Upper Reaches Hotel Oxford

Right...23 Days to go!! Not long now since i started counting at 385!!!
Only 10 actual days of my "real" work left to do then i'm out of here! I can't actually belive i'm going it somehow does not seem real!
I think the nerves are setting in and the waves of happiness and fear come and Go!!!!!
I never though for a minute i would leave the comfort of a perfectly good job, home and my family and friends to travel on my own ...

With time rapidly dwindling I went down to Banbury way this afternoon to visit my brother et famille before I leave, taking the opportunity to say goobye to two young nephews - one of whom was able to appreciate some of the implications of what I am doing, "But what if you get sick?" he asked. :-)

Back up to Stoke in the late evening. Last day of preparations tomorrow.

... to hotel in Amsterdam
- Hair straightening and Christmas Ho Ho Ho dress on bus in Amsterdam - all you people out there know what this means!!
- Booth of Truth
- "Secrets" game
- "Mopping" up - All you peeps out there knows what this means!
- Getting stuck in Anna and Adrian´s room, and Adrian offering a string of tied up bed sheets to help me escape from the window
- Getting into trouble from a man in jocks in the hall of our hotel for making too ...

... commenced our trip back to Reading on the trains. It was sooo good to finally arrive back at Mat and Jo´s. Mat ordered us pizza whilst we told stories about the people we had met and the places we had been to. We were so exhausted we had the best night´s sleep ever!

But it wasn´t for long! Up again at 8am to get through the mountains of laundry, posting stuff home, buying christmas trees from B ...

... to work, then during the day we kept losing broadband connection. With an over booked plane it was imperative I checked in as soon after 7.20pm as possible so as I could to preserve our precious seats. Eventually after fraught nerves but good assistance from son Stephen I got the job done.

Off to bed with some relief.

... Pookie).
I got to the station in plenty of time, rode first class on the way back as well. Once back in London, I had to take a tube to a different station and then a train into Oxford. But I got here safe, and it was so awesome to see Pookie. She met me at the station, and we went back to her work for a couple of hours, and then we went to her house.
Pookie and her husband have been ...

... will be thankful for our showers at home! Something made me feel ill a bit later, but I recovered and went to Jim's lecture, his fourth one, on Group Controversies in the Scrolls--the Essenes, the Sadducees, and the Pharisees.  There were about 25 people there, many of them taking notes.   At 6:15 we went to Evensong at New College Chapel where they did a Byrd service of psalms, responses, and a ...

... am so excited to be kind of getting connected. My tutorials seem to be falling into place, yet my sleeping habits and times are horrid. Let's pray they start to figure themselves out. Thank you all for reading this, I'm sure this gives you things to pray for. All of us here down at Oxford very much appreaciate your support. Just reading this makes my 45 minutes of time worth it. Thank you so much, without all of you, this would not be as easy as it is. It's not that easy...

Whoah, I'm here! In Oxford England! I'm totally loving England, everything is delightful. I saw a genuine apple tree on the way here. Having just rollercoastered in from Hawaii land of a million kinds of fruit but no apples, a heavily ripe apple tree in England feels like going to Arizona being reassured to find that there are still cactii. The English accent bowls me over, especially combined with the typical public ...

... place a new order and this time got talking to an actually extremely helpful guy who said because the lines already there we DON'T have to pay the fee which is what I was trying to tell the other 5 people I talked to days earlier. I guess all it took was throwing the whole thing out and starting up a new order for them to finally listen to me. Regardless they are now coming to hook it up Sept 16th and we will not be paying the install fee. The mate was from Ireland also so ...