Sarah is now home from the hospital. I as understand it, this hospital was in or near Oxford. This got me to reminiscing about Sarah’s and my first trip to England.  Our purpose was to allow Sarah to see the schools in England where she had applied. Sarah could have gotten in to most colleges and universities in the US and probably received significant economic help. But she wasn’t interested in being a foreign exchange student. She wanted to go to college in England.

We went to several schools. I kept a journal for our entire trip. I used to keep tons of written journals.

Now I do this on my google drive.

I refreshed my memory with my journal. It was in February, 2000 that we made this trip. We checked out several schools in different cities and ended a bit north at the University of Huddersfield.

I can remember that Sarah was very unhappy as we sat alone in an art studio at this university. She was unhappy because she was sure she wanted to attend a university which we had already visited (which indeed she did do). I remember suggesting that we use the time we had left in our visit to go see the sights and that we should start with Oxford.

I remember arriving late in the evening on a train to Oxford with no place to stay. This was a formative part of the trip for me, because I remembered what it was like to be young and crazy and discovered that I could still be crazy if not young. I came home from this trip and quit my church gig before too long. But that’s another story.

After eating and finding a place to stay, Sarah and I wandered around. The first place I can vividly recall is the courtyard at Church Church college. We were looking for the window of the place where Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) had lived. We got kicked out by a grumpy guard. But it was fun.

Little did either of us dream that she would be giving birth near this place to a beautiful baby with a loving partner in Matthew sixteen year later. Life is good.