1st update

Hello all

Well, I arrived safely in England, with no major travel travails (although a bit of excitement helping find room for everyone on a train from Birmingham to Oxford). The first day was uneventful - mainly getting here, meeting the jr. deans who will be running the house
where I am staying (for you SAU folks, think giant coed K-house with about 40 people in it), meeting my roommates (who I have gotten along with excellently) and moving into the spacious room (triple the size of my SAU room) we will be sharing. The evening was quite, as we were all pretty jetlagged.

The next day also was spent meeting people and recovering from jetlag, although a few of us did find time to go into city centre and find some of the easier to locate places (most importantly the Bodleian, where copious amounts of time will be spent reading their millions of reference-only books)

Sunday one of my roommates and I did a more thorough exploration of city centre, including stopoffs at St. Mary's (the Oxford University Church, and a most beautiful Cathedral - Cardinal Newman preached there, and the Wesleys attended church there for a while) and Oxford's botanical gardens. Then we went for afternoon tea, followed by a trip to St. Andrews for services there (St. Andrews is an evangelical Anglican church - think garden variety US evanglical church with communion every week. The worship, except one hymn with a pipe organ and an awesome vocal arrangement, was the same style as US contemporary. The message was interesting and well-presented, although the conclusions weren't thoroughly thought through. I'll probably go to the evening service there after tea, but will keep looking for a morning service to go to).

Today was the first day of orientation, and we all went over to Wycliffe hall to met the SCIO (the organization we are here with) staff and learn a bit more about how our stay here will work. Then we had afternoon tea.

The one irritating thing so far has been the internet connection here at The Vines - flaky would be an understatement in describing it. That would be the explanation for why I've not updated anything since arriving here.

See you all later,
Daniel