The In Between

First off, I would like to address some well-founded grievances about my last blog. It was said that my Paris blog was confusing and hard to follow. Maybe I should read over them when I am done. You know who you are, I want you to know I am making an effort to fix it.

Anyways, I just got back from Munich, Germany- so beautiful and so much fun! But we had a short couple of days before we left that I haven't had a chance to write about. It may not be as exciting as a trip to Germany, but I will still like to remember, so bear with me!

 On Monday, we went on a tour of Oxford University Press. It was pretty cool because it is such an old press and the way they had to print was so tedious. Oh and our tour guide was named Martin. I just thought that was noteworthy because can you think of an American Martin? Me neither. Also it doesn't sound right to say Martin in any other accent than a British one. (i.e.Parent Trap? we've been quoting that the ENTIRE trip) Moving on....

 Printing sounded so painstaking. Martin said that it took 7 years to fully train someone in printing and they had to know the languages backward to be able to print them. They just learned patterns of the languages (like their mirror images) so they could piece the words together and then they would stamp on the right way.

James Murray came along to Oxford Press and had the bright idea to start a dictionary. Can you imagine loving the English language so much that you wanted to write the first ever dictionary? Anyway, Oxford Press were the only ones willing to sign on to this huge job. Murray died when they were working through the letter T. It took a few million dollars (which is way more for back then) and several years to complete. It made me a lot more thankful to be able to Google a word's meaning because without these guys, we would have no dictionary, and even worse, maybe no urban dictionary or Wikipedia.

Well this is the last picture at Oxford University Press, I don't want to be too too boring. Martin had some cool ideas about where printing would go. They have their whole dictionary online and Martin thinks that a revolution is going to come very soon. Bigger than computer printing? I don't know we will see I guess.

Okay done with printing, this is cool. Monday we got out early and went to the Oxford Covered market and it was actually open! This is the entrance with lots of fresh food and as you walk in there are several places to eat, cute shops and best of all at the back, we got a milkshake. I got a loyalty card there, but for my health I should probably stay away. It was fantastic.

 Here's the back wall of the smoothie shop with very few of their flavors shown but there are probably 100 different options.

This is a picture of outside the laundry room, and even that is pretty. It was a beautiful day on Monday and we sat outside "did homework" and waited for our laundry. When we went in the laundry room we became friends with Shykirah from Malaysia. It is pronounced Shakira (Hips Don't Lie?). Anyways, she was extremely friendly, added us on facebook and asked us if we wanted to go punting! Umm, obviously I talk about punting quite often on this blog so we really want to. Hopefully we will get the chance to punt with our new friend Shakira.

That's about all that we had time to do the few days before we flew out for Munich. I am working on that blog, which will hopefully be awesome because it was awesome to be there. I am a German.