Goodbye, Uncle Sam

I've decided I'm never coming back to the States. It's just too great to be in Europe. For instance: a week from now I will be in Rome. A week from then I will be in Barcelona. In the meantime I'm planning a trip to Prague. I love weekend trips to other countries. Sara's family still owns a house in Italy, in the mountains where her grandpa or some other relation moved to get away from the Mafia. There's no plumbing, but that won't be a problem. We'll grow tomatoes and have a goat and throw the greatest dinner parties with tomato-and-goat-cheese hors d'oeuvres. Sara will make pasta from ancient family recipes, and I'll probably go into espionage.

Swan Lake was incredible. Better than Sleeping Beauty. The girl dancing the lead was amazing, doing the whole swan thing. I nearly had a heart attack watching her. And the best part was the scene when Prince Siegfried first goes to the lake and meets Odette, because that's what we did for the Cavelle recital that one year, and I recognized the choreography.

On a related note, the teacher of the Oxford Dance Society ballet class that I've been going to on Saturdays asked me to be in a production that her private company is putting on! Sadly enough, the performance is May 31-April 1. Ah well, it was nice to be asked.

'Twas Brillig

I'm reading Lewis Carroll for next week. It's great fun--aptly-timed comic relief as we approach the end of term. We all feel a little in need of inspiration, since 8 weeks straight of paper-writing can drain the creative resources.

Today I was reading in the Upper Camera reading room at the Bodleian, in the top floor of the Radcliffe Camera. (Sorry, just realized I don't have a picture of my own of it.) I don't believe photography is allowed inside the Bodleian, but I may have to try to be sneaky for your sakes, because the inside of the Camera itself is great, and the view from the highest windows even better. Eye-level with all the spires and towers of Oxford.

Swan Lake tonight!

So This is the Forest of Arden

The guy in the middle is Jonathan, our valiant and fearless Junior Dean, a.k.a. The Queen's Favorite, a.k.a. The Guv'ner. On Valentine's Day all fifteen of us girls in the house surprised him ridiculously early in the morning--because the Guv'ner keeps odd hours--with a giant card, balloons, flowers, confetti, and breakfast. Ever the proper Brit, Jonathan was properly embarrassed, and said, "I believe this is my best Valentine's Day ever." Which, of course, earned him a rousing chorus of "Awww!"

Tonight Sara and Bethany and I went to a student performance of As You Like It at New College. It was in this little room in an old medieval building (cold! because it's still snowing) with only about thirty chairs, and the actors were about four feet in front of the front row. They did a terrific job, and the best part was, the British accents weren't faked.

One last anecdote:
Me: Why is the Archbishop of Canterbury so famous?
Sara: Because he made all that chocolate...oh wait, that's Cadbury.

(Not Sleeping) Beauties

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...

6th week! It snowed this morning, for the first time since we got here. It didn't stick, but it was definitely coming down. Bethany, who's from California, was thrilled. The rest of us, who are not, were less so.

But nothing can be bad today because Sleeping Beauty is tonight!




Slaving away as usual... (Actually, you'll notice I'm trying not to laugh. Sara took this picture and we totally staged it.)

5th Week Blues

They tell me the 5th Week Blues are a common condition around here. Just over halfway through the term, everybody starts getting sick of all the work and unmotivated because it seems like you've been doing nothing but writing papers for four weeks and the end isn't yet in sight. Plus in Hilary term (this current term) 5th week is in February, so there's not much sun to counteract the problem.

Other than being lazier than usual, though, I can't say I actually have the Blues. I must admit I was less than productive this week...but that's due to Middlemarch, which intimidated me, and William Blake, who really annoyed me.

(They don't say, "We'll meet February 18th for your tutorial," by the way. They say, "We'll meet Friday 5th week.")

I'll have tons of new pictures in a couple weeks, after Rome and Barcelona. Here's a funny picture that we staged in the Magdalen College chapel in a thing we thought looked sort of like a confessional:

Brain Dead

I'm going to write to the Queen, or the Prime Minister or somebody, and request that the writing of essays on Middlemarch be banned. Not only is it simply too huge a book (800 pages huge), every bit of it is significant, or influential, or revolutionary, or telling, or metaphorical....you get the idea. It took me three days just to figure out what to write my paper about. I did, however, make friends with George Eliot in the meantime. She doesn't make me chuckle like Dickens, but she certainly deserves her fair share of respect.

That's all for now, cause I don't want to type anymore.

Oh, except--I'm going to Rome! March 4-8. So very excited.

American-friendly Brits

They're so courteous, they put it directly on the road which way to look for traffic in London! Or maybe they just got tired of traffic being slowed down by near misses with tourists...

Erin and I went to London on Tuesday for the day. I've crossed off a few things on my list of Things To See Before I Die--Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Hyde Park, Big Ben, etc etc etc. Still didn't get to Buckingham Palace though, or up into the galleries of St. Paul's (where they planted the bomb to try to kill Churchill in Bodie Thoene's book--remember, Mom?) or actually into Hyde Park or the Tower of London (which isn't really a tower). Or any of the museums. How can one city be famous for so many things? I will definitely be going back. Twice, at least.

We saw a bunch of signs protesting the war in Iraq in Parliament Square. I thought this particularly clever. And we decided that Westminster Abbey is really a very fancy graveyard for rich people. (And other not-so-rich people, including the plumber.) It's just so cluttered! I loved Poet's Corner, though, and determined, after being there, to go find and read that story by that one famous author about the time he went there...or, well, I'll put it on my (very, very long) list of Things To Read Before I Die.

I had to make another Photobucket account, by the way, because I can only store so many pictures on one account without paying for it. So, Mediocre Photography by Laura continued at oxford_05_2. Still password "oxford". Also, Paul put some pictures up of the day a bunch of us went walking around--in case you want to look at them, his account is andressegovia, password "pictures".

I'm studying Anthony Trollope this week. (Or rather, I would have just finished with him today if my tutor hadn't gotten food poisoning and had to cancel my tutorial this afternoon.) The man was a machine, let me tell you! He wrote about a million novels, and he was so frighteningly deliberate about it--got up every morning at 5:30 am to write for three hours before going to his regular job with the Post Office, and set himself to write 250 words every fifteen minutes. And he did it. Remind me not to adopt Trollope as my role model, should I ever decide to become a novelist. He would certainly have disapproved of the struggle against procrastination that it was for me merely to write a 10-page paper, on one of his shortest novels, for this week.

Holywell

Today a bunch of us went walking around, snooping in colleges and taking pictures. This is Holywell Cemetery, right near the building where I go to all my lectures. It's next to St. Cross Chapel, a small stone building, and you don't realize how far back the cemetery goes until you're in it. It's all overgrown except for narrow footpaths; most of the tombstones are unreadable because of the years of wearing away the stone. It was a little eerie, but calming too. It seemed to me to be the kind of place you should visit at midnight on a foggy, moonlit night, when you'd catch glimpses of a beautiful young woman in white floating along the paths. (Or be accosted by an escaped convict, if you'd rather go the Dickens route.)

And here's another unintelligible Brit-ism:

Apparently the Brits have advanced further than the United States in the animal rights movement...? Being so considerate of the disabled badgers' companions and all. I'll have to go to the zoo and see if the disabled badgers are anywhere near the humped zebras.

A bunch more pictures up in the Photobucket account...some not so great, but I'm no photographer.

Did the Victorians Say "Freakin'"?

Well, it seems the infernal Mrs. Gaskell has done me a good turn, even after all my slights on her writing ability. Dr. Loughlin-Chow called my paper on North and South "absolutely freakin' storming."

Here's how I wanted to respond: BWAH haha haha haha!!!

This is Oxford, is it not? "Freakin'"? Don't get me wrong--it's gratifying to know I'm doing something right. (Though I don't know that anyone wouldn't be able to write a good paper on Gaskell; her themes are so artlessly blatant they jump off the page at you--and not in a good way.) But I still wish my tutor was an eccentric, 62-year-old man, with white hair and a pipe, who lives in an office filled with dusty books and knows nothing of the outside, modern world.


*edit* I feel that I should insert here a warning to any of you potential visitors to England: British light poles are not to be trusted. They move. Into the middle of the sidewalk. Yesterday evening one such wayward pole may or may not have had, let us call it a run-in, with yours truly. So keep your eyes open, fellow Americans.

Peace At Last

I've finished the Gaskell paper. All is once more right with the world.

Now to tackle C. S. Lewis. :eek:

I've Joined the Masses

Yes, it's true, I finally have my very own iPod and will now look even less like a tourist, because everyone who lives here always has their earplugs in when they walk places. And my goal in life is to not be a tourist, obviously.

Still wrestling with the infernal Elizabeth Gaskell. Bugger her, as they say.

However, my new hobby, which proves very useful when I want to be distracted from writing about the infernal Mrs. G, is finding cheap flights to places in Europe from London. I and four other girls from my house are planning a trip to Barcelona in March. So very excited about it! I love the fact that within about five minutes of hearing about said trip, I had bought the ticket online, and for a very satisfactory price. Another great thing about England: "Oh, I made such an impulse buy the other day! Yeah, just a few days in Spain."

Also, a Russian ballet company is coming to perform not only Sleeping Beauty but Swan Lake...in the same week. Gah. I am going to both. I think they must have ordered this double feature specially for me.

So yeah, there's Barcelona, and Russian ballet troupes...things here are fine.