Snow!

My wish has come true. This morning I woke up to a beautiful, pristine layer of snow over the ground outside. About time! It's been absolutely freezing in Oxford this past week, and what better way to embrace the arrival of winter than snow? Only a half-inch, granted, but that's more than we often get in New Mexico! (Not to mention California...)

This week being the last week of classes, I've got several final papers hanging over my head, but I couldn't resist: I bundled up and set out for a lively walk around Christ Church meadow, camera in hand. This was my first encounter with snow since I got my cochlear implant this past summer, and the sounds of it were amazing: crisp crunching, squishing where it'd turned slushy on the road, the wind whipping past. Lively, chill, and refreshing. The banks by the river had taken a good dusting, tendrils of ice had begun to form, the snow clung to the trunks and branches of trees, and behind it all the spires of Oxford loomed, keeping watch. I felt inexpressibly happy. Add on the cup of hot chocolate I bought from a chocolate shop on the way back (best I've had in a long time), and it was a magical morning.

The City of Dreaming Spires

If there's one thing I've learned since coming to Britain, it's that you have to take advantage of the good weather while it lasts! The last three days have brought in some warmer temperatures and gorgeous sun (for the most part), so this afternoon a few friends and I walked out to Carfax Tower, at the far end of Oxford's High Street, to enjoy some very panoramic sights of the city. After climbing up a succession of tightly spiralling, claustrophobia-inducing staircases, we emerged to see this:



Spectacular. As many pictures as we took, none of them come close to capturing that view. There's a reason Oxford is called "the city of dreaming spires."