Weird Things

Wonderful In So Many Ways

England has more than one kind of Queen.  Prepare for puns on multiple levels.  I've gotten stuck on a couple of different songs since I've come to Oxford, so I thought I'd share them with the world at large!  If you haven't guessed yet, Queen's I Want To Break Free is one of those songs.    I think Roger Meddows Taylor (blond schoolgirl/drummer) is my favorite thing about this song, although it's hard to outshine Freddy.  Come On Eileen by Dexy's Midnight Runners is the other song.  I'm not sure how either of these songs got stuck in my head, but they have some striking connections.  Both are preformed by British bands... and that's all I've got.  They're both worth a listen, anyways.

In other news, I was finally able to access Pottermore last night!  For those of you unaware or unsure of what Pottermore is, the video on the official webiste gives the best explanation.  The excitment level when I got my e-mail was insane, at least for me.  My friends who were not so quick on the uptake with the "Magic Quill" contest were not as thrilled when I yelled, "I GOT MY POTTERMORE E-MAIL!" and proceeded to gloat over my imminent sorting.  But it was not to be.  Pottermore, currently in a Beta version, was unable to handle all of the people suddenly trying to access the website and promptly crashed as I was preparing to buy a wand.  Depression set in as I set off to bed unsorted and wand-less.

Today, however, was a great day in my life.  First, my wand; my wand is 14-inches long and hard (aka not flexible or supple), with a unicorn hair core, and is made of Vine wood.    If Pottermore hadn't crashed again I would post the descriptions of my wand materials.  They're loosely based off of personality traits and are quite interesting to read.  One day, when Pottermore works, I'll post this information.  This I pledge to you, my audience. Even more wonderful and far more anticipated than my wand was my sorting into a Hogwarts house (either Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, or Ravenclaw).  

And now for the sorting.  Drum roll, please:

If I could make this picture any larger, I would.

I'm a Ravenclaw!  No surprises there. [If you a) have an intimate knowledge of the Harry Potter world and b) are surprised at my sorting, you should probably re-evaluate our relationship]  It's nice to give my eight-year-old self the closure of knowing that I've always considered myself to belong, in heart, to the correct house all of these years. I've been floating on the elation of my sorting all day long.  I belong to the Harry Potter generation, and I have been sorted.  There are few greater things in the world.

Probably applies to homework... 

I'm not sure what this applies to, but I think it's funny.  

More Field Trips and More Thoughts

Dear Readers:  My adventures in England continue.  

Another Downside: Super Long Lines

The field trips for my Integral course have finished up, but the last three locations were awesome.  I’ll take you through them in order.  On Wednesday the 14^th, we went to Wells Cathedral and Glastonbury Abbey.  We got lost on the way to Wells and ended up doing a drive by tour of Stonehenge!  This is apparently the only kind of interaction you’ll ever need with Stonehenge since you can’t get near the stones anymore. Back to Wells: The Cathedral was beautiful, and we saw it on an amazingly sunny day (a rarity in England).  The architecture is primarily Gothic, resulting in the height of the building (reaching up towards heaven) and the flying buttresses.  This is about all of the enthusiasm I can continue to muster up for the cathedrals though; the cathedrals are all beautiful, but they’re all basically the same.  If you’re not waaaaaay into architecture they get a little redundant. I find the cool historical stories about the castles more interesting and engaging than the cathedrals; the tombs of dead priests can only hold my interest for so long.  On a more exciting note, only a couple of blocks away from the cathedral is the only surviving street from the Middle Ages.  I walked that street.  It was awesome.

Medieval Street!  

Because there has to be a picture of me somewhere in this blog

Jeff does a back handspring 

Glastonbury Abbey had been destroyed at some point in history, so we were visiting the ruins of the Abbey.  Allegedly, Glastonbury was the resting place of King Arthur, which means that I got to see the destroyed theoretical tomb of King Arthur!  Alun Thorton Jones told us the lovely story of the monks finally opening the tomb to prove that it was him.  According to legend, both Arthur and Guinevere (blond hair and all) were in the tomb; but she crumbled to dust when a monk touched her.  Arthur’s bones survived the impurities of the world and he was moved to a different place in Glastonbury.  The ruins were very peaceful and calming to walk around.  Even though the walls were just big lumps of rock, there was still a kind of reverent atmosphere about the grounds.  It was also nice to visit a site where we could run around and be silly without being sacrilegious.

Our last field trip was at Warwick!  Warwick castle was probably my favorite location.  It’s kind of a strange site because it’s owned by a company; so it was sort of like a castle theme-park.  Except the castle is a real-life castle built by William the Conqueror in 1068: serious stuff.  We spent all day at Warwick (usually we’d visit two locations in a day) but there was plenty to do so I didn’t mind.  I watched the portcullis being dropped did a sort of tower walk where you get to climb up and down all of the towers along the front of the castle.  As I wrote this, Carolyn informed me that there are 520 steps in the tower walk.  I got my exercise!  We also walked through a creepy wax museum/experience thing called "King Maker."  The wax figures scared me.  I couldn't tell if some of them were real people or not.  There was a particularly creepy "guard;" I made Julian walk between me and the figure when I had to walk by him.  After the disorienting Kingmaker experience, we met up with Dory and Evan for lunch at a pub in town.  Following lunch, we went to a wonderful tea house!  Thomas Oaken Tea Rooms, as a matter of fact.  It had awesome tea and I experienced the wonderfulness of English Breakfast Tea with sugar and milk in it for the first time.  It was so yummy!  I bought some of their loose leaf tea so that I could drink the wonderful tea again and again.  It also gave me a great excuse to to out and buy a french press.  

Ernie Prepares to Land Next to Meat

Two Birds At Once!

When we returned to Warwick castle, we saw an eagle show!  It was sooooooo awesome! We saw an Eagle Owl, some sort of Vulture, an American Eagle, and a massive eagle of some other breed.  The owl was my favorite. His name was Ernie, and he was six months old so he was still being trained.  He got so close to me at one point that he whacked me on the back of the head with his wing feathers.  Awesome.  The hawker got him to do most of his tasks pretty well, but when he tried to get him to pounce on a piece of meat as if it were prey, Ernie didn't preform too well... Instead of landing on the meat, claws out, in ATTACK MODE, Ernie would land next to the meat and pick it up with his beak.  "Poor form, Ernie," said the hawker when Ernie failed to attack the dead meat.  The rest of the birds were a little temperamental.  The Vulture had to be put away early because she was playing "silly games" and was flying at him and jumping around instead of flying to the castle wall.  The American Eagle (I can't remember her name) was beautiful; we watched her as she flew to the ramparts and back a couple of times.   Unfortunately she decided to assert her independence in the middle of the show and just kind of flew away.  The hawker wasn't too concerned about it, he said that he has had to go looking for her in his castle uniform several times.  So he moved onto the next Eagle, Nakita, who was supposed to fly up to the Guy's Tower (the biggest tower on the castle).  She  flew around with her 5 foot wingspan for a while and then the American Eagle decided to come back while Nakita was visiting the castle ramparts.  Nakita saw the Eagle and pulled a "What is she doing here?" and flew back to the hawker to get a look at what was going on.  Mr. Hawker-Man suddenly had to deal with two eagles, which is a problem when the end of your arm only has enough room for one bird.  He had to fling bits of what looked like dead baby chickens at Nakita while he shoved the American Eagle in a bird box.  It got rather exciting.  After the "other woman" episode, Nakita was a little put off and confused about what she was supposed to do, but she eventually made it to the top of Guy's Tower.  Everyone cheered for her.  


After the Eagle show, I traveled to the top of the castle mound and then got to see the trebuchet launch a fireball across a field (I was so fascinated by this that I forgot to take pictures, an unfortunate mind slip indeed). 

Water wheel as seen from Castle window

I also went down to the "Gaol" which was kind of like a Medieval jail.  Not the dungeons exactly (those had been turned into a super campy "Haunted Dungeon"), but the smaller, free-of-charge dungeons for those who wouldn't pay up for the bigger dungeons.  It had some informative plaques about the treatment a Medieval prisoner could expect in a Gaol.  Namely lots of neglect in a room that had no sewage system in it.  I realized that I'm facisnated by the idea of an oubliette: a place where you put someone to forget about them.  It seems horrible that you could shove someone into a hole and leave them to die (which is essentially the point of an oubliette). After that I only had a couple of minutes to walk through part of the Great Hall and Weapons Room, and then we had to leave.  I didn't even get to see everything at the castle!  There was a super cool river walk that went by an old water wheel that had originally been a mill but had been turned into an electric generator in later years. As Evan pointed out, the Castle would be a great place to spend the Zombie Invasion.  

Bald Eagle!

And now a photo vomit of Warwick Castle!

Risking my life to bring you pictures 

Awesome Tea Room

About to Brave Guy's Tower

Arrow slit

Day to Day

Sitting on the shoulders of giants

"Oxford is a magical place, full of magical people" - Dr. Sichel


This is a true statement.


Life at Oxford is in many ways, probably, like life in any other city.  I, however, have never lived in a city before, so my experience stands out as a completely different way of life for many reasons.  As you can see in this lovely picture, there are many people and buildings in Oxford.  What gets kind of weird about it is the strange mix of buildings, which incorporate contemporary technology and improvements with history.  What do I mean by this?  Well, look at the picture and find that lovely rounded roof at the far left of the skyline.  That's the top of the Radcliffe Camera, part of the Bodleian Library.  The Radcliffe was built between 1737-1749 and now houses several Reading Rooms of the Bodleian Library (more on that later in the semester, I'm sure).  The tower I took this picture from is called Carfax tower.  Commonly referred to as the center point of Oxford, the tower is all that remains of a church from the 13th century.  Yes, I have climbed history.  It was scary.  So the city of Oxford itself (like all of England, it seems) can be best described as a city with a history bomb that exploded in the center of it.

The street performers in Oxford are also pretty phenomenal.  I haven't seen the same person twice, and most of them are usually quite talented.  Most of the ones I've seen have focused on music, although there has been some variety (see photo).  Angel Statue Man (left) weirded me out, the second day I was here I walked out of the Clarendon Center and had one of those strange "missed step" feelings.  I thought a statue had been dropped into the middle of the street overnight.  This amused me so much I took lots of pictures of it.  

Delicious Moving right on to people.  The people in Oxford are pretty magical.  Indeed, Jeff and I made a potion together the other day.  We just wanted to try out the potion recipes from lecture our last lecture.  It was pretty magical, no big deal.  Everyone in my program is pretty wonderful and magical in their own right.  Lots of my friends are super talented and intelligent; I’m having a lot of fun getting to know people and having random discussions with them.  My friends make doing things like reading Saint Augustine’s Confessions more enjoyable.  My hope is that, one day soon, we can build an awesome fort together; I wanted to do it on Sunday, but everyone was too busy with the Confessions.  I think a fort would be an awesome place to do some reading in, although, realistically speaking, we’ll probably end up getting distracted and watching Adventure Time or Dr. Who.

Bianca

There aren’t only people my age here, CMRS also has a lovely staff of professors and other enablers.  We have two Junior Deans, Bianca and Gareth.  Bianca’s pretty sweet; she’s from Germany and I’ve enjoyed talking to her and pestering her with questions about how life is lived in England.  Gareth got to the program late because he was at a conference in China, so he’s kind of like the Other Junior Dean.  He’s also very kind and has a pretty awesome beard, so he’s probably pretty cool.   Dr. Philpott is the other member of the staff that we interact with the most frequently.  He is now the Principal of CMRS (starting this semester) and was the Senior Tutor, so he lectures us a couple of times a week.  His lectures are usually interspersed with lovely little anecdotes that are often amusing and hilarious in a subtle (or not so subtle as the case may be) sort of way.  He often sighs deeply and rolls his eyes at us. 

In other news, apparently there’s such a thing as a Midwest accent.  I can’t hear it, but multiple people in my program have commented on it.  Apparently it’s a “cute” accent.  I wasn’t really sure I believed in the accent until dinner tonight.  I met a man from Israel who, after hearing me talk for about ten seconds, asked me if I was from the Midwest.  In my region’s defense, he had lived in Northern California and was familiar with America’s accents.  At least everyone says it’s a nice accent. 

I have strange Friends

Please stay tuned for more of my adventures!  


P.S. This is a link to a video my friend Julian (pictured above) made with some friends at his college in Walla Walla, Washington.  It's pretty cool.  If you haven't seen the "I'm on a Boat" video by the Lonely Island, I'd suggest looking at that first.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Hsm912iStM

An Introduction to Oxford

Hello all!  I am now launching my attempt to faithfully update and record my adventures in the UK and Oxford with some sort of regularity.  


I'm getting a bit of a late start, so I'll have to give the abbreviated versions of my trips to Gloucester Cathedral (pictured left), Berkeley Castle, Winchester Cathedral, and the Great Hall in Winchester. 


Last Sunday we had our first field trip and visited Gloucester and Berkeley.  Gloucester was beautiful.  The architecture really is amazing and the carvings on the monuments and buildings are wonderfully intricate.  None of the little faces, saints, angels, or gargoyles are exactly the same.  Thinking about all the work that had to go into these places is mind boggling; luckily it's taken place over hundreds of years, so I suppose there's been plenty of time for improvement.  


Inspiration for the title of this blog finally struck on the bus-ride to Gloucester.  For those of you more familiar with my blog dilemma, I've been wombating about trying to find a title since around May (a total of about 4 months).  Luckily for me, Dr. Alun Thorton Jones felt the need to lecture us on the bus about the superiority of English Ale.  My title is a direct quote from said lecture/rant.  For anyone interested in getting an idea of the hilarity inherent in a little old man lecturing us on ale, please check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3hBznY7oas  This video was taken in years past, suggesting that this rant is a yearly occurrence.  It's nice that our professors here can encourage us to drink.  (A further warning about this video, the picture is not good.  I suggest focusing on the audio).      

Of the places we've visited so far, I think Berkeley castle has been my favorite.  Unfortunately we  were only able to take pictures of the outside of the castle; otherwise I'd be posting pictures of the room where King Edward II was killed and imprisoned as well as a real-life oubliette.  It was way more intimidating than the oubliette in Jim Henson's Labyrinth... In real life there's no magic door that lets you out.  The one I saw was essentially a 30-foot pit in the floor.  Apparently people in the castle would drop all kinds of unpleasant things down there including bad food, dead bodies, and prisoners of common birth (I can confidently say that, if dropped into an oubliette, you'd die very quickly).  


This castle was a real fortification, added on to and enlarged in later years, that still had lots of unpleasant tricks for the defense of the keep.  We walked up the main steps of the original keep (all built at different heights, purposely).  Behind the biggest step that was the most likely to trip you up, there was a lovely little arrow slit pointing right where someone would fall if they tripped on that step.  We also got to see the "murder holes" where defenders of the castle would pour unpleasant things like boiling urine onto potential invaders.  Unsurprisingly, Berkeley castle has only been taken once in its history.  


Our trip to Winchester was also educational.  Besides seeing the grave of Jane Austen, the most interesting part of this cathedral was the numerous tombs of various bishops and other important people.  Some of them were quite ornate and lovely.  Again, the architecture was astounding.  More pictures can be viewed via my Facebook page  (theoretically, at some point) or upon request.  

The fountain does its thing

After the cathedral we went up the street a ways to the Great Hall.  There we viewed what is commonly accepted as the genuine Round Table.  Yes, as in King Arthur's.  In actuality, it couldn't have been the original table since it only dates back to the late 13th century (everything here is ancient, the 13th century is like yesterday); but since it has traditionally been accepted as the genuine Round Table it retains that distinction.  In England tradition counts as a reason to keep on doing something.  King Henry VIII had it repainted during his reign, and it maintains that exterior today.  The table weighs about a ton and is about 18 feet in diameter.   We also got to see a very cool representation of a Medieval garden with a working fountain from the period.  And yes, it still works!  The garden was very small, but very lovely.  A standard feature of the Medieval garden (not pictured here) was a "secret garden" or a small alcove in the garden that was kind of sectioned off from the rest where the ladies could go and have a nice rest.  Apparently the queens have historically taken control or been responsible for the garden.  Not all of the gardens, just the garden for the noble family.  A theme that has emerged in my visits to the castles is the extent to which nobles were separated from, and held above, the common people. 

The weak sleep on the bus

So that's the whirlwind tour of the exciting places I've been to outside of Oxford.  Coming Soon: Experiences in Oxford!