Oxford 3

In this episode our occasionally-brave-but-usually-quite-timid hero decides to organize a punting expedition in an upper fork of the Thames River. Her punting stick becomes hopelessly stuck in the mud, causing her to cling to it instead of the boat that she is standing on. She finds herself clinging to the pole in the middle of the murky, treacherous waters until a mysterious stranger with a northern English accent comes rowing around the bend. He stabilizes his boat to let her jump in (effectively saving our hero) and the pair row to safety - but not the same punting port from which she originally left. Instead, he has rowed them to a secret island featuring a spectacular library housed in an old cloister. They stumble upon a cellar in the cloister full of Nutella, and spend the rest of the afternoon under an unusually blue sky eating strawberries (picked fresh from the riverbank) and devouring the contents of that ancient cellar.

Okay, that was fiction. But it could happen: tomorrow, when I've planning a punting expedition in the river that's just a step outside of the Stanford House.

I'm in Oxford! England. The country I've idealized for a not-insignificant proportion of my adolescence (most of this relates directly back to Victorian literature). The best thing about ideals and expectations is that they are not true. We can hardly ever flush them out to a level of reality that would be satisfying to actually live. Ideals and expectations also have the capacity to have the opposite effect. However, I think that if we exaggerate things enough then we never actually expect them to be true, and the simple realness of things - the power of place - is enough to make the journey worthwhile.

Consequently, one of my favorite things to do upon arriving here, like the walking through NYC thing that I mentioned, is simply staring out of my window at the tourists (and some locals) walking on High Street. The Stanford House could not be more ideally located. It is right across from Magdalen College (alma mater of C.S. Lewis) and short walks away from nearly every Oxford College, tea shop, clothing store, grocery, church, bookstore, etc. I am roommates with Haiy Le, a friend who I've spent a lot of time with at Stanford through religious studies classes and events. The room is enormous, and as mentioned the view is wonderful. I'll post some pictures at the end of this post. We've already visited pubs, eaten an expensive and classy meal with the Bing funds, experienced afternoon high tea, gone on a walking tour of the colleges, and dabbled in collaborative cooking ventures. One of my favorite things so far was watching North & South, currently my favorite BBC miniseries, with a group of about 5 people until 2 in the morning.

It's really impossible to summarize.

Work is exceptionally minimal so far. My first meeting with my tutor is next Thursday, and its purely introductory. I will be starting on reading (Lewis' Surprised by Joy), but mostly because I can, not because I have to. I'm taking a fairly heavy load of classes but I'm so excited by all of them that I don't want to drop any. I'm convinced that it is the right amount for me, especially given that one of them is "The Oxford Trans-Idiomatic Arts Practicum" - a course in which my primary responsibilities are seeing art, writing reviews, and them making art. For our second class we performed a flash mob piece in the courtyard of the Radcliffe Camera, part of the Bodleian Library, which involved tapping stones together and doing rigid movements to a musical score on special wristwatches (designed by our Prof. Mark Applebaum). My other two 'class' classes start next week - creative writing and women writers. I have yet to determine the rigor of those two classes, but I'm thrilled to start.

At the moment it is 6 pm and I can hardly contemplate dinner after stuffing myself with a scone and cucumber sandwiches at high tea. (It's all about the clotted cream, by the way.)

Weekend plans: punting, as aforementioned. Jazz festival, to watch. Museums, possibly. Church (at the most ideologically progressive church I could find) on Sunday, followed by social dancing there later that night. Monday, likely a trip into London to see a dramatic adaptation of Frankenstein.

All the Oxford students and faculty are still enjoying Easter break, so it will be a while before things feel 'normal' in Oxford. It will be nice, though, to feel like a resident here before the universities start up and I feel like a stranger (i.e. an American) once again.

Pictures!

Our third roommate: Basil. Good for cooking and company while studying

The long-awaited scone eating picture.

High tea fare.

Window view (left).

Window view (right).

Oh-so-spacious room (my bed is near the window).

My side.

Awesome kid-sized shark shirt for sale in the covered marked - a great place to buy oriental clothing and pillow-covers (if you're into that), Ben's cookies (not 'biscuits', but wow! delicious), and an onion for 69 pence if you can find the change amongst quarters and dimes to make that.

The only surviving image of Heidi in NYC last week, for posterity.

Also, a final thanks to Adelaide for inspiring my melodramatic opening in this post.