This Little Piggy Went to Bop

"What in God's name is a bop?" you may ask. Well, the Oxford English dictionary defines a "bop" as "a British dance to pop music". In practical Oxford application, it means a big party, usually with a theme and often with costumes, thrown by one of the colleges and open to other students if they are a guest of one of the college residents. And this past weekend, I went to my very first bop!

I guess I should rewind, since there is an entire 0th (pronounced "nought") week of classes and introductions to sum up before the real fun started. As I mentioned in my last post, Monday was a day of last minute errands, buying the boring but necessary school supplies like notebooks and pens and such. Then on Tuesday, I had my big program induction.

I use the word "big" a tad ironically, since the MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies is in actuality rather small by Oxford standards, with only 24 students. On Tuesday, I learned that there were only three other Americans, a large Australian contingent (6 grads who jokingly refer to themselves as the "Aussie mafia"), five mainland Chinese students, and an assortment of others who are British or from various other European countries. We definitely have a very international group, and everyone has different backgrounds. Cate, the other American Rhodie in my program, and I are two of the only students fresh out of undergrad as far as I can tell; most of my classmates have spent some time living and working in China or have already received some other postgraduate degree. Our professors are very impressive, and have come to Oxford from a wide range of fields to teach in SIAS, the School of Interdisciplinary and Area Studies. The very integrated approach to learning was one of the things that really attracted me to this program in the first place, so listening to them describe the different specialty courses they will be offering in second term was very exciting! Everyone was super friendly, so I was glad to be able to chat and mingle and hear everyone's stories.

On a much more comic note, Wednesday was the day of my first rude awakening that, as a postgrad at Oxford, I'm not in Wofford/Kansas anymore. Coming from an insular undergraduate institution where I could walk from one side of campus to the other in five minutes to Oxford, where various old buildings are so seamlessly integrated into the historic streets that the tiny blue signs denoting their actual academic functions are unfortunately quite easy to overlook, I'd gotten into the habit of leaving embarrassingly early for classes in new places to allow for time to get lost. So when I was supposed to meet my new advisor, Dr. Sarah Eaton, I left fifteen minutes early for a five minute bike ride to the China Centre, which I'd luckily found the day before.

Imagine my panic when I walked in the front door and casually asked the administrator to direct me to Dr. Eaton's office and she gave me a blank stare that plainly said, "I have no idea who the heck that is, and you're an idiot for asking." Come to find out, Oxford was kind enough to build us both a China Centre AND a China Institute, which are of course almost a mile apart from one another! The blank stare lady was kind enough to give me directions to the other China building (with a haughty stare for good measure), and I hopped back on my bike for the frantic race to the next building. Which turned out to be farther than I'd thought; so far that I stopped at one college and asked for directions, and was promptly pointed back in the opposite direction and told that I'd passed my destination. And then, when I'd doubled back on myself and still couldn't find it and was already five minutes late and on the verge of panic, I finally had the presence of mind to dig through my email to find the cell phone number of our program's administrator and give her a frantic call.

I have no idea how she managed to decipher the rush of American English that was something along the lines of, "heyLucyitsRachelIhaveameetingwithDrEatonandImverylatebutitsbecauseImlostanddontknowwhereIamandtheChinaCentreisdifferentfromtheChinaInstitutehelppppppp", but Lucy managed to be unflappably British and direct me to the building in a kind voice, as well as promise to go tell Dr. Eaton that I was not, in fact, delinquent (just a tad incompetent). Then, after about a quarter mile sprint (I ditched the bike at some rack I found in order to be able to read signs as I ran), I made it to my meeting, sweaty, late, and having lost my pen for note-taking somewhere along the way.

Luckily, Dr. Sarah Eaton is young, brilliant, and also has a great sense of humor, so she burst out laughing when I finally huffed and puffed into her office (thoroughly convinced that I needed to make it to the gym more often). We had a lovely meeting in which I managed to both reduce my heart rate and discuss with her my plan for my dissertation, and she contributed some good ideas for starting my research and told me that she was totally okay with a more independent working relationship, in which I could be left to my own devices and check in with her when necessary, as long as I continued to make the deadlines she'd set out for me.

Besides Thursday afternoon, when we had another joint introduction to the research methods course that all MSc students in SIAS take, I had the rest of the week to get acclimated to Oxford's library system. Although the sheer number of books in the University is impressive, somewhere around the 11 million mark, they're spread around the city in a combination of central libraries, subject collections, and college libraries, and each has different rules for access and checking things out. To add to the confusion, books that are in high demand for multiple subjects can't actually be checked out, and can only be read in the libraries for three hours at a time.

When I was in undergrad, I was wholeheartedly a curl up in bed with music and a cup of tea type reader, so imagine my dismay when I realized that every book I needed was of the type that couldn't be removed from the library, thereby outlawing tea, bed, and music in one fell stroke. However, I did find out that the Social Sciences Library contains nearly everything I need, is right around the corner from my dorm, and has massive windows with comfy chairs, so I guess that's the next best thing! Plus, the one good thing about the cold and rainy weather here is that it makes sitting inside and reading all afternoon much easier than it was in the warm and sunny regions of South Carolina.

Now, to Saturday! Before the bop, I had a lovely afternoon down at the Brasenose boathouse. That's right, folks, your author dearest is one of the newest novices on Brasenose's women's rowing team! Although I'd originally been very against playing any sort of sport here, having both loved playing volleyball undergrad and yet lamented the constant demands it put on my schedule and joints, I finally decided that I wanted to do something new and still athletic. Given that rowing is new, favors tall people, and is ridiculously British, I decided that I'd give it a try. My roommate Emily, who is also American and athletic but is tiny, was recruited as a coxswain, so we went down to the Brasenose boathouse on the Thames together to meet some folks and enjoy what was (for once) a warm and sunny afternoon. Then, in a fit of Oxford awesomeness, we found a sushi place and got some rolls to go for lunch, then snuck into the private gardens at Exeter College and ate lunch in a beautiful English style wildflower field overlooking the Exeter Chapel. You honestly can't make this stuff up! Photographic evidence:

For Saturday night, the bop options (boptions?) abounded. It should first be noted that costume parties, or "fancy dress" parties as they're known in the UK, are a huge thing here. Wadham had a "dress as your subject" theme, St. Antony's did an animal motif, Green Templeton chose to have a Harry Potter party, and Balliol went medieval. Because there are large groups of Rhodies in both St. Ant's and Balliol, my boyfriend Joe and I were on the lookout for costumes that could cross over from a medieval theme to an animal bop, in case we decided to jump ship at any point during the night. I had a group of friends who had decided to dress up as knights for Balliol, so I settled on dressing in all white and French braiding some "reigns" so that I could be their white horse. Joe didn't know/care what he wanted to dress as, so he made the fatal error of giving me complete control over his costume.

While at Primark, which is essentially a souped up and yet even cheaper version of H&M, I stumbled across what is perhaps the best find of my costume-shopping days: a zip-up pink onesie pajama set that turned the wearer into a pig! Now, just the mental image of my tall Army boyfriend in pink fleece with a curly tail sent me into hysterics at the store, and since my one good faith effort to call and get his permission went to voicemail, I had no choice but to spend the twelve dollars and hope he'd be a good sport. Per usual, he was, and even managed to keep a straight face as we walked across town in front of all the staring eyes of Oxford. You can imagine that we made quite a scene, but check out the amazingness of the finished product:

And here's me with one of my "knights", Jenny:

There were many other noteworthy costumes that night. Two of my roommates wore all black and went as "the Plague", Joe made a new friend in a fellow student who donned a onesie dragon costume, and my personal favorite was a dude in a cardboard box with bricks painted on it-- he was a castle. Watching him dance and maneuver through doorways was probably the high point of the night! With the exception of the weird techno and house remixes the DJ insisted on playing, which made all of the Americans grit our teeth in auditory anguish, it was a great night and a fun first of what will hopefully be many bops.




This week, or "First Week", on the all-important Oxford style calendar, has been mostly just about settling into classes and keeping up with reading for lecture, but last night we had what was probably the most fun dinner since coming to Oxford. Rhiana, one of our fellow American Rhodes Scholars, was turning 24, and since we realized the inevitable headache that would come about from trying to make reservations for at least 30 people at one of the (usually tiny) restaurants here, I offered to cook dinner for everyone at Joe and Evan's apartment, which is the largest of the scholars'. Having gotten used to cooking for an entire volleyball team, I can make a mean assembly line of lasagna, so I put together 7 and also threw in a huge salad and some garlic bread. I asked everyone else to bring drinks and desserts, and they definitely came through, so we pretty much had a feast! Besides the moment of panic I had when I realized that tiny European ovens can't keep enough heat to cook that many lasagnas in good time and had to jack the temperature up to broil in order to get all of the cheese melted and zucchini cooked in the vegetarian ones, everything went off very smoothly, and it turned into an amazing night that I'm sure we'll all remember. I even played soccer mom and got everyone to stand still long enough for a big "family photo".

So there you have it! Happy Wednesday, from my Oxford family to yours :)