July 9th - Preparations

Hey everyone!

Nothing too exciting happened today. It was mostly a day for me to prep for tomorrow. What’s happening? You’ll have to check back to find out!

This morning, I had breakfast and went to my 8:30 class as usual. After that, I headed back to my dorm to work on some homework for the same class.

Once I wrapped that up, I grabbed lunch with Connor in the Covered Market. It was a quick grab-and-go situation since we needed to make a Tesco run and I still had another class later. We stopped at a place that sold some ready-to-eat items; the only catch was they weren’t warm. So there we were, wandering Tesco with me eating a cold steak roll and Connor holding a quiche like it was a giant cookie. Quality lunch break right there.

Later, I went to class, which today was held at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. We met the director, Shaunaka Rishi Das, an older Irish gentleman who welcomed us into the center’s library. He talked to us about the Indian (or Hindu) way of thinking about philosophy, which is very different from the western approach. In short: Indian philosophy is more integrated and holistic, whereas western philosophy tends to be less spiritual and more fragmented.

After class, I went back to my dorm and did some more work.

Then, to take a break, I joined the WWII film class for a showing of Jojo Rabbit, a satirical movie about a Hitler Youth cadet (whose imaginary friend is Hitler) who discovers a Jewish girl hiding in his house, completely shaking up his worldview.

Once the film ended, we wandered over to a sushi place that was closing up for the night. They were selling all their sushi kits at half price, so naturally, I grabbed two! The sushi was great, and I ended up eating a lot of salmon.

A nice evening in front of the sushi shop!

To wrap up the evening, we decided to try out the electric scooters that are scattered all around town. We found a quiet spot and took them for a little test run. They were surprisingly nice, and we might use them again to zip around Oxford a bit faster.

And that's pretty much it! Be sure to check back soon!