London, Day 2

I feel as if I've spent the entire day on my feet. Strictly speaking, I haven't, but I've been either standing or walking most of the day.

In the morning, we went as a group to the British Museum. Once we got there, though, we were free to go off on our own and explore whatever interested us. At this point, I might as well just stop writing about the museum, because it basically goes without saying that I went straight for the Rosetta Stone and the Greco-Roman exhibits. Especially the Elgin Marbles. Like yesterday, I took photos, but I'm too tired to sort through all of them and then wait for ages while they upload. I'll post photos when I get back to Oxford.

The entire afternoon was free for us to do whatever we liked, so I left the British Museum around 12:30. I took the Tube to a station relatively close to London Bridge (and by "relatively" I mean it was a 15-minute walk), took some very boring photos of it, and then walked to the Globe. As simple as that sounds, it was somewhat fiendishly complicated. The streets in that area don't make any sense whatsoever - they run at odd angles, go around corners, and turn into each other with no rhyme or reason whatsoever. Add to that massive crowds of tourists, all getting in the way, and you start to get the picture. Once I found the Globe, I then found the ticket office, then the returns queue (to wait and hope for a standby ticket). Around 1:40, someone came along with a ticket for the yard (the standing area on the ground, in front of the stage), so I got in!

The play was wonderful, and the actors did an outstanding job with the play. Much Ado About Nothing is the first Shakespeare play I ever saw performed, so it was fun to be able to see it again. And of course the yard tickets only cost 5 pounds, which is nice. There are downsides, though. One is that there aren't any seats in the yard, so you have to stand up for three hours. Another is that if you are towards the back of the yard, it can be hard to see the stage sometimes (I was lucky and got a spot right next to the stage). And then there's the open-air part of the equation. The seats are under cover. The yard is not. And of course it rained during about three fourths of the performance...

Still, I guess that makes it authentic. I just wish I could have experienced the authenticity while I was wearing my waterproof coat with a hood, instead of a denim jacket. It wasn't really cold out, but the rain was cold, and I was shivering by the end of the performance. On the positive side, though, the waterproofing spray that I used on my leather jacket seems to work, because I used some extra on the bag I had with me today. Nothing inside got wet, and it dried off really quickly, so the inadvertent test proved to be successful.

Our group met back up for dinner at 6 at a Thai restaurant. I don't really know enough about Thai food to say how good the food was, but it seemed all right to me. After that we went on a Jack the Ripper walking tour. Some aspects of it were mildly interesting (a theory about who Jack the Ripper was, and what motivated the murders), and other aspects were utterly disturbing. All in all, I think I probably wouldn't have gone if I'd had a choice - the subject matter wasn't all that pleasant and the temperature was steadily dropping.

If I total up how long I've been standing or walking today, I suppose it's no wonder I feel so exhausted. We started to leave for the museum around 9:30, and I got back to my room around 11:30. Apart from an hour for dinner and the Tube ride back after the walking tour, I've been on my feet basically the entire time...which means about 12.5 hours. I'm glad we don't have a full day of touring tomorrow...

London, Day 1

Yesterday was interesting, although it feels like we didn't get a whole lot done. The bus arrived in London around 12:30, and we took the Tube to where we are staying (guest housing at Imperial College). We had a quick lunch before setting out for the War Museum.

Taking the Tube has proven to be quite a production. No one is ever quite sure where to go or how to get there, which results in 30 people milling around trying to read the signs in every station, figuring out which direction we're supposed to go, and then moving uncertainly towards the platform once about five people have figured it out independently.

The War Museum was interesting, and I took quite a few photos. When I have some more time, I'll post photos and a more thorough description. They had a number of planes and tanks and guns out in the main display area, including a shell from the largest gun ever built. (The Germans built it. Go figure. It was so massive that the shell was about twelve feet tall, by my estimate.) I went through an exhibit on Britain's clandestine activities during World War I, World War II and the Cold War, as well as an exhibit about the merchant navy.

After that, we took the Tube to Piccadilly Circus, where we were free to get dinner. I and a few others went to a little restaurant called The Stockpot. The food was quite good - I got their soup of the day, which proved to be leek and potato. I've never had leeks before, so I wasn't sure how it would taste, but I liked it. I also had an apple crumble with ice cream, which was even better than the soup.

After dinner, we met outside the Apollo Theatre to see Yes, Prime Minister. I wish we could have gone to see a play with more substance or at least more literary merit. The play was funny, but essentially pointless, and the long string of jokes got to be a little bit tiresome by the end. Our seats also weren't that good - we were up in the balcony, and the angles were such that I either had to lean forward and prop my elbows on my knees to see the stage, or lean back far enough that I could see between the railing and the seat in front of me. Neither was very comfortable for a long period of time.

Today should be a lot more fun, though. The first stop this morning is the British Museum, which has me very excited. I won't get anything like enough time to explore it, but at least we do get to spend some time there. The afternoon is free, and there's a production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Globe at 2, so I'm going to try to get a standby ticket for that. Several people have mentioned that they successfully got standby tickets for other plays before, so hopefully I'll be able to see it.

En route to London

I'm on the bus with all the other GMU students now, on the way to London for the weekend. We'll be visiting places like the War Museum, the Tower of London, and the British Museum. We're also going to see a play, but unfortunately not at the Globe. The play is Yes, Prime Minister, apparently.

I also have a mildly annoying ditty from an old Madeline cartoon stuck in my head... "We are going to London, we are going to London. To London! To London! Now everything is fine!"

On Wednesday we took a day trip to Hampton Court Palace. I have a bunch of photos, especially from the gardens, which were quite impressive. Hopefully I'll get a chance to post some of them soon.

The Kilns and New College

Saturday was quite a busy day for me. First, I went with a group of 11 other students to tour The Kilns, C.S. Lewis's home. We met Mr. Mackey there, and he showed us around the house and gardens, as well as a library that was added after Lewis's death.

The interior of the house has been painstakingly restored, a task which was made much easier by the abundance of photos from Lewis's lifetime. Even though a great deal of the original furniture was sold after Lewis's death, quite a bit has been recovered thanks to those photos.

Lewis's desk:

Lewis's typewriter:

Joy, Lewis's wife, made this afghan:

After World War 1, Lewis took in the mother and sister of one of his Army friends who had been killed during the war. He chose the less convenient of the two upstairs bedrooms for himself - and because to get to it, he would have had to go through the ladies' bedroom, he instead used the fire escape to access his room. (You can see a better view of the fire escape in the picture of the front of the house.)

Somebody had a sense of humor, I think. (Or is that humour?)

A little attic space in the house is set up to recreate a room where Lewis played as a boy, along with his brother. The two of them invented a land called "Boxen," which influenced Lewis's Narnia books, and the attic room reappears in Polly and Digory's adventures in The Magician's Nephew. A sign on the door reads, "This attic recreates the little end room in Ireland where, as boys, Jack and Warnie entered their imaginative world of Boxen."

By the time C.S. Lewis married his wife, Joy, she was an invalid and unable to manage stairs. This was her room, on the ground floor.

 A couple of pictures of the garden:

And one picture of me in the garden:

After we got back to the city center, I decided to wander around and take advantage of Oxford Open Day, which just so happened to be that same day. A lot of places not normally accessible to the public were open, and a lot of places that typically charge for admission were free. From what I understand, the colleges that had been used in the filming of Harry Potter movies were an absolute zoo sometimes, but I steered clear of them.

Instead, I decided to visit New College, where I'll be enrolled once term starts. Technically, I don't have privileges as a student until then (the beginning of October), so I wasn't sure whether I would be allowed inside under normal circumstances. That meant that I got my first good look at the college yesterday.

Let's just say, I'm really excited.  I basically just wandered around by myself, so I'm not entirely sure what everything was. I did later find out that New College incorporates part of the old Oxford City wall, which is visible in a few of the photos. It actually has towers and a walkway along the top and arrow slits in it - although I wouldn't particularly want to use the walkway. It looks nice from the ground, though.

I also went by the official University Shop and got myself an Oxford University keychain and a New College pin. I didn't take a photo of the keychain, but here's one of the pin:

Bookworm Heaven (and other adventures)

On Monday, we started a three-week lecture series on British history, society and culture. We'll have two or three lectures a day, five days a week, on various topics. On Monday, the lecture topics were "How to Write an Essay for Tutorials" and "The English Education System." The lecture on education wound up being closer to a discussion on the philosophy of education, which I found fascinating.

This morning, we heard lectures on "British Moral and Political Philosophy" and "The British Legal System." Tomorrow we'll be breaking off into smaller discussion groups after lectures to talk about the ideas so far in greater depth.

Our afternoons this week are almost entirely free. Yesterday afternoon, I took a bus over to east Oxford to visit a friend of a friend, Aidan Mackey. Mr. Mackey is a renowned scholar of G.K. Chesterton and the Inklings, and an extension is being built at one of the colleges in Oxford to house his collection of Chestertoniana. (Don't you just love that word?) We talked about Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, and Tolkien, and he offered to take me and any other interested students on a tour of the Kilns, Lewis's old home.

This afternoon, I stopped by a used bookstore, St. Philip's. From the outside, it looks like almost nothing - there's a sign hanging above a little alley (more like a hallway) that leads back to where the shop is. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, and I was very pleasantly surprised when I got inside. It's much bigger than it looks from the outside, and there are bookshelves lining very nearly all the walls - even going partway behind the desk with the register.

I have to admit, some of the books I saw were very tempting. I found an ancient-looking copy of Liddell and Scott's Greek Lexicon, which is THE definitive dictionary for ancient Greek. I have an abridged version, but this was the practically immovable full version - around six inches thick and quite possibly fifteen inches tall. They wanted 60 pounds for it, and I suspect it was worth every penny. Even though it was finished in the 1800's, it is as valuable a resource today as it was back then.

Another book that caught my eye was a leather-bound King James Bible from 1860. The pages were gilt-edged, and even though I don't know a whole lot about antique books, it looked to be in very good shape to me. They had a Latin Vulgate from 1883 and a Greek New Testament too. (Before anyone asks - yes, I have a Vulgate. Yes, I have a Greek New Testament. Yes, the only difference is that mine aren't as old. Your point is?)

And all that was just in the hallway. Most of the books were in the front room, with the bookshelves arranged in a sort of U-shape to fit as many of them in as possible. Old books, older books...a whole section for C.S. Lewis books...and then, at the very end, a glass-fronted bookcase with rare books locked away inside of it. 

The lady behind the desk asked me whether I was looking for anything in particular. I said no, I was just browsing...and did she by chance know how old that copy of Lord of the Rings in with the rare books was? She came over and unlocked the case for me and let me have a look at it. Turns out it was a first edition - all three books, complete with their original dust jackets, and in very good shape. Turns out it also was priced at 225 pounds...

I definitely plan to go back there. Of course, the first edition LOTR is a bit beyond my budget, but some of the other books were nice too - and I didn't really expect to spend three and a half months here without coming into possession of at least a couple of new books. Or, better yet, old books.

Another student on the program said that Blackwell's, another bookstore, has a rare copy of a Latin translation of the Iliad for sale - for 2,500 pounds. I don't think I've ever seen a book worth that much in my life. (Of course, I haven't seen it yet, but Blackwell's very conveniently happens to be on my way to and from lectures...so there's another bookstore I'll be paying a visit to at some point in the near future.) The only real question now is how to make my luggage hold more than its physical capacity on the way home...

Fish and chips

Today was our orientation with OPUS, the Oxford Programme for Undergraduate Studies. That took most of the day and covered a lot of information. Most of the orientation was given by the OPUS director, but there were also a few guest speakers who came in to talk to us.

One orientation session covered the library resources that are available in Oxford, the most impressive being the Bodleian. The Bodleian is the Oxford University library, although each of the colleges also has its own library. It's one of three copyright libraries in England, making it essentially the equivalent of the Library of Congress. Very much like the Library of Congress, too, you can't actually take any books out of the Bodleian. He added, "Legend has it that a king of England tried to borrow a book from the Bodleian once. He got his head cut off."

Unfortunately, none of the students in our group will be able to access the Bodleian until the Michaelmas term starts, in October. Once the term begins, though, we'll have full access to that and to our college libraries, as well as the library of the Oxford Union and the faculty libraries.

After orientation was over, I and several other students went out to find dinner and do a little bit of shopping. We found a little restaurant that sold fish and chips...

I've never had fish and chips before, but I think I'll be having it again. 

Arrival in Oxford

The flight across the Atlantic was completely uneventful, apart from a little bit of turbulence and some rather odd-tasting yogurt. Four other students from George Mason were on the flight with me, and we met up with each other at the gate and stuck together after the flight. We arrived at Heathrow ahead of schedule, but thanks to a very long immigration line, we didn't leave on the bus for Oxford until nearly 10 AM. Some of the scenery on the drive was beautiful...

...and the weather was gorgeous.

This was on the outskirts of Oxford.

I'm afraid we passed by all these lovely buildings too quickly for me to take note of what all of them were, so I can't tell you very much about them. I just liked how they looked.

Check-in was at Hertford College, near the center of Oxford. We got our housing assignments there, then went off to our different houses to unpack and get settled. 

Here's where I'll be living for the next three and a half months:

The house has a kitchen, two and a half baths, and eight single bedrooms, all of which are now occupied. My room is on the second floor, overlooking the back yard. Here's the view from my window...

I left the camera at home for the rest of the day. We had tea at the Vaults & Gardens, after which I got a SIM card for my phone and wandered around the city for a little while with some of the other girls from Mason. One of the places we walked past was New College, where I'll be enrolled when the term begins in October. We also walked past the site where Robert Boyle came up with Boyle's Law - his house is no longer standing, but there's a plaque that commemorates the discovery set into the wall of the current building. 

It's been a long day, or more accurately a long two days, considering how little sleep I got on the plane. I'm tired, but definitely excited for orientation tomorrow and the rest of the semester.