Snow!

My wish has come true. This morning I woke up to a beautiful, pristine layer of snow over the ground outside. About time! It's been absolutely freezing in Oxford this past week, and what better way to embrace the arrival of winter than snow? Only a half-inch, granted, but that's more than we often get in New Mexico! (Not to mention California...)

This week being the last week of classes, I've got several final papers hanging over my head, but I couldn't resist: I bundled up and set out for a lively walk around Christ Church meadow, camera in hand. This was my first encounter with snow since I got my cochlear implant this past summer, and the sounds of it were amazing: crisp crunching, squishing where it'd turned slushy on the road, the wind whipping past. Lively, chill, and refreshing. The banks by the river had taken a good dusting, tendrils of ice had begun to form, the snow clung to the trunks and branches of trees, and behind it all the spires of Oxford loomed, keeping watch. I felt inexpressibly happy. Add on the cup of hot chocolate I bought from a chocolate shop on the way back (best I've had in a long time), and it was a magical morning.

An Apology

Dear British stranger, dear Oxford student: You speak, and what is it I see in your face? Not words, certainly. A shadow, fleeting and unfamiliar. Clipped vowels, an "o" seemingly changing to an "a," making me yearn to change my interpretation's dull light. I search your eyes, and there find the way things might be - intelligence, a penetrating gaze. But the world lurches beneath my feet, and I am uncertain, floundering, undone.

Christmas Spreads to Oxford

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that the Brits really get into Christmas. I mean, this is the country that produced A Christmas Carol, after all. London is aglow, as are other towns I've visited in recent weeks, such as Winchester and Canterbury. Signs have been up on restaurant and pub windows for ages, at least since I first arrived here in September, advertising that patrons should "book early for Christmas dinner." I guess that's a big thing here? Shop windows have had Christmas displays for several weeks, and last night the cheer spread to Oxford, as a range of Christmas lights and nighttime holiday markets opened for the weekend.

The smell of mince pies and mulled wine was in the air, and there was a stand selling hot chocolate brandy that I was tempted to try (but didn't, alas). There were kiddie Christmas trains and rides, and merchants were selling Christmas-themed goodies and trinkets. A machine even sat in the corner, puffing out fake snow. With the cold nipping in the air, I'm starting to get into the holiday spirit!

Soane Museum and Christ Church Regatta

Some days in Oxford feel like I'm overscheduling myself to the brink. Today was one of those.

This morning I was off to London for an architecture class field trip to the Soane Museum, the rather eccentric home of preeminent 19th century British architect John Soane. In describing this building, let me emphatically repeat myself: eccentric beyond belief. Photography wasn't allowed inside, so I only have this lone shot of the exterior, but in any case I don't think pictures could capture the quirky feel of the entire building. John Soane was a man who lived for architectural whimsy, it seems, and who was also captivated by the ideals of his own designs, especially in terms of the romantic and the sublime. His house (actually, three connected London townhouses) is a rabbit warren and mirror-gallery and exhibit-hall of antiques and unique architectural inventions. The ceilings vault and curve, there are unexpected nooks in the corners, walls give way to hidden painting displays, and the entire back portion is devoted to a gallery containing ancient stone fragments, contemporary paintings, and a chamber where Soane liked to imagine that a solitary monk lived. Light plays throughout the building in odd ways, shining through colored glass here before creating an intentional sense of gloom there, all striving toward a strangely dramatic and melancholy mood. The oddest part is that the house was this way when Soane lived there over 150 years ago, and has only been preserved for the museum! Probably the strangest house I've been to, by far.

After a whirlwind tour of the Soane Museum, during which I got to see some fun London streets and squares I hadn't encountered before, I headed right back to Oxford. The reason? This week is the annual Christ Church novice regatta, in which my Corpus Christi boat was participating. I say was because, unfortunately, we lost this afternoon after winning yesterday's second-round race by a whopping six lengths. No quarterfinals for us tomorrow. But no regrets: we rowed as well as we ever have, and I (for once) got to experience a competitive sport that doesn't involve horses. Rowing all-out for the duration of a race is hard! I go back to the saddle with a fresh appreciation for other sports, as well as a newfound sense of gratitude that my normal life doesn't involve horribly early mornings turning into an icicle out on a pitch-black river. Rowing is quintessentially Oxford, though, and I'm happy I embraced that.

Photo by Celine Zeng. I'm the one in the stroke seat. How strange that I'm leaving so soon, yet these Oxford people will continue to go about their lives...

A British Thanksgiving

I admit it. Today, Thanksgiving Day, has been one of my most homesick since I arrived in Oxford. It's the first Thanksgiving I've ever spent away from my family - and I'm thousands of miles away from home in a country that doesn't even celebrate the holiday, at that. Today has made me remember all of the small things I miss about New Mexico, and it's been easy to keep wishing that I were back there, if only for one day.

That said, the Stanford-in-Oxford program has many amazing students, and our house Thanksgiving dinner (even if not quite the same as home) ended up being a great success, as well as one I think I'll always remember. Each person brought one dish, no small feat given the cramped nature of the house (bad for so much cooking going on at once!) and its many nook-and-cranny kitchens. I spent most of the late afternoon and evening racing around the house baking cookies and whipping up mashed potatoes, probably making up for the calories with all the stairs I climbed. The air outside was very chill, one of the coldest days in Oxford so far, but the house soon came to feel like a furnace, boiling and swirling with food smells and activity. Finally, once the turkey finished around 8pm and we'd crammed all our hot bodies and steamy dishes into the downstairs kitchen, it all snapped into place.

I was impressed by how good the food ended up being, and toss in a bit of wine and some interesting conversation... ahhhh. It wasn't my usual Thanksgiving, but did achieve the contentment and comforting air that I've always associated with the holiday. Oxford has given me so much to be thankful for, indeed.

The Case of the Black Swan

Random photo of the day: a black swan! These rare birds originate from Australia, but there were a number of them at Leeds Castle this weekend - apparently one of the former estate owners was an avid exotic bird collector, and her aviary still exists on the grounds. England has enough swans (which I'm a bit obsessed with, despite being chased by one near the Thames a few weeks back), but the black ones have a strange, singular charm. I found them beautiful.

Harry Potter Puts Me in the Thick of Things

I. Love. The. U. K. Today's reason: because I got to go see the new Harry Potter movie, captioned!

I won't take up space in this post talking about the film itself (which was pretty good if a bit scattered at times) - what really pumps me up is that this is the first time, ever, that I have been able to go to a film during its opening weekend. That bears repeating: the first time EVER. For someone who has so often felt frustrated and left out of pop culture because of lack of accessibility, this is huge. At home in the US, it takes seemingly forever for the captioned version of a film to hit the theaters, and then by that time most of the buzz has died out. There's still a big buzz about Harry Potter (so much so that, walking out of the theater, I bumped into a group of other Stanford students on their way in to see it), and, for once, I am part of that buzz. For once, I have seen a movie at the same time as everybody else, and even before. I don't know what makes the accessibility options so much better in the UK, but they are, hands down. YESSSSSSSS.

That said, seeing Harry Potter while studying abroad in England was especially fun, because I recognized some of the English-type scenery in the film - plus of course London. One of the London streets featured early on in the storyline, I'm pretty sure I saw just last weekend. And the actors' curiously British mannerisms? Yep, I recognize those too.


One of the many Harry Potter ads all over London - this one from a bus stop near Marble Arch. Hey there, Tower Bridge in the background! I know you!



Leeds Castle, Canterbury, and the White Cliffs of Dover

So the horizons of England keep opening up before me... Today's adventure: a trip all the way from Oxford to London and through the countryside of Kent, to the banks of the English Channel itself!

I got up at a rather unearthly hour to catch a bus to London for a day tour heading out from Victoria Station - making the trip alone this time because of irreconcilable issues with my friends' schedules, but so much the better. It ended up being a good day to go solo for a number of reasons, not least of all the opportunity for self-reflection and taking obscene numbers of pictures. My first stop was Leeds Castle, an absolutely resplendent medieval castle built on top of a small lake. The walls extend out over the water, and the view (both from inside the castle and outside) is so magical, it's like something out of a fairy tale. Plus I have personal reasons for liking this castle: besides supposedly being one of the most breathtaking in England, it was the topic of a final class project my little sister did a few years ago. She researched and constructed a scale model of it (which is still around our house somewhere - even if useless, things like that take so much work you never want to throw them away), so I felt a bit surreal seeing it in person.

After Leeds, I was on my way to Canterbury, which I'd mostly wanted to visit out of interest in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Though I haven't taken a class in Chaucer yet, I almost certainly will for my English major, and hopefully having seen the place itself will help! Canterbury was charming, a bustling little medieval town, very similar to Winchester and York. I visited the cathedral, which was the site for many pilgrimages back in medieval times, and then roamed around the city, seeing the walls/river/shops/ streets/etc., and trying to imagine what it would have felt like to live there centuries ago. To have that tiny place be your whole world. It's hard for us twenty-first century people to picture.

Canterbury is surprisingly close to the ocean, and after getting back on the bus a final time I ended up at Dover and the English Channel. The white cliffs are indeed white, and jump up so suddenly out of rolling English countryside that the effect is startling. It's as if the British Isles, without warning, have decided to throw themselves into the sea. Being from the American West, though, I have to say I was a bit underwhelmed by the scale of these cliffs, which I'd imagined as being massive. (Hello, Grand Canyon - hello, Rocky Mountains and Yosemite - you knock this British pretender out of the water!) In terms of scale, the West trumps all. Still, the cliffs of Dover were neat to look at, and I was unreasonably pleased to have set foot on the banks of the English Channel - and seen France way over there on the other side!

Now I'm nestled back at Oxford, dead tired, and heading off to bed...

A Horsey Post

I miss this. Who wouldn't?

But the good news is I made it out to play polo again today. The weather actually warmed up a bit, and I felt more confident with whacking balls than I have before - which, believe me, still doesn't mean I'm good! We got to play a bit, three-on-three, and the action of sweeping across an arena surrounded by other pounding horses and riders, eyes fixed on the small orange ball, did get quite thrilling. This was only my third time playing polo, or indeed getting on a horse, since arriving in the UK - something that I find a bit disappointing, but that doesn't seem all that unusual for student life here. I've found that sports and hobbies aren't as all-consuming in the UK as they are in America, even at the university (varsity) level. Athletic clubs and teams aren't nearly as well-organized, and I haven't found them that physically grueling, even rowing. Other Stanford students here have echoed similar sentiments. For Oxford students, "sport" isn't as central to life (you won't find anyone here cheering "Beat Cambridge!" like Stanford students do "Beat Cal!"). For one thing, there's too much schoolwork to worry about. And in general, these students seem to have different goals and a different work-life balance. I've enjoyed striking this new balance through travel, and with some upcoming day trips and time running short, I likely won't be able to make it out to play polo again. Still, I'm glad to have had the opportunity.

That said, in two weeks I will be done with schoolwork and the Oxford term - then in three weeks I'll be on my way home! Yikes, time to start cramming in some last-minute adventures!

Lessons Learned About Writing

Because heaven knows I've been doing enough writing in Oxford, and because I'm one of those strange people who likes to reflect on the process of composition, here are a few:

- Write to rewrite. Yes, I knew this before. It's one of those maxims that everyone repeats about writing. But never have I realized it so intensely, truthfully, personally. The first draft doesn't matter. Don't write expecting every sentence to turn out perfectly. Shut down the inner censor and throw everything you've got at the page, allowing it to be hideous and wandering and nonsensical if it wants. It's all for the next draft. With enough time, out of all that rubble a pearl will emerge.

- Free writing and free association is a mysterious, wonderful thing. Again, something I knew before, but once I abandon myself to the first draft and allow the mushed-up-word-soup to come, I find myself stumbling across insights I never had before.

- If you have an idea, write it down. Straight away. Don't let it slip out of your fingers, don't rely on your mind or your memory or the muse to strike the inspiration again.

- The essay is about the discovery. Often, I cannot nail down a specific thesis until after I've finished writing something, or until I'm well into it, and this is honestly the way it should be. The word "essay" itself means attempt, something I've been reminding myself of a lot lately. I start out with an idea of what I want to say, a vague train of thoughts that loosely relate, and only through the probing and thinking and writing process can I lash them all together, drawing out a meaning that I never could have predicted.

- One essay can never say it all. Or book, either. So frustrating, the limitations of words and intelligible, coherent arguments. But also exhilarating: one can always return to it, over and over again.

- Be disciplined. Tight prose, always. But not so tight that it bursts under the strain.

- It's okay to let passion and fervent language leak into your academic work. Sometimes better, in fact.

- Read, read, read. And then read some more.

I suppose I did know all of this before I came to Oxford. But not so clearly. It's like returning to an old draft: the ideas are there to begin with, but only time and effort can bring them into sharper relief. Now, on to next week's tutorial paper!