The Rasmusens in Oxford

  this is whare we go yousiily. it is doun toun it is my faferet plase.

  

After church we ate leftover chicken and hamburger plus bread, orange juice, jaffa cakes, crisps, and red Leicester cheese from Sainsbury’s next to to the County building. Then we walked up the castle hill.  There’s   one big tower of the castle left, separate from the hill, but we didn’t go to that part today.  We did get a nice walk and a good view.

Nuffield College is right across the street, and you can see the Tower in the background.  We could also the college  roofs, which are quite attractive.

We went to Abingdon yesterday, to try shopping at Tesco, a “superstore”.  We thought that meant a store like K-Mart or Wal-Mart, but it’s actually a large supermarket with a few household goods.  It has a large parking lot, at least, so we checked out mini-vans, called MPV’s here, many of which have no luggage space to speak of.  The Toyota Previa and Chrysler Grand Voyager look OK, and we discovered the wonderfully named Mitsubishi Space Wagon.

We also had two good meals.  You can see the kids eating a sundae at  Pizza Express,  which contrary to its name is quite an elegant place.   At $90 or so, it was three times what we’re used to spending for a family lunch at a restaurant.  The 4.95 -pound kids’ meal  included a sundae and a special coffeeless coffee–foamed millk with chocolate powder, shown here on Benjamin’s hand.

                 

 Our large family does benefit from family passes, though– it cost us “just”  8 pounds for a bus pass to downtown Oxford    the five miles to  Abingdon, and back again. 

 

    All  three children had a good first week.   Lizzie ‘s teacher chose her as “Worker of  the Week”,  and one girl has asked her several times how she’s doing. She’s  trying to  catch up in  math, since her fellow students did  multiplication and division last year, and  she hadn’t even started on  those topics.  Benjie’s busy learning phonetics and how to write  letters, since his class knows how to do  that.  Both are happily working on catching up.

Well, not an entire day, but an hour and a half gave us enough of a trip,   time for our sandwiches, and time to learn how to steer.  I have the exact wrong instincts on boats, though–pushing left when  I should push right and so forth.  The Cherwell Boathouse was pleasant, though,   the river uncrowded, and the children well-behaved.  And on the way there Benjamin found an interesting puffball/earthball/earthstar growing out of an ancient  wall.