A Dangerous Business

I publish this blog on the eve of my departure for Oxford and all things British. The idea is that I update this blog religiously (or at least often enough) with all of my fantastical adventures while studying abroad. We shall see how that goes. Cross your fingers!

I like the idea of blogging this, as opposed to emailing or journaling. For one, emailing is very pushy. Sending out email updates is like saying, "you are required to care about what is going on in my life right now. Here's a huge update." Blogging on the other hand, is wholly reliant upon you checking this website. I hope you do and I hope I don't bore you :) As far as journaling, they aren't public and often lead to hand cramps.

I suppose I was in a very literary mood when creating this blog. Jason Elliot wrote An Unexpected Light, a wonderful travel book about Afghanistan. You should definitely read it. The above quote was on page two; I was hooked from there. In trying to come up with a title/address for this blog, I visited several ideas, as Joe can attest (he helped me while on a skype call. By the way, if you have skype, you can call me for free in England! And you should have skype. It's beyond awesome.) I lit on Elliot when I was scouring my bookshelves for inspiration. The quote relates not only to travel, but touches on insanity, both of which may come up in this blog.

My second literary foray in this post is the title; it's from Lord of the Rings. The whole quote goes something like "It's a dangerous business, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no telling where you might be swept off to. "

I suppose I should give some kind of indication of what I'm doing. Similar to how first diary posts go something like, "My name is Laura. I'm a 19-year-old college sophomore....blah, blah, blah" Or at least, that's how I imagine they would. I've never gotten that far.

This fall semester, I'll be studying abroad at Oxford University. I'm staying in a refurbished Victorian mansion with my fellow UGA students. I plan on taking plenty of side trips all across Britain and Europe. I'll be taking four classes:
A Room of Their Own: Jane Austen, the Brontes, and Virigina Woolf
Historiography of the Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Centuries (studying works produced by the time period in order to understand the time period)
Shakespeare: Selected Works
Tudor England

The persistent nerd within me is unbelievably ecstatic.

10 days and counting...