So Now I've Been Here a Week

Left: "The Hall" (dining) of Christ Church college Below: Looking at Tower Bridge

Left: Eric and I in London

Below: A typical Oxford street

Left: Christ Church Cathedral

Below: Scholars thinking. Amy (left) and Alana also go to Covenant.

Left: The Thames beside Port Meadow

Below: Inside The Hall at Christ Church

Ruins of a nunnery near Port Meadow.

Greetings! Much has happened in this past week. Orientation is over, and this week we begin lectures and tutorials. My first tutorial assignment is a six page essay examining some issues in Jane Eyre. This will begin a routine of essays due each week, regarding Victorian Literature. My secondary tutorial is in Creative Writing and will be held every other week. Besides tutorials, which are always one-on-one sessions, I'll attend about four public lectures per week, and also one itegrative seminar with other SCIO students. My workload here will largely consist of reading and writing.

Part of our orientation last week included a fieldtrip to Christ Church College, which was beautiful. We were given a tour of the cathedral there, which is the only cathedral in Oxford. To qualify as a cathedral, a church must have a bishop's seat (Latin cathedra=seat, chair). Another highlight of Christ Church was seeing the staircase and the great hall that are used in the Harry Potter movies!

Almost every day since I arrived I've made some sort of excursion into the city or our surrounding neighbourhood. It's handy that we in Crick live only about five minutes from the city center. Oxford is beautiful in any kind of weather, and there is always so much to explore.

Yesterday we went on a second fieldtrip, this one a little farther away to London. London is an amazing city, despite anything you've ever heard to the contrary. I was fascinated by the mix of old and new throughout the city, rather than there being "old" areas of town and "new" areas, as you'd see in other parts of Europe. We travelled through London mostly on foot, seeing quite a lot in a condensed time. Highlights included Buckingham, Parliament and Big Ben, Scotland Yard, the balcony from which Charles I was beheaded, Trafalgar Square, The National Gallery, Tower of London and Tower Bridge, the London fire Monument, and even the oldest coffee shop in London. We only saw the outside of these places (with the exception of The National Gallery), and heard a little history about each. We finished off the day with evensong at St. Paul's and supper at The Friendly Inn in Chinatown.

Well, this concludes today's post. Once again, thanks for reading, and tune in next time for more of Elsie's Adventures in Oxford.