Weekend update

I haven't posted in awhile, so thought I'd better give a general update. However, the main reason I haven't been writing is that we haven't been doing anything very exciting!

Wednesday I had my second Greek tutorial, which went better than the first but still was so hard! My tutor said she saw lots of improvement since last time and sympathetically noted that she remembers this stage of language learning is "like Purgatory." I agree!

Friday was my second Roman coins class, which was about how coins were used as propaganda and/or monuments. And we got to touch some more coins after class, including a very rare one. After that I made an exhaustive tour of three different libraries to find books for my next essay (due Wednesday), which is on the growth of the primacy of the Pope from 325 to 461 AD.

Friday night we again didn't win the lottery, but this time other people did. The game was Euro Millions, and was for all of Europe, so you can imagine our odds. But the jackpot was up to £125 million! We heard on the radio that if one person won it, he or she would earn £15,000 per day on interest alone! Two people in France and one person in Portugal won. Darn.

Yesterday, we took a shorter trip than has become our Saturday custom. We drove about 15 miles north to the city of Bicester, which David's coworker had recommended as a good place to shop. They have a huge, new outlet mall called Bicester Village that is actually quite impressive.

Bicester Village reminded us a lot of good old Woodburn, but it's a little fancier. In addition to Timberland and such, it has stores like Gucci, Versace, and Jimmy Choo, and most of the shoppers looked richer than us! We didn't spend long there, but I did find time to grab several pairs of pants from French Connection (my favorite overpriced UK clothing store) for only £10 each! Wahoo!

Back in Oxford, we had an early dinner at a pub in Headington. We had been by there several times before, and even parked nearby to go to Blockbuster across the street, but this was the first time we'd been there in the light.

And this time we discovered that we had been right by one of Oxford's most famous (and odd) attractions without even knowing it! David happened to look up, saw a shark stuck in the top of a house, and said, "Hey, it's the shark house!" We have no idea why a guy put a plastic shark in his roof, but the odd spectacle has made it into most travel guides.

The other highlight of our weekend has been watching rugby, which has been fun. Rugby is so much better to watch than American football - the action hardly ever stops and it's much more violent! We still haven't worked out all the rules yet, though. We watched England beat Wales and Scotland beat France - yay!

Watching rugby was a fun way to have our own little Super-Bowl-ish weekend in the UK. And in keeping with the junk food tradition for such a weekend, I made a wonderful discovery: Giant Buttons!!

But they are showing the Super Bowl here - in fact, David is watching it right now (at 11:30 at night!). The sad part is that they go to British commercials in between! Everyone knows the commercials are the best part. But David has already found a website that will show all the ads shortly after they air; we'll probably check them out tomorrow.

I must admit I've been mostly avoiding my Rome essay this weekend (not nearly as interesting as Constantine), but have been doing some reading for it. I did some work last week and will really hit it tomorrow and Tuesday. I've been mainly updating Sacred Destinations with photos and articles related to the places we've been (especially Trier, Germany).

My website earnings (mainly from ReligionFacts) are continuing to grow every month, which is exciting and very much needed!

Hope you all are enjoying the Super Bowl (go Chickenhawks!) and have a great week!