home, umami home

Note: The title of this post has nothing to do with the 305, in case you read it wrong.

As a wise man once told me, "Home is where you make it," and this year has produced a lot of definitions of the word "home." I returned to my family's house after graduation, but almost immediately began hopping all over the place--visiting friends around the state, living with family in Italy, etc.--and thus had one sort of home base but multiple homes (does that make sense?).

Nowadays, I find myself thousands of miles from my actual house in Florida, but for an extended-enough period of time that I must, for sanity's sake, make a home out of this place as well. I recently realized that I never shared what my digs even looks like here, so here ya go, a little inside scoop. It isn't surprising that I'm only getting around to sharing this old news just days before I head back to the 'States for the holiday break. Oh well.

Blenheim Palace

One week ago, a few of us took advantage of some nice weather and headed a few miles north for Blenheim Palace's annual "Living Crafts for Christmas" market. It was...interesting. Not what we expected out of a Christmas Market, but it was still pretty neat to see the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill. I've gotta run off for practice, so here's a simple picture-post:

Twas a looooong driveway...

Museums galore

Oxford not-so-fun fact/rambling story:
I live in on-site college housing, and every morning (9am on the dot), my "scout" comes to empty my trash. She has a key to all the rooms, so she gives a quick rat-a-tat-tat on the door before unlocking the old, noisy doorknobs. The walls are thin: I can hear the entire progression down my hallway (as well as the hallways above and below me). If you don't want to be disturbed, you can place your trash can rubbish bin outside your door, but you can do this for a max of 3 days in a row. I think the every.single.day thing is a bit excessive, and figured the 3-day-max thing was to ensure nothing illegal was going on inside your room. Turns out, however [note: here's the aforementioned fact], the housekeepers are called Scouts at Oxford because they "scout" out your room to make sure no suicide attempts have been made. Yeah, you read that right. Apparently the dreary England conditions + ridiculous workload drive a fair number of people over the edge.

I don't share this info to make light of the subject by any means (the name's origin is probs just an urban myth anyway), but rather as a basis for my excuse of not having "new" material to blog lately. I've been swamped.

Luckily for you, however, I found the draft of a blog sitting around that I've decided to put to use. I wrote it agggges ago [or so it seems], after visiting several London museums. My intention was to add to the post my experiences at several Oxford museums, but...well, did I say I've been swamped? There's definitely still a lot remaining on my places-to-see list...

So howsabout we take a little jog back to the days when leisurely trips to museums, like, happened. Ready, go:


Museums seem to be a big part of my life this year, from Madrid, to DC, to London, and now Oxford. And I haven't paid for a single one of 'em yet!

While in London [two months ago], I visited the following, [and recommend all four!] --

uhhh-pdates

eghhh...I'm getting really bad at this. Here's a life update. Kind of. Forgive me.

1. This Halloween, there were no (or at least minimal numbers of) costumes, there was no trick-or-treating, no sugar overload. Instead, there was a Formal Dinner at my Oxford college, which I attended and ate a delicious meal with my brother at my side and 'new' friends all around me. No complaints here.