ACU COBA in Oxford 2010 (unofficial blog)

Our entire group took a trip to London yesterday to visit the Lloyd's of London to visit an ACU alum who works at Lloyds and talked with us about being a Christian in the workplace. Our group was required to dress in business casual attire which meant no flip flops and no jeans. I did not have much of a problem with that so I dressed in a nice outfit with white heels to match which was a mistake that would impact the duration of my stay in London. My logic and reasoning behind wearing the heels was because I felt like they were the only pair of shoes that did not resemble flip flops and therefore I had no choice but to wear them and to this day, I regret ever wearing them that day. We went to London by taking the train but first we had to walk to the train station which was about a 30 min walk. Once we arrived in London, we had to walk a considerable length (I would say about a mile, maybe more) in order to get to Lloyd's (by then my feet were relatively sore) and then about another mile to get to Pizza Express which was where we had lunch. By this time it was starting to heat up considerably outside and since it was sunny, it made things even hotter. My feet, on the other hand were another different story. All the walking that was done caused large blisters to form on front sides of my feet due to the fact that my heels had small straps that would rub against my feet with each step I took. Our visit to Lloyd's was very interesting. Our speaker had lived in the UK for 11 years and told us about life in the Workplace which, in my opinion was very different from the work environment in the United States. Our lunch was very tasty and once we were through a group of us got together and tried finding a pub that would be showing the World Cup match between the United States and Algeria. This proved to be quite a challenge because England was playing at the exact same time as the United States and naturally, all the pubs and restaurants were showing the England game. It took us a while to find a place but the closest that we got was the window of a restaurant called, coincidentally, The Texas Embassy who would not let us in because they were completely filled up. So we watched the game from the window and was able to see the game winning score that the United States made at the very end of the match which caused the crowd in the restaurant to go absolutely crazy and they all started chanting "USA! USA! USA!" Our little group outside went pretty crazy too and pretty much let all of London know (I exaggerate of course) that we scored and we were darn proud of it! After the game the crowd came out of the restaurants giving us high fives and a couple of guys were so happy, they jumped onto Jeff and gave him a hug! It was a pretty memorable experience that I will never forget and of course, I hope that the United States is able to keep playing and potentially make it to the finals of the World Cup. Who Knows? As for whatever became of my poor feet...I ended up taking my shoes off and pretty much walked through London, to the train stations, and back to Oxford in my barefoot because it became extremely painful to walk around in those shoes and I would rather brave the paved and graveled roads than the painful blisters that would keep getting rubbed against my shoes if I kept walking around in them. So now I have these humongous blisters on the side of my feet and they hurt like crazy! I'm hoping that they'll heal soon!