Oxford

Oxford is very pretty. Especially the older part of town (where the bus took me) is strikingly more historical than both American architecture or the architecture America chose to copy. After first arriving I was sort of sad that I have yet to have the opportunity to study at Oxford (I thought about applying, not that that meant I would have gotten in, when I was in boarding school in England; I also could have gone there instead of Berlin and Kazakhstan for my year abroad). At Oxford I would say there is a real sense of tradition and through the colleges I would say a greater sense of community and belonging than say at Columbia, though it is not grand in the way Columbia (or many other American universities) are.

What did strike me after walking around, however, was: 1. Oxford is really rather small 2. it very quickly becomes like an American small town or suburb (though to my knowledge Oxford, unlike Cambridge, does not have a Chilis). Of course, Oxford does have great bus service to London (cheap and very regular) so it does have access to a big city . Still as I have learned I am a fairly urban-oriented person I realized that Oxford would not have been the place for me to be (not to mention in the British educational system in general is is harder to do all the random things I like to do, i.e. the mixture of German, Russian, politics, and history I did at Columbia would not have been possible).

More than anything else, Oxford struck me as a being a great back-drop for life, be that studies or working.