We finished our first day as Oxford summer students and everything has been just as amazing as we’d hoped it would be. We’ve had three meals in the Christ Church Hall so far and we’ve met an incredibly diverse group of fascinating people. They’ve hailed from Orkney to Florida, from Aix en Provence to Pakistan. All with rich life stories and an abundance of curiosity and intelligence.

My tutor for The Black Death course is perfect. We’re covering a lot of detailed information and I can’t keep up as I try to write down the references to books and historians and historic figures and events. But he has a sense of humor. Anyone who acknowledges the dearth of good coffee choices and then turns around and makes a Monty Python reference has won my attention.

Meanwhile, we’ve seen a couple pictures of the kids and their cabin-mates, so we’re optimistic that their adventures are going swimmingly also.

Tomorrow is a full day – the usual meals and classes and also a walking tour of the city, a string quartet performance and then another walking tour of the pubs. Should be a fun day!