Alyss from the Abyss!

My dearest friends,

It’s true, three weeks have passed with no news, but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been news to give! Quite the contrary – I’ve been too busy to post. So starting from… the start.
I spent Halloween in London at a Google-sponsored party for Rhodes and Marshall Scholars. Dinner was nice and rather posh, set in the London Banquet Hall (once the banquet hall of a palace that subsequently burned down). Everything was Googled out – theme colored lights (blue, yellow, red), light-up “ice cubes” in smoking glasses, and specialized Google logos. (You know how their search engine logo changes with the holiday? We had some specialty Halloween ones, NOT seen on your average Halloween Google page. Although I thought it would have been much more creative to have ones about African colonialism and post-war economic rebuilding… not to be biased har har). I made a few good connections, namely with the guy in charge of Google’s new “green initiative.”

Then (for contrast, I suppose) we went to a club down the street where we got to watch a live show of queens doing “the time warp agaaain…” Brought be back to the summer of ought-five, chasing the phantom Horror Show through the streets of Cheyenne with a couple of remarkably hairy, remarkably good-looking gals (you know who you are… ) Stayed the night with a few Londoner Marshalls and spent the next day lounging around watching movies because the weather was atrocious.

However, this is when the trouble began. First, I realized I’d lost my phone at the club the night before. Then, due to driver shortages, no trains went back to Oxford that evening, so after some adventures we chased down a bus (at midnight) and returned to a rainy freezing Oxford with no taxis running. The next morning I had rugby practice, during which my bike got nicked (another one to add to your dictionary). Next day my favorite jacket got nicked. And this on top of a whole range of other events I won’t go into now.


My friend Rose, also having run into hard times, luckily saved my sanity. She said, “You know, maybe we’re donating our good-luck energy to Obama!” And she must have been right! Election night was thrilling. WAY TO GO USA!!!!! Every television in Oxford was tuned into the election, and most colleges had set up big-screens connected into CNN or MSNBC. A big crew of us at Linacre made it through to Obama’s speech at 5am. We had eyes representing every curve of the globe in that room, and by the end not one was dry.


Since then, life has more or less returned to normal: reading, reading, reading, rugby, reading, reading, lecture, reading, rugby, lecture, reading, reading, and reading. This weekend will be a nice mix-up… I’m going on a climbing trip to the Lake District of England with some folks from the Oxford University Mountaineering Club! Should be smashing, even if weather prevents any serious climbing. I will do my best to report back early next week… hopefully with some more stimulating pictures and even stimulating-er conversation about European visions of “wilderness.”


Until then, tally-ho!
Alyssa



(and for your viewing pleasure, some pics from our last match. On the left, I am the leftish fleshy blur with taped legs... and check out this link! Some promo for the upcoming men's varsity match. Any Monty Python fans out there?! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJWV8RIlyEk)