I've got a Golden Ticket!

This, my friends, is the most powerful tool I may ever wield. It doubles as both my Oxford Student ID and Bodleian Library card, giving me access to over 7 million physical books in the city of Oxford as well as many, many more electronic resources. I spent a little time late in the afternoon today walking around the Bodleian main builing as well as "Redcliffe Camera", were I will be spending the majority of my time over the next semester.

It seemed cruel that on the first day would could actually see a blue hue in the sky, they would keep us penned up inside with more orientation, but so it goes. We spent the majority of the morning in more academic orientation, and after lunch we were "treated" to a good 2 and a half hours of library orientation before they'd give us our cards. They are very serious about books here. I guess that's what happens when you've had a library since 1602 and, by law, since1610 a copy of every book that has been published in the UK is sent to their Bodleian. Despite this fact, watching a librarian spend hours showing the different ways to find a book on the system is about as stimulating as watching the grass grow. But it all paid off with the golden ticket into one of the most famous libraries ever. It is just now sinking in that I am going to be studying here for the next three months, and by the looks of my two tutorials, oh what a three months of study it will be! 

This shot was taken outside of the restuarant where I ate dinner (and no, I saw peacocks neither in the yard nor on the menu.) The place was about an hour's walk north of Oxford proper. We took a shortcut that lead us through horse pastures and along the Thames for a bit before coming to the Trout Inn. It was a nice little restaurant. I had the Fish and Chips, which put me back about 7 pounds, but filled me up quite nicely, which is apparently unusual due to smaller serving sizes here. This became incredibly important when I embarked on my two hour walk home to The Vines, which is situated outside the south side of Oxford, almost to Headington.

The last two days have been a flury of orientations. I spent a large portion of yesterday doing program/city orientation, culminating with a afternoon scavenger around Oxford. I spent some time wondering around the different colleges and shops just getting my bearings of the city proper. The different colleges are absolutely beautiful. All of the architecture is ancient, and history seems to seep out of it all.

Today was primarily academic orientation. I visited the college which I am a "VS" (visiting student) of for the first time. It's know as Wycliffe Hall and was established in 1877 as a school to train up vicars in the church of England. The people running the show here talked to us for quite a while and seem to be rather nice. Each college/hall has its own chapel, and before afternoon tea at 3:30, we attended a chaple service at Wycliffe. Apparently there's a day care service just over the wall behind Wycliffe hall, because when I stepped out back during one of our short breaks I was greated with the delightful voices of little British children. I jumped up and peeked over the wall and saw them all running around and playing on their side of the wall, but the cutest thing was their tiny British accents. ;0)

Tomorrow promises to be much of the same as today, maybe without the 4 hour round trip treck for dinner, but we'll see. Maybe I'll get motivated ;0). At this rate, there's no telling how much weight before I make it back to the land of heaping portion and motorized transportation. 

The Bird and the Baby

Yes, yes. I didn't take me more than a couple of days to run across the famous stomping grounds of Lewis and the other Inklings. I felt like such a tourist standing there with my camera making sure I got a good shot, but I couldn't resist. I only poked my head in and looked around for a minute, but I plan to call again.

This morning I got up around 8:30 to lay claim on a good shower and then headed over to Crick, where we at the Vines had been warmly invited for a "pancake breakfast" before 11:15 church services. The pancakes were an experiement for the British Junior Dean running the house (basically, the RD of the place) and they ended up coming out something closer to crapes than pancakes, but they were still pretty good. I hand Nutella, something akin to peanut spread, and something like cereal inside mine.

After breakfast, I took a short 5 minute walk to St. Andrew's Anglican church for morning services. I guess you could describe the service as an Evangelical-High Church format, meaning it was very structured, with ornate surroundings, but they didn't look at you funny if you held your hands wrong when you went up for communion. We sang and did congregational readings out of a modernized version of the Common Book of Prayer. All in all, it was a very pleasant experience, and the church members were very warm and friendly following the service.

The service concluded about 12:30, and knowing we had a scheduled tea engagement back at Crick at 3:30, a group of us (including Evan Donavan, Cara and Brendon) set out to see some of the city. Before too long I had sniffed out a second-hand book store, so we spent a little time browsing, but most of the time we walked around. It was a little cool and it drizzled pretty much all day, but I understand I better get used to that.

At 3:30, we made our way back to Crick for tea and chewed the fat for a while. It gets dark here in the winter between 3:30 and 4, so by the time we were ready to leave it was full-fledged night. So we made the 50 minute or so treck back across town to The Vines in the dark, but it wasn't a big deal.