Port Meadow

Greetings from Pret, my favorite British coffee shop, where I am enjoying my usual--Skinny Caramel Cappucino.

This morning I finally convinced myself to get up and go for a run. This has been a REAL challenge for me, well, forever. But when I played at Drake and had the fear of God in me about not making my mile time or coming in out of shape, I was compelled to do things that I would never have done otherwise--including getting up VERY early in the morning, including running, including getting up early to run. Strangely, now that no one checks in on me, my motivation level (slash, my ability to compel myself to do either of those things) has plummeted drastically. So the way things usually go is that I EITHER can't get myself out of bed in time to run in the morning OR if I do get up that early, it is so painful that I can't imagine adding another layer of agony. So I don't.

But today, will power met the limited resource formerly known as time, and I went for a run. I ended up down in Port Meadow, and was tickled to death to find all kinds of animals grazing. I had heard horror stories about being chased, bullied, and generally intimidated by mean cows in Port Meadow, but I decided to keep my eyes to the ground (looking for that cow-effect that is even worse than bullying) and run right through the herd. I should have been counting, but let's just say that I saw lots of cows, some pretty cool white horses (with foals--including a "dalmation" foal), some "cow horses" (white with big black spots...duh), and I think I even saw a donkey. Clearly, my midwestern-ness could use some work. I was running through a different field with a friend the other day and he asked if it was corn growing. I didn't know. Iowa would be so ashamed of me.

Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful.

I'll finish with this random factoid: I have seen that a few teachers from my past are or have been grading AP exams in various semi-exotic (or not) locations. The professor of my Comparative Education course told us how much they get paid, when marking our exams (one week from yesterday!), per "script" (three, one-hour essays): 1.50 GBP. No wonder we don't get any comments on our paper.