Missing all that Beantown action
I shouldn’t be complaining as I’m in the best city, living the life. I go to Belgium tomorrow and Netherlands after that, but I cant help but wish I was able to have a pint with friends and watch playoff hockey.
Hello London
On Thursday we had a fun day trip to London with the OSAP office. We were loaded on the coaches very early in the am, Rikki slept through most of the trip as we had been up late the night before, and arrived at Westminster Abbey around 10am due to some traffic jam on the road.
First sight out of the bus. Not bad, eh?
We got our instructions and briefly toured the outside of the Abbey as it wasn’t exactly part of our itinerary. The purpose of our trip was to visit the Churchill War Rooms, which houses the original Cabinet War Rooms, the wartime bunker that sheltered Churchill and his government during the Blitz.
Entrance to the War Rooms
It was a fascinating hour. We learned quite about the government’s efforts during the war and I was surprised to learn how fragile the bunkers really war. It was a great trip and I definitively recomend it for any history or WWII buffs out there.
Afterwards, we had plenty of time left before we were to head back to the abbey to catch the coach back home. Before heading over to a pub for some pints and lunch, we decided to stop by Buckinham Palace. Just to our luck, we were able to catch the changing of the guards just as it was about to start, what a treat!
Nice close up of the action
We also briefly visited Trafalgar square but our empty stomachs wouldn’t allow any more time for touristy stops. We headed over to a local pub and had some delicious burgers and pints. We had over an hour to spare before heading back to the coach and while some people chose to wonder about in London, Rikki, Maya, Jon, David and myself opted for some downtime at St. James park. A choice I do not regret since the park is absolutely gorgeous.
We walked about for a bit and saw some beautiful foliage and birds, until we decided to settle down on a nice open spot where loads of people were having picnics or just sitting about in the sun. We noticed that there were these lawn chairs scattered about the grass everywhere and no one seemed to be using them. So we all took one and made ourselves comfortable. Just as David was pulling out a bag of nuts out of his backpack, a gentleman showed up out of nowhere and asked us for 5 pounds. I guess we hadn’t realized that the lawn chairs werent free for our enjoyment. We jumped out of the chairs to the grass, apologized and cleared up the mix up. Now it made sense why no one was using them!
Happy kids at the Park
It’s a nice day for a garden party
It was such a lovely day today. The sun was out and in typical English fashion, everyone one and their mother was out to enjoy it. Maya and I started off by checking out the LGBT parade going down Cornmarket street. Then, we met upwith all the other students in our program for the New College garden party. There was free ice cream, popcorn, Pimms of course and a large table with an assortment of “American” style barbecue goodies; hamburgers, hot dogs, fries, cole slaw and desserts.
It was nice to just sit and enjoy some pleasant conversation in the sun in the company of wonderful people. Some of us are recent arrivals, like gus who is destroying a hot dog in this picture, and others like Betty and Jennie have been here for two semesters and are headed out this week. It was a bittersweet day since we were reminded that our time here is about to come to an end. I will miss these lovely afternoons at New College gardens the most…
It’s the small things…
If music be the food of love, play on.
Each morning, there is a different musician at the corner of my street playing some tunes, today was this pianist. Waking up to music is one of the things I’ll miss most about my flat in Oxford.
A very Merry unbirthday to us!
birthday cake the girls got me
I just realized I didn’t make a birthday post for myself or my roommate. Our birthdays were pretty close together. On May 6th I turned 26 and since I had tutorial the next day, I opted for a more “mature” celebration. I had been craving some Mexican food (There aren’t places that you can go for a nice sit down dinner, the closest thing is the burrito place next door) and opted to have my birthday lunch at Las Iguanas, this very hip Latin American fusion restaurant.
The food was great. The restaurant puts a modern spin on traditional dishes from each country in Latin America. The mango and brie pastelitos were to die for! My roomates were so sweet and got me a surprise cake, I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned how much I love these girls. I’m so lucky to have such great flatmates. Afterwards, went across the street to Bubbly Bar for some hookah and ended the evening back at our flat for some drinks and card games. As soon as everyone left around midnight, it was back to studying until the wee hours of the night.
Rikki opted for a bigger bash since it was her 21st birthday. We got everyone together for dinner at Giraffe and then went over to St. Giles, the Christ Church annex house where some of the exchange students live, to pre-game for a night out at Lava, a local nightclub. It was an interesting experience for sure. At one point, they were playing the Pokemon theme song and everyone was tearing up the dance floor. The place is quite large and at some point I ended up getting separated from everyone else and walked home on my own. Despite that, it was a super fun night!
the Tutorial
exhaustion after working 12hrs straight on an essay
I know that I have yet to go into detail about the Oxford tutorial system. Honestly, we are so consumed with our studies that it is difficult to find the time to go into detail about the experience. But, after spending 7 hours on a plane (I had to fly home for commencement and work on 2 essays while I was there!) finishing an essay to be reviewed just 3 hours upon landing, I think it is the right time to go into more detail about the tutorial system.
It is a very individualized system provides unrivaled opportunity of study in concentrated topics within a field. My degree is in Psychology and Latin American Studies and when arranging for my tutorials, I could not simply pick a broad subject such as Latin American Literature, it had to be concentrated within a theme or author (I have a primary tutorial in Brazilian literature narrowed to a specific period and theme). Once you have your tutorial topics decided, you arrange which will be your ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ subjects, consisting of nine and five tutorials respectively, spread out at roughly weekly and fortnightly intervals in the term. Typically, take one primary and one secondary course but since there is absolutely no pattern to the system, I actually ended up with three primary tutorials.
In a nutshell: you have on introductory meeting where you get to know your tutor, talk about your goals and set up your meeting dates and times for the term and you are sent home with your first assignment and reading lists. Again, there is no normal pattern to this, one of my tutors sent me all my assignments for the term and meeting dates 2 weeks before I had arrived while my roommate didn’t hear from her tutor a week after she had gotten here!
our motto
Tutorial meetings can be very informal, you might meet at the tutors college or even at their home! They general last about one hour, at which point your written work will be read, aloud to your tutor (the first time was absolutely terrifying) and commented upon, with discussion frequently branching out beyond the original topic to embrace cognate areas as well. Most often, you will leave with an extensive reading list and title for the next essay (I received one the other day with over 20 items). Some tutors require that you submit your work before your next meeting while others require that you bring an extra copy to the meeting.
Fun fact: inboxes here are called pigeon holes.
Your success depends solely on extensive independent work with minimal guidance from the tutor. There is no spoon feeding! The system teaches you how to teach yourself the material.Tutors expect you to come prepared to discuss and critically analyze the information you have acquired.My experience thus far has been that there is very little talking from the part of my tutors, I have to come prepared to engage in deep discussion about the ideas presented in my essays and provide solid evidence of how I formed these conclusions. They know exactly how much work you have put into the assignment and for the most part they expect you to go beyond the suggested readings.
I won’t sugar coat the truth. The system is demanding but the rewards exceed its demands. I have never studied so hard in all of my academic life and have learned more in just a few tutorials than I would’ve learned in a full semester. It takes time to get adjusted, especially to the amount of work you have to put in on a daily basis (thus me writing essays on the plane back here) but it sets you up to for a very successful future. Grad school is going to seem like a piece of cake after this intense experience!
A traveler without observation is a bird without wings.
Oh the quirks of Oxford…
Totus mundus agit histrionem
Thursday we took a fantastic trip back in time to Stratford-upon-Avon and visited the birthplace of William Shakespeare. Stratford is a quaint medieval market town that lies on the river Avon (it is the largest town belonging to the district of Stratford-on-Avon and uses the “Upon” to differentiate itself) near the Cotswolds, in South Warwickshire.
We boarded the coach early in the AM with the newly arrived groups of summer exchange students. I was happy that we had the same guide that took us around Oxford, Kevin is very knowledgeable and entertaining. We arrived just under 2 hours to a very cold and rainy Stratford. On our ride there, we had been given maps of the town and instructions on how the day would proceed.
We would be taking a walking tour of the town upon arrival and would have a number of hours to explore on our own before watching the 7pm stage production of As You Like It at the Royal Shakespeare theater. As soon as the coach pulled up to the rest stop, we were separated into groups and we were sent off on our tours with theater tickets in hand.
The tour was brief, it covered the main attractions and an entry to the Holy Trinity Church, Shakespeare’s baptismal and burial site. Dating back to 1210, the church is the oldest building in Stratford and England’s most visited parish church. Siting on the banks of the river Avon, the parish is strikingly beautiful both from the outside and in. We spent a long time admiring the stained glass windows inside, even to the untrained eye one could observe the centuries the parish had lived through by observing the variation in painting styles. Another stunning feature we came across were the 15th century misericord seats, these benches covered in intricate carvings ranging from religious to secular and mythical storylines. Afterwards, we grabbed a quick lunch at Garrick inn, a quirky pub that carries a lot of history and is rumored to be the oldest in Stratford. After some traditional fish and chips, we explored some of the local shops and attractions. We managed to go to a Tudors exhibit, ghost tour, teddy bear museum and the Stratford Butterfly Farm which is supposed to be the largest tropical butterfly paradise in the UK. I had a great time at the butterfly farm. For starters, it was nice to be out of the cold and inside someplace warm but the whole experience was very pleasant. We spent quite some time there and decided to head over to a two named pub (originally named Black Swan and later renamed Dirty Duck by American GIs camped at the river during WWII and sign boasts one name in each side) to stay warm until curtain time. 
The show was was outstanding. The company re-told the story of Rosalind and Orlando with a contemporary folky vibe, some early songs re-written from their Shakespearean form and others newly composed for the production. It was something I can only describe as Shakespeare meets Mumford & Sons, so refreshing and authentic! At one point, the talented Alex Waldmann, who played Orlando, picks out a parody of “I Walk The Line” on a piano accordion. The cast brilliantly delivered the lessons of love, life and the world which are always salient in Shakespeare’s work; Especially Pippa Nixon who portrayed one of the best Rosalinds I have ever seen. This was by far one of the most memorable performances, it is one of those productions that one could easily watch again and again. Check out the clip below and have a taste!
Nina goes to Oxford 