It's Raining

We all knew that the wonderful weather couldn't last. Since I arrived a little over two weeks ago, the weather has been amazing. Sunny every day, in the high sixties for the most part, and otherwise perfectly suitable for a California native. We have been extremely lucky, given that we had a trip to Bath with perfect weather, followed by a trip to Wales which our 80 year old program director described at one point as "the clearest I can remember". And he grew up in Wales.

What has been so nice about the trip thus far is they are taking us on weekly day trips to various exciting spots. The first week it was Bath, last week it was Wales, and tomorrow we are off to Stonehenge and a couple other places. Our program director and another Professor (Chris Pelling, who is a professor at Christ Church-- think Harry Potter dining hall) went around with us showing us a lot of cool sites. We drove through the Forest of Dean to Tintern Abbey, which was breathtaking. It is a old Cistercian monastery that became overgrown after the abolition of the monasteries in the 16th Century. The stone walls remain, but the ceilings and floors are gone, giving you breathtaking views of the sky and grass from within the building. Just check out the pictures to see what I mean. This abbey is the setting of the Wordsworth poem many of us read in high school english.



Following Tintern Abbey, we followed the Wye River for a while up to Symonds Yat, a hill overlooking most of the Wye River Valley. Some breathtaking views from that spot, and this was when Dr. Loughman made the comment about it being the clearest he has ever seen.



After stuffing ourselves on sandwiches (becoming a theme), we drove to Raglan Castle, which is an honest to goodness castle. It played a pretty prominent role in the English Civil War (the one with Cromwell), as it was the site of one of the last battles.

You can even climb to the top of the main tower-- I must say it was something of a childhood dream fulfilled.



Stepping even further back in time, we next drove to Caerleon, which is the site of some pretty well preserved Roman ruins (including an amphitheater). The nine of us enjoyed running around inside of it, and otherwise acting like we were little kids.

Lest you think we are actually on a semester long tour of England, I'll talk briefly about our courses. I still do not have a tutor or a tutorial, but we have been having weekly lectures for our British Politics course. Leslie Mitchell is very impressive, and I have been enjoying his lectures immensely. The workload is going to be very manageable-- two large papers over the course of the semester, coupled with reading that most of us have already done over the summer. Kasyn, Ian, and I had our first Architecture Tutorial on Monday up at Oxford Brookes University. It is with Dr. Matt Gaskin, who I immediately liked and think will be really fun to work with. He seems very laid back, has a wicked Scottish accent, and otherwise seems really excited to have us as students. Rather than making us write a huge number of papers, he is going to have us do a final project which involves designing our own Oxford villa.

As I mentioned, I still don't know a thing about my econ work, so that could be interesting. Hopefully later on this week I will find out more.

This weekend we move into our homestays, which I (and I think everyone else) have mixed feelings about. On one hand, I am really thrilled to finally meet and interact in a much more meaningful sense with a British family. But us guys will be at least a bus ride away from Univ, and all of us will be scattered about. So it will be much harder to organize dinners, pub-hopping, ect. And we will miss out on the residential college experience here, but not much you can do about that.

The rain has now turned into a downpour.

To see more of the pictures from our trip to Wales, click here.

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The Bod

Today we went and got our Bodleian Library cards. The Bodleian is one of Britain's six copyright libraries, meaning that it has a copy of every book published since the 17th Century (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodleian). So this is no ordinary library, to say the least. And the introductory ceremony fits with that theme. All nine of us are led into a wooden room with massive doors and a twenty foot wooden table (older than all of us combined) by a woman in black robes. She is the "Admissions Director" for the Bod, and after introducing us to some of the history of the library she explains the real reason we are all there. In order to receive our library cards, we must recite an oath, as follows:

I hereby undertake not to remove from the Library, nor to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any volume, document or other object belonging to it or in its custody; not to bring into the Library, or kindle therein, any fire or flame, and not to smoke in the Library; and I promise to obey all rules of the Library.

So that was how we spent our morning, each of us in turn showed her our Passport (to prove our identity) and recited the oath. One of those "I'm not in Claremont anymore" moments.

The First Week

My Room




As of three hours ago, I have spent a full week here in England. And I'm loving every minute of it. It really has been such a wonderful change, and while not really having a crazy amount of work thus far has helped, it is just a great experience being someplace completely different. The Pomona people I'm here with are great, everyone seems to get along very well thus far-- but still can't wait for the regular students to get here. Freshers show up this coming week at some point, and then the upperclassmen show up the week after (when we move into homestays).

Over the past week our director and an Architecture prof have been showing us around to lots of places-- the highlights include a day trip to Bath and a full tour of Oxford (both focusing on the architectural stuff, but still very enjoyable). We've all gone out to pubs for a couple nights, including going to one last night with our professor called The Turf. Fun fact about The Turf, it's allegedly the location of Clinton's "did not inhale" incident while he was a Rhodes scholar here at my college, Univ. Beer is expensive (2.5 pounds, or about 5 bucks) but very good. The exchange rate sucks for us Americans at this point, and probably is going to be getting worse, but what can you do. Thats why I worked all summer :)

Our first politics class met on Tuesday, and it looks like it is going to be a great class. Crazy thing, the professor has his own wikipedia page (See Leslie Mitchell). So despite being intimidated to death of that, he seems very cool and is definitely an engaging lecturer.

Also got to visit the Ashmoleon museum, the first public museum in Britian located right here in Oxford. Saw a few other cool local stuff that I want to go out and explore today. Some people are doing London today, but I'm going to hold off on that until after term I think.

P.S. For all of you predicting doom and gloom RE the weather, we have had sun every day thus far. While I certainly don't expect that to continue, it has made for a great first week!

To see my pictures from the Bath trip, click here.

Also, see the post below for two pictures taken out of my bedroom window.


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The View From My Window

Click images to enlarge them

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Safely Here

First post actually from England-- we don't have internet access in the rooms yet, so this will have to be fairly short.

Flight was fine, was up for 34 hours straight by the time all was said and done. Landed in London Gatwick with Kasyn, took the bus that goes straight to Oxford (about a two hour trip), and then desperately tried to stay awake. We landed at 7:30 in the morning, and managed to keep ourselves up until 9:00PM. The city here is amazing, and our college is astoundingly beautiful. We are staying here for the first three weeks, and then we move out into our home stays. Here at Univ we basically live in a castle-- the rooms are huge, we are all (with one exception) in singles with huge common rooms and a seperate bedroom. We have sinks in our room as well, which is very nice. I'll be posting some pictures once I get my laptop working (ie connected to the internet).

The town is very active (at least it was on Saturday) and had a great indoor market with lots of cool shops. Cornmarket street is the main street (its a pedestrian street), and has lots of stores and such. Spent several hours walking around there already.

Only bad news I got was yesterday when we first got here and met with Dr. Loughman (our director while we are here) I found out that my tutorial is going to have to be my second choice (something to do with the EU and their economic policy, if I remember correctly). Thats a bummer, but not much I can do about it. The nice thing is that our first class--British Politics-- doesn't start until Wednesday, and the main courses (our one on one tutorial and the small group tutorial) don't begin until October.

Tonight we have our orientation/official welcome, and hopefully we will get the internet in our rooms activated at that point.

Anyways, theres the update for the time being. Still tired and jetlagged, so hopefully a more interesting post will come sometime soon.

Of Starbucks and Goodbyes

I was at a Starbucks with a friend the other day, and when we tried to place our order for two iced coffees, we were informed that--

Starbucks Barista: We're out of iced coffee.

Me: You mean you are out of ice?

Barista: No sir, out of iced coffee. You can get any of other iced drinks.

As best I figure Starbucks in engaged in a conspiracy to the deny iced coffee to sweltering Californians so that we purchase more expensive iced lattes, mochas, etc etc. I just can't for the life of me figure out how a Starbucks runs out of generic coffee. Your thoughts are welcome.

Only slightly more important is the reality that I fly out two days from now (Passport finally got here!). I genuinely can not believe that this is actually taking place, that I will actually be in England for three months, that summer is over, that I'm halfway done with college... The list continues.

I think I have everything I need for the English weather, with the exception of a raincoat. Kinda an important exception, no? After searching for one at more locations than I care to think about, I have come to the astonishing conclusion that SoCal in August is not the optimal time/place to be in the market for a heavy raincoat. As of now, it looks like one of my first English adventures will be searching for a raincoat in the thrift stores.

The past few days have been filled with saying goodbye to people (sometimes three or four times) from home and from school. The wonderful people I worked with all summer took me out to dinner last night, so I got to see a lot of people from Pomona yesterday which was fun and odd at the same time. We have such different semesters ahead of us, it will be interesting to see how much or how little it affects things. Also trying to say goodbye to the ever-dwindling number of people from high school that I keep in touch with. Amazing how things change over time, even in the space of one year.

Anyways, this was probably a complete waste of time-- but at this point I am procrastinating packing for just a bit longer. The next post will be from England, and hopefully by then I will have something more eventful to discuss!

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