No other country has ever given me as many problems as this one. I had issues getting past the immigration, because my nationality is one that is marked as “tb-prone” (or something to that effect). And no one bothered to tell me when I was getting my visa that I needed to have an x-ray done because I’ll be here for more than half a year. The culmination of these two is a little slip of paper with several tick marks that sentences one to a health check before one is allowed past immigration. Not just any health check, but one that begins in a bewildering queue near the toilets that is chock full of people from several countries in Asia, all there for some suspected health issue. And one soon realizes that that particular queue leads into a tiny doorway, where only several are called at one time, thus making the line move extremely slowly. So after 2 hours or so in the queue, I get called to my destination. That doorway which seems like the “answer to all my problems”. Except that within that doorway is another line, in a tinny waiting room divided with some borrowed JAL separators. Several harried nurses sit behind tables at the far end calling out names or processing people. At this point, I begin to feel that I’ve done something terribly wrong and am being punished for it. In the words of a girl I met (who coincidentally was also Oxford bound), it looks like a waiting room in India. Eventually, the line moves to a point where I face a little lady who asks for my acceptance letter and passport, asks me some questions, and hands me another piece of paper while telling me to join the other line in the room. Lovely stuff, lines. This new one leads into a changing room, where you take off your top, put on one of them generic hospital gowns (which undoubtedly was not changed in the past week or so) and after another wait, get x rayed. This done, you put on your stuff and once again, join the others who have already experienced the same, and wait for your name to be called. I suppose that the excruciating detail that I’ve done this in is reflective of the experience itself. That said and done, I felt no small amount of relief while searching for my bags, which by now have been taken off the conveyor belt and put aside somewhere.

The airport experience is somewhat comparable to my "lets open a bank account" experience. To cut an extremely long story short, I was passed from one branch to another in London, told to go to Oxford early to get a new letter because the one I had was 20 days overdue, and then, in Oxford, made to run between the bank and my admissions tutor several times (3 to be exact) because the format of the letter was not right. What in the world happened to "the customer is king"?

But I love this country nonetheless. Its been amazing, walking around London, going to Portobello market and getting boots for 15 quid, taking the bus with the Oyster card, walking all the way along the Thames, seeing the London eye from the bottom, going into the Tate modern... I would say that based on London alone, it was worth it. Yet, there is more. Oxford is a serious tourist area but also a seriously populated city. Its amazingly international here - every other conversation is in a language that I don't understand. There are people of all kinds (well, judging by physical appearance anyway) and personally, I think its even more mixed than Boston was, because of the number of European countries nearby. Although people tell me that there are more asians in the uk, I don't really think its accurate... or maybe I'm just not looking in the right places. Its fine by me though.. I've met some really sweet people here who I probably would never have had the opportunity to speak to.