This past week, we have had time to truly feel like we're living in Oxford, and not just visiting on a whirlwind vacation. We've been hanging out, taking trips into the city centre and just exploring our new temporary home.
Peter, our OBU liason told us that there was a gold post box in Oxford, and our interest was picqued, so on Thursday we decided to search for it.
Let me explain. For the 2012 London Olympics, Royal Mail has painted a postbox gold for every Gold Medal won by a British athlete in the Olympics or Paralympics. A postbox in the Gold Medal Winner's hometown is painted gold, and it just so happens that an Oxford Paralympian won Gold in a rowing event. This is the first time in modern day that post boxes have appeared anything but red, so the gold post boxes are not only iconic but also historic.
We found out what road the gold post box was on and decided to embark on a quest to find it. It wasn't easy to find because it wasn't in the city centre but rather in the neighborhood where Lily van den Broecke's family lives. We did find it eventually, and looked rather touristy as we took pictures with it. But really, we didn't trek all the way there to look at it and leave--we're girls, we had to take pictures.
What was so cool about finding the postbox was this: that even though we weren't in England for the actual Olympics, we were able to experience some of the excitement emanating all over Britain as this year's hosts. This is something that you have to be in England now to experience which was very cool.
Cheers, Amy.
Hahah, this is awesome! I didn't know they did that.
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