Second Week

Second week of term...

On Monday, my bike was finally fixed. Unfortunately, I anticipated riding into town on it, and finished the food in my cupboards. This proved a bad idea when it begin to rain very hard and I was left to remain at home without any food the rest of the evening. Still, the rain was the beautiful sort that seems to clear everything away and leave it all clean and fresh. Thus, Tuesday dawned very bright and clear.

I began the day with schoolwork, then biked into town to have tea with everyone. At this point, my hunger was sated by both an unnecassarily large number of cookies and a trip to the grocery store on my way back. How quickly everything went now that I could cycle! Hwin, my dear little blue bicycle, loved the wind and took me wherever I liked as quickly as I could keep up. I returned just in time for a lovely conversation with my dear mother on Skype. We let an extra half hour slip into the conversation, which was especially nice. Then, off to Scottish Dance.

On Wednesday, I began with a lecture on poetic form, then went on to the library to work on the paper I had begun the previous night. Back at Wycliffe, my college, we had a lecture on global warming, then tea. From there, I returned home for more school work.

Thursday is now my big lecture day and, by God's blessing, I discovered one of the richest treasures of the EFL (where my lectures are). The coffee machine upstairs. And the adjacent chocolate vending machine. Oh, and the lectures were all excellent, too. But that hot chocolate--just 30 p (about $.60)! It was a cold day, and my night to cook, so I went to the grocery store again. Matt and I fixed egg McMuffins, hash browns, and prepared fruit. Then, I began my paper writing. I had 3500 words of notes on the assigned poem, and needed to turn it into a coherent paper. Instead, I had a few lovely conversations about music and poetry, gave a massage, and started the paper very late at night. I wrote into the early parts of Friday.

In the later parts of Friday, I worked on another assignment, then went to my tutorial, read my paper, and had a good conversation about one of my favorite poems. That evening, we had our movie night in Matt and Quinn's room-a weekly tradition, now-and we got to bake a large batch of sweets for said event. Then, we played several games, including "The Best Game Ever." I laughed until my sides hurt.

I'll tell about yesterday later. I'm off to a pub.

Still Alive!

It's good to be publishing again! I won't say 'writing' since I've been writing all week. Oxford's term began this last week. For those wondering, I've been taking British Landscape classes up until now. This week, I moved on to Oxford tutorials.

Tutorials are the traditional Oxford (and Cambridge) way of studying. You meet one-on-one with a teacher (called a "tutor") and present an essay answer a question he has posed to you. After reading your essay, you and the tutor discuss the form and content-mostly content if you're already writing well.

These began this week. Additionally, lectures began. Lectures are quite what they sound like: you go and listen to a wonderful British accent discuss obscure topics.

Last week I got to meet my tutors in a group setting. Both of them are wonderful, but I am especially fond of my Creative Writing tutor. He's just brilliant and instantly likeable.

For Creative Writing, we were told to write something evoking some part of Oxford. For Poetry in English, I was to discuss the intellectual poetry of Donne and Herbert, two of my very favorite poems. Thus, I began the week with good feelings about the work to be done. Everything would be marvellously fun.

And, of course, it was. I wrote a poem about Autumn in Oxford (since I'm getting to experience my first proper autumn) which was "Structurally impressive" though the vocabularly expressed my "crush on the 16th century", as my tutor described it. He was absolutely wonderful at giving painless criticism, a valued skill in such a profession.

For Poetry in English, I spent hours in Donne's The Extasie and Herbert's Providence, two examples of the 16th century poetry on which I have said crush. This was especially lovely after being told that I would have piles and piles of secondary sources. Both of my classes are only working from primary texts, which is the most comfortable kind of research for me. Especially when one of the primary texts is Oxford, itself.

That, very, very briefly, was my first week of Oxford classes. Tutorials went well, research went marvellous. All is well in Oxford.

Of Paris

I'm not even going to attempt to do Paris justice, this morning. It was an amazing trip and that's that. I would rather write enough to actually tell you something when I have time than write a very poor sketch this morning, which is all I could do. Nevertheless, I don't want people to think I have ceased blogging, so I'll just give you a little itinerary to be fleshed out later:

Friday:
~Louvre
~Notre Dame

Saturday:
~This great Parisian graveyard with Oscar Wilde and Chopin
~Place de Concorde
~Egyptian Obelisk
~Louvre Park
~Arc de Triumph
~Effeil Tower
~Notre Dame (again)

Sunday:
~Museum of Cluny (Medieval Museum)
~Rodin Museum (with the famous statue "The Thinker")
~Museum of Modern Art
~Sacre Coure (Church)

Monday:
~Roman Arena
~Mosque
~Bastille
~Pantheon

That's a general overview. And we ate lots and lots of great French bread. I'll describe it all in greater detail this weekend.