One Month Left

Hey everyone, first off Happy Halloween for those of you stateside. People here have been randomly dressed up for the past week (mainly at night for parties obviously), but I'm not anticipating much in the way of Halloween festivities for tonight. Which is just as well because it has never really been my cup of tea (do I get points for using the British sayings?).

Anyhow, sorry it has been such a while between blog posts. Things have been busy to say the least. Surprisingly enough I am beginning to get used to the workload, which is something I never imagined would happen. If you had told me I would be accustomed to a reading list of 15 books a week and writing an eight page paper every week, I would have laughed at you... Yet somehow it has happened. My course work is really interesting, and now I feel like I have some expertise on the European Union. In fact, I've tossed around the idea of coming back over here over the summer to do more research on the EU (sounds like a good excuse to get back to Europe, no?). So courses are going well, quite enjoyable. As for those of you who have been admonishing me to make sure I have fun, don't worry! That's what I spent the past week doing-- I was lucky enough to have my best friend come visit, so I spent nearly the whole week doing fun stuff (which you will hear about shortly).

Other than that, there really isn't too much to report. Went to watch the Oxford Blues Rugby team play (it's our varsity team) on Monday, which was a lot of fun. Oh yes and I had rugby initiation a couple weeks ago, which was quite entertaining. Nowhere near as bad as I expected, although it did involve raw squid...

So on to my week of vacation. Carrie (my friend) got here on Saturday, so after getting some lunch and dropping off her stuff at my homestay, we went with most of the Pomona people up to the Radcliffe Arms, which is a pub in Jericho. In case you hadn't been following world sports (hah), England made the Rugby World Cup which is of course a huge deal since it pits countries against one another and only happens once every four years. And the final match was on that night-- England vs South Africa. So we were in this pub with at least fifty Brits, including an incredibly drunk rugby squad. They sang some of the best drinking songs I have ever heard, and otherwise were quite possibly the best entertainment I have ever had. Sadly England lost the match after a somewhat dubious call dis-allowing a try... But regardless, we all had a wonderful time. Really it's probably one of my favorite memories of the whole trip so far, just because it was so British.

The next day I had to spend doing work (those papers don't write themselves) so that was unfortunate, but oh well. On Monday we took the train to Bath and at the first stop were greeted with this sight:



Now I don't know about you, but thats definitely not something I would typically see in the states. Nuclear power is quite impressive, and while I knew the French use it almost exclusively I was not aware there was a plant here near Oxford.

Anyhow, Bath was very similar to when I went, but we had a great lunch at this Nepalese place called Yak-Yetti-Yak (no lie). It was an awesome little place that served good food. The only other big difference was we both tried the water from the Bath springs, which is supposed to have marvelous healing qualities. It tasted like it was chock full of heavy metals, but we both chugged down a glass just to say we had done it.



The next day we spent hanging around Oxford and otherwise touring some of the colleges. The perk of being young is you can just walk into these supposedly "closed" colleges and if you act like you know what you are doing they don't even stop you. One of my favorite spots is this location inside Merton College (which is right behind Univ) overlooking Christ Church Meadows. And we had stunningly good weather, so just spent a while talking/people watching from there.



Wednesday did the rest of the stuff in Oxford--the museums, snuck into Christ Church, went to The Turf, etc. Also had a memorable debate over which major is more useful--art history (Carrie's major) or Economics (my major). Need I even mention who won hands down??

Thursday afternoon we went into London, but not before getting creme tea... This was my first time getting tea while in England (heresy I know!), but it was very good. I hadn't been to London yet, and it is a very cool city. Stayed at a backpackers place in Picadelly Circus, which was a great location for the price. The first night we went and got half priced tickets to see Chicago and then collapsed from exhaustion. Chicago was amazing, totally worth the price of admission, let alone half priced tickets.

The next day began our whirlwind tour of London. In a nutshell, we saw the British Museum (pieces of the Parthenon and the Rosetta Stone), the Tate Modern (lots of cool modern art), and rode the London Eye (big Ferris wheel). Rather than blabbing on some more, I'll just have some pictures and then wrap this up since it is already far too long.



Do you know the Muffin Man??



Note Big Ben in the background



Trafalgar Square



Millennium Bridge and St. Paul's Cathedral in the background.



Big Ben and Houses of Parliament.

So that was London in one day, then Carrie left early the next morning. All in all it was really a heck of a lot of fun, and we definitely got to see a lot of cool stuff. Nothing like having a mini-vacation halfway through term. Anyways, thanks for reading hope all is well on your end!!

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Into the Storm

Well, the storm which I had been talking about and talking about has finally arrived-- last Thursday in the course of one afternoon Kasyn and I were assigned a tutorial, met with him, and received our first assignment. By next Wednesday, we needed to have 17 books read and a 2000 word paper (approximately eight pages). Now luckily mostly we only needed to read excerpts, but it still made for quite a bit of work. And to make it all the more painful, I was feeling sick and was going to be gone for the weekend in Edinburgh.

Regardless, we got it done and are now into the second week (basically the same thing with different books and a different prompt). Luckily our topic is pretty cool (the tutorial is on the European Union), and the tutor is really engaging and obviously very smart. His name is Dr. Martin Holmes, and he is a tutor at St. Hugh's College. So that is good, while its hard to have to do lots of work again it is nice to feel like I am accomplishing something academically. And despite not being what I intended, it is still something I am interested in.

Other things from the past ten days-- Twelfth Night was very very good, and the two standouts for me were John Lithgow as Malvolio (Lithgow is the guy from 3rd Rock from the Sun) and James Clyde as Feste. Theater was nice, and in general had a fun night.

Trip to Edinburgh (click here for pictures--went a little crazy taking weird pictures in the bus once we landed, sorry bout that) was awesome! Way too short, but still lots of fun. Edinburgh is an amazing city, I hope I get to go visit there again sometime. The main highlight was climbing Arthur's Seat, which gives you breathtaking views of the city (and is a decent workout!).





While there, we took the scotch whiskey tour, saw lots of other cool sites, and visited Adam Smith's grave. The three Econ majors in our group took the obligatory picture there (yes we realize that is weird).



Back here in Oxford clubs and sports are starting up, which is exciting. Starting to meet more Brits, which is quite a relief. What else is new? Well I am going to be playing rugby, which I am pretty stoked about. Actually four of the five guys from Pomona are going to play. Practice is once a week for all of an hour and a half, and then we have games every Tuesday. And it sounds like all of us will definitely get on the field, despite having never played before. So that is something fun to look forward to. Anyhow, I'm off to get some sleep and figured that a shorter update would be in order this time around.

P.S. Yes I'm still mourning the abysmal performances of the Angels and the Cubs, but hey at least they made it to the postseason (yea, I'm talking to you Mariners fans)...

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Freshers Arrive

Finally the students have started to arrive!! It is hard to believe that we are in October, and freshmen are just beginning to arrive on campus. Classes for normal students do not even begin until next week, and the term runs all of eight weeks. I'm sure that the intensity of those eight weeks will more than compensate, but at this point it still seems unreal.

Since last week we have gotten to see lots of ancient ruins, moved into our homestays, and taken the first steps in what will soon become an excruciating workload. But it still, amazingly enough, remains the calm before the storm.

In our third and almost final touristy trip, we spent the day exploring Old Sarum, Salisbury, Stonehenge, and Avebury. For all of the pictures from this trip, just click anywhere on this sentence.

Old Sarum is the original site of the city of Salisbury. It has some pretty cool remnants of a castle, and managed to be the location for some cool pictures. It was bone-chillingly cold on the day we took this trip, but it remained clear.





A view of the foundations of the original cathedral.

Salisbury was more interesting; most of our time was spent within the Cathedral (seen below).


The inside of the cathedral was quite impressive, and an interesting fact is that the massive bell tower has caused some of the stone supports to lilt approximately three feet. One thing that all of us particularly enjoyed was the copy of the Magna Carta which they have on site. It is one of only four originals remaining, and was very well preserved.

After grabbing lunch, we were off to Stonehenge which was impressive (despite it being smaller than everyone expected). It is simply astonishing that such massive stones could be hauled around and placed in formations some thousands of years ago.



Yes, it was really really cold. I felt like I was back in Apple Valley, with the gale force winds.

Avebury has more of the same prehistoric formations, and as an extra bonus a HUGE man made hill built for an unknown purpose 3000 years ago (not a burial mound). All of that stuff can be seen below.





What makes Avebury so cool is you actually get to walk right up to the stones (which is no longer allowed at Stonehenge).

So that was our trip. Lets see, what else has happened in the past week?

Besides the magnificent jobs done by both the Cubs and Angels to make it to the postseason (I may have to stay up till 3:00AM to watch some games while I am here), we have mainly been doing the usual pub hopping and such. The move into our homestays has gone smoothly, although I think we all would rather have lived in college for the whole term. We get bus passes, and the places we are at are quite nice, but regardless it isn't the same as living on campus. Ian and I are living together (we get separate rooms, but we are with the same host "mother" Pauline, who seems very nice) in a suburb of Oxford called Summertown.



My new digs

Chanda came down from Edinburgh last weekend, and so all of us had a lot of fun partying it up with her. We are developing a few favorite pubs, a favorite bar, and a favorite Kebab stand. Speaking of Kebabs, they are absolutely delicious.

Freshers week is incredibly different here than any freshmen orientation at Pomona (or any college in the US for that matter). Far from a dry week, freshers week encourages going to clubs, pubs, and seems to be a week of drunken debauchery. For example, last night (second night freshers were here) the five colleges on High Street took over the club Filth-- which has evidently over the years earned its name. Drinks were cheap (1.50 for a tequila shot), and it was a very interesting thing to check out. A few of us just went to get a feel for things, and the music served as an incredibly odd reminder of high school/first year of college. Nearly every song that was played was American, which I suppose shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did, but it was more the fact that if I closed my eyes I could have envisioned being back at Homecoming. From such classics as "Get Low" to "Buttons", it was all there. We actually had a great time, but mainly just realized that the two year difference between us and the freshers was a pretty large gap.

Anyhow, tomorrow we are off to Stratford (yes, the one of Shakespeare fame) to see a production of Twelfth Night. I'm very excited. Thats way more than enough for today, but I will leave you a quote from the otherwise obnoxious Architecture reading I had to do over the past week--

"If one were to give an account of all the doors one has closed and opened, of all the doors one would like to re-open, one would have to tell the story of one's entire life." -- Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
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