Bittersweet Symphony

I'm leaving in about an hour for the airport. Almost everything is packed up and ready to go, just the tiniest little details are left. Having not gotten much sleep last night nor this week, I hope that I'll be able to finally get some sleep on the plane. If not, well then don't expect me to be a very happy for the first couple of days.

This experience has been absolutely amazing, and I really wish I wasn't leaving. Don't get me wrong, I'm not despising going back, but there's just something here that feels so right and so fitting. If I could spend next summer here in O

xford, I would do it hands down, no questions. In fact, I really do want to come back to Oxford, I feel as if while I've been here I've been too much of a local and not enough of a tourist. There are so many things which I could've seen here, but just didn't take the opportunity too.

It's going to be weird not hearing English accents all the time, we were all having a discussion about that last night. (And for the record, I have a rubbish English accent, but an amazing Cockney one.) There's going to be so much here that I'm going to miss, and I know that it hasn't quite hit me yet. Especially the people. I didn't think we'd be interacting so much with the students here and become friends with them. I just always assumed there would be a barrier there or something that we would recognize them in passing, and nothing else. And it's true, the Texas program really was the only program that did actually hang out with them, so maybe we're just the weird ones; but regardless on whether or not we should've, we did. I got a little sad when hanging out with some of them last night when realizing that I'm most likely NOT going to see these people ever again. They've said so much how they would love to come to the US and see Austin, but it is an investment and can be a bit of a hassle. 

If they do, though, they can always find a friendly face in that big city.

There are some things I'm looking forward to: Mexican food, regular ketchup, watching TV online (most shows are blocked from viewing in the UK), seeing friends and family, sunshine and nice weather, and I'm sure much more once I finally arrive.

Please, for the sake of my transition, use 'lovely' instead of nice, 'cheers' instead of thanks, 'brilliant' instead of great, and 'rubbish' instead of bad. One of the guys last night actually made a comment about how well we had done at incorporating it in to our speech. I was talking about soccer, but had been referring to it as 'football' and he didn't think about how I had been doing that until halfway in to our conversation.

Oh yes, American football, add that to the things I'm looking forward to.

Well, Cheers Oxford, Hello America. Don't be a stranger, always stay a friend. I hope that isn't the last time that we'll be together. You'll always be a part of me.