Oxford Arrival

Phew! I've made it, and, after 14 hours of sleep last night, I am feeling much more myself.

I've been picking up essentials - SIM card for the phone, binders (Jess's students take note!), duvet, and the funny polyester gown. Oxford is lovely, but more crowded than I expected, with lots of tourists and high school students out and about. It makes me appreciate the open sea views in Darwin.

Part of this experience so far has been wholly British: the architecture, the beetle-shaped taxis. The students, however, are not. I share my area of the dorm with three women (Chinese, Indian and South African respectively), and eating lunch at the college yesterday I met my first Brit - or so I thought - his crisp accent belied that he was born and raised in Zimbabwe.

And I myself seem to be approaching this course in Development Studies as a daughter of Timor-Leste. As Robert Lucas wrote concerning how poor states could recover from economic collapse or emerge from long-term stagnation: "The consequences for human welfare involved in questions like these are simply staggering: Once one starts to think about them, it is hard to think about anything else."

This affliction, caught in Dili, is really why I am here. To think of nothing else.



Pictures: First, the view from my room. Second, my room's interior.