Dubrovnik

We went to Croatia with my parents and stayed for a couple days in Dubrovnik. It was an amazing city with huge walls that you can walk all the way around and look down on the city below. Here are some photos.


Isn't it a beautiful city?

The water around the city was so blue.

The city walls are very impressive.

From the city walls

This sight makes Scooter a happy, happy man.

This sight is good for my heart. It fills it with peace.


Aren't my parents a handsome couple? (Individually as well though, I must say...)

The ultimate traveller/tourist. Audio guide and video camera at once!


The city walls fall straight into the sea one three sides.


Can you imagine how long it took to build those walls?

This is the main thoroughfare of Dubrovnik.

We ate gelato - lots and lots of gelato. Croatia is just across the Adriatic Sea from Italy and, lucky for us, this delicious stuff made it across!

Do you know what makes me happy?

These folks!

My parents just left this morning from a ten day visit. It was too wonderful for words to have them here. They are always so enthusiastic about everything, so it was really fun to show them around Oxford. Even things that have begun to seem regular and mundane to us were so exciting from their perspective. I'm afraid that the trip wasn't entirely as relaxing for my overworked dad as I had hoped, but he sure did see a lot. We went to Stonehenge, met Scooter as he came out of his last exam (which he did very well on - thanks for your prayers), went punting, ate dinner in hall, had a private tour of Christ Church college with afternoon tea at High Table, went to the village of Doxey, took a four day trip to Croatia, went to Wimbledon, went to show in London, had a picnic in the Buckingham Palace park, saw a lot of Oxford, ate in a historic pub, and bought plenty of Oxford paraphernalia. The best part of our trip was just being together talking and laughing. I miss them already even though I will see them again in a few weeks when we move back home. Thanks so much for coming mom and dad!

Exam Day

We have been so busy preparing for our last whirlwind month here. My parents are coming for a visit, and then Scooter's mom is coming out for graduation. We have a couple of last trips thrown in the mix. Tomorrow Scooter starts his exams. He has three written and one oral exam. He takes his first two written exams, and Friday he takes his last written exam. Each written exam is three hours and consists of a few essay questions. His teacher estimated that they should write 70 pages over the course of the whole exam, so that should be 46 and 2/3 pages just tomorrow folks! I bought him some new pens to ensure that he wouldn't run out of ink. I'm sure he is going to need a major hand massage tomorrow night! We are really looking forward to these exams being over. He has been studying pretty much constantly for the past month or so. Yesterday he went at the library at 6:30am and didn't come home until 10:30pm. It will be nice to have him back. My last day of work is tomorrow as well. All in all it is going to be a very exciting day. I've been thinking a lot about how much I am going to miss Oxford and our life here. It has been such an amazing and surreal year. I'm going to miss riding the bus and people-watching my fellow passengers everyday. I'm going to miss our tiny flat - no matter where I am in it I am never more than a few steps from Scooter. I'm going to miss being able to sleep with our window open (even in the middle of the summer it cools down enough). I'm going to miss all of the street performers on Cornmarket Street. I'm going to miss the fields of yellow rapeseed I ride past on the way to the grocery store. I'm going to miss waking up at 5am thinking that it is noon because the sunlight is so bright coming through the window. I'm going to miss our local library's huge collection of travel guides. I'm going to miss the incredibly old buildings. I'm going to miss the chalk pictures that a homeless girl draws on the sidewalk every night. Anyway, enough of the reminiscing. We packed for a couple hours today. It is amazing how quickly we were able to pack. In under two hours we were able to pack about 70% of our stuff. It is such a contrast from our last move from Provo to Saint George - it took weeks to pack that time. Anyway, I need to run off and clean my house before my parents get here!

If you remember, Scooter could use your prayers - he has a lot to remember over the next couple of days.

Ascension Day

We are getting so behind on our blogging - sorry! A few weeks ago we celebrated Ascension Day with Scooter's college - Lincoln College. Ascension Day is a day where our college celebrates these strange traditions that originated so long ago that no one is entirely sure how they started. The first thing you do on Ascension Day is participate in "Beating the Bounds." This is where you walk with sticks along the medieval borders of our college parish. These borders now cut through all kinds of interesting places: through stores, through other colleges, down alleys full of dumpsters, etc. There are stones all along the way marking the boundaries. At each stone the priest marks it with some chalk, a prayer is said, and we all "beat" the boundary stone with our sticks. We looked really strange walking along with our long sticks in this long procession following huge religious banners and various priests. Our procession went through fire exits, the stockroom of a shoe store, through the lingerie section of a department store, another college's pub, and a restaurant, among other places. People kept stopping us to ask what was going on. All of the stores were expecting us and some places even had treats waiting for us.

After we "beat the bounds" we go back to our college and celebrate the rest of our traditions. Read what Wikipedia says about Ascension Day at Lincoln College and the rest will make more sense:

"As is common with Oxford colleges, the College has a longstanding rivalry with neighbour Brasenose College (which was also founded by a later Bishop of Lincoln). The two colleges share a tradition revived annually on Ascension Day. The story goes that, centuries ago, as a mob chased students at the University through the town, the Lincoln porter allowed in the Lincoln students but refused entry to the Brasenose member, leaving him to the mercy of the mob. An alternative is that a Lincoln man bested a Brasenose man in a duel. Either episode resulted in the Brasenose student's death, and ever since, on Ascension Day, Lincoln College has invited in members of Brasenose College every year through the one door connecting the two colleges, for free beer as penance."

For many years the Lincoln students (because they were upset about having to part with some of their precious beer every year) started "poisoning" the beer with ivy. It really doesn't poison it but it does make it taste really gross. So they opened the secret passage and let the students from our rival college though and we all ("we" meaning everyone except for Scooter and I) drank some of this bad tasting beer.

Many years ago the college started contributing to orphanages every year. Somehow over the years they started making some kids come to college to receive the donation, then someone got the bright idea to start giving the donation by throwing it at the kids from the college tower. Then in order to teach the kids to not be greedy they started super-heating the coins (which they have only just recently stopped doing for safety reasons). Kids are still bused in to have coins thrown at them from the tower. All of the kids love it. They scramble all over picking up as many as they can gather.


We also went to see the preliminary races of the Summer VIIIs. It was the first proper race that we have attended. We stood on the top of the Lincoln boathouse and cheered for our college. The boats try to overtake and bump each other. It was a lot more exciting than we had expected. We really love Oxford.

Broad Street

This is one of my favorite areas of Oxford

Not only is this because of the bright shop-fronts, but because this is the street of delicious baguettes. English people really know how to make good sandwiches. I think that, in general, they are more creative with what fillings they use. Mortons, the shop on the left, tries to get rid of all of their sandwiches before they close by selling them for only one pound fifty for the last fifteen minutes they are open. Sometimes we plan our days around getting there at 4:45pm in case they have any mozzarella and sun-dried tomato baguettes left. Another shop in the photo, Cafe Creme, has delicious feta cheese sandwiches to die for!

Since we have taken our blogging break we have:

visited the London temple, visited York Minster cathedral, eaten fish and chips with mashed peas on the medieval city walls in York, visited York on a race day and went on a ghost walk (I screamed really loudly - no real surprise), this is England's version of the Little Caesars pizza advertisingwent hiking in Yorkshire Dales, these nice gentlemen showed us a peregrine falcon - fastest creature on earthwent to the Preston temple, went to a BYU Singers concert to see some friends sing, walked the castle walls in Conwy, Wales, relaxed in Conwy bay, saw Britain's smallest house, hiked the tallest mountain south of Scotland (in the rain, wearing trainers with holes in them, and with gale force winds), I know, ponchos seem a bit rudimentary, but our "waterproof" jackets weren't even helping to keep the rain from soaking us. The wind finally ripped mine to shreds a couple minutes after we took this picture. When we got to the top we could barely see - the visibility was basically nil.heard some Welsh (this is what it looks like written - fun fact: "W" is a vowel in Welsh), went to the city with the longest name in the world, visited Holyhead island in Wales, went to the Beatles museum in Liverpool, ate the spiciest Balti food ever in Birmingham (I made the mistake of ordering "slightly" spicy - we could barely eat it, which was sad because it was so good), went to Shakespeare's house in Stratford-Upon-Avon, and celebrated Ascension Day with Scooter's college, and summited five peaks in the Lake District (more on these last two activities in future posts). We're exhausted!