days off and days on

today was my first day off - hooray!  (i get one day off a week.)  i took the bus into london for the day - there's a great bus company that runs only from oxford to london (stopping at several different locations in each city).  a round trip ticket costs 16 pounds, and the buses run every 10-15 minutes during the day and every hour from midnight to five am - but they run 24 hours a day!  a very exciting find.  today i slept in (of course - the perfect way to start a day off), and then took a bus into london that arrived at about 1:30.  i bought a half price ticket to the matinee performance of "la cage aux folles" (30 pounds - 6th row - in the middle - purchase 45 minutes before the performance began - whoo hoo!) which was SO FUN.  the robin williams movie "the birdcage" (one of my favorites - if you haven't seen it, you need to!) was based on this musical, so i knew the plot line going into it.  great acting and singing, though, and lots of really fun dance numbers performed by super skinny (but muscular) drag queens in skimpy outfits.  and a very sweet plot line - i loved it.  i had dinner at a vegetarian indian restaurant that was delicious, went to a book store, and took the bus back to oxford.  i just had some raspberry sorbet from the cute ice cream shop on the corner, and now i'm in my pajamas in my room.  it started raining when i got on the bus in london and was almost pouring by the time i got back to oxford, so i'm happy to be inside. 

when i got this job several people asked me what exactly i would DO at this job, and i really couldn't tell them - the description was very vague but they could guarantee that i would only work 5-8 hours a day, so i took it.  now that i've been here a week i can sort of tell you what my job is and what a typical day looks like!  i work one five-hour shift per day (longer if one of the other deans has the day off).  during my shift i sit in the program office with one PA (oxford undergrad) who is also on duty and we field whatever comes through the door: phone calls from parents, kids locked out of their rooms, teachers who need help figuring out how the copy machine works, running errands to buy more office supplies (note: this includes biscuits (cookies) and crisps (potato chips)), answering general student questions ("how do i get somewhere" is the typical question - and i always defer to the PA, as i have no idea), and checking students in from 10-11pm (if i'm on duty then) - and then inevitably searching for the kids who fell asleep and missed check in.  if something major came up (students caught drinking or doing drugs or otherwise breaking the law), i would be the person who dealt with that.  so i guess i'm paid the quasi-big bucks for the "in case" scenarios, which makes sense.  if i'm not on duty and not on my day off, i'm expected to be in oxford with my cell phone (which they provided) and ready to come in if need be...and i usually pop into the office once or twice when i'm not on duty to just make sure things are going okay. 

other things that happen in the office that aren't necessarily part of the official business of the office: 

1. the boys listen to live streams of the tour de france/cricket/football/auto racing on the computer (guess which sports broadcast included the phrase, "the boys have gone in for tea now...we'll resume when they get back"?).  i have been AMAZED by the quality of live streaming audio broadcasts on the computer of these events.  it's exactly like the radio.

2. we make and drink tea and eat biscuits and crisps

3. we read magazines or books

4. we check our email.  a little tradition amongst the staff is that if someone leaves their email account open (or their cell phone out), you sneakily try to take it and send a message to another member of the staff from their account.  typically, these messages should proclaim the person "sending" the email's love and/or infatuation for the person they are sending it to.  i have received two such emails and only had one sent from my account, so i feel like i'm on the winning end of this game (for now).

add to this (a) walking down the street to buy lunch, (b) trying desperately to finish rereading the 6th harry potter book before the movie comes out next week, (c) eating dinner in hall (for free...the food isn't great, but it's okay), and (d) going out to pubs for beer or cider with my coworkers, and you have my life right now!  i don't want to think about the fact that my summer is half over, but it is.  i am loving oxford, my new friends here, the weather (most of the time - the high today was 70 and i do wish it got a BIT warmer and the sun stayed out a BIT longer...i had to buy some long sleeved shirts!), and the fact that i'm only sort of working.  if it isn't 95 degrees with 95% humidity every day, friends, summer is AMAZING.