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 :)
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
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!
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!
Thursday, November 14, 2013
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.
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):
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):
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.
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
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!
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.
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:
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!
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