It is always great to see friendly faces… and this weekend I sure got to see a few!

After a pretty speedy recovery, I was off to Oxford on Friday to visit Ashleigh. She too goes to Stonehill but has been abroad since September, first studying at Oxford’s Worcester College and now in Grenoble, France! She had a week break so headed back to England for a visit. It was great having an inside tour of Oxford because if she/ her friends weren’t there I wouldn’t have been able to go into some of the university’s buildings. Walking around I half regretted not applying there and half thanked myself for not inflicting serious amounts of work on myself. The college looks like a scene right out of Harry Potter; Snape or Dumbledore should have turned any corner at any given moment. Too bad I didn’t have my wand ready. We walked around the city, visited her friends at the crew races, sipped tea, and paused for a picture outside the pub where C.S. Lewis and J.R. Tolkien wrote. All in all, it was a great day exploring a city embedded with history and oddities with a familiar face!

Saturday came with more visits, both planned and completely unexpected! I met Chm and one of her flatmates at Borough Market and then headed to the Museum of Natural History. We saw the dinosaurs! One of the main rooms of the museum is where J.K. Rowling read the first few pages of the final Harry Potter book at midnight last year! Apparently Harry Potter was a theme of the weekend too. The museum was fun to wander around, next time we might go in the special exhibit to see if we are fit to live in the artic… I doubt I would pass that test considering I’m always cold! Anyways, here is the interesting and shocking part… We head back to her flat to meet up with two other flatmates and their friends that are visiting for the weekend from Madrid. I walk into the living room and immediately hear “Laura?!” And I go “Jess?” Surprise Lauralton reunion! A girl I graduated happens to go to college back home with Chm’s flatmates and is also studying abroad this semester. Small world! Everyone in the room was so confused at first since we immediately used each other’s names without being introduced or anything. Needless to say, shock, laughter, and awe filled the room for the majority of the afternoon.

Well, that was great procrastination. I guess I have to get back to my paper now. Soon enough (in only 3 days!!) I’ll have some more familiar faces visiting me for a week!!