And we're walking!

I seem to be very dumb to be in a place for people so smart today.  Turns out I bought my new shoes a size too small (they have different sizes here) and suffered with them nearly all day before my friend – blessed shall she be for all eternity for her patience and kindness in all matters relating to the shoe – Alex (girl Alex) asked me just how tight they were to the toe and if they were maybe too small.  Then she promptly scolded me and dragged me back to the shoe store to get the right size.  Neither of us thought they would exchange them after a full day of wear, but they did – so now I have the right size and start from square one on the breaking in process.  Huzzah!

We had another interesting two lectures today – one about the question of whether the Feudal System came about by revolution or by gradual change and the other about basic interaction between Regnum and Sacerdotium (which basically means State and Church respectively, but not quite, and a good bit of the first part of that lecture covered why they are slightly different and that the special words weren’t just being used for the sake of being scholarly or pretentious, really, we were assured).   We were also assured that we need not read the entire reading list provided, only those bits which we feel are going to be crucial to our essays and our colloquium discussions – which we have some input in directing by putting forth what we’ve read into the discussion.  So it has become slightly clearer than mud what to be reading; however, questions for the exam and essay topics will be published to us soon, which should go a good distance to removing any more murkiness in the task at hand.

After lunch we (Alex and I) went to the Ashmolean Museum and explored the upper floors before I had to cry for mercy because of my shoes (refer to the first paragraph about new shoes).  They have some very beautiful paintings, sculptures, baubles, coins, and on and on there – none of which is permitted to be photographed as far as we can tell (it hurts the paintings if you use a flash, and just try explaining to them that your camera doesn’t have one, really, it is a hoot), so you will just have to check out their website for an idea of what we were oooh-ing and ahhh-ing over this afternoon.  I will say that the Greek Myth statues from the 1300’s and on were probably my favorite though they had a very striking instrument exhibit that contained a Stradivarius called The Messiah which is apparently very famous but also incredibly beautiful; it made me wish rather sadly that my beloved hadn’t been bullied out of his talent as a violin prodigy as a child by those other nasty children.

The ladies want to go out tonight to the pubs and have some fun at the end of the week, so we will see how that goes.  Personally, I’d rather put my feet up anywhere and stay stationary for awhile to recover, but I don’t want to be ‘the old lady’ or ‘the mom’ so much that I don’t go have some fun – which, yes, they are calling me and I joke back that if they are going to think of me as old then I insist on being called The Crypt Keeper and cackling at them.