The Final Stretch (Almost)

We just finished the sixth week of the eight week Hilary term, so things are winding down. Once the term is over, we'll have a travel week and then seminars, a huge essay, and a two-hour final exam, so things aren't quite as complete as we are ready for them to be.

Friday was shaping up to be a crazy day. I spent the morning and early afternoon writing an eight-page paper on sublime ecstasy in Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan. I had to quit at 2 to get ready for our Shakespeare seminar, for which I had done none of the reading. But the tutor was ill, so it was cancelled, and my Gothic tutor was in the office and asked if we could meet early. My paper went over really well, and we had a great conversation, and I was done two hours before I thought I would be, which was awesome.

Friday night we went to David and Debbie's for dessert. David is a professor from Azusa Pacific, the college that organizes the program we're here through. We had a great time. It was wonderful to spend some time with another married couple.

Saturday we read all day and rented some movies at night: Interview with the Vampire and My Little Eye. The latter was a really creepy independent horror flick. The ending was a little disappointing, as the endings to many horror movies are, but the scares are genuine and it's not just a slasher movie. I recommend it for horror fans.

Today we had roast turkey at the Raddy and splurged on dessert. I got a huge piece of chocolate fudge cake. I think they accidentally (or intentionally because I'm such a great guest) gave me two pieces, because it was twice the size of every other cake we saw served. I ate it all as a matter of principle, but now I feel gorged.

Christine finally got me to take a leek at the market. Well, from the market. Four actually. We bought a cookbook called New English Classics, so when we go home, we can show everybody why we rave about the food so much. It has a recipe for leek and potato soup that we decided to try. We've had it the past two nights in a row. It's really good.

I'm reading The Iliad this week for my Greek tragedy tutorial. It's such a great story and so sad. I love it. For my Gothic tutorial, I'm reading Arthur Conan Doyle's horror stories, which should be fun.

Next weekend we're going to Portsmouth.

Oh, and Rachel, I heard someone say, "Bloody hell" this week. Thought you'd want to know.

Christine and I have a tradition of buying a new Christmas ornament every year that represents something exciting that we did. Last year we bought a hand-made clay heart ornament at a bazaar in Aruba, where we went for our honeymoon. This year, we bought a Santa ornament at a Christmas shop in Stratford. Here it is on our bulletin board with our Lord of the Rings calendar and a picture of Chauncey Burghart. 

England: Don't Believe the PR

I used to have a rather idyllic impression of England: high teas with crumpets and scones, punting along the Thames, witty conversation over cigars and Brandy. It turns out that that's all bullocks. The "proper," "polite" British are as loud, obnoxious, and disgusting as any American I've ever known, if not more so.

Now, I realize it may be unfair to judge England based on Oxford, which is a college town (I certainly wouldn't want to be judged based on my school), so take what I say with a grain of salt (if you don't have any, there's plenty over here), and remember all the lovely things I've said so far.

People make out everywhere here. In cafes, in pubs. It's worse than the student union at my school back home. People even stop in the middle of the sidewalks just to snog.

And speaking of sidewalks, they are too narrow and no one has the common decency to get out of the bloody way. So Christine and I will be walking down the sidewalk in single file to avoid taking up too much space (and to hide our numbers, much as the Tusken Raiders of Tatooine do), and we have to step into the road to get past any number of people coming toward us who apparently all need to gaggle about together like geese. At first we thought it was our fault. We're used to staying to the right, but in England they probably go to the left. Nope. The mindset on this tiny island seems to be that with space at a premium, I must take up as much as I can whenever I can.

And what's the deal with driving on the left side of the road? It's not any more practical. It's as if the English all decided, well, the Americans drive on the right, so we're going to drive on the left (I suspect the actually wanted to drive in the middle of the road, but someone must have been practical. Whoever it was, he and his descendents must have emigrated). Look, America invented the car. If you want to drive one, drive the way we do. I have the same question about their power outlets, which are too big and oddly shaped. America discovered electricity, so if anyone else wants to use it, they should darn well use it the way we do.

And a word or two on our flatmate. I think all I have said so far was that he is a nice guy. He still is. He is also the most disgusting clod on this island (which is saying something). He and his girlfriend (who is basically our fourth flatmate, although we don't know her name because nobody here speaks English) are proof against Darwinism (and while that should strengthen my faith, the fact that we have been forced to live with them actually makes me question it). In a naturalistic, survival of the fittest world, Christine and I would kill and eat them. They illustrate famously that book learning doesn't mean intelligence. Their one purpose in life seems to be to make this flat smell like arse. They begin in the kitchen, cooking elabrate and wonderful smelling meals, which they then devour in the living room. I use the word devour, because they sound exactly like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park when they eat. Including the snorting. My brother, cousin, and best friend are notorious for their less than elegant table manners, and each one of them could give our flatmates lessons on table etiquette. Once they've demolished their meal, they leave their dishes lie wherever they slip out of their greasy fingers. Then they begin to strew their books, shopping bags, shoes, and papers all about the living room, where they will stay until we kick them into a corner. The next day, the pans which were used to make the delicious smelling meals lie on the counter still encrusted with food, where they will stay unless we ask them to wash them so that we may cook. If we don't ask, the dishes stay where they are, the kitchen and dining room smell foul, and they have accomplished half their life's purpose. At which point they move to his bedroom, which is next to ours, and proceed to chain smoke smoke Marlboros, filling the hall with the acrid smell of unwashed cowboy. The bathroom, thank God, never smells too badly. However, when our flatmate takes his bi-monthly bath, he throws the shower mat onto the floor after filling the tub with water and then gets out before drying off, and then wonders why the bathroom is damp. It all reminds me of the line from The Green Mile, "How many years you spend pissing on a toilet seat before someone told you to put it up?"

Say what you will about English food, at times breakfast baps, fish & chips, and bangers & mash are all that keep me from writing off this festering turd of an island. Well, that and Victorian horror fiction. And the people at the Raddy are nice. And the libraries, the libraries are good. Not to mention Blackwell's. And I do like the castles everywhere. And the year-round Cadbury Creme Eggs. And the crocuses and daffodils are blooming so everything is purple, yellow, and green. And everything here is within walking distance and the museums are free. Oh, who am I kidding? I love it here!

I just want to go home.

Modernism (not to mention eavesdropping) is alive and well in Stratford upon Avon

Yesterday at 2:00 our bus left for Stratford upon Avon, home of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway. For those of you who are not of the literary persuasion, William Shakespeare is a poet and playwright, and Anne Hathaway is the star of The Princess Diaries 1 and 2. I though the bus ride was the best yet, since the girl I affectionately refer to as Satan's Bullhorn did not attend. Christine, however, did not appreciate the scenic backroads and spent the 1.25 hours curled up in a nauseated pile on my shoulder.

Shakespeare's birthplace has been turned into a museum that admirably demonstrates just how little we actually know about Shakespeare. It was almost as much fun as reading a Dorling Kindersley book on Shakespeare in a hallway with 50 other people, many of whom speak loudly in not-English and don't know what "excuse me" means (come to that, not many of the people who do speak English seem to know what that means). The house itself was very interesting, though. Sadly, they didn't allow photography inside, so most of the pictures are outside.

After touring the birthplace museum, we did some shopping and then had dinner at the Garrick Inn. During dinner, some of us were discussing literature and someone asked me to define horror fiction. This is always difficult for me as Andrew can attest, so I simply quoted H.P. Lovecraft who said that horror fiction includes "a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers," for example, I said, the spiritual realm. Later in the conversation, an elderly gentleman approached our table and said matter-of-factly, "I just wanted you to know, there is no such thing as the spiritual realm." That said, he walked to the bar and began (or, I suspect, continued) drinking. Well, that resolved it for me. I always base my beliefs on the unsolicited opinion of old, drunk Brits. I wonder, had he overheard us talking about Dracula, if he would have been compelled to tell us there's no such thing as vampires.

After dinner, we saw The Two Gentlemen of Verona at the Swan Theatre. It was updated to the 1940s and was pretty good. Shakespeare's comedies just strike me as silly. Cross-dressing, frolicking in the woods, falling in and out of love. This week in our Shakespeare seminar, Christine and I are presenting the supernatural themes in Hamlet, which is more my cup of tea.

Today I went back to the Natural History museum while Christine had her tutorial. It was a family day, so it was packed with people. The dinosaur exhibit seems to be growing, so I will have to check back every couple of weeks.

Christine's parents just confirmed that they'll be coming over to travel with us in March. We're very excited about that, and it should produce a lot of fun pictures.

We had someone take a picture of us in front of the gardens. When he said, "Say cheese," Christine thought he said, "Pretend you're a flamingo." 

This should have been a lovely picture of Christine standing on the street outside Shakespeare's birthplace, however, she was eating a bap and bit her lip at the exact moment I took the picture. 

The Shakespeare's birthplace gift shop 

The gardens surrounding Shakespeare's birthplace 

Shakespeare's birthplace at Stratford upon Avon 

The Natural History Museum shares its building with the Pitt Rivers museum of anthropology. The crowded museum features this Native American totem pole. 

The naturalistic view of human existence is so depressing 

This is an albatross. It's enormous and would be very awkward to wear around one's neck 

This one's for Dad. I don't know why, but whenever there are giant bugs around, I have to go look (I realize that a spider is not a bug, but it is nevertheless one of the most disgusting of God's creatures, and I take a certain joy in seeing a pin stuck through this one). I walked past the hissing cockroaches again, and the skin literally crawled off my body and clung to the ceiling. Really. You can go look at it. 

I assure you, the picture is not upside-down; the squid is 

A crocodile skeleton 

You should see the Santa Claus skeleton in the back... 

Statue of Euclid 

The museum features many statues of famous scientists 

The glass ceilings make great use of natural light 

I took more wide shots so you can get a better feel for the incredible architecture 

The T-rex 

Two Minor Catastrophes

Today was to be spent reading, and in those quiet hours, Christine and I decided to get some laundry done. Now, to understand how this is done, there is something you must know about England: it has everything America has, only ridiculously inconvenient. So we have a front-loading washer in the kitchen, but it holds about a gallon of water when full. Christine happened to notice this morning that the sink was clogged. Well, it must have been somewhere way down in the pipes, because when the washer drained, the sink filled withed soapy water. I mean FILLED, with a cloudy purple meniscus in which floated tiny pieces of potato and onion.

Finally the sink drained. By then the washer had stopped, so Christine opened it to pull out the clothes, at which point we learned that our washer actually holds more water than just a gallon, because at least that much poured onto the floor before Christine got it shut again. Since the washer was now half empty, I could see the water line on the door. So, while I mopped up the floor, I set the washer to drain again. And again, the sink filled with water. And, as I watched the water in the sink go down, I could see the water in the washer going up. So I put it back on drain, and the sink filled again. As the sink drained, the washer filled. The water was simply moving back and forth between the sink and the washer.

Somehow the moving back and forth must have broken up the clog, because the final time the sink drained, the washer did not fill. So I put the washer on spin, then opened it with great trepidation, expecting clothes, water, onions, and potatoes to spill out. Fortunately, the clothes were actually dry and clean and smelled only of soap. They are now drying in front of our space heater (dryers are too convenient, therefore not British).

Tonight I was going to make bangers and mash for dinner, but we only had one potato and the sausages had gone bad. Reeeeeeeeeeeeeally bad. Whew! So I salvaged dinner by making mashed potato and gravy sandwiches with an awesome gravy. It was kind of like hot turkey sandwiches, but without the turkey. It was good.

I spent the rest of the evening downloading books from the Online Books Page. This week I'm reading Arthur Machen's horror stories and Sophocles's Women of Trachis and Philoctetes.

So, how are you?

The cover of London's "Daily Mirror" from November 4 to give you an idea of the political climate over here

Midterm

This week is the fourth week of the eight week Hilary Term at Oxford, and we're really feeling it. As we sat in the Bodleian library last night, Christine asked me if I were ready to go. No, I said, but I won't be any closer to ready when the library closes in a couple of hours, so we left and ate at the Raddy (omelettes this time. I haven't had anything there I didn't like). It's frustrating to struggle under a workload that often seems impossible, but part of me feels like it's better to fail at Oxford than succeed at another school (do I sound too much like Milton's Satan?).

We're not really failing, so don't get me wrong. Our objective in coming here was to learn a lot about topics we're interested in, and by that standard we're definitely succeeding. But when each week has all the information and processing of a semester's worth of the same class back home, it's easy to feel exhausted.

Christine's Friday tutorial was cancelled last week, so today she met with her tutor from 9:30-11:30, so we got up wicked early for breakfast and I've been writing my essay for my tutorial at 5 since then. It's about how HG Wells addresses social issues in his fiction that later become systematized in his utopian (and horribly racist) non-fiction. Since his fiction is very exploratory, it's very difficult to come up with a thesis. Right now my pretentious title is "The Eloi, Morlocks, and Beast-Men in London: Social Structures in H.G. Wells's Imaginative Fiction and Prophetic Non-Fiction." My goal is to so impress my tutor with the title that he overlooks the meanderings of the paper itself.

We got fruits and vegetables at the covered market this week. Christine told me to go up to one of the vegetable vendors and say, "I'll take a leek." Then she laughed really hard. Sadly, she's the mature one in our relationship.

In answer to Rachel's question about creative cursing, it's not the case. I've heard no "bloody hells" or "slimy gits." Howver, I don't think that a day has gone by when I haven't heard somebody yell the "F" word loudly and in public.

We're going to see Two Gentlemen of Verona in Stratford on Tuesday, so watch for pictures.

Grad School

Christine has been accepted into the graduate program at both Northern Illinois University and Cal Poly. We're still waiting to hear from Notre Dame, Loyola, and Western Michigan.

A Normal Day

I often post when we've done something exciting, but I just wanted to update you all on how our normal, day-to-day lives and studying are going.

At the end of this week, our tutorials will be half over. My Greek Tragedy essay, which is due tomorrow, will be about the role of the gods in Oedipus's downfall. Friday I will have an essay due on either degeneration or imperialism in HG Wells's Island of Dr. Moreau and The Time Machine.

I've also found time for some extra-curricular reading and read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which was hilarious. I also read Vathek at Eva's recommendation and enjoyed it very much. The style of the 1700s is much different from the Victorian era, so it was a refreshing change.

Christine is reading Dorothy Sayers's Gaudy Night and Christina Rossetti's poems.

We both found out that we have a 4,000 word essay on some element of British history or culture due the beginning of April, so instead of reading, eating, and walking, we may just be reading and writing.

If you're sick of hearing me talk about food, skip this part. Saturday night we didn't feel like making food, so we went to The Radcliffe Arms (hereafter "The Raddy"). The owner, a kind elderly woman who reminds me of my grandma, recognized us because we eat there a lot and introduced herself as Jennifer. She calls us by name now whenever we go in, so it feels very homey. I had a Ploughman's Lunch, which is a huge chunk of cheddar cheese, crusty bread, pickled onions, and salad. It was very good and very filling. Last night we made homemade bangers and mash, which were delicious. We bought pork and leek sausages at a farmer's market on Thursday. We also got some delicious cheese and bread. Christine found a great recipe for an onion gravy made with beef stock and red wine, which was the perfect complement to the meal. Click this link for a crash course in British Food.

We went in search of books today, this time at libraries, and still couldn't find the HG Wells material I needed (not that a trip to a library is ever a waste). Thank goodness for the On-Line Books Page.

Our beloved chess set 

Me studying 

Christine studying 

A Canterbury Tale: or Why I Hate the Bus

Yesterday we went on a tour of Canterbury Cathedral. We had to leave at 9, so we got up early (breakfast bap, mmmm...). The bus ride was just like last time only more so. If anyone thinks that they know the most immataure, obnoxious person in the world, I beg to differ. She's here in Oxford and spends evey bus ride making sure everyone listens to her asinine thoughts on everything. Ugh. Ok, the rant is over.

When we arrived at the cathedral, we listened to an Oxford don relate the story of Henry II and Thomas Becket, who was murdered in Canterbury by four of Henry's knights. It's a fascinating story of intrigue and betrayal. I can't believe I haven't seen it as a movie yet.

We then received a tour of the cathedral. Our tour guide was a charming old woman who was very informative. The cathedral was gorgeous, and after seeing the beauty and talent that went into decorating it, I cannot believe that visual representations of Christ are idolatrous. Everything about the art and architecture was designed to focus attention on worship.

Our tour ended at 3, and with an hour left till we had to leave, we decided to stay for the Evensong service. It was sung by a men and boys choir. The liturgy was beautiful. As we left, we picked up "A Canterbury Christmas," a CD of Christmas choral music, which we have been listening to all day.

Today we had roast at the Radcliffe Arms, and then walked around town looking for books. We didn't get any. Tonight we're making our own bangers and mash, which should be good.

Have a great week.

The cathedral ceiling 

Shrine to St. Thomas Beckett 

The altar. The Bible is read from the back of the eagle in the foreground