My New Haircut

. . . or my new bangs (known to the British as a fringe, or a fringy bit, and I still managed to ask mistakenly for fringes -- because bangs are, after all, plural, so it seemed logical) and trim/shaping. I'm saying all this because the difference is not drastic, although the fringy bit is a little different from the bangs I've had in the past.

I went the other day for my first experience in a British hair salon. It was a little bit pricier than I'm used to paying at home, but I was so desperate for a haircut that I didn't care. I went to this salon called Brothers because I'd received a ten-pound off coupon (known to the British as a voucher) from them in my Fresher's pack. The salon was very nice -- as were the employees. They offered you drinks while you waited, took your coat to a coat room, and gave you a "complimentary" scalp massage prior to your shampooing and a "complimentary" hand massage while you are getting your hair cut. I know that "complimentary" really means nothing (hence the quotation marks); it just explains why my visit cost me more here than it does at home, but after all the Oxonian stress that this place puts me under, it was well worth the few extra pounds. And I'm quite happy with the results:

Playing "Catch Up" on the Blogging

I haven't had a chance to post in a few days as I've been rather busy. To make up for lost time, first I'll talk about Saturday. Early in the morning, the Freshers had their matriculation, which I mentioned in a prior entry. And as promised, all the international students had the opportunity to dress up in our newly acquired subfusc and take pictures with the other Oxford students, even though we didn't actually get to matriculate. It was a lot of fun. I was so giddy and excited to feel like a real Oxford student as I rode down the streets with my black robe flapping in the wind. It was great! Here are some pictures:

Brandon and me outside the Spencer House

A Family Portrait:
Brandon, Phil, and me (all Spencer House inhabitants)

This completely candid shot is my favorite.
Isn't my expression great!?
Brandon was pulling me backwards by the sash of my gown,
and I thought I was going to fall over.

On Saturday I also got to meet Sally's friends, and I had a wonderful time with them. They invited me over to their house, where they had prepared a lovely English tea for me, complete with scones with jam and clotted cream, crumpets, fruit, and these supposedly "American" doughnuts. Everything was so yummy. (I was quite happy also finally to learn what a crumpet is anyway, especially seeing as how I like to say "Oh, crumpets!" from time to time as an expression of frustration. Why? I'm not really sure why. But it's fun.) But anyway, afterward the English tea and lots of chatting, we all went to the pub to hang out for a while. I had a lovely time with Sally's friends, who are nerdy like me, so it was great to be around people that I actually felt like I could get along with. They invited me to hang out with them tonight, so I'm going to leave the house in about thirty minutes to go watch a movie with them. Yay for new Oxonian friends!

Rachel, Mikey, and Becky

Mark, Alice, and me

More photos here and here.

A Random Smattering of Events

Today I went to my first lecture, which is the first of a four-week series on Classical Mythology. I figured it might behoove me to learn about all those crazy gods before I try to take the GRE. I checked a couple of secondary sources on Chaucer out of the library. I'll have to read those this weekend along with finishing up my Yeats paper. Then I went to my first formal hall, which is Friday-night dinner, when all the students and professors dress in their academic regalia. This formal hall business is all about tradition -- I mean, bowing at the table of professors if you have to excuse yourself during dinner, bowing again when you reenter the room, waiting for the Principal to strike a gavel on the table before you can begin eating, then again before you can leave. No kidding.

In other news, I managed to ride to formal hall on my bike, while wearing -- wait for it -- a dress, so I guess I am officially an Oxonian. Yay for initiation!

with several of the international students before formal hall

Some Words Between Chaucering

I know it has been a few days since I have written, but the work load is really starting to hit. On Thursday I met my Modernism tutor, Dr. Julian Thompson, for the first time. He seems really nice, and I think the tutorial with him will be a great learning experience. He let me have a say in what I'll be reading in the tutorial, and in my efforts to prepare for the GRE and grad school, I've selected a reading list that will give me exposure to a wide range of authors. For my first assignment, I'm reading several poems by W. B. Yeats, and Dr. Thompson has given me a list of questions that I can choose from as the topic for my first essay, which is due on the Tuesday of second week.

On Friday Brandon and I went to buy our subfusc, which, in short, is the academic regalia that students and professors wear here. The official Oxford students have to wear their subfusc for matriculation, when they take exams, and for formal dinners. Since Brandon and I, who are visiting students, won't be matriculating or taking exams, we'll just need the subfusc for the formal dinners and any other social events when wearing subfusc is required. Dr. Robson, in her efforts to make the visiting students feel welcome, has arranged for us to come have our photo taken with the regular Oxford students on their matriculation day. So while we're not all too happy to have been forced to spend 35 pounds on jester-like, Harry Potter-esque attire, it will be a nice souvenir to have a picture in our subfusc with all the incoming Freshers from this year. And we'll also have a photo with just the visiting students in our subfusc.

Friday I also met my Medieval tutor, Dr. Victoria Condie, for the first time. She seems really nice, but she has already assigned me so much reading. I have to have Troilus and Criseyde and Fragment I of The Canterbury Tales read by Monday. And she wants me to read it in the Middle English, which wouldn't be so bad if I had prior exposure to Middle English, but I don't. So it's pretty slow going. To make my reading more efficient, I've been reading each tale in translation first and then going back and reading it in the Middle English. That way I have an idea of the tale in my mind first, so I know what I should be gettting out of the Middle English version. Plus, it's also helping me become more efficient with the Middle English text because I'm finding that I don't have to refer to the translatory footnotes as frequently. My first tutorial with her is on Monday, and I don't have a paper due then; I just have to be prepared to chat about a discussion question she assigned. My first paper for her will be due Friday of second week. I'm not really sure what texts I'll be reading after Chaucer, but I guess I'll just find out about that on Monday.

Today I woke up around 9:00 a.m., and minus a few breaks here and there (such as my taking the time to write this blog), I've been doing nothing except Chaucering. (Yes, this reading is so extensive that it requires its own verb.) Tonight Brandon and I are going to the school because we have dinner with our "college parents," who are second- or third-year students whom the college assigns to us to serve as guides or mentors of sorts during our year here. I met my "college father" very briefly yesterday, and he seems very nice, so tonight should be fun -- and a much needed break from all this Chaucering.

Day 2 of Naught Week

Well, today I woke up feeling like I'm getting a bit of a head cold, so I'm biding my time until I can go to sleep. This morning Brandon and I, along with the other visiting students, had to register with the university nurse. Then we had an orientation meeting with Dr. Lynn Robson, the international student coordinator and also one of the tutors of English literature, in which we found out the tutorials we'll be taking and our tutors. I have a full tutorial in Medieval literature with Dr. Victoria Condie. (A full tutorial means that I meet with Dr. Condie once a week for the duration of the eight-week term, and I'll have a paper due to her at every tutorial.) I also have a half tutorial in Modern literature with Dr. Julian Thompson. (A half tutorial means that I meet with Dr. Thompson once every other week for the duration of the eight-week term, and I'll have a paper due to him at every tutorial.) That makes for a total of twelve 1,500 to 2,000-word essays by the time I go home for Christmas! I have a meeting with Dr. Thompson on Thursday, and I'm waiting to hear from Dr. Condie so I know when I'll have a meeting with her this week. Then next week, tutorials officially begin.

Evensong at Christ Church

Yesterday evening Dr. Ross, Brandon, and I went to Christ Church to hear Evensong. We were lucky enough to be there when the boys choir was singing, and it was magnificent choral music, consisting of Howells's "Collegium Regale" and Handel's "The King Shall Rejoice." I think what I found most amazing about Evensong is how that quality of chorale music -- something you have to seek out actively in places like Columbus -- is a part of the everyday culture here. Evensong made me miss singing in the Chorale so much that I can't wait to find a choir to join while I'm here. It's something I've wanted to do since I first found out I was coming to Oxford. Here are some pictures of Christ Church:

In the quad at Christ Church

The quad at Christ Church after Evensong

A Three-Hour Tour

Yesterday Dr. Ross told Brandon and me about a little town near Oxford called Iffley that has a 12th-century church. He said that he and some of the other professors (Drs. Norwood and McCrillis, I think) had seen it before and really enjoyed it. He said that it was a little bit of a walk to get there but that it would be fun. So I asked if we could go today. We all agreed to leave around 10:00 a.m., but Brandon woke up with a bit of a head cold and didn't feel much like walking, so Dr. Ross and I decided to go ahead and brave it alone. We set out on a journey that we expected to take only a couple of hours and were enjoying our walk through the English countryside. After walking about half an hour (and having a too-close-for-comfort encounter with a loudly mooing cow), we came upon a little town, but Dr. Ross didn't think we had walked far enough for us to have reached Iffley, so we kept walking for about another hour, when we reached another small town and decided to stop for tea in a local pub to warm up. After taking our tea, we ventured toward Iffley again, but when we stopped one of the locals to ask for directions (because three roads diverged in a yellow wood) he told us that we needed to go back the way we had come -- that we had already passed Iffley. Well, Dr. Ross and I started walking back in the direction of Oxford. We turned off a path that we had walked past earlier and thought that we had finally found Iffley. So I asked a man sitting outside of a pub where we could find the church. He said he didn't know but that his friends inside would. Dr. Ross and I went inside with him, and they told us that we needed to keep going toward Oxford more. So we started to head out of the pub, and the men said to us that we should stay for a pint, and Dr. Ross declined and started walking out the door. So then the men looked at me and said, "Well, you should stay for a pint then." Obviously, I declined, wiping the pub scum off my skin as we exited. So getting back on the trail, I joked that I felt like Keira Knightley walking into a room full of skeezy pirates (some of those guys really did look like characters straight from the Pirates movies), and Dr. Ross joked about my new "British friends" who would be meeting us in Iffley. We kept walking until we reached the first town that we had reached (thirty minutes after leaving Oxford), only to find out that it was, indeed, the Iffley that we sought. Needless to say, I got quite a few burns in on the directionally challenged Dr. Ross and his faulty Magellan sense. I finally designated myself leader for the remainder of our time in Iffley -- an action I think that may have resulted in our making it back to Oxford today.

Once in Iffley, we stopped for lunch at a nice little restaurant and then proceeded to find the church, which turned out to be well worth the extra three hours of walking, even if we did only stay in the church for about twenty minutes. (It was so small that it didn't take much longer to see it anyway.) Inside the church, you could see how the church was built in sections, the first built in the Romanesque style and the second two sections built later in the Gothic style. It also had lovely stained-glass windows. The exterior of the church looked a bit like a fortress or a castle, which I remember learning is typical of churches of the 12th century, so it was fun to see that in person.

Inside the Church

Exterior of the Church

Well, I guess I must say that even if our slight detour (how's that for some classic British understatement?!) did become a little Gilligan's Island-esque, we made it home safely, and we had a lovely walk along the River Thames and had tea in a cozy little pub that we would not have found if we hadn't walked too far. So it all paid off in the end. Dr. Ross kept thanking me for being such a "good sport." "No problem," I kept saying. But man, I really do have about a month's supply of burns stored up now for Dr. Ross! Haha!

Rowers on the Thames

More photos here.