Oxford Observations

Ok, so sorry for the delay in writing.

Yesterday (Sunday) was orientation for us, so we got to go around and see the school and such. We met our teachers and talked a bit about what the next couple of weeks would be like. We also had our first meal of our trip at school, which included Yorkshire pudding. Which apparently is actually bread and not so much pudding. Then some of us just hung out for a bit, trying to get to know each other better and such. I had a lot of difficulty sleeping in my bed for some reason, and only ended up getting 2 hours of sleep.

Today was the first day of classes! We'll be starting out my Shakespeare class with Julius Caeser and then my Woolf class with some of her short essays. Our first excursion as a class is going to be this Wednesday to Blenheim Palace, which we'll also be seeing the Royal Shakespeare Company perform Julius Caeser. I know a lot of us girls are excited about it!

After class today, a pretty good group of us went to the famous Covered Market of Oxford and got some lunch. I was very impressed with myself with how well I'm doing with the coins here! It's so confusing- there are coins for a penny (don't call it a one pence, I did and got scolded), 2 pence, 5 pence, 10 pence, 20 pence, 50 pence, 1 pound, and 2 pounds. That can be very hard to keep track of! Shortly after lunch I went with a friend to go see the movie Bruno, which I do have to admit was a very interesting commentary on American society. Once I got back to my room I took a nice little nap before dinner, which we do have a 15 minute sit down prior time to. They attempted to give us a 'Texas' dinner to welcome us, including a poorly attempted Fried Steak, 'spiraled' fries, corn on the cob, and salmon on ciabatta bread.

We're not the only group here this summer. There's a large group of French guys who are studying here, the Oklahoma University Law School, and then the OU group which is basically doing the same program as us. This has caused a couple of incidents between Longhorns and Sooners, including a riveting serenade of The Eye of Texas. The local students here absolutely love the rivalry, and definitely encourage it. They surprisingly know a lot about the 2 College Football Teams!

Tonight a couple of us girls went looking tonight to find the movie The Hours to put us in the mood for our Virginia Woolf class. We got very confusing directions (including a very messy map) from some of the guys at the school, and had ourself a little adventure around Oxford. It was a lot of fun, although once we got the Video Store it turned out that the video had been damaged for a couple of years now. So we didn't get to watch the movie, but it was still a blast walking around.

We've been told that the amount of tourists around town will decrease within the next  2 weeks. It's still been a little crazy around the school. A lot of people want to go explore all of the colleges, which just really isn't possible when so many people are living there. So at the front of the building there's a sign saying "No Visitors Past This Point" which still means they can take photos of the front Courtyard. This causes quite a congestion, which means you have to push your way through them to get in the door. And some don't understand why you're trying to get through, and get a little upset that you're trying to ditch in front of them, when really you're not. Another little observation- most of the tourists around town are Italian. Don't really know why that my be.

Well, I don't have quite as interesting update as I have had recently. But I hope you've enjoyed it!

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