When I told people that I was moving to the UK the first thing they always said was, “Oh, the weather there is awful!” Having spent several years in the Willamette Valley of Oregon (it’s between San Francisco and Seattle and gets plenty of rain), awful weather to me meant torrential downpours and no sunshine for weeks or months on end. While it’s possible that winter hasn’t yet officially hit Oxford, I can say that so far it really hasn’t been that bad. Yeah, it rains. Yeah, it’s foggy and damp and grey a lot of the time. But I’ve been pleasantly surprised that when it does rain, it’s usually light and it usually doesn’t last that long. For the most part, beautiful sunny days have been mixed in with the dreary ones.

Something, too, about the sunshine here—it’s so bright when the sun does shine. It’s a harsh, white light much different from back home. I’ve heard theories about the high humidity levels in the air here that reflect the light differently and make it seem brighter. I think the atmosphere over England just isn’t quite sure what to do with the sunlight, so when it does shine through, it really shines!