In and Out of Oxford

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. I'm getting "stuck in," as they say, and I keep running out of time to write a post. Ok, no more excuses, just action-packed adventure:

It's been a busy week and a half since I last posted. I turned in two essays on Monday, and I have another one due tomorrow. That's a lot of writing in one week. In non-academic news, I've been spending a lot of time in the Master's Lodgings recently. The Master and his wife have a house in college, so they often have students over for events. Last week, they had all of the visiting students over for drinks and canapes. The Bursar and some other important college people also came, so it was a good opportunity to put faces and personalities with names. I had some lovely conversations. The Master asked a lot of questions about how we were finding Pembroke and what we thought about all the tradition. We all agreed that we really like formal halls and things of that nature. Yes, it takes an hour of your night three times a week, but you really get to know the other members of your class. And it's nice to sit down together and have a good meal on a regular basis, instead of eating and running or heating and eating in your room, or whatever. Obviously, my class at Penn is much bigger than my class here, but I wish we could all get together like that on a regular basis. After NSO, we really don't do any activities together as a whole class (or when we try, it's a disaster - see waiting outside for an hour for Sophomore Skimmer and not even getting in) until we have alumni day and class reunions. Back to Pembroke, we also went to the Master's last night for a recital. Twice a term, the Master hosts a student musical recital - anyone can sign up to participate, and anyone is welcome to come and hear. I didn't perform last night, since I didn't bring any music with me and didn't really have time to find any, but all the performances were very good. We had a few people sing, someone played the cello, someone sang and played his guitar, etc. A few highlights: one of the fellows played a recorder arrangement of a Handel piece that he did himself in his university days; Sam Baker, one of our organ scholars, played a suite of dances for piano that he composed; and Manos, one of our music performance majors, played a Chopin Ballad that was absolutely stunning. I can't wait to sing or play in the next recital!

On Saturday, the Tufts office in London ran a bus to Stratford upon Avon for a day of Shakespeare. "Non-Tufts friends" were cordially invited, so I went along. The bus left from London and picked us up in Oxford on the way there. Saturday morning was raining and not looking very promising for a nice day. I was tired on the bus, and we got stuck in some heinous traffic on the way there - it took us an hour to go the last ten miles. But by the time we got there, the weather was clearing up and I was in a much better mood. First we went to Shakespeare's wife's cottage. Her name was Anne Hathaway, and her family lived outside of town in a 12 room cottage that was actually considered a good-sized house at the time. It still has a thatched roof and all the original walls, made of timbers filled in with some sort of organic material. The house is filled with Elizabethan furniture, including the ACTUAL SETTLE where Anne and William courted. That's one of the funny things about Stratford - we don't actually know that much about Shakespeare's life, so everything that we can prove to be his is a big deal. The tour guide kind of reminded me of the old historian in Monty Python and the Holy Grail who gets mowed down when the Medieval knights ride through the filming of his documentary. He liked to give the linguistic roots of some of the phrases we use today, like "turning the tables" (one side of the table top was polished and for display only, the other side was rough and used for doing everything else). After we finished at Anne Hathaway's, we went to Shakespeare's birthplace, back in town. There's a sort of museum leading up to it with a series of videos explaining Shakespeare's life and his importance to our culture - very cheesy. They have a signet ring on display with the initials WS, which MAY be a ring worn by the bard himself, since it was found outside the parish church in Stratford (and as if no other man in town had the initals WS). The house itself is pretty similar to Anne Hathaway's house, but has the addition of a glove-making workshop where Shakespeare's father worked. One of the coolest things about it was that so many famous authors, performers, and personalities have walked through the house at some point - one of the rooms of the house is devoted to all the people who have visited over the years. After we left "the birthplace," we wandered around Stratford to find something to eat, since it was almost 2:30 by this time. So many things in the town are named after Shakespeare or his plays: Much Ado About Toys, the As You Like It Cafe, etc. It turned out to be a beautiful afternoon, so after we ate (during which we had an intense discussion about whether Shakespeare actually wrote his own plays or not), we walked down to the river just to be outside. There's a monument to Shakespeare with statues of some of his most famous characters, so we made funny faces standing next to them and took pictures. Then we got back on the bus to come home, but instead of getting stuck in traffic on the highway again, we took the scenic route through the Cotswolds. The sun was shining, the trees were beautiful, and the villages we drove through were adorable. All in all, it was good to get out of town and out of college and do something a little different.

No set plans for the weekend yet, but I'm sure we'll find something to do. We haven't gotten the opportunity to do a lot of the touristy things in Oxford yet, so maybe we'll visit the castle or something. Hopefully I'll get back onto a more regular posting schedule.