Running On Fumes...

It's taken me some time to muster up the energy for a new post. This is because I'm more or less brain dead. Sara and I have decided that we must be, by this point, racking up an academic intelligence deficit. We've used up whatever smarts, paper-writing ability, logical processes, etc that we came with and will have to find some way to pay back the extra that we're now borrowing from...somewhere...in order to finish out the rest of the term.

Well, I use "term" lightly, since it's nothing truly Oxonian anymore, just program stuff.

I'm still doing fine, just feeling the effect of 12 weeks straight of writing papers. It's the constant output that's draining.

Easter break was somewhat relaxing. I spent a day in literary pilgrimage to Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare's birth- and burial-place. Then I went to London and spent some time with Heather May. I'll put pictures up later from Stratford.

Ken Bratt, the honors guy from Calvin, is here evaluating the program cause he's an advisory board member. He took me and the other two Calvin students here out for dinner tonight, which was nice. (Especially since pounds sterling are proving as hard to come by, as of late, as brain cells!)

We have another day-long field trip tomorrow, to Winchester. It would be nice to have the excuse not to be researching all day, except that the time that could be spent researching is so badly needed!

All right, back to linguistic theory...

Don't Tell Me

No, hearing the British accent every day hasn't gotten old yet. It's especially nice coming from select lecturers with pleasant voices, young children, and most automated things. (For example, the bodiless female voice in the grocery store who, with considerable excitement, tells customers waiting in line, "Cashier number FOURTEEN, please!" And the lady on the other end when you dial the number on the phone card: "Please entah your PIN numbah.")

I've been warned, however, about a certain syndrome which afflicts many Americans re-entering the States after an extended amount of time spent in Britain. The symptoms are as follows: attempting to use "cheers" and "mate" in everyday conversation, calling cookies "biscuits" and French fries "chips", and possibly evidencing a disproportionate affinity for tea. They call it "a case of the Madonnas". (After the starlet herself, who basically decided she was British and everybody went along with it. Probably for the same reason she can get away with having no last name.)

Let's hope I'm cool enough to avoid developing a case of the Madonnas. (I'd appreciate a few swift kicks to the shins if the contrary turns out to be the case.)

Push Soft Once, Wait Hard Twice

Sara and me at the Mediterranean! And here are the other lovely ladies with whom I spent the weekend in Barcelona:



Becca, Christy, Sara, Krisalyn, and Bethany.

The weather was great. It was a weekend of café hopping and sightseeing. We survived entirely on coffee and chocolate, and the occasional loaf of bread--or, as we preferred to call them, flying saucers. Relaxing...except for the part where we trekked across the entire city. Really, I'm only exaggerating a little bit. This picture is taken from Parc Güell (where we went on Monday) which is on a hill on the opposite side of the city from the castle we were at on Saturday. (It would be off the picture to the right side.) The towers I circled on the picture (yes, I know my MS Paint skills are unbelievable) mark the location of the beach we were at on Sunday. Our hostel is somewhere in the middle.

We saw La Sagrada Familia and decided it was weird-looking...and then went to get more coffee. We went to the beach. The Mediterranean is beautiful. Here's my self-portrait in the Mediterranean. (Now marvel at my unbelievable photography skills.) Lots more pics up on Photobucket.

Sadly enough, we had to come home. Waiting in the London Luton airport, we finished out the weekend with another good dose of chocolate and coffee, and muffins this time since they didn't have flying saucers. Here's Sara after the last hurrah. We got home to Oxford at 5 am Tuesday morning. Here we are waiting at the bus stop at Heathrow between legs of the journey. Here's the bird who lived in the bus stop (which was really more of a glass box in front of the spot where all the buses stop).

And since I must now, once again, frantically catch up on the paper-writing, I'll leave you with this picture, which pretty much sums up how much fun the entire trip was. Words can do no more.

Hello, Goodbye

I'm leaving for Barcelona in about an hour and half with Sara, Christy, Beth, and Sara! It's been a somewhat frantic last couple days...but not as bad as it could have been (should have been?).

Oxford term is officially over today. We have a whole day off (Monday) for something along the lines of Spring Break, so most of us here at Woodstock are going somewhere this weekend. Tuesday we start the SCIO program part of the semester here. We have "Christianity and Cultures" lectures and field trips and reading to do and essays to write...the topic of the lecture course is "British Landscapes". What I think of the C & C course in a word: bleh. It's the Americans. They just let all the Oxford administrative power go to their heads, I think. Anyway, I didn't come here to study British history and hear an hour-long lecture on a map drawn in 1426--which is not an exaggeration on how specified the lectures will probably be; Oxford scholars tend to narrow their fields of study down to about three days in some long-past century. Despite how interesting some of the lectures might be, I am less than excited. Since I did come to study English lit. All right, I'll stop ranting. The other part of the last four weeks here is the English seminar, for which I'm writing one long paper. That will be bearable, I think.

But enough! Barcelona awaits...

Ciao!

I'm back in England, halfway unpacked, drinking some very disappointing instant coffee (after the real Italian espresso I've had for the past four days) and reading the pile of emails which has accumulated since I left. Rome was incredible--beautiful, impressive. We saw a LOT. And I took a million pictures...but you'll have to wait because I have to catch up on paper-writing now.

*edit* Pictures from Rome are up on Photobucket.

The Importance of Being Studious

In tribute to the Wildean wit about which I have been reading all day, here is a summary of my day's activity in the form of a list of things which are absurd in print but have somehow become normal in the context of everyday life as an American student at Oxford:

1. Having just turned in one 10-page paper yesterday for a tutorial at 9:00 this morning, I went directly to the Bodleian after said tutorial to spend the better part of today (5 hours or so) researching for my next 10-page paper, which I intend to start writing tonight.

2. The reason my paper-writing is stepped up to such a pace is that I will shortly be leaving for a little weekend trip--to Rome.

3. By "shortly" I mean "at or around 1:45 am" Friday morning.

On the street today I saw a man and three children riding a bike. The man and the biggest child were riding a tandem, to which was attached both a bike seat containing the smallest child, and one of those attachments which make a normal bike look like a tandem (you know, only one wheel and pedals) upon which rode the middle child. It took me a full thirty seconds, as the above described passed me while I waited at a crosswalk, to take in the scene and determine how exactly four people could ride one bicycle. I believe that what I witnessed was the pedestrian-culture, Oxford-style version of a minivan.