Oxford Dusting

Well half of CMRS is having fits of joy this morning; it snowed.  Not what WE would call snow in the midwest - actual accumulation of annoying white barrier between home, work, and school that is going to turn black in a day or two and make you remember how much you hate ice - no, this is more of a bit of fluffy rain clinging to the walkways and building tops for decoration.  Seriously, it has to be less than 1/8th of an inch here.

Now, where were we?  Oh yes, climbing the last hill of papers to sight the final days coming up fast from the distance.  As some of you know, my Classical Mythology tutor was advised to take the rest of the term off for health reasons, so I am meeting his replacement today.  Since class was so sporadic and disjointed in terms of when we met and what was assigned, I may have to do two papers more for this rather than the one.  This is a considerable difference given that I have my Seminar paper due this Friday and my Integral paper due on the 8th - so getting 1 more paper in there would be not so bad, putting 2 in might be straining the capacity just a bit.  We shall see though.  Meanwhile, I just turned in my last Viking Literature paper today at tutorial, huzzah!  I also donated all of my books for that class with the primary material to the Feneley Library here at CMRS, so anyone who is taking that class after me - the books are available and you will not have to buy them.  ^.^  Really, I couldn't take them all back with me anyway - luggage space is going to be at a premium - and I think they are much better off here being used and taken care of than being put away in my basement for some distant possible future reference.  When I'm a big, growed-up teacher person I'll treat myself to a handsome leather bound set or something perhaps.

Everyone is getting down to their last batch of papers around here and for the first time this place really is like a hive of academics all buzzing busily away trying to get everything done before the final week so they can party or explore or just relax for the last few days here in Oxford.  I am, of course, extending my trip for a few days to be with my love in London for five days and looking forward to seeing him is the carrot right now at the end of my "get it done" stick.  It seems like I just got into the rhythm here and have a good flow going between working and more working and now it is coming to an end.  Ah, such is life I guess.  I am very much looking forward to coming home as well and making cookies and doing the Christmas thing with family and friends, showing off my England swag and making people watch my 'home movies.'  Wow, that sort of makes me feel a little old right there... Hmph.

I think the fact that I am coming home to the holiday season makes leaving here a little easier.  It would, I think, be harder to want to come home (I've pondered a second term here about a billion times, but I just couldn't do that to my sweetie or my family or my bosses who've all been awesomely generous letting me go on this trip as it is) if it wasn't such a deep desire in my heart to be home for Christmas.  Hm... maybe this tiny bit of fluffy rain that people keep calling snow really is making me a tiny bit homesick - scratch that, not homesick just excited about seeing home again.

Awwww ^.^

Then, just before I started my paper and went for tea in the kitchen - a few of my little duckies and some of the outer flock had little encouraging notes for me!  Claire has this awesome pad of "Pep Talk" notes and each of them filled one out for "Crypt Keeper"

I am touched.  Thanks all!  <3

Tick Tock

I haven't written in awhile... mostly because there just are no words.

Brief summary: My Classical Mythology class - which I do the most work for probably every week - has gone from "challenging" to "yeah, no."  My tutor had a bit of a moment, and now I am getting a new one.  Whatever the first one's issue is, his doctor has advised him to take some time off.  In the aftermath of this, I am rather despondent.  I was doing fine, but now I have a paper due tomorrow at 9 am, or at least I think I do - I really haven't gotten a confirmation on that yet, things are in progress - which is normal, but all my energy to make such a thing happen seems sapped by the drama of it all.  This is unhappy.  On top of that, I am going to meet someone entirely new, so it is "First Paper" time all over again just when I was getting the hang of what the first guy wanted.  This is three weeks from the final day if anyone is counting.  I'll have one assignment from the new instructor for sure, which will hopefully be alright - and possibly a second one which I've asked NOT to have, because it would be due the day before I go to the airport.  That, for me, is not really OK.  I wasn't the one who dropped the ball; I am not the one who should be made to make up the slack.

Meanwhile, I continue to have papers for the other class which is tooling along to its last meeting on Tuesday (thank goodness that stayed on track!) which will lead into the paper for 2nd teacher at the end of the week.  In between that, I need to pull the Seminar paper out of the research I managed to do last weekend for Arthurian Legend (3 or 4 thousand words worth) due the 3rd and get some type of jump on the Integral paper that is due on the 8th.  So if I have yet another 2nd teacher paper due on the 10th, I may have to find an active volcano to start sacrificing virgins to in order to gain the favour of the gods that I may not sleep for these next few weeks to get all of this done.  Huzzah.

This brings me to why I am actually writing this post - because there is no point in attempting to vent the stress and the general exhaustion I am suffering at present, as I said before, there just aren't words that make any of this all better.  Not that I haven't heard a lot of words on the matter - most of them go along the lines of "Well, you wanted a challenge right?" and that is what you, my fellow future comers, will probably hear when this (or something like it) happens during your term here.  The people not here just aren't capable of understanding exactly what you're going to be up against and their words of encouragement, however well meaning, are going to come across as "Well you asked for it" instead of what they are really trying to say which is "I don't understand, but I want to help."  So, be prepared for that if you can be, and understand that no one back home who you reach out to is going to be goading you or brushing you off - they just won't know what you're dealing with exactly enough to make a difference.  Your best bet is to talk to some of the people at CMRS who - even if they are not having their own crisis moment that second - will have some idea of what you are up against.  The downfall there is that these aren't people who will know you intimately well, and so that itself is a limited option.

Basically - it is about just making it through to the next day and the next at the end of the tutorial/seminar cycle.  The Spring comers are the ones I am envying right now, because you guys get to finish with the Integral - so not only will you NOT have that 1 extra paper due in your final tutorial/seminar rotation, but you'll have a month of 'cool down' time to bounce back, treat yourself to some of England, and so on.  Then again, you get thrown right into the tutorial/seminar cycle without a warm up, so maybe it is damned if you do and damned if you don't on one end or the other?  I don't know - you'll have to meet up with me when you get back and tell me how it went (I'll be recovered by then!) ^.~

Oh yeah, it is also Thanksgiving... so happy that to everyone.

The JCR committee is doing something on Saturday that is supposed to resemble a dinner for all of us.  I think it is an ill-concieved notion, but I hope it goes well.  I might go and I might not go - it depends on how much work I have and how much I want to avoid drama (because drama tends to crop up at such things).

Keep it Light

Friday evening me and a bunch of the CMRS crew decided to hit our new favourite watering hole, Que Pasa, for a few 2 for 1 cocktails after a long week.  This was all well and fine and everyone was having a good time until a joke got perceived as something serious by another person who hadn't slept the night before and took it into a serious conversation about a seriously divisive issue.  Things were said, the flow of chatter became a current of argument, and in the end hasty wording combined with too many voices to the detriment of what had been a fine outing.  What was said and the abrupt departure of those it was said to could have arisen out of any such topic, and today it is a new day - wondering if there will be a sharing of drinks again, or the common room for that matter, in the happy camaraderie we had.  I am sure things will work out, but we've only got a few weeks left and it would be a shame if some people find themselves not enjoying that time for something that just happened that way.

The conversation can turn from jovial to serious in a hot minute here when everyone is under a great deal of pressure to perform and to think about things seriously and scholarly - and yet a bar is not a classroom and people don't mind how they say what they say as well as they might without that atmosphere to guide them.  My advice is: keep it light.  There are 30 some students here who have 30 backgrounds, 30 points of view, 30 ways of thinking, 30 reasons to believe what they believe - and to imagine for a second that they will always agree and will always be what everyone can decide together is perfectly right is just plain impossible.  My fiance's father once told me: when people live together, no matter how well they mean or how much they care about each other, sometimes they are going to fight.  It as true here as it is at home - but here you don't know the people around you well enough to make assumptions about why they think what they think or know when you are going to fall into a minefield during happy-hour.

So what I'll say is: try to keep it light and when you can't, when the fight that is inevitable comes up, have grace and remember that it is very unlikely that anyone intended to cause it or hurt you in it - quite the opposite in fact, no one wants these sort of disagreements to become barriers to getting along in close quarters - so apologise or accept an apology or find it in yourself to let it go if you possibly can.  Life is too short - and this program so much shorter - to let a slip of the conversation put a cloud over your stay here.

In other news:  I had another good tutorial and I might be taking a trip to Cambridge in the first week of December with my tutor and another of his student's from here.   I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of my sweetheart and the completion of this program, and yes, I know I signed up for the work but coming into 7th week it has been a sprinter's marathon and I am not the spring chicken who can pull double all nighters that I used to be ^.~ !  Now, with the end in sight, however distant it may seem at times, I am aware of how much being over here and doing this has broadened the way I think of the world and the people in it, but also shown me that no matter where I go and who I meet patterns emerge that are familiar and that gives a degree of comfort to the idea of the world being so much bigger than it was this time last year.

The Plan (Flexibility is a must)

We all plan.  I planned to be asleep by 11 pm last night… when in reality it was more like 1:30 am then I finally dozed off.  On that good nights rest I got (hey, 6+ hours is good around these parts!) I planned to 1) go to breakfast, 2) read in my room from 9-10:30, 3) exchange my bed linen, 4) read in Sackler Library from 10:45-12:00, 5) Lunch, 6) read in English Faculty Library from 1:15-5:30 or 7:00 depending on if I felt like I could work though dinner productively, 7) dinner (either at the hall or a can of food at the dorms), 8) write paper, 9) get some sleep tonight, at least 4 hours hopefully.

That was the plan, still is a working model of the plan, but I’ve had to adjust.  Y’see, instead of reading from 9-10:30 (see step 2) I got dizzy and had to lay down for awhile, so at 10:30 I was staggering back up out of bed to pull off my sheets and run downstairs with them.  I could still go to the Sackler Library… but it is already 11:00 and lunch is at 12:00 – by the time I settle in I’ll be wanting to leave to go eat… not really productive to do that, which means it gets bumped to do the reading here I missed this morning… but I can’t go to the Sackler after lunch or I won’t get around to the English Faculty library, which is a pretty long walk out and has bad hours – so step 4 just got replaced with step 2 and bumped past step 7 into where 8 was which leaves 9 in a highly questionable position of maybe not happening at all. 

OR… I could discard that reasonable assessment completely, stubbornly go to the Sackler Library anyway only to be told that my books won’t be in until mid-late afternoon (because no one works on a weekend apparently) and thus, not wanting to have wasted the time entirely, walk all the way to the English Faculty Library, arriving at 11:40, making Lunch a complete miss and take until 12:15 to actually find the books I need in the tiny room in the basement where they all are (hey, at least I get privacy I suppose) because half the titles in the room are German and Icelandic and I had to rack my brain for my library card number as it was taken to vouchsafe my return from this room of treasured books by the desk clerk.  Oh yes, flexibility… right into a pretzel shape.  I’ll have to get out of here by 5:00/5:30 because I still need to put minutes on my phone and all the shops close at 6… and the EFL closes at 7pm anyway… /sigh.  Did I mention that today is just another day?  One of THOSE days certainly, but every day seems like one of those days when you are trying to work with layered systems of inconvenience. 

Then… just when you are bracing for the storm… you find 80% of your reading list is completely readable and though there were a few manic panic moments of “where the hell is this thing?!” escape from the library by 5pm seemed possible – and happened!  Miraculously.  I will even get to eat dinner – if it is any good – and start my paper after, because I have written off the one title in the Sackler library I needed, since I somehow ended up actually buying the other one I have waiting there and so don’t need to go after dinner.  Huzzah!  Sleep might even happen.  It is too early to tell yet, but there’s a ray of light at the end of today’s tunnel.  Even put minutes on my phone on the walk back, damn I am good.  … or lucky.  I’ll take either about now.

Rice and broccoli… does that count as dinner?  I am really not sure at this point.  It seemed like food at the time; I have reserves of KitKats and Jaffa Cakes in the room.  Time to get writing, wish me luck ^.~

Sunday Sunday Sunday

It has been a bit of a rough week over here, I am not sure where to even begin; the days have completely blended together by lack of sleep, so perhaps a quick run through of happenings:

Had a power outage in the building (brief, but disrupting) on Wednesday.  This caused me not to be informed of Seminar class not meeting because our instructor was ill, so I got up early for it (almost didn’t make it out of bed really almost forgetting it) to find out it wasn’t happening.  Tragically, I’d devoted the entirety of Tuesday to the reading for this seminar… that was very long.  Couple things around the building with people – just various things here and there that needed attention or time or whatever.  Thursday was given to reading Virgil and then Friday I hit the library and started researching – there are a lot of books on the subject, so I was doing that till almost 8pm which meant I was up way into the next day writing my paper (just pulled the all nighter) and then in the morning, my tutor was too busy to meet me – so I met him today instead, but at the time it was a little crazy. 

I am minimizing that last bit… what really happened was I went to meet him all strung out from finishing my paper just an hour or so before with only a quick breakfast of tea and a croissant in between, he was late, Fiona wasn’t in the office to have gotten his message that I was to meet him out of the building at another college, I didn’t know where the other college was, and I ran out of here without a coat to get to him late only to find him on the phone, waited for him, then was told “tomorrow instead.”  I was not pleased at the time… but it wasn’t really that bad, and it is hard to stay mad at someone who says nice things about my papers. 

Besides, I am told I tend to let things go fairly quickly – no point staying stuck on one thing when a bunch of other things are going to keep happening.  Busy busy.

That’s just a sampling really, to write it all out would mean I have time and that just isn’t the case.  Also, like I said, I don’t like to dwell.

So Saturday I took more or less for myself after my tutorial and went to look at some shops, bought myself my official “me” item (a charm bracelet and three charms for it) with the money Mommy and Da gave me for buying something for just me.  I also picked up another family Christmas present – but I can’t say what or for who because they might be/probably are reading these posts.  I hadn’t really planned on doing my holiday shopping here, but it is sort of turning out that way as I see things I know people back home will like or want – I wonder how I am going to get all my stuff with the stuff I picked up here, with the books I bought, and all this stuff into my suitcases! 

In the evening I hung out in the Common Room with peoples, watching movies and just generally milling around but I was rather on the cranky side so I moved around more than usual and tended to drift between groups of people until I finally got tired of doing that and camped out in what I have dubbed “Crypt Keeper’s Harpy Nest” … which is a sideboard near the TV / couch area that I like to sit up on.  I was up watching various movies until 1am or so, maybe 2 not really sure because I wasn’t keeping track of the time, but apparently I went to bed before the real party started – or so I heard this morning. 

This morning I got up and instead of going to brunch like I usually do, I went to the Remembrance Day ceremonies in St. Gile’s Square.  I took some video, but not of the official parts that involved prayer because that would have been, in my opinion, highly disrespectful – not that I didn’t see people doing it anyway.  I felt the parade was fair game though so I took shots of that.  It was actually very moving and the drizzle didn’t bother anyone.  On the way back home I picked up some breakfast and made some tea to go with it before coming back to my room and starting up laundry and meeting up with my sweetie for video chat.

I have some reading to do today, primary stuff from the books I bought at Blackwells.  Today I read the main text, tomorrow I will spend at the library researching, and then the evening is given to writing.  If I didn’t have the text, the time it takes to read it would need to be subtracted from one of those two things tomorrow, which bumps the whole program closer into becoming another all-nighter – and believe me there are too many of those here as it stands.  I don’t have a Classical Mythology assignment this week, because we seem to have gotten out of synch with the other students and so on, but I will probably use the time I’d usually be using on his work to do my Seminar paper, which I really need to get put away or at least half done before it comes due in just three short weeks – yes indeed, today marks the first day of 6^th week and that means only 3 more to go!  Where did the time go?!  Yet, I also feel like I’ve been here forever.  It is very strange.

As for Remembrance Day, please feel free to watch the short parade that I have left more or less unedited (took out some shaky camera bits here and there), and below that I have also included the e-mail that Dr. Philpott sent out informing all the CMRS students of this days importance in this country.  I am very glad to have been able to honor it.

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high,

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow.

 

These lines from the Canadian poet John McCrae's famous work In Flanders Fields help to explain why lots of people around you have suddenly started wearing paper poppies in their buttonholes. At around this time of year we commemorate the sacrifice of those who died fighting for our freedom in the two world wars and all the other struggles of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. On Sunday the Queen will lead the Remembrance at the Cenotaph in Whitehall in London, taking part in a short service and laying a wreath on the symbolic empty tomb, accompanied by members of her family, Commonwealth, government, parliament,  armed forces and civilian services, along with thousands of veterans and civilians.

 

All over the United Kingdom city-by-city, town-by-town and village-by-village, similar services will be taking place. Oxford’s will be around the War Memorial in front of St Giles Church, led by the Lord Mayor and the Vice Chancellors.  On the stroke of 11 a.m. (commemorating the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month -when the Armistice brought the First World War to an end) all over the country guns will thunder and sirens be let off, inaugurating two minutes of silence for remembrance, reflection and rededication. This is - or should be - a most solemn moment in the nation's year; please can I urge you to respect it?

 

Some will also ask you to respect two minutes of silence at 11 am on Thursday – the actual 11th day of the 11th month.

 

Why poppies? Well, it's partly because of the extra-ordinary crop of poppies that grew on the battlefields of Flanders in the disrupted soil of 1915, providing a striking image for poets like McCrae:

 

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

 

Thus the poppy comes to be also a striking symbol for our remembrance of the sacrifice and our determination to hold high the torch thrown to us at so high a price.

 

In addition - perhaps even more importantly - we wear our red poppies, because they are made and sold by the Royal British Legion for the benefit of ex-servicemen and women, and their loved ones. The labourers are few, but the work great and still growing. Alas there are now very few surviving veterans of the First World War, but those of the Second are well into their seventies and eighties now, and there are plenty from subsequent conflicts who need help.  ‘The Legion’ recently calculated that it tackles about 300,000 urgent calls for help each year; and - shockingly - that something like 100 ex-service people sleep rough every night in London alone with a further 500 in homeless hostels.

 

Thus, the poppy is both a symbol of remembrance and determination, and a concrete help to surviving heroes and loved ones. So, if you can spare a contribution, it will be well used in a very good cause....

 

Traditionally, a few lines of Laurence Binyon's For the Fallen are read at Remembrance Ceremonies, so they seem an apt way to end this note

 

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

 

MP

Guy Fawkes Weekend

Oh yes, England has holidays we don't have: Guy Fawkes day was this Friday.  Made famous by V for Vendetta, which is an awesome movie that was not in the common room to watch because someone swiped it for their own personal viewing at some point before me and my crew got there - much to our annoyance.

For the actual history I defer to Dr. Philpott who sent us all an information e-mail:

Remember, remember the Fifth of November

Gunpowder, treason, and plot

We know no reason 

Why Gunpowder Treason

Should ever be forgot. 

Well, like lots of other things in this country you have to go back a long way to answer that question -  to 5 November 1605, to be precise.

On that day a plot by a small group of Roman Catholic terrorists to blow up the King, James I, and both Houses of Parliament at the State Opening of Parliament was foiled by the arrest of their explosives expert, Guy (or Guido) Fawkes in the cellars of the Palace of Westminster. (If you visit the Ashmolean,  you can see the lamp that Guy had with him.) The aim of the plotters appears to have been to destroy the whole Protestant establishment in England at one fell swoop leaving the way open to a Roman Catholic coup. However, one of the plotters seems to have sent a message to a relation who was a member of the House of Lords to miss the State Opening and the plot was discovered. Guy was arrested as he arrived to light the fuse. A service in celebration of this deliverance (the so-called ‘Gunpowder Service’) was added to the Book of Common Prayer and observed according to Royal Proclamation until 1859.

The sense of 5 November being a special date in England's history was further reinforced in 1688, when a group of grandees alienated by the high-handed and inept government of the Roman Catholic King James II and fearing his religion and close alliance with France foreshadowed an attempt to impose Roman Catholicism and ‘arbitrary government’ on England, invited his Protestant nephew and son-in-law, Prince William of Orange, to come to the rescue. Sped by what later eulogists called ‘the Protestant Wind’, William landed in England on 5 November. James fled, in a futile and childish gesture towards disrupting the government dropping the Great Seal in the river Thames as he went. After a certain amount of disruption and disorder (including some of the local agents of James' government being besieged in the Mitre Inn on the High Street),  the Crown was given to William and his wife, Mary, jointly, and the succession reserved to Protestant claimants, concluding what English (but not Scottish or Irish) historians  traditionally call(ed) ‘The Glorious Revolution’.

Almost everywhere in England the traditions of  ‘Bonfire Night’ as it is known have long since lost the anti-Catholic element which was a marked feature of celebrations in earlier years. In Oxford in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Bonfire Night was also often a time of serious town-gown troubles and even outright rioting. A rather sad (and late) reflection of this can be seen in Brasenose College Chapel in the  memorial to a late nineteenth-century undergraduate killed in a 5 November riot.

Most English people, although they might know the rhyme above, would have little or no knowledge of the history of what is regarded as a fun, autumn festival especially for children and the young-at-heart. Traditions revolve around the building of  a great bonfire either by individual families in their back gardens or by communities on village greens. ‘Guys’ are made by stuffing old clothes with newspapers and putting a mask for the face - usually symbolizing Guy Fawkes himself, although sometimes others. Small children used quite often to be seen in the streets with a guy (usually in a battered old pram) and a badly painted sign saying ‘Penny for the Guy', but this is now pretty rare, although I did see a particularly impressive Frankenstein's monster guy with matching Frankenstein's monster children a few years back. The money is then usually used to buy extras for the Bonfire Party. Once the bonfire is good and alight, fireworks will be set off - rockets and bangers, Catherine wheels and screamers, and (my personal favourite) sparklers which you hold in your hand and trace pretty patterns of sparks in the dark night.  The guy is then thrown or put into the centre of the bonfire and burnt. Some people hide fireworks in the guy but this can be extremely dangerous and is best avoided. Meanwhile, all sorts of things can be baked, roasted or toasted in and around the bonfire - potatoes, chestnuts, fingers, marshmallows...

And all this on a crisp November night, all wrapped up against the cold in winter coats, big mufflers, woolly hats and gloves.... Thus a time of fear and hatred transforms itself into a festival about family and fun, sharing and warmth...

Please to remember the Fifth of November

Pretty interesting yes?  I thought so, but had no plans to commemorate it... more about that later.

Anyway, Lady Katherine had a friend visiting from Norway who was really curious to meet me who I had promised to go out with after dinner on Friday.  I kept my promise, we went to Que Pasa which is a great place to go before 9pm because they have two for one cocktails every night until that hour.  Some guy at the bar overheard and apparently really enjoyed my giving advice on boys and such to the group of cute giggling girls all dressed up for the occasion and bought our whole table a round of drinks.  This was very awkward (largely because he must have been 30 something and there was one of him and five of us) but we have gotten to know the staff at this place and the bartender delivered them personally so I deemed them safe to consume (they were too).  This had the added effect of putting 4 long island iced teas in yours truly instead of the 2 she intended to consume.  Two for one drinks, five of us, guess who was drinking both of hers while everyone else split?  Crypt Keeper, of course.

Then we left, because it was strange and because we were more than happy with our consumption for the time being.  We waved as politely as possible... not sure if that's the protocol, but we weren't going to go talk to him either I mean, come on.  Who does that?  And what do they possibly think will come of it?  Moving on.

Lady Katherine's friend turned out not to have proper cash money for her bus ticket home - poor planning there, always travel with enough local currency to cover local transportation if you go anywhere.  Since we had to remedy this and it was inconvenient for her to use an ATM (called Cash Points here) due to not knowing her pin (another travel Don't) we agreed to pay her cash for purchase of some bottles of Bacardi at the local Tesco, which we proceeded to drink in the common room while watching movies... though NOT, as I mentioned, V for Vendetta.  We substituted History of the World Part I and something else I don't remember because we were drinking Bacardi.

All this lovely revelry led to the hang-over that dominated Saturday in its entirety for me up until 6 pm - with much agony and all the usual hang-over activities.  When I finally did emerge from my room in the pursuit of food, having missed both brunch and dinner, to get my Ramen Noodle on... I was seized by Claire and company to go see something burned in effigy for Saturday night's Oxford Guy Fawkes festival.  I thought perhaps this might be in the town centre or possibly at the large bus station clearing - both of which were near our dwelling and so agreed.

This turned out to have been a stupid assumption.  Once we had walked for some 10 minutes I started to wonder exactly where the hell we were going... only to discover it was basically the other side of town.  Having come too far to turn back myself, I had little choice but to press on with the group grumbling about being old and ill and generally miserable.  We saw some fireworks and a burning wicker man.  It wasn't so bad once we got there; it was even better when we turned for home.  Huzzah.  Tally up one more English experience!  All ended well, with my Ramen and some tea, and since I had slept the vast majority of the day anyway we stayed up watching Planet Earth dvds from my personal collection which was quite soothing.

So, with all that having consumed Friday evening, Saturday day and night (which was intended to be library time for Viking Literature paper due Tuesday), today I got up for brunch and read both Dante's Inferno for colloquium tomorrow and the Volsung Saga for my Viking Literature paper which I will be researching tomorrow morning and then writing the paper for tomorrow afternoon / evening.  Huzzah.

Tomorrow is Monday already isn't it?  /sigh.

Two Months!

As of yesterday I have been in Oxford for two months - can you believe it? Well that called for something special to me, so I took some time away from my books and my laptop (not the whole day, mind you, just the bit between lunch and dinnertime) and went to a museum here, the Ashmolean Cast Gallery, looked at some ancient Greek items and also took the time to peek into the gift shop.  After reading Oedipus Rex it was pretty creepy to see the ancient dress pins probably just like the ones he scratched his eyes out with (gruesome right?) on display there.  Also, there was a very nice statue of Pallas Athena as well to gaze upon and reflect.

After that I went to the covered market, which I have been meaning to do when it wasn't 5 minutes to closing time for weeks now.  I was looking for something to get for myself, which I am under explicit orders to do, that isn't "needed" but will be something to remember my time here.  I am thinking about a charm-bracelet / charm ... or just the charm (it's hard to spend $ on things I don't need if they are more than a few quid).  I am not sure yet - but I was there to look.  I found loads of things that I'd love to get people for Christmas presents if I could trundle them all back with me in my luggage!  I also discovered the best place for shakes in the world: Moo Moo's right in the covered market!

I ordered a chocolate shake... they told me that had 6 kinds of chocolate shake!  And they have loads more flavors and non-dariy options (which they call no-moo) which all look amazing.  Actual hunks of chocolate and ice cream went into the blender magic machine and poof: amazing deliciousness for a very reasonable 2-3 pounds.  A must stop in for all future comers if you ask me.

So that was my "holistic" day of CMRS this week.  They do encourage us to take time away from study to enjoy actually being here, and it is a very good thing when you can do so.  Granted, this is a small thing compared to some of the major travel others are doing and planning, but it was my small thing.