And on the 15th day... she rested.

I am making a life here! I have a bank account, a phone, and (dun-dun-du-duuuuuun) : a place to live! I am beginning to think that my new colleagues here may think of me as a generally excitable person and perhaps they are right. I am delighted to have a room of my own once again and I have not stopped talking about how great it is here.

I am living in the front room in the house-share that I talked about in my last post. I was completely won over by the place immediately and the room mates are really great so far. This is a picture of my great big bay window from the corner of the room where my bed is.

The house is on a quiet street north of Oxford in a neighborhood called Summertown. Our house is one in a row of houses and the front looks like this. The window in the front with the tree is my room and it really is very nice. The kitchen and bathroom have been re-done recently so things are in good shape. There is a washing machine and drier as well as a dishwasher and there are lots of nice touches like my gigantic antique desk and a nice garden out back. This feels good to me. Now I just need to get a bike.
I will post more photos of the town and stuff like that but the big news is that I am permanently out of the hostels and happy to have a home! There are too many funny and or strange stories from my nights in the hostel. I am very relieved to be out of there. Nothing really bad happened it just wasn't home...

I was also introduced this week to the concept of on-line grocery shopping. One of the more affordable places to do grocery shopping here is Sainsbury's. I can do all of my grocery shopping on-line and schedule a time for the goods to be delivered. In a town where many people rely on bikes this is a life saver. I was dreading going out in the rain to buy all of the basics and drag them back to my place when one of my lab mates told me about this great service. Hooray for Sainsbury's! All of my food and a bunch of wine is being delivered tomorrow!

I should mention that I joined a choir here. This was a spontaneous move on my part. I saw the auditions advertised on the day of and so I just sort of showed up. The people in the choir seem really friendly and I think this will be a fun experience. The choir is apparently the oldest mixed a capella choir in Oxford and they are called The Alternotives. There are samples of their stuff up on-line. They arrange all of their own music and they are doing contemporary pieces from popular music but breaking them down for a choral setting and there are probably about 16 members right now. I have my second rehearsal tonight. Should be fun.

That is all for today.

Cheers!

Little Bird