(Well, I would exchange today for a whole set of literature lessons though...)
My roommate had gone to some football stadium, so until evening, I have the whole room to myself!
As usual, for free time, I like to go out for a walk to somewhere I can see amazing things everywhere. However, instead of going south to the center of Oxford, I went up Banbury Road, trekking north for the first time. In that direction was Summertown, where a lot of supermarkets are located in. The first market I came upon was M&S, Mark and Spencer. The air conditioning was quite cold, I have to say, with my short sleeved T-shirt. There were tons of variations of food in the market (no surprise), and at first, I was planning to buy the food I am bringing back to Taiwan, including the tea packages for my aunt, the cookies for my French class classmates, a tablet of 72% dark chocolate for Melody, etc., but then it dawned on me that I still have more than two weeks in England, so why bother buy food so early? That was the reason why I put them back to where they belonged to, and then shopped for food for myself. Ultimately, I grabbed myself two packages of chips and a pizza.
Then, I went to a stationery store nearby, just to check out how much the pens cost in England. Now, I was prepared for some somewhat expensive price, about two pounds or so. Never had I anticipated the shocking price.
4.5 pounds. If converted into TWD (1:39.3 at this moment), a normal 35 TWD pen in England costs about 177 TWD, which is about five times the price. I don't know if this is the general price here, but one shop alone with pens of this price is scary enough; I would rather go and buy some fountain pens, which are relatively cheaper!
To pacify the shock I just experienced, I went to the next supermarket, Tesco. There, I bought an intriguing workbook of codewords:
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| New brain-taxing toy :D |
Since I had free time for the whole day, I decided to make the best use of it.... by staying in my room. True, I have a lot of places I would love to go to, and there are a lot of adventures I would love to take, but I have this blog to keep, and I have my French studies. Being abroad for over three weeks means that I'll have four weeks of French courses absent (and it also means that Candy is going to the lessons alone. I don't think she is complaining, though *cough cough*), and I would have to try to catch up with their progress with the notes they provide through our chatroom. That means I am going to figure out how the comparison works in French by reading into the notes. Glad that they were coherent enough, or I would fall back behind the schedule after I get back to Taiwan.
To add spice to my dorm life, I went for another episode of Catchphrase, and learned some more of the idioms:
to put your foot in your mouth: saying something offensive or inappropriate
water under the bridge: the past is past
to sing for your supper: doing someone a favor in hope of getting something in return
chalk and cheese: to decribe when two things are completely different
Yeah, and this was why I had to stay in the dorm instead of roaming in and out of the bookstores all around me.
Also on today, I got a reply from our Mr. Maher, about not mentioning about the beautiful parks and the old exquisite buildings. Therefore, so out of the blue, I had immediately planned my trip to the Oxford University Parks tomorrow, after our courses are done at four in the afternoon. I'm going to walk around the gigantic park and give introductions about the buildings. I'm not coming back for dinner, for the pizza I now have in the fridge. A small forewarning at first: I am not good at leading people on tours, so sorry if I give a lowsy introduction, I'll do my best though; I promise.
This is all for today.
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