With my time abroad, I want to see one new thing every day. This ambition does not feel too daunting while ensuring that I make the most of this precious experience. This desire to maximize my time makes me reconsider how I have potentially squandered massive amounts of time while at home. Almost equally important, I want to write. It is one thing to have experiences, but much of the value comes from how you remember and the memory. I want to protect these experiences from the effects of time. Lastly, I want to explore as much as possible on my own feet: run and walk.

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I have run about sixty-five miles since arriving in Oxford. Because Oxford is only about eighteen square miles, one might assume that I would have seen quite a lot of the city by now, but you would be mistaken. I would guess that ninety percent of my time running has been spent meandering in circles around the streets outlined above. The first few days, I deviated from this route. I wanted to explore the city. I craved the feeling that I was maximizing my time here, but running through the busy commercial areas jam-packed with tourists and locals alike proved to be severely inconvenient. I became tired of weaving through crowds, never sure whether to pass on the right of the left, so I ventured elsewhere. I began to favor park trails and quieter residential roads.

We talk endlessly about the global perspective and gaining cultural competency. We want to see the world to see every church and palace, but this small chunk of time running each day has rounded out my experience in unexpected ways. In one context, it is my escape. Alternatively, wandering around neighborhoods and parks has been an exercise in immersion. Leaving our FYSA bubble, I can experience a bite of British life. I am surrounded by moms taking their kids to the park, people commuting home from the office, and food delivery workers whizzing by on their bikes. I aspire to have one new experience every day, and recently many of those have been adding a new small section path to my existing repertoire.