“The Dickens Museum felt for many years a bit like Miss Havisham, covered in dust.” After an extensive renovation, the London home where Charles Dickens lived as a newlywed has reopened to the public.
For more of this morning’s roundup, click here.
One of the places I really wanted to visit when I was abroad last year. I was heartbroken to find it closed for the renovations, but I hope it was worth it.
Bodleian Library, Oxford (by Cathy G)
Yes, it does look this beautiful in person. Especially when emerging after hours of studying inside.
Traveling alone is the best feeling in the whole world.
This is what I felt like after traveling to Bath, Stratford, and Blenheim Palace on my own. Some of my best days.
(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 weird not writing about literature. At this point last term I would have already written at least one paper. The fact that I barely have to read 200 pages for class … I feel almost lazy. I don’t mean to dish on Rice though; I know things will get a lot worse when all my classes begin assigning papers and presentations. But for now, I’m going to spend some of that analytical/creative energy here.
For my American Literature class we are reading Henry James. Truthfully, this author is the reason I’m taking the class. So many people have told me that I should read “The Turn of the Screw.” We aren’t reading that novella but still, I am reading finally reading this important author. He seems especially fitted to my life right now: American citizen, but traveled so much in Europe until he finally got fed up with American politics and switched his citizenship to Great Britain. I haven’t gone that far, but I do understand why he ended up writing so much about American ex-patriots in Europe and why this marked him as a particularly important author on both sides of the ocean. He was listed at the end of my Victorian Literature recommended reading list at Hertford, and now he’s at the top of my reading list for American Literature 1860-1910. I love it.
(Henry James, image from the Wikipedia.org page)
For our first piece of literature we read “Daisy Miller,” his most popular short story and then this week have moved on to one of his earlier novels, Washington Square. I’ve heard that these aren’t as crazy and convoluted as his later novels. I’m glad we’re starting out easy, but everyone telling me about the later ones is beginning to make me think of it as a challenge …
Anyways, I love how the narrator remains somewhat omniscient in these pieces of fiction, but still does not give the reader a full picture of what is happening. No one character has access to the full truth; many think they do, but as the narrator hints, they are all misled at least a little bit. James could easily sweep in a clue in the reader, but where’s the fun in that? I love this because I feel like it is true to life. You can’t just stop, ask the narrator what is going on, and then continue, knowing that whatever he/she/it told you is the truth. I love that even though James’ novels were written centuries ago when people generally lived in a different manner, they still apply to my life today.
I’ve also been reading some crazy modern drama for my capstone course and I’m sure our discussion of David Wiesner’s picture book, The Three Pigs, in Origins of the Postmodern will be worthy of further discussion, but I’ll have to save that for another post. Even though readjusting to Rice has been weird in some ways, getting back into the classroom with these sorts of texts is always comfortable and enjoyable for me.
Before I left for the UK, I wrote numerous posts about how I needed to learn to adapt to traveling. I knew that having a plan wouldn’t work out, that things would not go as I expected, and that I would have to go with the flow. As I also stated before, I knew that this new life perspective would be difficult for me. But I did succeed in adapting. I didn’t even know where I was living when I arrived at Hertford College. I stayed in a hostel for the first time.
Silly me. When I got home, I thought that was all over. I thought that I could return to my schedules and a specific routine. I don’t know what I was thinking. The lessons I learned from traveling abroad don’t just apply when I’m across the ocean.
Living off-campus next semester is going to be a new type of adventure. Yes, I’ll be back at my home university. I will have the normal class schedule, my friend support group, and the Texan-American culture I’ve lived in most of my life. But on the other hand I’ll be living in an apartment, in charge of paying my portion of the rent, the electricity, the water, et cetera. These are important things that people do every day. If I don’t learn these skills at some point, then graduating from Rice won’t be quite so useful. I’m scared, but if everyone else can learn how to become this independent, then I can, too.
Instead of spending my next few days freaking out over how I’m going to learn how to live off-campus next semester, I’m going to enjoy the rest of my break. I finally finished The Return of Sherlock Holmes and since I’ve been reading so much Victorian Literature recently I decided to switch time periods and go for Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I missed him. I don’t know when I’ll actually be able to read it once classes begin, but it’s still a nice treat.It’s been a great winter break. I enjoyed vegging out on my couch for the first two days, sort of fighting and sort of enjoying the effects of jet lag. It was the first time I’d ever really experienced jet lag. I don’t think that sitting on the runway for two extra hours after landing in San Antonio helped … Going to cheer on my high school at their fifth state championship football game was fun, too. Mostly I enjoyed comparing the Texan culture that I’ve known for over half my life with the British and European cultures I’d been experiencing for the past three months. Although, I must say the Texas accent grated on me for a while. I loved hanging out with my family for Christmas. Because this was the first fall where both my sister and I had been away, my mom went crazy with the decorations in our house. I walked into my bedroom to find it covered with snowflakes. We made out with some cool Christmas loot like coffee makers and Toms, but I must say hanging out with the family definitely meant more this year. I’m glad that I went bowling in Belgium because it made me slightly more prepared for the family showdown on Christmas day.
My New Year’s celebration definitely helped start off 2012 on the right foot. Mostly, I spent at least four hours on New Year’s Eve playing either The Michael Jackson Experience or Just Dance on the Wii. And that helped me work off the rest of the Belgian desserts … Just after the ball dropped, I watched Captain America with my friends. I suppose that also helped me set the tone for the New Year. Sadly, my wallet probably isn’t going to allow for much more world traveling this year so I should get into the American spirit again.
For now I’m thankful for all the life experiences and friends I found while abroad, but I am also excited to reunite with my friends at Rice and truly see how Oxford changed me.
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 that my only adventure left would be Belgium with the Hertford Choir, but during my last few days in Oxford, I decided to plan one more solo adventure for myself, sort of like my trips to Bath, Paris, and Stratford at the beginning of term. I had heard from some other friends that Blenheim Palace was only a thirty-minute bus ride away. So I woke up early on Sunday morning and caught an early bus toward Woodstock.
If you don’t know what Blenheim Palace is, don’t worry; I didn’t know before I traveled to the UK either. But my tour guide on the Discovering Shakespeare’s Country Tour said it was a great part of the Cotswolds, something not to be missed. The royal family doesn’t live there; it’s actually owned by the Duke of Marlborough. The first Duke was allowed to build it after winning a great victory at the Battle of Blenheim (see where they got the name?). The really cool part of the house’s history is not the Duke though, but one of his relatives, Winston Churchill. He spent a lot of his childhood at Blenheim, riding horses and exploring the vast grounds. In fact, he was born at Blenheim. I loved reading about this great man. I knew before that he was a great politician, but I didn’t know he wrote books and painted. Hallmark even printed some of his best work as greeting cards. I know that British children learn a lot about Churchill in their history classes, but I didn’t in mine so it was great to learn a little bit more.
You know you’re back in Texas when … You’re watching a high school football state championship game in an NFL stadium. Back in the land where American Football is life. Go Cavs!
