| ♕ | Oxford - Golden cyclist | by © Darrell Godliman
Bodleian Library, Oxford (by Cathy G)
Yes, it does look this beautiful in person. Especially when emerging after hours of studying inside.
This photograph is so precious (yet so small).
Carroll and Alice Liddell taking a stroll, probably in Oxford.
I wish he was wearing his top hat. Alice’s garments are so cute.
I saw a lot of Alice and Wonderland in Oxford because I walked past Christchurch and Alice’s Shop every day. I love seeing a picture of them actually walking down a street in Oxford. It reminds me of so much.
(I swear it has rained more in Houston this year than it did the entire time I was in England … )
I promised myself that I would not post until after I had finished the two papers due this week, but I have broken down. To be fair, I have a complete draft of the paper due tomorrow finished and about half of the paper due Thursday finished, but that’s really not where I should leave it for tonight.
Alas, life is going to be busy and stressful for the rest of the semester so there will never be an “ideal” time to post. So I might as well write now, right? I’ve been trying to strip some things away to make my life easier. Originally I just gave up French Fries for Lent. And then last week I realized that I was just doing that to avoid the thing I really needed to give up this year: television. As an English major and a purported lover of great fiction, I am ashamed to say that I spend way too much time catching up on my favorite television show series or re-watching the DVD copies of my all-time favorites: Gilmore Girls, Friends, Glee, and The Big Bang Theory. And to think, before I came to college, even that list was half as long. It’s pathetic, but it’s how I cope with all the work, reading, writing, and stressful social situations I have to endure throughout the school year and the summer. But recently I had been using it as too much of a security blanket. So far it hasn’t been too horrible, but I know that God is going to test my sacrifice at some point during Lent. Probably when I go home in a few weeks for midterm recess.
On the bright side, in the time I haven’t been watching television I have been working on my personal writing projects! (I’m taking a page from my Oxford writing friend’s blog The play I workshopped at the Oxford Playhouse Writer’s Weekend last term has finally been “unpacked,” more thoroughly researched, and I’ve begun writing the new version! I’m super excited for this one and I promise to post my progress here. I’m also writing a short screenplay for a friend. It was high time that the scriptwriter and the film director (who are best friends) finally started a joint film project … Anyways, she came up with the idea and at first I wasn’t too stoked. But now I am starting to actually realize how the small parts can represent characters and how the whole short film represents this feedback loop … I’ll have to save the rest for later. Four scenes down, three to go!
I feel like Rice is this wonderful curse. Wonderful because I am constantly surrounded by intelligent people, supportive friends, and fantastic literature courses. But a curse because as much as I try to keep at least some corners of my life free, the different club obligations, personal contacts, and projects keep piling up. And this is all before classes have even begun assigning essays or heavy reading. I’m hoping that if I get some of this out of the way now I won’t be quite as stressed when my first 5-6 page essay shows up in a couple of weeks.
(For those of you who haven’t visited Houston, it may not be Oxford but it has a beauty of its own)
I thought I was finished with blog posts for this week, but as it turns out, I’m not. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to think about ordering textbooks, or the resume/cover letters I should also be revising/composing at this moment in time. Or maybe it’s because now that I’ve given myself permission to write short posts I can potentially write this before dinner. And finally, I might be feeling particularly introspective today because I know that all my friends at Oxford are going back today (well, went back) and it throws my experience here into greater comparison to what I would be doing over there.
In many ways, I’m glad to be back at Rice. But when people ask me how I’m feeling I don’t really know how to respond. I love visiting with all my friends, but at the same time, things have changed. Some things have changed for the better. Because I walked so much in Oxford I now think walking from Martel to West Lot is a piece of cake. If anyone complains about that to me, I will ask you to repeat my route from the Graduate Apartments to Hertford—or even better, to St. Hilda’s College and then to the English Faculty Library. Loving to walk is making living off-campus much easier. I also love how sunny it is here in Houston. I claimed that having that sun set at 3 pm in the UK didn’t bother me, but that was sort of a lie. I love pretty weather and I must say, even if I have to look at the sunshine through a library window, I’m still happier.
On the other hand, some things are very weird. I spent so much time with the freshers at Hertford, and yet I know none of the freshman class here. I walk around as a stranger to one fourth of the school. Also, I hate buying textbooks now. I loved just going to the library and checking out the book I needed for a week. Because I just needed it for a week and there were bound to be enough copies for everyone. Plus, I forgot about the sticker shock when your English classes assign 15 or so texts for a course … I also loved just taking English courses. I’m sure the computer science course on databases and Excel will help me, but we’ve only met twice and I’m already dead-bored with everything.
And finally, even though I’m coming back to campus, it’s not the same because I’m not the same. I find myself watching everyone, like I’m observing the whole place like a new culture. It’s still familiar, but if I think about it, I can see how so much of what we do here is unique to Rice or at least more unique to America. While it may get annoying at times, I think this is one extra benefit of study abroad. Not only did I get to discover a new country, but I also get to rediscover my own. I promise I won’t be keeping a running comparison going between my fall semester and my spring one, but I’m still going to keep aware of the differences. To me, as a writer and an observer of life, this new perspective is such a gift.Hello everyone! I’m posting from my new apartment in Houston, Texas. I am partially moved in. I’m still waiting on a bed and my parents are bringing the rest of my things this weekend. Being back at Rice is great in some ways because I love going to class again, I love seeing my friends here, and I’m excited to return to the Rice Players and other extracurriculars. On the other hand, it’s weird not living on campus. Martel is still home, but I have to leave every night. I can’t just walk over to my friends’ rooms and hang out with them; I have to plan time to see them. It makes coming back from abroad even more of an adjustment, but I’m trying to remember how I coped last semester. I lived fifteen minutes away from Hertford College, but I ended up spending a majority of my time there instead of at my flat.
Since I have been back, many many many people have been asking me how my study abroad semester went. I tried to tell them to go look at this blog but most of them said that I wrote way too much. Some of my friends told me I should make my posts shorter even before I left for the UK, but I couldn’t help it. Now that I’m back in the US and having adventures that are a little less exciting, I am actually going to make the effort to make snappier posts. It’s not a New Year’s Resolution. I don’t like the concept of New Year’s Resolutions because I feel like most people break them. Plus I believe New Year’s is an arbitrary moment to choose as a threshold or a transition. I think people change when it’s right, not just because one or two numbers change on the calendar. And finally, I hate the date change because I swear it makes me write the wrong number at the top of every assignment for at least a month.
To all my friends going back to Hertford in the next few days, I’m so jealous. I didn’t know how much I would miss you all until I got back here. And Hertford College Boat Club, I miss your workouts. Using the erg machine by myself is not the same.
Technically, every European vacation does not have to end with Brussels, but it seems that fate has just wanted me to end all my vacations in Belgium. It has never been planned; the first two times we had our layover there after family vacations. I didn’t expect to get to visit there again. When the choir first announced that that was where they were going for tour, I knew my flight was booked for the 4th for the United States and that I probably couldn’t go. But, fate stepped in and pushed things around—my dad was able to move my flight, I was able to scrounge up the extra money for the trip, and all of a sudden I was booked for a real trip (read: more than 12 hours) to Brussels.
Even from the first coach ride, the trip was off to a great start. After four or five days hanging out in ghostland Oxford, I loved getting to talk to some of my choir friends again. And once we arrived at St. Pancras station, not only did I find all of my choir friends, but we also found A LEGO CHRISTMAS TREE!!! (Yes, my Hertford choir friends are way more important than a Lego tree, but seriously? Look at this thing!!!).
I thought my last week at Oxford would be really emotional. I’m the kind of sensitive person that usually has a difficult time with goodbye’s and I couldn’t imagine how saying goodbye to this magical university and all the people within it would work out—especially since I had no idea when I would be able to return to the United Kingdom. But, I had so much fun in the course of this last week that there wasn’t really time for an emotional goodbye.
The week started out pretty serious. I woke up Monday morning and walked down to college in my gown for collections. It’s weird because at Oxford collections can actually mean two different things: 1) exams that take place after each term, usually after the break or 2) a meeting with the college principal and head tutor to go over tutorial reports. Thankfully mine was the later, but it was still a nail-biting experience. It helped that I had met our principal, Will Hutton, a few times before the meeting. He is an interesting guy. If I had read The Guardian before I left, I would have known that he is a famous journalist, but in some ways it was better that I hadn’t because then I didn’t feel like I had to act different around this public figure. As it turned out, I really enjoyed talking with him. The first time I heard him speak it was all about economics and although I knew he was making important points, it was all I could do not to eat the dinner roll sitting in front of me. Giving a speech before formal hall turned out not to be such a good idea. But later in the term he told me a lot about the books in the Hertford Old Library. Apparently they are worth millions of dollars. But most importantly, I loved the conversation we had during collections. We did spend a few minutes talking over my tutor’s reports, both of which gave me great marks and said that I was a promising student, but then the conversation turned to Victorian Literature in general. The best part: I got to bring up the topic of Victorian Adaptations, which is the subject I’m really well-versed at, thanks to that class I took freshman year at Rice. Plus, he tipped me off to a new Charles Dickens biography coming out. After loving David Copperfield, I definitely think I should add that to my reading list.
