Day 5: Greens Café, Homework Escapades and the Oxford Grind

            Suzanna and I left for mass at St. Aloysius at 8:20 in the morning. We thought the mass was at 9 but it ended up being 9:30. It was a gorgeous church, definitely worth the 40 minute walk. After mass, Lieren saw us and we ended up passing by her flat (which is absolutely gorgeous). It drizzled for a bit and under it, the three of us walked to Greens Café and there we spent the morning (or afternoon for both Lieren and Suzanna) doing work.

All the ladies in the CUA group (sans Helen) ended up congregating at the 2^nd floor of the café (which is where the picture above was taken, clearly when people aren’t around yet) at around 11:30/12:00. This was definitely unplanned. We were all taking advantage of the unlimited free wifi and their fair priced food and coffee. I personally prefer the atmosphere at Coffee Republic. However, Greens Café is much more conducive to the power of my purse. Greens Café felt like a cottage while Coffee Republic feels like a café.

I left Greens at around 1:30 and headed to Blackwell. Blackwell is basically like Borders or Barnes and Noble in the US, only it’s bigger and I like it more because of the extensive selection and reading space. It served as my library for the day although I only found one of the books I needed to read for class. I spent about 1.5 hours in there, looking for books and reading the work I needed for my essay, and then I went to Waterstone (another version of Borders) and to The Works (which is also a bookstore). I eventually headed home at around 3:30 to grab a REALLY REALLY late lunch and an early dinner. I went back to the city at around 5 and headed to Greens, got a Chai, used the wifi and saw that Suzanna and Lieren still there. We left at around 6, which is the time that Greens closed and this marked the end of the day.

The work has definitely begun and paper writing has commenced. It’s slightly nerve wrecking to see our free time diminish so fast. And focusing is one of the hardest things to do here, at least for me. I’m trying not to get in to what they call an “Essay Crisis” (having an essay due soon and not having done it yet), It helped that it drizzled a lot today, the first time I experienced the true England weather since I got here. I am definitely getting into the Oxford grind.