One Wicked Awesome Weekend - the First of Many I'm Sure...

What a weekend! Never a dull moment here in the U.K! Friday night Phoebe and I stayed in at our house and we had Emily over to watch Shakespeare in Love in preparation of our visit to Broughton Castle next Saturday (the movie was filmed there), and had some great desserts. This was after we finished our meeting about half-term plans with Mad and had then toured some of Charlbury's shops and the library. Saturday morning, we slept in like lazy students and then decided that we would go into Oxford for the day - we came to this conclusion about 10 minutes before the next train left from Charlbury station... so we met Lisa and Emily and we RAN all the way to the station. Now it's usually a 15 minute walk, but due to our spontaneous planning, we had to make it there in 4 minutes. Thank goodness the train was held up by people loading piles of luggage! So we made it...we were shaking and gasping for breath but we were on that train! SUCCESS! But we had no tickets...
Don't worry! We just bought them in Oxford, apparently it happens all the time! Phewwww. So, Phoebe, Emily, Lisa and I headed off to check out the o-so-ethnic Cowley Road which was a long walk from the train station, but it brought us past the Botanic Gardens, Magdalen College, and all sorts of amazing sights and architecture.

Here is us gazing dreamily at the dreamy spires of Magdalen College. It was a pretty dreary day but we made the best of it - we might have to get used to dreary!
So we walked down Cowley Road...it was definitely a college student area - it was pretty exciting!
Then we decided that we were too lazy to walk back and taking the bus qualified as an Oxford experience so that's what we did.
We actually found Ben and Matt and then we all went for supper at an Irish pub (O'Neils) and watched some Rugby Heineken Cup action - all the Irish people in the pub were going for Leinster so thats what we did too...it was a blast and a half! And the food was amazing! (and CHEAP!)
And after that, we decided that we'd just head back to Charlbury so we hopped back on the train (this time with tickets) and us girls had a movie night at Charlbury Baptist Church. We watched Elizabeth.
Sunday qualified as a 'wicked awesome day'. First, we woke up to the sound of bells tolling, playing all sorts of songs. That is incredible, and what a wonderful way to wake up! Also, the sun was streaming through my windows, illuminating my purple room! Then we had a combined service at St. Mary's, the local Anglican Church, which was about a unified church. It was a fantastic service with all sorts of congergation participation (choir, sketches, a cross activity, a picture activity) and the whole group was very welcoming to us. Then we headed off to our assigned 'Sunday Lunch Hosts' for...Sunday Lunch! These were people who wanted to help out with the programme but weren't able or chose not to house students. Emily, David and I went to Martin and Claire's house and had an incredible meal! I eat waaaaay too much here...I'm pretty sure everyone rocks at cooking! And then, they took us to Woodstock so we could see Blenheim Palace! That was right at the top of my 'To See' list so that was just great! It was still sunny outside and we walked around the lake and everything was soooo gorgeous. We even saw Canada Geese! The palace was incredible!

Emily and I were pretty excited! And we thought that we looked amazing in our Wellington Boots! Unfortunatley, the Palace was closed so we could only tour the grounds, but it was fine anyway...I'll just have to go back!
And that's basically it...I was able to cross a lot of things that I wanted to see off my list, but I'm pretty sure I'll go see them all again regardless!
It's hard to believe that we've been here just over a week! What a great week though and it just promises to get better and better!
Time is going to fly...dang.