Escape from Oxford

My first term ended not with a bang, but a whimper. At least, until I departed grey, soggy England and got to experience fun, food, architecture, and good friends!

Then again, I’m probably getting ahead of myself. It would be better to first relate the (surprise, surprise) archaic, confusing, and generally stress-inducing procedures required to turn in my term paper. You see, all evaluated work at Oxford goes not through one’s department –that would be far too easy- but through the Exam Schools, a large and intimidating institution probably older than time. In order to turn in one paper, I had to print six different things, and have them categorized, stapled, enveloped, signed, and numbered in varying places. So stressed was I that I would somehow ruin it all and therefore fail my course (hey, I never said it was a legitimate stress) that I set myself a deadline of finishing the assignment a full three days before I was leaving Oxford, to allow for at least that many tries in actually getting the thing across the heavy wooden desk at the Exam Schools.

After a momentary panic that I was expected to turn my paper in wearing full subfusc, aka Harry Potter costume, I calmed my breathing and followed another blessedly plainclothed student up to the desk, filled out the requisite paperwork, and clutched the receipt proving I’d turned my assignment in with a death grip until I could get back to my room and take a photo to upload onto my computer in case something terrible happened. Then, telling myself I’d done more than my due diligence, I planned how to spend my last two days of my first term in Oxford with no academic obligations besides attendance in class.

After some rumination, I settled on spending the next day baking, both to enjoy leisurely cooking on my own schedule and to supply my friends with goodies to get them through their respective term papers, presentations, and exams. All Thursday after class, I listened to Christmas music and danced around the kitchen, making pecan pie, rice krispie treats, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, and apple cobbler. I was rather tired by the end of it all, but it was totally worth it to see my friends dig in (Chris the Marine ate literally the entire pecan pie by himself and two Italians who’d never had Rice Krispie Treats tucked in like they were manna from heaven).

I regretted my post facto procrastination on Friday, however, when I was left running all of my end of term errands on the same day. On top of finishing packing, I had to go transfer money, exchange pounds for euro, Christmas shop, meet an undergrad for coffee, work on my consulting project, go to class and ASL, and have a meeting for Rhodes Ball planning. I did take some time out of the day to attend a very special service at Rhodes House, in memoriam of Nelson Mandela. The great South African leader lent his name to the Rhodes Trust in the early 2000’s, and a new scholarship program that sends students from South Africa to the United States for undergraduate education was started in his name. In addition, there are 9 South African Rhodes Scholars selected every year, so it was touching to hear those students and others talk about the impact Madiba has had on their lives and countries.

Somehow, I got everything finished in time, and was able to go enjoy the final Meet n Mingle of Michaelmas Term for a while. I specify only a while, because I had to get to bed early to try to get at least some sleep before getting up to catch a 3:45 am bus.

No, folks, that was not a typo. My friend Rachel Kolb and I had booked a ridiculously cheap flight to head to Faro, Portugal, to meet the other Rachel, Joe, and Kit for a weekend of Portuguese sun and relaxation. The funny thing about cheap flights, however, is that they tend to be cheap for a reason. In this case, the low price came from the fact the plane departed at 7 from London Luton, an airport on the other side of London from Oxford and a full two hour bus ride away. Therefore, I was dragging myself out of bed at 3 am and cursing budget airlines as I walked through the rain to the bus on Saturday morning. Luckily, both Rachels made it to the bus and got a little more sleep before we had to go through security and get breakfast at the airport.

Things were running smoothly until we got onto the aircraft, and then came to a screeching halt. In the space of a two-hour delay, I learned more about British air traffic control than I’d ever wished to know. You see, all of the London airports (Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, and Luton) are controlled by one central command. Because the control center uses such massive bandwidth to get flights in and out of all the airports during the day, it’s controlled by software that reduces frequencies at night to give the servers a break, and then revamps to full capacity in the mornings. Unfortunately, this particular morning was the one that some software glitch caused the revamping to fail and stay failed. In practice, this meant that the command center was struggling to get all of the flights out of all of the airports with only about 50% of their capacity available…in other words, every. Single. Flight. Was late!

Two girls starved for Vitamin D by British weather waited on bated breath for two hours, until we finally started to taxi out and could breathe again. I slept for most of the flight, and I woke up to stretches of teal and turquoise water and sun that made me blink with its brightness. When I got off the plane, the first thing I saw when my eyes adjusted was Rachel (who’s from New Mexico) doing a happy dance on the runway, arms wide and face upturned to the sun rays. When I stepped off the stairs, I had to join her for a brief moment before we abashedly looked at the disapproving Europeans and walked away with only big smiles to evidence our joy at the warmth and sunshine.

Despite our absolute lack of Portuguese language skills, we were easily able to get a taxi and find our way to the large church that served as the landmark for the house we’d rented. Then it only took minimal squinting at the map to navigate to the house, where I saw Joe sitting on the rooftop balcony and could easily flag him down to let us in. Rachel and I had originally intended to take a nap when we arrived, but the sun and excitement had rejuvenated us, so we walked around the city all afternoon instead, taking pictures, scoping out places for dinner, and stopping for coffee in outdoor cafes any time we felt our energy waning. When the sun finished setting over the marina, we headed back home to collect the studious members of our household and head to dinner.

We'd scouted out a tiny fish restaurant near the marina, which looked like it had delicious (and judging by the case out front, definitely fresh) fish dishes for reasonable prices, and everyone voted for enjoying some local seafood our first night in Portugal. And man, we weren't disappointed! I ordered the mackerel, and when it came, it looked like this:

and was just as delicious as the picture looks. All for only 10 Euros! The food was so good and the woman who owned the restaurant so nice that we decided to make our way back the next night. 

First, though, we needed to SLEEP. Rachel and I had been up for almost 18 straight hours by the time we finished eating, and we were more than happy to head straight home and crash. A fringe benefit of going to sleep at 10 pm was having a nice early wake up time naturally, which allowed me to cook a full breakfast and head out in search of coffee before everyone else had really started to move around. There was a moment of hilarity when I tried to ask for coffee "to go" at the cafes in town; apparently that is not something that normally happens in Portugal. Unsure of whether American or British English would be more useful, I walked in and out of three places asking, "To go? Taking away? Drink at home?!" before finally finding a woman who understood and gave me the coffees -in smoothie cups- with a smile. 

Rachel and I headed back into the city, charting another vector to the old Moorish quarter for our explorations. Faro is in the Algarve region of Portugal, and is pretty much the southernmost tip. It's a small city of less than 100,000 people, but has the distinction of being the historical seat of the Moorish empire in the area, which means there are beautiful old winding streets, walls, and gorgeous tile everywhere you look. We took many pictures over the course of our time there, and I can't include them all, but here are a few of the highlights: 

Around lunchtime, we headed back to the house to collect Joe and Rachel number three, who'd agreed to accompany us to the beach in order to have a little change of scenery for studying. Faro is bordered by a lot of small, sandy islands, and you can get a ferry out to spend a full or half day on the sand. Being a Carolina girl, I was ecstatic for the beach, and it did not disappoint. Although the 60 degree weather wasn't optimal for tanning, just looking for shells and basking in the sun made England feel millions of miles away. We stayed until the sun set, and took some more pictures, but I thought I'd include my favorite, of the three Rachels all together:

 Just to give you a full idea of the scenery, and how adorable my boyfriend Joe is, here are a few more:

With the sun setting came a 15 degree drop in temperature, so we hustled back to the relative safety of the last ferry leaving for the mainland. Back in Faro, we returned to our fish restaurant, where the woman greeted us enthusiastically and with just as much delicious food as the night before. Then we spent the night relaxing at home with the housemates, who were planning on leaving early the next morning to head back to Oxford and take the exam they'd been studying for all weekend.

Luckily, we had two Canadian friends, Laura and Joanne, who were coming into town that night to round out our little travel group. Although they'd originally intended to be in Faro the day before, the continuing problems from the air traffic control malfunction had canceled their flights, and we only heard that they'd arrived in Faro when we got back from dinner. They were exhausted after their frustrating travel experience, so we arranged to meet them at their hotel the next morning and encouraged them to rest up for a long day.

We'd already booked another apartment in Lisbon for the next night, so Rachel and I brainstormed which of Faro's highlights we wanted to see with them in their half day in Faro. Since the city had turned out to be so small and walkable, it wasn't too difficult to circumambulate, see all the highlights, and also go to the two main cathedrals in town, which we'd been saving to do with the girls. While we were there, we got to experience one of the weirdest/creepiest/most fascinating feature of some Portuguese churches: cathedrals of bones. Yes, bones. Like actually human skeletons! Apparently, Igreja de Carmo, the cathedral near our house, used to be the site of a monastery and had an extensive graveyard. During the 19th century, they'd been forced to demolish it, and rather than moving all of the graves, they exhumed the bones of past monks and incorporated skulls and large bones from over over 1,295 skeletons into a building in the gardens of the church. It is a chilling, solemn, and strangely beautiful place, reinforced by the inscription over the door, which reads "stop here and think of this fate that will befall you". I didn't take too many pictures, but here's one that gives you an idea of the place:

Once we'd left the Bone Chapel, we'd had our fill of Faro sightseeing, and time was creeping closer to our 3 pm train. So we found a cafe in an open plaza flooded with sunlight and ate lunch outside, enjoying the rays and chattering until we walked to the train station and relaxed for the three hour ride to Lisbon. At the train station, we managed to have a hilarious and slightly anachronistic adventure involving payphones, of all things.

You see, we'd rented an apartment using a website called VRBO, which is super useful for students traveling on a budget. You basically rent uninhabited apartments or houses instead of staying in hostels or hotels, and it's possible to find great deals and also enjoy amenities like kitchens and balconies in most cities in Europe. You work directly with the owners or property managers, which is normally great, except when they do things like require you to call them when you get off the train in a city where you have no access to a working phone. None of us could remember the last time we'd actually used a payphone, and of course the ones in the train station were all in Portuguese. We couldn't figure out why the earpiece kept beeping angrily at us and refusing to dial the number, until we realized that (for some inexplicable reason) including the Lisbon area code caused the call to fail. After about ten minutes of looking like monkeys trying to use typewriters in a very public place, we got through to the property manager, who obligingly met us at the building and let us in the third story walkup. The stairs were narrow and dark, but once we emerged into the three bedroom apartment, we were greeted with high ceilings, big windows, and cute, modern furnishings. We rejoiced, unpacked, and used the free wifi to confirm with all families and friends that we'd arrived safely before heading off in search of dinner.

We weren't too far from a posh district of Lisbon, and found a great tapas restaurant where we snacked on fried manchego cheese, Portuguese "tortillas", some version of hash browns, beans and rice, and a delicious flan for dessert. We walked around peering in the windows of shops for a while, and then decided it prudent to head back to our warm apartment and snuggle up for the night, so as to get an early start the next day. We'd decided to walk for most of day, and so justified our morning breakfast of multiple pastries with all of the calories we'd undoubtedly be burning later on. And walk we did! We found our way down to the waterfront area, and followed the coastal road to the huge main square that marks the beginning of the historic districts of Lisbon.

We had pizza for lunch sitting out in the sun, and then wound our way up hills and steep stairs to the cathedral:

And then went to Caselo San Jorge, which is the old Moorish castle sitting on the hill above the city. It offered history, cool architecture, archaeological sites from still earlier times, and most importantly, absolutely beautiful views of Lisbon:

By the time we'd exhausted the castle, we'd also succeeded in exhausting ourselves, and headed back for a siesta before dinner. We'd decided to eat hamburgers (or veggie burgers, in my case) and then snuggle up to watch a Christmas movie that night, but our plan was partially foiled when we lost wifi in our apartment, so we ended up just laughing, chatting, and going to bed early...which was pretty much the recurring motif of my end of term travel, as it should be!

The next morning was a comedy of errors. We woke up and walked to the super market to find ingredients to cook breakfast, but the market was closed. Then we tried to throw together a makeshift meal from bread and fruit we had, and blew a fuse in our apartment...apparently, old Lisbon buildings don't allow for running a toaster and a hair dryer at the same time, which is less than optimal with four girls. We finally gave up and bought pastries again, and then hopped on a bus that was supposed to take us directly to Belem, another historic and beautiful area of the city that we'd planned to walk around. Somehow, we ended up riding a few stops too far, and then had to navigate mapless back to where we'd actually intended to go...only to find out that the old watch tower, which looked so commanding in the guidebooks, was actually quite a bit less imposing in real life:

We did end up sharing a good laugh and then food at a good restaurant for lunch nearby, although a lack of language skills on both sides of the counter led to me getting a chorizo sandwich instead of an egg one and therefore eating soup and bread for lunch instead of a hearty sandwich. We also walked through yet another glorious cathedral, and mosied our way back along the waterfront until it was time to catch a bus back to our apartment to collect the Rachels' stuff and head to the airport. RKolb was headed back to Oxford to regroup and repack to head home to New Mexico, and I was off to Zurich for my flight back to the United States. It was definitely a great weekend with some good friends, though! Here's my favorite picture of the four of us:

It may sound strange that I had to fly to Switzerland to in turn fly back to the US, but I can explain. You see, the impetus of this whole Portugal trip was a failure of another vacation. Joe and I had originally planned to spend a week in Switzerland at the end of term, and he was convinced (although I was not) that he'd be able to teach me to ski. So we'd gone as far as to book our flights back to the US from Switzerland instead of the UK, until the cruel announcement of a surprise exam ruined that plan. Luckily, I can say that Portugal was more than worth it in retrospect, which is further proof that things always somehow work out for the best.

The only downside to my readjustment of plans was that it now necessitated a late night flight to Zurich, a quick nap and shower at an airport hotel, and then an even quicker turnaround back to the international terminal for a 10 am flight to Atlanta and then to Washington DC. Every year there is a black tie dinner, or "dining out" in DC for all of the military Rhodes scholars and their dates, and I was going with Joe and taking the opportunity to visit friends in the city where I spent such a great summer. I was super excited, so the ten hour flight seemed to stretch out before me, only to be filled with movie watching, since I'd finished reading my book. We did land eventually, however, as planes tend to do. When I finally got through customs and the second round of security, I did what any good Southern girl returning from abroad would do....made a beeline for Chick Fil A. And man, did that chicken sandwich taste like freedom!

This post is long winded, even for me, so suffice it to say that my weekend in DC was a great one, with plenty of brunching, visiting friends, and schmoozing with older Rhodies. We even took the time to get a great picture of Joe, me, Kiley, and her boyfriend, Justin:

And at the end of it all, I caught a flight back to GSP and made it to my own bed by 11 pm last night. Now I'm off to enjoy my time back Stateside, and hopefully see some of you before I escape back to Oxford! I won't be taking time out of enjoying home to blog until I get back, so expect a synopsis in the New Year. Until then, Merry Christmas....or I guess now that I've lived in England, "Happy Christmas!"

We are the Champions

So sorry again for the late update here. This past week and a half has been a completely hectic whirlwind, but in the best way possible. As such, I'll just hit some of the high points, but believe me, that should be enough for both of us.

Last Friday, two older Rhodies were back in town to defend their DPhil theses. Lucas (Economics) and Sarah (International Relations) were four years older than us and had both been on our panel at the Bon Voyage Weekend in DC, and Joe and I had really hit it off with them. So when we heard that they'd be back in Oxford and would be finishing up their respective PhDs, we offered to throw them a party at Joe's apartment to celebrate. It was pretty casual, and we had about 40 people standing around drinking wine and eating snacks, so imagine our surprise when the doorbell rang at about 11 pm and I opened the door to find two bobbies! That is, British cops.

After I lowered my heart rate, I found Joe in the crowd and sent him out to talk to the officers. They were more sheepish than anything; apparently, they'd gotten a call with a noise complaint and showed up expecting a rowdy undergraduate party with bumping speakers and underage drinking, and weren't at all prepared for a room full of 20something nerds. They even apologized to us in the end! After some investigation the next morning, we learned that it was a French girl who lived downstairs that called the cops on our rowdy wine and cheese gathering. Joe seems to get along with pretty much everyone except for the entire country of France, so I couldn't help laughing when he told me the story of going downstairs to knock on her door and having to talk to her through it (she apparently wouldn't open it because she thought he was "too physically imposing" and even threatened to call the cops again!). According to the disgruntled Frenchie, people walking around in Joe's apartment sound like "elephants", and any group of people in the kitchen just leads to unbearable noise in her bedroom. Angst over this indignity had apparently been building up for some time, and had come to a breaking point on Friday night. After promising to ask everyone to remove their shoes and evenly disperse through other parts of the apartment, Joe exacted a promise from la francaise that next time she thought we were being loud upstairs, she would knock on the door like an adult, and not waste the poor cops' time. On a side note, Lucas and Sarah felt super impressive, and kept spinning longer and longer yarns about the time they'd had a DPhil party so rowdy that the cops had to be called :) 

People ended up staying past midnight, so I was already tired when I had to get up the next morning early to head down to the Isis (the Oxford branch of the Thames) in order to take part in my first rowing regatta. Rowing is a huge deal at Oxford, and although I'd been planning on avoiding all athletic activity while here, I ended up deciding that I'd at least try out rowing for the novice fall term, when no experienced rowers are allowed to compete. I was actually a bit nervous for the Nephthys regatta on Saturday, because the girl who rowed "stroke" (that is, the seat in the boat closest the coxswain, who sets the rhythm for the rest of the rowers) in our Novice A boat had gotten hurt earlier in the week, and I'd been promoted to stroke with only one practice under my belt before the competition. Because Nephythys is an all-novice regatta, they don't do the traditional "bumps" racing where boats actually try to crash into one another. Rather, it's a side-by-side knockout bracket, where two teams race head-to-head and the fastest team advances to the next round until the finals. Our first race was somewhat of a disaster, with everyone out of time and "catching crabs" - go to the 12 second mark of this video for a visual representation of what that means http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_AqOPdgj3c - in words, basically the angle of your oar/"blade" in the water is incorrect, and the momentum of the boat wrenches it out of your hands. Somehow, we still won, and by the time our next race came around, we were much more relaxed and confident. We raced Wolfson, which is an all-graduate college that normally has a good squad, but we won a close race to move on to the semi-finals. In that race, we rowed against the top boat from New College, with my friend Nina on board. We had probably the worst start in history; I missed a stroke and we were all off-rhythym, so one girl caught a crab so badly that the rower behind her had to stop rowing, reach around, and help her free her oar from the water. As a result, we were left rowing with 6 people and the added resistance of a blade stuck in the water for almost 10 strokes, and we were an entire boatlength behind after 200 meters of a 750 meter race. Somehow, though, we started gaining on the other boat, and as we realized we were catching up, we started rowing faster. By the end, we won by a few feet, and our coach admitted that it was possibly the best comeback he'd ever seen. Now, I'm normally one of the most competitive people around, but I haven't been super invested in rowing here...still, MAN, did it feel good to come back and win that race! Almost directly afterwards we had to hop back in the boat for the final against Lincoln College, which has been Brasenose's rival in pretty much everything for centuries. But coming off the euphoria of such a great win, they really had no chance of winning, and we ended up taking the final by more than half a boatlength. Here are some pictures of the whole shebang, for those of you who (like me until last week) have never seen a regatta:

I had planned to do work on Saturday afternoon, but was so tired and cold after a day out on the river that I ended up just curling up in bed with some Netflix. Then I headed to Joe's apartment, where we hosted the cooking club in making some delicious Indian food for dinner (and apple cobbler, which is not Indian but is still delicious). Sunday was devoted to doing work all day, because I knew that the upcoming week would be a crazy one, for two reasons: American Thanksgiving and Christ Church Regatta.

You see, it's a tradition at the Rhodes House for American Rhodies to host a Thanksgiving dinner for everyone, and this tradition has grown and grown over the years. Nowadays, it ends up being an extravaganza, with almost 150 people showing up to eat and drink together. Somehow, I managed to get myself put in charge of food, along with my friend Annie. Now, I love to cook, and I've cooked for rather large groups before, but that was in the range of 30-50. The sheer level of mathematics required to scale all of the recipes for 150 people and then determine what ingredients we would need was mind boggling! Luckily, Annie and I had some serious help. Joe orchestrated a grocery run to Croughton, a military base nearby that has a commissary that is basically a Costco without taxes, so we were able to get the ridiculous amounts (read: 96 lbs of turkey, 70 lbs of potatoes, 30 baking trays) of the things we needed for very low prices. We also coordinated an attack on the farmer's market in Oxford, which allowed us to procure the large amounts of fresh produce we needed by Wednesday.

Over the course of the same week was Christ Church Regatta, which is the main event of novice rowing. Nephythys is really just a warmup, so although we had gained some respect by winning it, pretty much every other crew was now gunning to knock us out of the next competition. Our first race was on Wednesday, and I was pretty nervous, only because I knew that we absolutely had to win. "Why, in a double elimination competition, would one race be so important?" you may ask... Answer: if we'd lost on Wednesday, we would've had to row on Thursday, and I knew that under no circumstances would I have time to take off from cooking on Thursday to make it down to the river to race.

As a result of the confluence of Christ Church and Thanksgiving, my day looked something like this: two hours of Chinese class in the morning in North Oxford, a quick sandwich grabbed on my way to the boathouse on the south side of the city, a race that we won by multiple boatlengths (hallelujah!), and then running by the farmers' market to grab even more produce before locking myself in the Rhodes House kitchen all afternoon to do the "make ahead" dishes like cranberry sauce, quinoa, and salad, with Annie and a few volunteers. Then a meeting and dinner...I was supposed to go meet friends at a pub, but I ended up bailing at the last minute to go to bed at the ripe hour of 10 pm.

I gave thanks for my early bedtime the next morning, when I got up early to head to the Rhodes House. Remember when I mentioned earlier those 70 lbs of potatoes? Well, those look something like this:

and allllllllll of them had to be peeled for mashed potatoes, candied yams, and sweet potato casserole. Since we only had three potato peelers, Annie, Rhiana (the kindhearted Rhodie who'd donated her potato recipes and sanity to the cause), and I had decided to just show up at 8 am and get to work. We blared Christmas music and went to town, and somehow when the first volunteers arrived for the cooking shift at 11 am, all but about 5 pounds were complete. We were more than happy to pass off the peelers to new folks, and we set about orchestrating the preparation of all of the dishes.

Over the course of the next few hours, it was amazing to see everything come together. We'd put together an insanely organized schedule, which listed what needed to be done hour by hour, and somehow we ended up ahead on pretty much everything. Since I'm the louder of the two kitchen leaders and I tend to be much bossier than Annie, I became in charge of crowd control, and directed the volunteers to help with different things. We got the turkeys in the ovens on time, and were moving forward at breakneck speed with the different sides, when we hit a snag. You see, the Rhodes House has a full catering kitchen, with top of the line appliances that just happen to be gas-powered. As such, British law requires that there be an emergency gas shutoff button somewhere in the kitchen. Unfortunately, it was located right near the spot we'd stacked all of our ingredients, so no less than three times, someone hit it accidentally....which then turned everything off, requiring us to wait ten minutes before turning everything back on and warming the ovens back up. When you're trying to cook 96 pounds of turkey in a timely manner, this is much less than ideal. At 1:45, when I had to leave for class, I instructed everyone to just keep assembling all of the side dishes that needed to be put in the oven, in the hopes that the turkey would eventually be finished and we could knock everything out in successive shifts.

Unfortunately, when I came back at 3:15, it still looked as if the turkeys would take much longer than we'd intended. Still, we forged ahead assembling the oven dishes and making as many stovetop things as we could, watching the clock warily as it ticked closer and closer to 7, when everything was supposed to be served.

The turkey wasn't finally finished until 5:45, so we contracted out some of the side dishes to people with apartments (and therefore ovens) near the Rhodes House, and then just tried to get everything as hot as possible in as short a time as possible. We also had access to some catering dish warmers, so we ended up throwing the mashed potatoes and other things we'd made on the stovetop in there to keep them hot rather than using up precious oven space. Somehow, though, we were able to bring everything out at 7, even if some of the rolls were a bit less than crispy and the onions on the greenbean casserole weren't perfectly crunchy. We had quite a spread: salad, quinoa salad, turkey, cranberry sauce, two types of stuffing, mac n cheese, wilted spinach, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, candied yams, a lentil-cashew vegetarian dish, and rolls. And although I was holding my breath until everyone had gone through the line, we even had leftovers! Once all of the guests were finally sitting down and eating, I could finally relax and enjoy myself. Some photos from the festivities:

 Annie and I, with our pride and joy, the prettiest turkey there ever was!

Joe the cleanup director with the kitchen chair

Since Joe was in charge of the cleanup and I was under strict orders not to lift a finger the rest of the night, once dinner service had gone through, I was able to just relax and enjoy my dinner with everyone. This year was my first Thanksgiving away from my family, but I'm so lucky to have a great group of friends here to spend it with, and I couldn't be happier about it. I also couldn't have been more tired after a crazy day of cooking...I fell asleep sitting on the couch in the middle of a conversation that night!

We even had enough leftovers for dinner again, so the next night,  we invited all of the main volunteers to Joe's house for Thanksgiving round two, and followed it up with a trip to see the new Hunger Games movie in the theater around the corner. Cultural note: in the UK, the schedule may say that a movie starts at 9:30 pm, but it will be preceded by so many commercials and previews that the actual film won't start until literally 40 minutes after that time!

Saturday was the final day of the regatta, and after we absolutely crushed a B team boat from St. Anne's College on Friday, we were through to the 4th round on Saturday morning. We started the day off with a fairly easy win, and then met a strong boat from St. Anne's in the quarterfinal, which we barely squeaked by. Green Templeton College, which was the squad we'd beaten on Wednesday, had fought their way back through the losers' bracket to face us again in the semis, but we held them off again, and then it was back to another final against Lincoln College, who'd proven themselves to be the best other novice boat in Oxford by far.

I honestly still don't quite know what to say about the final. We rowed a great race, and it was so close and so difficult at the end that no one can really say who won. The marshalls ended up deciding in Lincoln's favor, but I was so proud of how well we'd rowed (and was so tired that I knew I couldn't have done anything more) that I wasn't even upset.

After all, it may have been the end of my rowing career, but after a week when I'd already won a regatta and had pulled off helping to organize a Thanksgiving dinner for 150 people, I was confident that I was already a champion.

To My Adoring Fans:

I do hope that you realize I mean that completely facetiously. In all seriousness, however, between two regattas, turning in my final thesis proposal, and American Thanksgiving in Oxford this week, I haven't had time to think, much less write a blog. Stay tuned this weekend, however, and I promise I'll reward your patience with a looooong and picture-filled account of it all.

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving :)

Busy, Busy Me

Sometimes, I have to take a moment to take a deep breath....and then remind myself that, at the end of the day, my sole obligation here at Oxford is to show up to class 4 hours a week. It's funny how fast time seems to go by -consider that I've been here for seven weeks already - and I think it's mostly due to the amount of things that are constantly going on here. Now, I'm not complaining a bit; after an undergraduate career that essentially consisted of school and lots and lots and LOTS of volleyball, it's nice to be able to take part in so many new things, but man, do they pile up!

This past week was a study in that phenomenon of Oxford extracurricular time lapse. After I wrote my last blog, I went to dinner with my classmates at a Chinese restaurant in town, and then headed off to hear a talk on China's nuclear development and policy from one of the noted experts in the world, who just happens to be teaching at Oxford (naturally). That led naturally to a pub discussion with some friends, and then a late hour that necessitated bed.

After a workout on Friday morning, I managed to do some work before lunch with Joe and class, and then rushed off to pick up my bike from the shop. This is somewhat of a tangent, but I would just like to point out that I must've perpetrated some serious crimes against a bicycle in a past life, because my cycle here seems to have karmic retribution in mind. Only three days after the second lock I've bought broke completely, the chain snapped off, and I had to walk it almost a mile to a shop to have a new one put on...but I digress. Anyway, I then headed off to meet friends at Rhodes House, where another Rachel has been teaching us American Sign Language. I've always enjoyed studying different languages, and I'm fascinated by the intuitive nature of the visual signs, so I ended up staying afterwards to get some practice in before heading off to dinner with friends and yet again ending up in a random intellectual conversation in a pub.

Saturday morning, I'd signed up for the Trinity Forum. It's an annual event at Rhodes House, in which an outside group comes in and puts together a curriculum of readings around a central theme, and then conducts a day long Aspen Institute-style seminar. Since I spent a semester doing a similar weekly seminar with Wofford's very own celebrity Bernie Dunlap, I've come to appreciate such things, so I was excited when I found out I'd have the opportunity to take part in a similar event here. And believe me, it did not disappoint! Although I was completely exhausted by the end of the day, I was able to take part in some great discussions on what "fighting the world's fight" means to Rhodes Scholars, and that was more than worth it.

The only natural thing for my fried brain to do next was head to the Cold War bop with some friends at Balliol. It's entirely politically incorrect, but every year their Graduate Common Room splits in half, one side for the Americans and one side for the Soviets, and everyone dresses up for their side. Honestly, not going would've just been unpatriotic! I forgot to bring my camera, so unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of some of the funnier costumes, like Iron(curtain)Man and the Berlin Wall.

Sunday was another day of frantic studying before I headed off to a group discussion on the Third Plenum with the Rhodes China Forum, and then went to my weekly cooking group, called NOM (an acronym for "Nerds Out Munchin'"). We did a Mexican night, and it was great to eat guacamole, tortilla soup, huevos rancheros, and enchiladas with friends. I even pulled out a recipe for Mexican Chocolate cake with Tequila-Caramel sauce, so we really went all out!

Monday morning I had rowing at 6:30, but getting out of bed early was worth it for once, since I got promoted to rowing stroke for our first race on Saturday. We got to practice high rate rowing and starts, which is something we haven't been doing to this point, so it was super fun. After lecture, I spent most of the day frantically preparing for my meeting with my thesis adviser. It ended up going well, but she still thinks I should narrow my topic further for my final paper, so I have more reading and preparing to do for next week.

Tuesday was all about Rhodes Thanksgiving and the Rhodes Ball. Somehow, I've become Co-Committee Chair for the 220-person Ball happening in May, and my fellow Chair Laura and I had a meeting to get the date for the event, our theme approved, and a bunch of other information so that we can continue moving forward with all of the initial planning stages. I had some experience at Wofford planning parties, but nothing with the budget and scale of this, so I'm quite excited (if more than a little bit nervous). I'd intended to do work after the meeting, but then Laura and I ended up having a massive brainstorming session and looking things up online to our hearts' content. I also checked in on the logistics of our American Thanksgiving we're throwing next week, which will involve getting sufficient food for 150 people cooked and on the table at roughly the same time. I'm co-chair for the food organization, and it's taught me two things. First, the commissaries at military bases are probably the most amazing resources available to Americans abroad! Croughton, which is an Air Force base that is the closest post to Oxford, was able to look at the massive list  (read: 100 pounds of turkey) we sent them, tell us that they have all but 2 of the items in stock, and set it up so that everything will be pulled out, set aside, and waiting for us when we go to pick things up next week. Talk about military precision, am I right? The other lesson is not quite as exciting; I have figured out that there are more dietary restrictions among the Rhodes Scholars than any other group in the world. I'm talking vegetarian/vegan/gluten-free/dairy-free/fructose-free/soy-free....putting together a menu was quite an adventure, but we've finally got something that I think will work. And man, do I feel better about being a semi-strict pescetarian!

Last night, I also cooked dinner for Joe's friend and his wife, and had a great dinner party with Evan, Kiley, and the two couples. In case you haven't picked up on the recurring theme here, that also ended up with a pub night...I'd like to point out that I'm really delving into the finer points of British culture while I'm here.

Due to all of the above, I pretty much cloistered myself in my room all day to write a paper that I have due on Friday, read, and catch up on miscellaneous things (like blogging). After all, tomorrow I've got class and all sorts of extracurricular fun, so I've got to make the best of the time I have!

Friends, New and Old

It's funny (and honestly a bit sappy), but I think that moving overseas and being completely out of your element is actually very effective in making you realize just who the most important people are in your life. And somehow, I've been lucky enough to have an amazing group of family and friends on both sides of The Pond! This week has definitely shown me that, more than anything else.

After I wrote last Wednesday, my week devolved into doing an obnoxious amount of work. As every student knows, every semester has some hidden bottleneck, some  random week that looks innocent enough from afar, but then ends up sneaking up and being an absolute pain in the...erm, neck. The week leading up to today out to be the one that snuck up on me (hence the late blog): on top of the usual reading load, last Friday I had a group presentation on discourse analysis (a field about which I know little), we had to turn in a research plan for our semester project in our Methods course on Monday, there was a peer-evaluation seminar that required preparation on critiquing four other essays today, my thesis supervisor wants to meet to get an outline of my dissertation, and tomorrow is naturally the day that I signed up to teach my Core Class seminar on China's economy.

So I probably shouldn't have that many fun stories to tell, in all honesty. I most likely should've spent the majority of the last week in the library. Although it is true that a hearty chunk of my time was spent working, I also took some time out to relax and spend time with people...hence the title of this post. Because in all honesty, despite the fact that these two years will give me two masters' degrees and I'm amazingly appreciative of that, I think that my experience is much more about getting to know the wonderful group of people with whom I've been put here, and truly enjoying the myriad experiences that Oxford/The UK/Europe has to offer.

In that interest, I attended a guest dinner at St. John's College with Joe on Friday night. St. John's, besides having the largest contingent of Rhodies of any of the Oxford colleges, is also the richest college by far, and is therefore legendary for the quality of their food and wine. In fact, as the Oxford myth goes, it has the second largest wine cellar in the world (next to Her Majesty the Queen, of course), which is stored in catacombs all underneath the college and contains over 140,000 bottles. So when they have "guest dinners", which entails the chef who normally only cooks for the Fellows of the college deigning himself to make dinner for the rest of us, it is quite an affair. Luckily, Joe was able to snap up some tickets before they were all sold out, and so were a few of our friends. Here's a picture of the ladies at the champagne reception before dinner (with Joe as the photographer):

 The actual four-course meal ended up being delicious, although the vegetarian entree turned out to be a strange risotto stew that was so dense that I didn't eat much of it. The stuffed portabella and salad beforehand and the nice souffle afterwards more than made up for it, however!

Saturday was the day in which I did most of my locking myself in the library, with a brief respite to go to my first rowing practice that was fully British. That is to say, it was cold and rainy and gross outside, and we still had to go out on the river! I made it through, but since have been seriously questioning whether rowing is something I want to be doing next term, in the dark and crappy days of February and March.

That night, however, we'd gotten tickets to go to a Guy Fawkes celebration day, partially in honor of my flatmate Heather's birthday, and partially just to witness the weird tradition itself. For those of you whose British history is a tad rusty (or nonexistent, which is understandable), there was an event called the Gunpowder Plot in the early 17th century, 1605 to be exact (I think). Basically, a group of Catholic radicals wanted to usurp the Protestant King, and so rented a room underneath Parliament and filled it with insane amounts of gunpowder, which they planned to use to blow the whole building sky-high. Somehow, an anonymous tip got out, and they were caught and sentenced to all of the gory punishments that medieval England had to offer for treasonous folk. One of them, however, named Guy Fawkes, managed to jump from the scaffold and kill himself before the goriest of things were applied to him, and so the King ordered that a day be set aside to celebrate England surviving the plot and insult Guy Fawkes's memory. There are usually fireworks and carnival type games, but the biggest event is a massive bonfire with an effigy on top, which is nowadays supposed to be Fawkes. I've heard rumors that in earlier days the effigy was intended to be the Pope, but since that's much more political than I particularly like to be, let's just stick with the modern-day interpretation. So although Saturday was a cold night and I couldn't find my gloves, we did see some lovely fireworks, and manage to get one (very devilish looking) picture with the huge bonfire in the background.

 Sunday was wholly and decidedly non-academic. You see, a good friend of mine from Wofford, who is awesome and also happens to be named Rachel, is doing her master's degree at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. And my friend Viraj has a girlfriend named Annie who is doing a semester at University College of London. This past weekend, Viraj decided to come visit Annie, and since Rachel had the weekend off from basketball, she flew down to London as well. Since I'm only 90 minutes away from the city, I obviously had to go along as well, and complete the four of us so that we'd have approximately 1% of a normal Wofford graduating class!

We were blessed with an absolutely ridiculously beautiful day. Although it was cold, it was clear and sunnier than I've seen Oxford pretty much since I've been here. I arrived too late to tag along on Rachel's tour of the Tower of London, so I plopped myself down in a cafe and did actually get some reading done for about 90 minutes until she found her way out of that historic castle (interestingly, also the site of Guy Fawkes's torture) and came to meet me. We decided to walk the pathway along the Thames, and see as many of the London sights as we could before our fingers got too cold and we'd have to stop for lunch. First was the Tower Bridge (which is actually NOT the same thing as the London Bridge, despite the larger American misperception):

 Then we managed to snap a Rachels selfie with Parliament in the background:

 And we got a good view of the London Eye, although we found ourselves disinclined to invest the money and hearty chunk of time waiting in line to actually ride it:

 And we wound up by Westminster Abbey, which was closed for Remembrance Day (British Veteran's Day), but was beautiful nonetheless:

 ..And afforded us a wonderful view of Big Ben!

 After lunch, we headed into the National Gallery to look at some paintings, since we're both fond of Impressionists, especially Monet. Viraj and Annie then came to join us, and we walked over to Buckingham Palace, where more pictures were taken. My camera was being finicky, so most of them are on Annie's or Rachel's cameras, but I did get one awkward fake couple picture with Viraj, who has gotten used to funny and awkward pictures with me over the last four years:

To get the full British experience, we ended up having a pint of cider together in a pub before heading our separate ways. And although it did make my week significantly more hectic, I would go back and do it again and again! It was so nice to have a little bit of home for even a day, and to have the opportunity to catch up with people who have been so important to me for the last few years but are now so far away.

Since then, I have had to buckle down significantly, so besides a few nights out to dinner with friends and the weekly Turf Tuesday with the Rhodies, I don't have many other exciting things to report. But yesterday, I did attend a "Rhodes Conversation", which is a series of small discussions we have to talk about what it means to be Rhodes Scholars and what our expectations should be for ourselves and others. The topic was, "What are we doing at Oxford?" and I smiled as I heard everyone talk about the holistic importance of being here, of sometimes blowing off your studies to go learn from people outside of the classroom, because that is what I've been doing all along.

Hallowqueen (and other strange British traditions)

If this blog post seems a bit disjointed, that's only because this past week in Oxford was a study in all things random and a bit bizarre. This could be partially due to Halloween, but also things general to this place itself. 

Things started off normally enough: a mad rush to get finished with all of the work I'd neglected whilst (one of my new favorite British words) traipsing around Belgium with my father, eating at a few new restaurants in town and also going to some other colleges to sample their fare and complain about the general homogeneity of blandness that is British cuisine, etc.

Before the end of the week, however, I'd have been relatively convinced I was in the opening sequence to a horror film, almost been capsized in a boat, and gone to a party where every single person was dressed in drag.

So, let's rewind, shall we? First off, the horror movie bit. You see, a friend of mine here, Aidan, is a huge horror movie buff, and decided to embark on a crusade to watch a different scary movie every night of the week leading up to Halloween. Being somewhat of a fan myself (with the notable exception of unnecessary gory films, which I think are honestly more a testament to the costume and fake blood people than the directors or actors), I convinced Joe and Kiley to head to his room on Monday night for a late showing of "The Strangers". It's a movie about a couple that's staying at a vacation home in the woods and *spoiler alert* end up being the victims of a random act of psychopathy, and it was a good one! Per usual, I got some good gasps out of the movie, but wasn't particularly perturbed in the aftermath, although Joe and I had to ride our bikes home on either side of Kiley's so she would be able to make it back without having a heart attack.

The next night though, I had rowing at 7 pm. Now, that wouldn't be late in the summer, but considering it is pitch black by 5 pm here after daylight savings, I could barely even see the path in front of me in the pool of my bicycle light on my bumpy ride down to the boathouse. I'd thought I was running late, so imagine my surprise when I pulled up to the Brasenose facility and all of the lights were off and the doors closed. Considering I work out with the novice rowers, who are mostly irresponsible and chronically late 18 year olds, this wouldn't have been surprising, except for our coach has always been early. To set the mood more effectively, I should've probably told you that the boathouses are in a row along the Thames, in the middle of a large common greenspace that lends them an eerie quiet except for the water lapping and the occasional noise made by the overpopulated geese and ducks. I should've also said that there is no cell reception, so I had no way of contacting anyone on my team, and the moon hadn't managed to fight off the clouds yet, so I stood there in the dark, overanalyzing every sound and flashing back to the movie that hadn't seemed scary the night before. When I finally heard something repetitive, it was footsteps running towards me, and I'd already gripped my bicycle lock like brass knuckles when I heard a girl's voice asking if she was late or if we were in the right place. It was Louise, one of my teammates, and shortly behind her came our coach (and about 10 minutes behind him, the rest of the girls, who mumbled some excuse about not being able to find the place in the dark). So it ended up being fine, but for about two and a half minutes, I was fairly sure that there were scary country folk lurking around and waiting to stab me! Guess that's the mystique of the last week of October.

The next night was a more traditional celebration of the witching hour: the annual Brasenose Halloween bop.  Now, my college hadn't done a very good job of advertising the occasion, since the only notice we got was this somewhat bizarre email from our social secretary the day before the holiday:

Your HCR social sec' team, freshly aggrandised, just wanted to remind you about the Halloween bop this Thursday down the bar!! - Woo I'm really having fun with fonts for your guys.- Join us from 8 pm 'til 10:30 for a condensed but intense evening of music (YES, you did read "music": our usually non bop-friendly college is allowing to some music for like ONCE in a century so do come down and check this out!), cheap drinks (subsidised by the HCR) and fancy costumes. The best ones will be selected and given free drinks so dress up, peeps! Oh by the way, I won't personally because well you know I'm French so I've basically been brought up to reject American imperialism every day of the year and especially that one. But please, be my guests, you guys go ahead, show me who the boss is, impress me with your looks and thereby tell me why the globalisation of this world culture of degeneration and plagiarism is a good thing! I'm open to being convinced. Ok, maybe I'll wear a brooch or something.
Oh and did I mention the music? I did. *thumb up*
And I've tried all the font colours so there's nothing left for me to say but: come down the bar for the bop on Thursday!!! We need you!

...but I still managed to round up a few friends from inside and outside Brasenose to go to the party until the rather PG-13 hour of 10:30, after which we decided we'd head to some pubs. I should preface this by describing the deep, undying love that British people seem to have for "fancy dress", or costume parties. As my friend Sophie, who's from London, so succinctly put it, "British people just can't seem to be themselves unless they're dressed up as something else."

I'd juggled around ideas of several costumes, ranging from a tree to Sarah Palin, but finally decided to go as the Statue of Liberty. On the suggestion of one of my friends, I decided to carry a "Closed" sign instead of a plain book, and I was therefore technically "government shutdown Statue of Liberty". In light of the fact that almost every single European I have met seems to delight in harping on the circus that is contemporary American politics, it was somewhat of a joke and somewhat of a defense mechanism. To indulge my insatiable love for puns, I bought a flashlight to carry as my "torch" (it's only funny if you know that in British English, a flashlight is called a torch, and even then, it's not particularly funny). At the actual party, I managed to have a picture taken with a pirate, Batgirl, and a scarecrow; or, Daniel, Cate, and (another) Rachel.

I ended up winning third prize (and a bottle of wine) in the costume contest, so it worked out rather nicely. Although I think that the win was probably better deserved by my flatmates, who came as "American imperialists" in jeans, football jerseys, baseball caps, and Nike shoes and yelled repeatedly at everyone not in costume! 

 The next day was Friday, and it was a fairly typical day of homework and class. The only blip on the radar was when Joe and I tried to go to formal hall at my college (remember, this is a Harry Potter style dinner complete with robes and candlelight), but arrived literally two minutes late and were barred from entering the dining room! I had no idea that the Brits were so strict about being prompt, but we settled for trying out another good Indian place instead of having three swanky courses.

Saturday, however, was one of the biggest "bops" of the year. St. Antony's, which is an all-graduate college and known for being a little crazy and a lot fun, has a yearly "Hallowqueen" party, to which everyone must cross-dress in order to be admitted. It's always one of the most popular events for grad students, and people in my class had been chattering about the costumes they'd wear all week. To give you an idea of the extreme nature of this bop, five of the guys in my class dressed up as The Spice Girls, with the requisite wigs, dresses, and even fake breasts and makeup to make it seem more realistic.

Now, I'm always down for a good group costume, and since Joe was such a good sport about wearing the pig pajamas to Balliol's bop, I had several ideas stewing for us. I'd originally hoped to do a Black Swan-White Swan- creepy dance instructor ensemble from the Natalie Portman movie with me, Joe, and our friend Chris (who is a Marine, which would add to the hilarity of a tutu), but finding cheap ballet clothes that came in large man sizes in Oxford proved difficult, so I went back to the drawing board. Then, when Kiley told me that she didn't have any plans, I had a wonderful idea: Dukes of Hazzard! It was simple, since among the three of us we have plenty of flannel and moustaches and wigs are cheap and easy to find. And it was funny, due to our Southern roots (well, Kiley's from Missouri, but still). So we hit up a few "fancy dress" stores and swapped clothes around, and came up with the following finished product:

Although it was slightly disturbing to see just how well my boyfriend could fit into my jorts, it was also hilarious! The night was one that just begs for further photographic evidence, so see the following as well:

 Believe it or not, Joe found another Daisy! This one, whose name was Rob, is from Virginia and was in the Army, weirdly enough... maybe I stayed inside our demographic a tad bit too well.

 These jokers are some of my other friends. Chris is on the left, so you can appreciate how funny it would've been to get him into a tutu. As for Aidan (on the right), he refused to come as a girl, because he'd made his own Ironman costume that he only wore briefly before Hallowqueen, and, as he said, "Tony Stark doesn't cross-dress".

 This is only one in a series of pictures where Kiley and I did our best to pose like dudes, but kept being told by all of the actual guys that we were doing a terrible job. Then again, I think fake moustaches make it pretty legit to begin with. In the background you can see one of the coolest features of Aidan's costume: he'd taken some "tap on/tap off" lights and put them inside goalie gloves so that he could turn them on and off whenever he pleased! This turned out to be quite an asset on the dance floor :)

Finally, I took a picture with my flatmates, who came as "The Man", Snape, and Dumbledore, respectively. By this point, my moustache had already sweated off, after a valiant run.

Probably the funniest thing from the night (besides all of the men in makeup, obviously), was seeing how ill-adjusted we were to our respective opposite gendered attire. The whole time we were walking over in the cold, windy weather, all of the boys kept complaining that they were cold, their wigs were getting messed up, and they didn't have sufficient pockets to hold all of their things. "Welcome to girl world!" we told them. Then again, I have new respect for mustachioed men, because those things are itchy and uncomfortable, and I had the most difficult time blowing my nose! Besides, I've always taken for granted that dresses are much cooler than long pants in the middle of a crowded, sweaty room.

So there you have it. I've had some great Halloweeks in the past, but this one was definitely one for the ages. At the very least, I have some serious blackmail material on pretty much every guy I know!

Lifestyles of the Euro and Famous

Y’all already know that I am neither European nor famous, but this week I certainly felt like I was! So much has happened since the last time I wrote that I should warn you that this will be a longer than normal entry… and we all know that brevity never was my strong suit.

So let’s see; back to last Wednesday. In the morning, I had my first Mandarin class of the term. Due to a strange (and in my opinion, pretty silly) bylaw in my program, we don't have any access to language instruction. I therefore had to go through the Oxford Language Center to set up classes, and had the choice between what's called an OPAL course, which is super intense and includes tests and attendance requirements, and a LASR (pronounced laser) course, which meets once a week for two hours and is much more focused on maintaining proficiency. Since I'm still trying to find my way here and the LASR course was literally 1/5 the price of OPAL, it was pretty much a no-brainer, but I made sure I signed up for the highest level to challenge myself. However, I was still second-guessing my choice of the "Advanced" level when I was biking to class that day. 

Luckily, not only was the class not far over my head, but I towered over it the same way I normally do when I wear heels at cocktail parties. Everyone in my class (about 15 students total) thought that the "advanced" needed to advance a bit, so I'm confident that our teacher will allow us to move ahead a little farther, but it was a nice ego boost at the same time to already recognize all of the characters in the text, when I'm used to floundering around and having to study literally every day to stay ahead of those blasted pictographs. And I was surprised at how nice it was to actually be able to speak Mandarin again, beyond the usual pleasantries and restaurant lingo that I can use when interacting with Chinese people I meet in the course of normal business and can badger into allowing me to practice a bit. 

After class, I headed to Rhodes House to study for a few hours and print off my tickets for my big Belgian weekend. Not only is the House gorgeous and historic; it also has a basement full of free tea and coffee, comfy chairs, and the rare commodity of free printing. However, I only got a few articles read before I had to jump back on my bike to head across the city to the New Oxford Theatre. 

Oxford attract some of the best traveling shows and performers in the UK, and the understanding that it's a university town means that it's possible to get dirt cheap tickets to some awesome shows. There were about 8 Rhodies who'd purchased 12 quid tickets to see the Off Broadway version of "Westside Story", a play I hadn't seen since I was a child and my theater professor aunt directed a production in Georgia. We had seats in literally the back row of the entire theater and joked about the huge number of steps we had to scale to get up there, but the view of the stage wasn't actually too shabby when we finally found our places:

And the show was amazing. The singing was good, and the choreography had a lot of ballet influence, so it was beautiful. It was almost three hours, but the time seemed to fly by…which then meant I had to do a double-take at my watch when I realized that I needed to run back to my dorm and change before my next event.

Brasenose does something called a "Blurb" for its graduates once a month. I have no idea why that name was chosen (and a cursory Google search suggests it was random and not Latin like "subfusc"), but basically what happens is wine and appetizers as a guest speaker talks about his or her research, and then a formal dinner where the chef gets to cook whatever the heck they want (and there's more wine). The speaker was a noted environmental activist in the UK who argued the merits of "re-wilding"; that is, allowing large tracts of land like national parks to be turned back over to the way they would be without human intervention and reintroducing "megatrophs" like wolves and whales back into the environments. Although I found his argument a tad circular --why should we meddle with the environment in order to stop meddling with the environment?-- he was a good speaker, and did tell some interesting tales about the days when elephants, lions, and hippopotami used to roam the woods of England. Even if he had been a boring old windbag, however, it would've been worth it for the food. There was an appetizer of grilled sea bass risotto, a main course of eggplant casserole and potatoes (and duck for non-pescatarians), and chocolate pie with pistachios for dessert. By the time my flatmates and I left, I was worried I'd have to roll myself home!

The next two days were unremarkable except for the massive amount of reading I did to prepare to leave Oxford and its restrictive libraries for an entire weekend. But on Friday, we had our Rhodes "Coming Up Dinner", aka an excuse to get dressed to the nines and once again go eat delicious food and try expensive wine for free. Although there was somewhat of a flutter among the Rhodes ladies about whether short or long dresses were appropriate, I'd already made up my mind to wear a long dress, because I a) so seldom get the opportunity to do so and b)get super excited whenever I find a dress that's actually floor length on me. Plus, there's something about dressing up that triggers a sort of regression to princess fantasies from being a little girl that I firmly believe most women experience. So I spent time doing my hair and makeup and picking out jewelry and shoes to match my dress and still be comfortable, which is no easy feat. Luckily for me, I wasn't holding Joe up; one thing I have learned while dating an Army guy is that putting on a dress uniform is a long and complex process, so I was ready only a few minutes after him and early enough to force him to (reluctantly) take a junior high prom style picture before we walked across the city to Rhodes House.

We walked into a cocktail hour in full swing, and had plenty of time before we were seated to enjoy champagne and conversation and marvel over how nice everyone looked all spiffied up. With the exception of our sendoff weekend in DC, all of us have only seen each other in normal graduate student attire, usually layered under plenty of heavy clothes to ward off the British chill. So there were a few of my friends (mostly the guys) who I almost didn't recognize in their finery. It was an awesome photo opportunity though! There are many more pictures on Facebook, but I did want to include one of my favorites from the night, with some of my closest girlfriends here: 

From left to right is Rachel (who is also teaching me American Sign Language!), Kiley (my fellow District 12 nominee), and Jenny (probably the person who reminds me most of Reagan, my best friend from home). 

We weren't seated to dinner until after 8, and between the three courses, the speaker who addressed us, and the port and cheese that followed dessert, it was almost midnight by the time we ventured back out into the cool air. Although I was already doing mental math and realizing that getting out of bed at 5 am was going to be more than unpleasant, I agreed to go dancing in full black tie with some friends, because honestly, how often am I going to have that opportunity again? 

Somehow, however, the "carpe diem" argument didn't carry as much weight when I was jolted out of bed after three hours of sleep to walk through the rain to the bus station. Although Brussels isn't actually that far from Oxford in an objective sense, getting there in reality actually requires a bus, a subway, and two train rides. Luckily, I was tired enough to sleep the entire 90 minutes to London, wake up to navigate to the train station and eat breakfast, and then pass back out for the entire two hour trip through the Chunnel to Brussels. 

Everything had been going smoothly to that point, and I was on track to meet my dad at his hotel in Ghent by 1 pm as planned. Unfortunately, there was some sort of track outage between Brussels and Ghent (I think there was some type of fire, but my French isn't good enough to tell exactly and my Dutch is nonexistent), and my train was delayed a full hour. As Murphy's Law would have it, my UK phone wouldn't send emails, texts, or call, and there was absolutely no free wifi in the vicinity of the train station, so I couldn't get in touch with my dad to say I'd be over an hour late. I spent a large part of the train ride --when I finally got on it-- just praying that he wouldn't have had called the police when I finally showed up to the lobby. 

But finally show up I did, and send out a search party he had not, so I dropped my things off in the gorgeous hotel where his company gets a corporate rate, and we headed to lunch at around 2:30. We walked down to the main historic harbor area of Ghent, which has now been mostly converted into nice cafes, restaurants, and hotels. Most people don't realize that Ghent (or Gent in Dutch or Gand in French) was once the second largest city in Northern Europe after Paris, and the center of a huge textile and manufacturing empire stretching across most of what is now Belgium and part of the Netherlands and Germany. So the waterfront area is full of history and is well restored, except for the plethora of European hipsters that sit around and do silly modern things like play guitar:

After a delicious meal of pasta and coffee (always an appropriate combination in my opinion), my dad and I decided to take a boat tour around the canals of the city. I was amazed by our tour guide's ability to switch easily among Dutch, German, French, and English accounts of the various buildings and general history of the city, and a stolen glance at some of the signs suggested he could've done Spanish and Portuguese as well. I took some amazing pictures (again, see Facebook, because I can't load them all on here), but my favorite part of the tour was the explanation of the many churches in Ghent, which used to be sponsored by each of the craftsman's guild. In true Belgian form, one of the largest and most central had been built by the Brewmaster's Guild, and I dragged my dad to see it afterward. Although he swears up and down that every European cathedral is the same, I absolutely love going into old churches. I think that each one is unique, and there's both so much history and such serenity that it always makes me happy to walk around and explore. This particular church had some of the best stained glass I'd seen in some time, and the late afternoon light made it perfect for pictures:

Once I'd had my fill and my father had enjoyed his rest on a back pew, we headed back to the hotel to meet one of his colleagues, an ex-pat American who'd been living in Ghent for almost a year. He obviously loves Belgium and yet still has strong connections back to the Carolinas, so it was great to meet him and hear about his experiences. After sampling a few Belgian beers - including one that was the strangest and most delicious complex flavor combination I've had in quite some time - we let him get back to his family and dogs and struck out to try a restaurant he'd recommended that was a short walk from the hotel. Along the way, we walked past the canal at night, and I got what may be my favorite picture of all from Ghent:

At dinner, my aversion to Dutch got the best of me. Don't get me wrong; I love languages, and can normally get around fairly proficiently in countries where German or a Romance language is prevalent. But something about guttural, consonant-ridden, and complex Dutch never ceases to baffle me, and so I just blindly ordered a salad that said "Casar" on the completely Dutch menu, without realizing that it had chicken on top. Now, I've been in the process of going pescatarian for about a year now, and although I used to still eat the occasional piece of poultry, I haven't had chicken since probably August, so I knew that eating that volume of chicken would give me a terrible stomachache. Although my dad ate part of it and I sampled a few bits, I still felt bad when the woman came back to find the majority of the little cubes stacked neatly in the middle of my empty bowl. I couldn't even explain to her that it truly was delicious, and I just couldn't eat it! Anyway, we eventually headed back to the hotel to FaceTime my mom, and then I was more than happy to collapse into bed. 

The time changed overnight, and my dad would tease me if I didn't admit on here that I thought I'd set my alarm for the correct time and yet still overslept. When he did come knock on my door, I threw on some real clothes as quickly as possible, and made my way downstairs for the delicious breakfast buffet. Nice hotels in Europe tend to have an amazing selection of everything you could possibly want for breakfast, from fruit and pastries to bread and cheese and eggs and pancakes, so we tucked in and enjoyed some coffee before checking me out of the hotel and hopping on a train to Bruges.

Bruges, or Brugge in Dutch, is like the bigger and more famous brother of Ghent. Made famous partially by a movie with Colin Farrell about an assassin hiding out after botching a job, there are a huge number of tourists who visit its slightly grander central square and equally gorgeous churches. It was looking like rain when we arrived, so we walked a cursory lap around the beautiful "centrum", which features all of the flags of the city:

before taking refuge (and another cup of coffee) in a cafe on the canals that also criss-cross that city. After our great experience with the boat tour the day before, we decided that another canal visit was in order, and hopped in line for another trip around the old parts of Bruges. Unfortunately, the skies opened back up halfway through our 40 minute tour, and people in our boat were forced to resort to huddling under umbrellas, maps, and in one notable case, more nontraditional means of staying dry:

There were even earholes! I didn't get as many pictures of Bruges as I did of Ghent, since I was worried about the safety of my camera in the wet weather, but the churches and historic facades of the buildings were just as beautiful as we'd seen the day before: 

When we'd finally made it back on dry land and under the cover of awnings, I was on the lookout for art. I'm not much of a collector, but one thing I always buy when I travel is some sort of local art to remember the journey by. I don't really have a theme; I just try to find something I like and that isn't something I could buy a print of at a Hobby Lobby back in the States. Luckily, I found a street vendor with beautiful pencil sketches of Bruges's skyline and a jaunty handlebar mustache to boot! The whole cold rain bit was starting to grind on our nerves after that, so my dad and I sought refuge once again in a small place that smelled wonderfully of waffles. Although not all Belgian waffles come with the strawberries and whipped cream like Americans always assume, they are made of thicker dough and coated in sugar that caramelizes in the waffle iron, so it's nothing short of delicious. We also used the opportunity to browse for the famous Belgian chocolate, and stroll through a few free museums. Oh, and take some adorable daddy-daughter pictures:

After all of that, it was time to head back to the train station to start the long journey home. I stopped and had a snack with my dad before tracing my steps back to Brussels, switching to Eurostar in London, taking the Tube to the bus station (which is surprisingly difficult to find when it's dark and rainy and your brain was sleep-addled the only other time you've been there) and then walking back to my room in Oxford.

After all was said and done, I'd only been out of town for about 40 hours, but I felt like I'd stuffed an entire week of activities into that time. Although I've only been away from home for about a month, it's always nice to see family, and catching up with my dad while simultaneously traveling around two gorgeous cities was a winning combination.

Now, I've got to buckle back down and write the paper I'm actually supposed to be composing instead of this blog. Somehow, writing about China's ideological reasons for entering the Korean War aren't nearly exciting as reliving waffles, chocolate, and beer, but then again, I'm a student-traveler, not a traveler-student. As they say in Dutch, "welterusten"! At least, that's what Google says "good night" is. God knows I still can't begin to comprehend Dutch.