I get by with a little help from my 100+ friends

Walking home last night I realized I'm in a unique place. And when I talk about place, I mean Oxford itself as a city. When I first came here my closest friends where all Londoners, and all of them moaned. "Why are you coming over here?" was a really common question. It was too expensive, too crowded, to inconvenient, too this... too that...

But, I'm in Oxford. Oxford is a transient town. It's very youthful because of the university, but it's also very accepting. People come here from everywhere, whether they are a tourist or someone wanting to learn English. Because of this you wind up with a much more open community. For instance, I can walk into the local pub frequented on Fridays and without fail will find someone to sit with. Even if I only know them through a friend of a friend of a friend. They don't care, they'll let you sit with them because of that encounter you had a few weeks back where you said hi.

So long as you position yourself with the same open tendency you can't really ever run out of things to do or places to go. You don't have to run around with loads of cash, nor think you'll be crammed and inconvenienced. Sure, sometimes I miss my car and the stores full of stuff I don't need, but perhaps the reason the bike paths and long walks were put into place is to remind you not to rush.

So, despite the bad few weeks I've had (which I'm pulling out of in case you were worried) I have to be grateful to the 100+ people I've met, sat with at a pub, apologized to when I bumped, crammed in on a bus or train with, and lamented when they were biking so slow ahead of me - thank you. Last night, after being very internal and miserable and feeling foreign I was reminded that most of us here are foreign, but we're here. Wherever I go, there I am.