Up at Oxford

Christ Church Cathedral

            We arrived at Oxford weary and wet from the Southern Excursion.  We had enjoyed our experience immensely, but we were all excited to settle into one place for a while and to have some clean clothes.  Upon our arrival, President Ryken paid us a surprise visit.  He welcomed us to Oxford and gave us some tips on being Wheaties in Oxford since he himself once studied here.

Part of the beautiful Boudalin Library

More of the library

            Oxford works very differently than American universities.  Oxford University itself is made up of about 36 colleges.  I am studying at St. Anne’s College, which is a fairly new one.  When you attend Oxford, you attend only one of these colleges, but you have to be admitted by your college and by the university.  You attend school for three years, and you have three terms each year that are each eight weeks long.  The breaks between terms are long, but you are expected to study.  There are no liberal arts here; you pick your subject in high school and you continue to study it throughout college.  You attend one lecture once a week, and the rest of the time you work with your tutor.  You receive no grades until your final exam of college.  You usually take three exams, each three hours long.  How you do on those exams determines your grade and standing for your whole college experience.  This makes my finals weeks at Wheaton look significantly less stressful.

            We all have our own room at St. Anne’s.  It is nice and cozy and has a window seat, which is my favorite part.  Every day a scout comes by and makes our bed and gives us a new towel.  The most fascinating part to me about my dorm is the bathrooms.  They are communal, but they are divided up in very interesting ways.  Two rooms have one toilet and one sink that is the smallest sink known to mankind. Another room contains a tub but no showerhead.  The room next to it has two sinks and one mirror.  After that is a room containing a shower.  We then also have a mirror in the hallway.  This makes for two mirrors for a floor of seven girls.  It is a good way to cut down on vanity.

            One thing Oxford does extremely well is meal times and food.  Meals are served at one set time and we all eat together family style, which is good for building community.  Breakfast is cafeteria style, lunch is buffet, and dinner is served to us.  The food is amazing! I have yet to have anything I don’t like.

            Our days consist of classes and a fair amount of free time for studying and enjoying Oxford.  Downtown Oxford is simply a ten-minute walk away.  It is filled with shops, pubs, coffee and teashops, and the best bookstore known to mankind: Blackwells.  C.S. Lewis once remarked that Oxford is a dangerous place to live as book-lover because of all the bookstores.  He wasn’t kidding.  Blackwells has five floors of books and a café.  I’ve considered moving in there. 

            Since coming here, we have learned some new lingo: to be “up at Oxford” refers to the geographical location of Oxford since it is set on high ground.  “To go down from Oxford” is to leave town.  “To be sent down from Oxford” is to be kicked out of school for bad behavior. 

            We have also discovered the amazing changeability of British weather.  For most of the weekend it rained consistently.  Today it would pour rain for about twenty minutes, the sun would come out for an hour, then it would pour, then the sun came out, etc.  This cycle has repeated all day.  I’ve learned to always dress prepared for any type of weather.

            My first week has been busy here.  Here is a recap of all I have seen:

-We have gone on a great many walking tours with Dr. Ryken.  We did one at University Park, which is beautiful.  I went back there one day to read on a bench and discovered the bench I had sat down on was dedicated in Tolkien’s honor!

Tolkien's Bench!

-We walked around Port Meadow, which was a favorite haunt of Hopkins.  We saw the small town of Binsey and it’s church which had a well known for healing powers.  Henry VIII himself went there to try the waters in hope of curing infertility.  The walk was beautiful, and we got to see what life was like in a small pastoral English town.  We ended it with homemade strawberry ice cream from a local strawberry patch.

The Well

Church at Binsey

Port Meadow

-Went to a celebration of the 150^th year publication of Alice in Wonderland in Christ Church Park.  Families were there, people were dressed up in crazy outfits, a big band played, free lollipops were given out, and there was dancing.  It was like a British garden party gone absurd. 

With a Dodo Bird at the Alice Celebration

-I saw the Olympic Torch come through Oxford!

The Torch...You can't see it very well because of the flag the little girl is waving

The Torch from behind

-Ate at The Eagle and Child, which is where the Inklings, including Lewis and Tolkien, spent their time discussing their works

-Saw Hamlet performed at one of the University’s theatres.  It was a wonderful performance, but the theatre was outside.  Of course, it rained during Act III.  True to British form, we put up our rain hoods, kept calm, and carried on.  I was amazed at how the rain did not affect the actors at all.  I am surprised by how many outdoor theatres the British have (every theatre in Oxford is outside) give the propensity of rain here.  

Shivering at Hamlet!

It has been a good week so far, but we have a lot of work to do in the next couple weeks!