The Last Hurrah in Oxford

It's taken me a while to post since we left Oxford! The most notable thing about moving out was the huge amount of waste. Our apartment trash building was literally overflowing - probably three or four dumpsters worth of perfectly good, usable household goods and clothes thrown out because people couldn't take them overseas or wherever they were going, and didn't know where to go to donate them. Luckily our friends Mikki and Brian were staying in England, and they were able to use a bunch of our household goods and appliances, so that worked out great. They were nice enough to host us for two days between when we got kicked out of student housing and when our cruise left. I'll put up a separate post about the cruise, so for this one, I'll focus on our last few days in Oxford.

We moved out on Monday 15 Sept, and I worked until Friday 12 Sept, when there was a big end-of-year formal dinner at the Oxford Spires Hotel just outside the city center.

From ClosingCeremony - Sept 2008

Here's Paul with 3/4 of his team from their summer project in Munich.

From ClosingCeremony - Sept 2008

And here's nearly all of my girl group - I miss them so much!

From ClosingCeremony - Sept 2008

And I love this couple picture! We've got Tetsuya and Kaori (from Japan), Adrian and Alina (from Romania), Brian and Mikki (USA) and us!

From ClosingCeremony - Sept 2008

The next day there was a closing ceremony for the students at Templeton College. Their actual graduation doesn't happen until a later date because there is limited space at each graduation ceremony and the whole class can't go at once. It's kind of a strange system, but it keeps with the tradition of having graduation in the Sheldonian Theater. Paul scheduled his for next August.

So, here we are on the way to the party, standing by the Said Business School's ox (get it? OX-ford). I saw this thing every day on my way back from work.

From ClosingCeremony - Sept 2008

And here's Paul with some classmates all dressed up in their subfusc (and perhaps a future Oxford student in the mix)

From ClosingCeremony - Sept 2008

During the ceremony, they had some speeches and then called each student's name and had some hand-shaking. The speech theme seemed to be poetry, and the "taking the road less traveled" one was emphasized in more than one, if I recall correctly. I suppose you can't argue with that since not all that many people go to Oxford. Overall, it was pretty much the same as any graduation ceremony I've been to, only this one was nice and short (any of my Wellesley classmates may remember that our ceremony went over schedule by 4 hours in a hot tent). Here's Paul's hand-shaking in action:

From ClosingCeremony - Sept 2008

And here's Paul afterwards with an objet d'art in the Templeton garden

From ClosingCeremony - Sept 2008

And here we both are outside - it was an unusually nice day!

From ClosingCeremony - Sept 2008

After the ceremony, we realized we'd have to start and finish packing and cleaning out our apartment in the next day and a half, but we made time for one last dinner out with some friends.

From ClosingCeremony - Sept 2008