Today I:
Wrote my tutorial paper
rowed 10 k
went on a 3 hour grocery shopping spree for thanksgiving
did my architecture project
did laundry
and somehow made a homemade pecan pie without corn syrup or brown sugar
oh also cleaned the oven of overflowed pie filling for half an hour.
sigh. bedtime.
Just finished the greatest weekend in england so far. Jackie came from Berlin and we packed Oxford and London into a three day extravaganda. I don’t remember much but I can give a slightly annotated itinerary of what I do remember.
Wednesday:
Jackie Arrives (calls from the bus on some stranger’s cell phone because she’s out of minutes. I don’t recognize her at first when I see her in the house but proceed to tackle her when I realize who she is)
CCC Boathouse Cocktails (everyone is smashed when we get there. we talk to a few trinity boys in the beer cellar and make them think I’m russian. JW is dancing witha shoeless and drunken Claire out in the quad. Ahh Oxford. Where else do such classy people get so obnoxiously drunk?)
Find Jackie’s Hostel (Although she doesn’t make it in that night in time for registration so she has to pay for some overpriced three bed suite next door and has a pillow fight with… herself)
Thursday:
Meet for breakfast at the Rose
Jackie sees the Bodleian Library while I’m in architecture class (booking Berlin tickets and signing up for classes next quarter instead of listening to the lecture about melancholy in neoclassical architecture)
Lunch in College (Jackie meets Greg who is just as confrontational as he was the first day I met him and Gerome who still thinks the way I say “lover” is funny. We eat sausage and potatoes for lunch. big surprise there)
Laura goes to Tutorial Jackie visits Pitt Rivers Museum ( I spend half the tutorial talking about American woman who play rugby while jackie sees dinosaurs. win.)
Tour of the Covered Market (Jackie and discover we both love dark chocolate and hate marzipan. We then get moo moo’s milkshakes even though it’s freezing cold outside.)
Tea at college (Greg demands to know Jackie’s favorite communist revolution of the 20th century as i awkwardly sip tea.)
Tour of College (Library, Chapel, gardens, auditorium, and the terrace was open. Christ church meadow was pointed out as “the land as far as the eye can see.”)
Check into Hostel (very cool. As with every building in Oxford the hostel had a fully functional and licensed bar. Jackie stayed in the Panda Room.)
Buy ingredients for cookie making (as with all grocery shopping in England, it took forever to find the most basic ingredients. In this case it was jelly.)
Psychologist in The Chequers Pub (very funny guy. Glad we got there early since it filled up fast. I tried winter Pimms for the first time. So warm and Christmas-y!)
Donner Kebabs at the kebab van on Broad St. (not Achmed’s but still very good! + why did I get cheese? not a good idea.)
Baking Cookies in the Stanford House Kitchen (the shortbread had so much butter that the block we bought was not enough for one batch. Glad I had milk and an ability to improvise. Meanwhile Erin set up a stanford house power hour that was going on outside. Some college rugby team in the garden was shot gunning cider, scones, and cream. We only had some idea of the debauchery from the noise and full recycling bin of beer cans.)
Friday
Coffee at Queen’s Lane Coffee House (and talk of German politics)
Walk through Christ Church Meadow
Breakfast at Patisserie Valerie (because all we do in Oxford is drink tea and eat cake. I had mille feuille and Jack had double chocolate. this was just the beginning of the gratuitous amounts of sugar we would consume today.)
Post Office to Post some things (the brits still lick their stamps, weird.)
The Museum of Oxford (strangely kid friendly and very into cars.)
Many Book Stores (I got a Polar Bear calendar. Big surprise there. Jackie and I came to the sad realization that there are way more books in the world than we’ll ever have time to read.)
Oxford Museum of the History of Science (some really cool old math, physics, astronomy and chemistry stuff. One of Einstein’s blackboards from his 4th lecture on relativity is there. Also some real organs the doctors in the 19th century chose to varnish and preserve for science. Also celestial globes with, you guessed it, bears!)
Deliver Cookies to College Tea to be sold for charity (we never know if they actually made it to the bake sale or if the JCR devoured them before they could be properly sold. Also learned that the bursary is stupid and only open for 2 hours.)
High Tea at the Grand Cafe (with Lee and Andrea. Jack and I got Grand High tea which just means champagne in addition to our scones, chocolate truffles (passion fruit chocolate truffles), and delicious salmon and tomato egg sandwiches. So delicious. Just wish I had been hungry at the time.)
Speedy five minute tour of the Ashmolean (it was closing when we got there. We literally just ran around the museum once. I pointed out a couple of sculptures I knew.)
Formal Hall in College (crab cakes, rack of lamb with potatoes and green beans, strawberry cheesecake. Also, the closest thing to a Harry Potter dinner I’ll ever have.)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (the most intense movie experience of my life. Mostly because I bought tickets for the wrong day and the theater was sold out and the usher nazi was kicking people out left and right. No idea how we were lucky enough to get to stay and watch.)
Saturday
Coffee and apple strudel from Harvey’s
Catch the Tube to London (I slept the whole way)
Buckingham Palace (took us way too long to find it. signs in London are awful. Also we couldn’t get in to harras the guards.)
Green Park (Jackie was strangely interested in the Canada memorial. We then saw the most photogenic pink bird ever. We decided it was princess Di in her new reincarnated form.)
Westminister Abbey (we just saw the outside since it was obnoxiously expensive to get in and the line was way too long.)
Houses of Parliament (actually got inside for a tour. Our tour guide Mark was hilarious. Totally worth it and the best part of the whole day.)
Sausages and onions for Lunch on the Westminister bridge
Tickets for London Eye (and decision that the 4D experience just wasn’t worth it)
Tea at Paul in Covent Garden (I got chocolate brioche shaped like a christmas tree because the chocolate brioche shaped like st. nicholas had raisins in it. Also some people were playing with their baby on our table.)
Covent Garden shopping (some bad child entertainer, a violin quartet playing Frankie Valli, solid shampoo, perfumes that smell like grandmas, all the tea at Tea Palace.)
Dinner in Chinatown (after I got lost twice I ended up in Piccadilly Circus and had no idea that was where I was. We eventually found a nice place in chinatown and got BBQ pork. Also sesame seed buns with red bean and egg custard, mmmmmm.)
Walk through the Christmas Village (so many carols and fake snow. Got me so excited for Christmas! Especially the cute outdoor figure skating rink all lit up with blue lights.)
London Eye Tour (beautiful. Perfect end to the perfect week.)
Finding the Oxford Tube Stop Home (we had to find some other bus man to tell us where to find the stop. Luckily we found it and ran into Andrea.)
Well that was it. Jackie left but I get to see her in two weeks in Berlin!!!!!! Can. Not. Wait.
Excuse the obnoxious watermark but this is the only picture I have of me rowing on the Thames, and might be the only one to ever exist. I got to row Head of the River IV’s this weekend in London and all I can really remember from the day was that it was cold. I might have rowed I can’t remember. My boat (bow #253) came in 25th out of 29 in the masters quad event. I blame my utter lack of knowledge for what was supposed to be going on.
First of all I didn’t know where the course ended. I think I pulled about 5 sprints at the end. They told me the finish line would be loud because that’s where all the boathouses and people were. They were wrong. It was silent. It was like racing yourself, only instead of being alone we were being passed by other boats. All and all it wasn’t the worst race though. Our form was pretty clean and at least I was warm when I was rowing. Before the race we had to wait about an hour or two on the river without moving. We got on the water 45 minutes before the first boat went off and we were bow number 253. This was bad for me who was only wearing a uni and a long sleeve coolmax. I seriously thought I was going to get hypothermia. Then, to make matters worse we had to beach dock for the landing. i.e. I had to step into ice cold water barefoot and then walk along a rocky beach with broken glass in an effort to keep my shoes dry for the rest of the day. Thankfully the second our boat was in slings we got to change into dry clothes instead of de-rigging while wet. Still, an hour or so after I was dry and warm my lips were still bluish purple. The only scary thing was that I didn’t think it was half as bad/cold as rowing the Head of the Charles.
Highlight of the day: sleeping the whole ride back <3
Bath
Yesterday my architecture class went to Bath. It was everything I wanted it to be. I’m pretty sure Lee freaked out from all of the Jane Austen references, and we had place appropriate readings from Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. It was pretty nice.
We also walked a lot. Bath is like San Francisco. No matter where you go you’re walking uphill. We got to see a lot of really nice Palladian and Neoclassical architecture, and at the top of the hills you got great views of the town.
The best part however was the Roman Baths. Apparently Bath gets its name from the ancient city of Aquea Sulis which was built by the Romans. They thought the hot springs in the region (the only hot springs in the whole UK actually) were sacred and so they built a temple for Minerva there and built a city around it. They also turned it into a spa where men and women worked out naked together, got rubbed down with oil, then got scrubbed with bronze brushes by their servants. For a bath I couldn’t believe how little water the ancient romans used. Maybe they thought the bath water wasn’t clear enough to make wet activities seem sexually enticing. Better off doing jumping jacks in the nude then just sitting around in some opaque tub.
Anyways, apparently ater the English built Bath on top of the roman city but didn’t realize it. About 200 years ago they realized the roman city was underneath. Now the baths are excavated and you can go visit them. Very cool. Although people don’t drink the sulfurous water to treat illness like they did is Austen’s day, you can still buy a really cute pair of shoes and get a facial in Bath. My kind of vacation town. They also have a fashion museum which I didn’t get to go to. However I did get to go to the Pump Room for tea. That’s where they used to pump water from the hot springs because they thought it was posh. We didn’t try the sulfer water but we did get great rose tea and scones. yum! We were also late for the bus because of it.
That night I got to see Romeo and Juliet in the Oxford Playhouse. The set was cool. Very minimalist and almost all the props were done in flowers. Nicely done rendition, I definitely think this is the first time I really understood all the sex jokes. Too bad the characters of Romeo and Juliet are essentially the two most annoying people in literature. Maybe I’ll make it to Streetcar Named Desire next week.
Remember, Remember the 5th of November…
Today I went to south parks in Oxford for their Guy Fawkes Day celebrations. Essentially Guy Fawkes Day is a holiday celebrated in England to hate people and burn catholics. Technically Guy Fawkes day was yesterday but they celebrated it today with a big carnival.
There were rides and games and food. I got pork buns from a supersized skillet and then got hot, fresh, homemade made doughnuts while watching the fireworks. Then we saw this huge effigy of Guy Fawkes get burned. After a while it started to look like a burning pirate bishop. Strange. That was pretty much it. Really cool festival, but kinda creepy. Also on the way out I got a pink bag that says how are your breasts?
Conclusion: Great Day
Just went to see “Punk Rock” at the Oxford Playhouse last night. The best way I can describe it is Spring Awakening as a play set in modern England without as much rape. Mostly English teenage school kid angst. The best part by far was the set. It was this tall dusty library reminiscent of Harry Potter. That being said the libraries here in Oxford greatly let me down. I much rather be studying in the Bing Wing of Green Library at Stanford. At least there you can sit in a nice leather couch. Here it’s uncomfortable and cold and there’s this guy dressed in a tuxedo who comes around and yells at you if you drink water or put your feet up.
Anyways, this play was great and it was an under 26 night. Theater culture in England is weird. You can bring in food from outside and eat or drink in the theater. you can put your feet on chairs. Considering you can’t walk on grass here I’m surprised how lax they are with the theaters. They don’t even tell you to turn your cell phone off before the play starts.
Afterwords we got to stay for a question session with the actors and found out they’re a lot cooler than their characters.
Halloween in the Oxford
Halloween consisted mainly of me rowing in the rain and then doing a lot of school work. Corpus raced Autumn IV’s on the river Isis. Our first race it looked like we were going to loose before the other boat caught a crab. Then we passed them but we ran into a house boat. About 5 crabs later both boats crossed the finish line laughing. I have no idea how but we won. It was utter carnage.
The day before Halloween though was the main event. After a surprise 5 hour row up to Abington and back I ran to the covered market to get some pumpkins. I finally got to have my pumpkin party. I made two pumpkin ice cream cakes, a pumpkin pie, pumpkin cookies, and improv pumpkin shortbread which was impressively good considering I made up the recipe completely. All the food was gone ravaged within 24 hours. I’m glad since I spent all day slaving in the kitchen, boiling pumpkins and hand mashing them to make pumpkin paste since cans of pumpkin literally DO NOT EXIST in Britain. Everything turned out fine though. Some corpus people stopped by and we carved lots of pumpkins to decorate the garden. Afterwords we made it to Corpus for the Halloween bop. It was pretty depressing since the dance floor was empty and the only people moving were us Americans who were also the only people dressed in cute rather than horrifying outfits. Good thing I was too tired to stay. Made it home quickly to sleep for my race the next day.
How legit am I? Just got my UKTKD license and my British Rowing license. I’m officially cooler in the UK than I am in the US. Mostly because my UK TKD has this killer bio about this “Pioneer of Tae Kwon Do” who looks like Bruce Lee in the 70’s. It also has the tae kwon do oath. Score.
Today we went to Blenheim Palace. It was built as a monument to the English military but it’s mostly just a really nice house. This was by far my favorite Oxford field trip so far. The palace and the grounds are beautiful. I’m going to get married here then make enough money to buy it.
Some Highlights:
1. faking a Jane Austenesque proposal in the Rose Garden
2. discussing wedding plans in the Secret Garden
3. Finding hedges shaped like fat penguins and fat cats
4. seeing the cascades
5. the fall colors
6. our very witty tour guide who commented on the character and wardrobe of every duchess that ever lived there
7. seeing the greatest library in the world
Some Lowlights:
1. not getting to take the pleasure train to the pleasure gardens
2. my camera dying halfway through
3. not having a parasol, 17th century attire, and a strapping young man on my arm
