Of Robes, Methodism, and Such...

A few weeks ago, during the seventh week of term, I went to an event called "formal hall."  This is a formal dinner at your college where everyone wears academic robes and is served a nicer meal than the usual dining hall food.  I hate to say it, but the best analogy I can give is a scene in the Great Hall from a Harry Potter film.  Formal hall dinners at Oxford look a lot like that, except for the floating candles, the magical ceiling, and all the other non-muggle happenings at a Hogwarts dinner!

Academic robes, by the way, are not worn every day.  You don't wear them to class or tutorials, although full-time Oxford University students do need to wear them when they sit for exams! Also, each level of student wears a different type of robe.  Below I'm wearing the typical undergraduate robe.  You can see that it's short and doesn't cover much. Robes tell a lot about a person at Oxford - robes associated with higher degrees are progressively longer and cover more of the person.  Here's a picture of me wearing a standard undergrad robe for formal hall dinner:

Last week I went back to London for a bit and this time, I nourished the religious historian and nerdy Methodist side of me by visiting some of the John Wesley/Methodist sites in the city!  Across the street from Westminster Abbey is a place called Methodist Central Hall.  In their lobby they have a life-size statue of John Wesley, so I had to pose with him for a picture!

Look at that: I'm a little bit taller than John Wesley was.  Just shows that short people can do good things!

Then, I headed over to Wesley Memorial Chapel for a visit to a church that both John and Charles Wesley preached at. The marble columns lining the sides of the church were donated by several different sects of Methodism from across the world, including the American denominations of the Methodist Episcopal Church and Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

In the back of the churchyard, they have John Wesley's grave. Joe Eldridge, my boss at the Kay Center at AU, told me I needed to see his grave while I was in London.  Joe, these pictures are for you!

A view from the front of the church... I wish I had gotten a picture of myself in front with the statue! (I guess that means I'll have to go back!)

I didn't just see Methodist sites on my second visit to London, but I'll post more later.  Right now I need to get some sleep because tomorrow some friends and I are taking our first major trip of spring break: we're going to Barcelona, Madrid, and Lisbon!  Nine days on the warm Iberian Peninsula... a nice break from cold and rainy England!

School's Out!

After 8 weeks, 12 essays, 120 plus pages and thousands of words I completed my first term at Oxford University!

Terms here run for only 8 weeks (three terms per year) and visiting students take two tutorials per term.  This term I took, or "read" as one in Oxford would say, early American history and Twentieth Century American history.  Though it might seem counter-intuitive to study U.S. history abroad, it's actually been quite fascinating.  And, with the faculty, research facilities, and tutorial system that Oxford has to offer, Oxford is actually one of the greatest places to study U.S. history!

These past eight weeks I've worked the hardest I probably ever have and have really grown as a scholar.  The tutorials are rigorous and challenging, and the tutors are extremely critical of students' works, but I'm a stronger scholar because of it.  My analytical skills are sharper and my writing of historical prose has matured a lot.  As they say here, I'm learning to think about history as a science but write it like an art!  It's been a great test to see if I can handle life in academia, and I'm finding that I love it!

Next term, I'll be reading 18th century British history (and get a chance to look at British abolitionism!) and 20th century Soviet history, focusing on the interwar period, 1920-1937.  It will be good to try something other than U.S. history and will satisfy some requirements needed for my degree at AU.  But I've got 6 weeks of vacation before the next term starts, so I will soon be jetting off to the Continent for a Euro-trip!

A Weekend in London

Last weekend I went to visit London!  I have some friends from AU studying abroad in there, so I went to see them.  I was only there for a weekend, but it was good to catch up with my friends and see some familiar faces!

Trafalgar Square.  The column in the center is "Nelson's Column," in honor of Lord Nelson who defeated Napoleon.  Ironically, if you got to Paris, they have a huge tomb honoring Napoleon!

My friend Chris and I at the foot of Nelson's Column.

The view from Trafalgar Square.

Big Ben and Westminster Abbey.  We couldn't go in, but at least we got to see them from the outside.  And, when we were checking them out we saw...

... Prime Minister Gordon Brown (right) and French President Nicholas Sarkozy!

Me at Big Ben!

The London Eye.

On Saturday we went to St. Paul's Cathedral to enjoy the view.  St. Paul's is over 1400 years old, but the building was severely damaged in the Great Fire of London in 1666, so this cathedral is not the original one. 

The weekend I was in town, we had beautiful weather!

A view from the top of St. Paul's.  We climbed 583 steps up to the top, that's a total of 85 meters!

Then, we walked across the Millennium Bridge to visit the Globe Theatre! For those of you who don't know, I'm a big Shakespeare fan.  When I was younger, I used to perform in adaptations of Shakespeare plays in a local theater group so this was great for me to see!

This Globe Theater is not the original, because like St. Paul's, it was burnt down.  This recreation version was completed in 1997 and is authentic as historically possible.

  Note the flag pole at the top - in Elizabethan England, they would fly a flag to let Londoners know a play would be performed that day.  That's the only way the publicized a play - no posters or advertisements were used because so few people were literate!

The stage.  They still perform plays here. My friends and I talked about going to see one later this season!

The audience's seats.  This is where the "middle class" of the day would sit.  The poorest Londoners would stand on the ground to watch.

On Sunday, we went to Buckingham Palace!

Outside Buckingham Palace!

I also took the London Underground some places.  It's so much more extensive than the DC Metro!

As you can tell, I had a great weekend in London with my friends.  London's a great city and it was a much needed break from studying.  Oxford is great, but after a while you get cabin fever and need to get away from the libraries! I'll definitely be going back to London in the future!

Cambridge

Last Saturday, some friends and I decided to visit our 'rival' university, Cambridge.  Cambridge was founded in 1200s after a riot broke out in Oxford between the "townies" and the "gownies."  Fed up with the situation, some Oxford scholars left and founded a new university in the town of Cambridge.  Since then, Oxford and Cambridge have had a historic college rivalry, comparable only to the Harvard-Yale rivalry in the U.S.

After a 3 and a half hour-long bus ride we were all hungry, so we decided to start with lunch!

Our first stop was a visit to Corpus Christi College.  One of my friends from Oxford, Pavel, who is a visiting student from UMichigan, had some friends studying at Corpus Christi.  They were able to give us a tour around the rest of the town and get us in to some places that aren't supposed to be open to visitors!

Walking through Cambridge.  My friends Pavel (right) and Zhana (left) are also visiting students at Oxford.

"Hey! Don't take that picture!" (Honestly, I have no idea why I was making that face!)

The glare makes it hard to see, but on top of the big wheel is a giant bug.  This is a clock in the middle of Cambridge and the bug on top of it is supposed to symbolize wasting time.  The wheel moves clockwise, so it looks like the bug is eating time as you stare at it!

King's College, one of Cambridge's most famous colleges.  No one, by the way, is permitted to walk on the grass.  That's the rule at Oxford, too!

Some of our group at King's College.

 Me, on the other side of King's College quad.

The guys

(You can faintly see King's College in the background through the fog.)

The girls

St. John's College, another one of Cambridge's famous colleges.

Punting - an activity unique to Cambridge and Oxford.  Apparently, it's somewhat like a rowboat but much more difficult!  The bridge above is called the Bridge of Sighs.

The gang!

Every day is a Weekend and Other Midterm Reflections...

While you folks on the East Coast are snowed in and getting snow day upon snow day, life goes on here  on this side of the Atlantic.  It's week four of Hilary term, meaning that I'm halfway through my first term at Oxford University.  So, in honor of that, I thought I'd share some of reflections on my time here so far.

• Every day is a weekend here.  Since lectures are optional (and sometimes irrelevant to your tutorial), the distinction between class days and days off is blurred, so weekends don't have the same sanctity that they do back in the U.S.  Maybe that's what it's like to be retired...
• You can get £10 credit on your laundry card by putting a £5 note in the card machine.  This is obviously an error with the laundry card machine, but no student is going to complain!
• When I accidentally bump into some one on the street, I say "sorry" in an English accent.  My American friends and I decided that this was the best option, because this way we're not automatically labelled as the obnoxious American tourists.
• Because of the tutorial style education, the workload here is more consistent.  Instead of the semester building to a crescendo that culminates in lots of assignments at the end of the term, there's a steady amount of work all along. I haven't decided which I prefer yet.  This, in some ways, is more logical, though.
• My history tutorials typically require that I familiarize myself with 4-6 books per week.  Never again will I think reading one book a week for a course is a lot of work. 
• The Farmville craze is apparently not isolated to the U.S.  The other day I saw someone playing it here.  My opinion of Britain declined because of it.
• You can do a lot of sight-seeing by just going to pubs.   I've been to the Turf where Bill Clinton "smoked but did not inhale" weed while at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, to the Eagle and Child where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkein met to discuss the books they were writing, and to the Eagle (in Cambridge) where scientists Watson and Crick announced their discovery of DNA.
• They use A4 paper here, not 8.5"x11" paper.  A4 sheets are about an inch longer, but since essays here are defined by word limit and not page limits, it matters little.  Still, my papers stick out a little bit above the tops of my folders, which is a little weird.
• No one buys books here, or only on rare occasions.  Oxford University has about 100 libraries, so chances are there's multiple copies of the books you need and one is bound to be available for the week you need it for a tutorial.
• Oxford may be a college town, but very little stays open late and almost nothing is open 24 hours, not even the libraries!  Most stores close by 6pm, and even pubs close by midnight on Friday and Saturday nights.

Magdalen (pronounced "mawhdlin") Tower, one of my favorite buildings in Oxford.