Arrival Day!

Spare post with few details and no pictures at the moment, but I am back in Oxford! We arrived in London Heathrow this morning around 7am after flying last night from Washington. Sitting on the coach bus sent out to the airport for all the Rhodes scholars, while gazing through the window at the quintessentially English rolling green hills and sheep, tossed me into a surreal glow. (Okay, that might have been the jet lag. I hardly slept a wink on the plane last night and was definitely among those in "zombie" rather than "uncontrollable hysteria" mode this morning.) Could I really be back in this place again? With these people? And about to stay here for two years? I've spent weeks and months thinking about this moment, planning for it, visualizing it, but today all I could do was buckle before the immensity of the moment. Really, what I mean is that all my attempted imaginings and stabs at getting my life in order shifted in the face of the reality: these next two years are going to be huge, and are going to introduce me to things and change me in ways that I currently cannot anticipate, at least not fully.

Having Oxford feel so familiar, both from my time here three years ago through the Stanford overseas program and from my short sweep through this summer, only added to these feelings of incredulity. Nonetheless, I managed to get all my bags into my gorgeous new room at St. John's College (not unpacked yet, but photos coming soon) and took a tour around town before meeting some Stanford friends and former riding teammates for afternoon tea. Worlds intersected there again, but in a wonderful way, and I left to spend a few more hours figuring out internet and IT services at Oxford (read: not remotely resembling those at Stanford!!) before joining some of the other Rhodies at a tavern in Jericho for dinner. At which the customer service was subpar, another welcome-to-Britain moment... oh dear.

Walking back from dinner through the dark roads and cobblestone paths of Oxford, past a crumbling cemetery or two by St. Giles', I couldn't help but reflect on the nature of the scene: take out the cars passing by, and dim the lights in the windows, and I could have been transported centuries ago, or just about. The air felt cool and slightly damp, and with it came a brooding sense of time and age among the stone. This intersection -- between novelty and self-discovery, innovation and stability, tradition and time -- is part of what fascinates me about this place and leaves me wrestling to understand its impending influence in my life. May the explorations begin, then, but only after a good night's sleep. To bed and, as the British say, cheerio.