Whirlwind

I said it in my first post, and I will say it again: time has flown. I am now sitting in my empty office, trying to take in just a few more mental pictures of summer: the beautiful garden, the students (who, by now should be at home), my colleagues, and Oxford.

At 5:15PM today, I realized that I am leaving tomorrow, and I felt sad. Sad to leave what has been a lovely summer home, sad to leave a fun and challenging summer job, and sad to leave the friends I've made. But before I get too sentimental...

Let me catch you up on the last week. We took the students to Brighton, which is a fun beach town. It has a pier with arcades, carnival rides, and other games. The kids had a lot of fun, and honestly, so did we. I took a group of students through the Royal Pavilion, which was a home of King George IV. It was interesting to see, but its decoration was just so strange and gaudy. From the outside it kind of looks like the Taj Mahal, and the inside had just the most bizarre and bright Oriental decor. A lot of dragons, a lot of bamboo...not necessarily what you would expect to see in a palace that isn't in Asia. The tour guide said repeatedly that George IV wanted the decoration to be startling and upsetting, and I have to say it was. I'm glad I went and that I got to see it, but I won't be mad if I don't make it back to the Royal Pavilion again.

We then headed down to the beach where we saw a bunch of fun games, but one in particular caught our fancy:

Me, Kellen, and our Director, Sarah

The guys working there unzip the ball and you crawl in quickly, trying not to let too much air out. They put an air pump in through the opening, then once properly inflated, zip it up and you are on your way. Immediately upon entering the inflatable ball, I was overwhelmed with an eerie silence and the smell of feet. And, as it turns out, it is really hard to walk around in those things. I was able to stand up once, and then I immediately fell down. We thought it would be like the Atlasphere on American Gladiators:

...and that we would kind of be able to fight each other. Not so much. It was fun and so funny, but walking on water is difficult, even when you are inside a floatation device.

We played some carnie games, rode some carnie rides, and ate some carnie food. We had ice cream and doughnuts...not Krispy Kreme style doughnuts. More like a funnel cake, just in the shape of a doughnut. It was the closest thing to a funnel cake Brighton had to offer, so I ate one in honor of Lisa.

View of the pier from the beach

On the pier

The next day, I took a group of students to Bicester Village, which is really just an outlet mall. It looks less like an outlet mall and more like a charming village, so it was prettier than, say, the Hillsboro Outlet Mall. I bought some really cute shoes at a store there called Hobbs.

And that was actually our final excursion. The last week was kind of hectic: making sure all the students' travel information was set, getting the students' final grades and reports in from the teachers, and preparing for the students' final night here at LMH. We had a nice dinner in our dining hall that everyone dresses up for, and then a final dance. We also extended the students' curfew from 11PM to 2AM. Since we had to start leaving LMH at 5AM to get to the airport, a lot of the students just didn't sleep that night, and neither did we.

My group left for the airport at about 6AM, so we started loading up at about 5:45AM. I fell asleep instantly on the bus, and it felt like I had only been asleep for 5 minutes when we arrived at the airport an hour and a half later. We got all the students checked in and on their way and were able to leave by 11ish. I came back to my room and passed out. There was a strange silence across the campus, with all the kids gone. We had a staff bbq and party last night, which was a lot of fun. Today we cleaned out our offices and have started packing up. We had a really nice dinner out tonight with the senior staff team, and then, just for good measure, we all saw Harry Potter again.

Even though I am sad to leave Oxford, Kellen and I leave for Paris tomorrow. I have never been to France before, and I am really excited. We will get to see our friends David and Kristin, who have been living in Paris for the summer. We're also thinking about visiting Saint-Tropez, Nice, or maybe even Morocco...who knows where we'll end up!