"The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost."--G.K. Chesterton

NOTE: I wrote most of this entry last week, and I decided to post it now instead of starting from scratch, and thus most of the content took place two or three weeks ago. I had my last tutorial this morning, so I’ll post again soon to catch you up on the last week.




My life is a dream, and my heart is full.

To all of my beloved readers, I hope and pray that you are all living an abundant, beautiful life right now—the life you were created to live.

Here I am on the last day of November. Tomorrow will be the three-month anniversary of my relationship with the city of Oxford, its colleges and students.

There are seasons of life when we feel absolutely alive. We notice beauty. We love deeply and are loved for who we truly are. We feel that we have meaning, that our lives have purpose. I am in one of those seasons now.

On Friday the 11th, I went to my dear Irish friend Rachel's 21st birthday party. I gave her my favorite book (of course), J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey. The enormous poster on her bedroom door is further proof that our souls are the same; it is the original cover art for The Great Gatsby (her favorite book), the same cover art on my copy, which I first read in May 2010.
Hilda, our au pair friend from Holland, promised to play a song for Rachel. There’s a little connecting room in the corridor with glass doors and a tile floor; it has perfect acoustics. Another girl from the group—Bex, from Scotland—and I found Hilda after she had played for Rachel, and asked if she would play for us. We sat on the cold tile, and Hilda—in her patterned black tights and dress dotted with roses—sat cross-legged with her guitar (a guitar painted all over--even on the frets--with monsters and aliens and stars. She said before she left home her friends stole it and painted it, so she calls it her “monster guitar”). When H sings, it’s unreal. She sang a song she’d written, an Oscar Wilde poem set to music.



And I listened and thought, this cannot be real life.

After the song, Hilda and I went for a walk with Klaus, a Dutch student whom we had met, to look at the stars. We were in Somerton, the wealthier part of Oxford, full of large brick houses and quiet streets. We walked down by the canal, past the longboats that house some Oxford families. We walked on dark wet leaves under trees until the only lights were the stars. Ever since my quarter of Astronomy in the Seattle winter of 2009, I can find one constellation—Orion, because of his three-star belt—and I used to find him in Azusa all the time. There he was in Oxford, over our heads as we sat on the damp path and talked about God—the agnostic, the searcher, and the Christian.

The next morning (Hilda and I spent the night at Rachel’s), we made crepes and cried about leaving each other. If I had any money left, I would stay until Immigration kicked me out. That is what makes this feel like a dream—it is temporary, fleeting.


And in the midst of my absolute bliss here in Oxford, there are others who are not feeling the same. One guy in my program had to leave on Tuesday. A girl in my flat lost her grandpa this week.

A year ago I lost my grandpa. Over the past year, I’ve gone through several difficult circumstances. Some of you know the details; I won't go into that here. But this semester has been an incredibly healing experience for me. It feels like every little detail fell into place because God knew I would need it to be this way. To leave home for three months and live in a foreign country with an impossible workload could have been a disaster. It has been for some people in the past.

But for me it has not been; it has been quite the opposite of a disaster.

Last Wednesday, the APU students had a Thanksgiving Dinner with the president of APU and his daughter (who did the Oxford term in Spring, 2010, and is now studying Economics in London). We had made t-shirts with our faculty advisor’s face on the front and a list of his incredible accomplishments on the back, and we unveiled them at the dinner. Our president said, “You know, one of the signs of a healthy community is the decision to memorialize something together, and that’s what you’ve done here.” He said he’s never seen an Oxford group this close, one that feels like an APU program the way ours does.

Sometimes, we have a season of incredible blessings. The timing is perfect. I had lunch with a friend from APU two Thursdays ago, Heidi (one of the girls who went to Italy with me), and she said, “Don’t you feel like you can do anything here?”
It is the city of high expectations.

If Joan Didion had a “year of magical thinking,” I can have a term of magical thinking. Only mine has not been spent grieving and coping like hers was, but rather healing and loving. The one similarity between Didion's magical time and mine is that we have both spent the time learning more than we dreamed we could.


XX Jennifer

"You Can Make Anything by Writing"--C.S. Lewis

I suppose I should begin with something about the Ball last Friday.
Imagine the cocktail party from Breakfast at Tiffany’s; throw that into one of Gatsby’s parties; mix in a little highschool dance at the gym, complete with the sweat and hormones; put it in the mansion from Atonement; and douse the whole thing in sticky-sweet neon-colored alcohol.
That was the Union Ball.

The Union Society decorated their building so each room was different. Upstairs, there was a live jazz band and a small dance floor, and another room lined with bookshelves and plush velvet chairs had an enormous chocolate fountain. Downstairs was the main bar, the Statue of Liberty, and posters of New York City (the theme was New York, New York). Out in the courtyard, under a white tent, they served hot dogs, doughnuts, popcorn, and “candy floss” (cotton candy”). The tent connected to the dance floor, normally the debate chamber. The men were all in tuxedos and the women were in gowns, boas, fur, pearls, lipstick, and even a few Lady Gaga-esque couture dresses.
The dancefloor was packed for most of the night, and exceedingly entertaining (the British, you see, are not the best dancers, but they are very enthusiastic). Wandering the grounds, I met two grad students—one from Finland and one from Israel—and we talked for quite a while. The Finn could speak six languages, and we ended up conversing in Spanish for about a half-hour. The Israeli and I discussed Israel (obviously I was dying to hear an opinion for someone who’s actually lived in Israel, since everyone else seems to have one).
In the end, we picked our way through the alleyway leading to Cornmarket Street at 1:15am—past the entwined couples and clouds of cigarette smoke—and took a cab home. It was quite the experience!


Now, it’s the middle of fifth week, which means Fifth Week Blues.
Everyone has been exceptionally unmotivated. I’ve fallen into a 3am-11am sleeping pattern. It’s 1:23 right now and I feel wide-awake. I know the only remedy is to get up early one day, but all arguments are void before a warm bed.

But, to prove I’m not such a sluggard as you may think, I’d like to inform you that I wrote my statement of purpose for the first round of grad school applications this week.
Bam.

I spent the first half of this week trying to compile my last two essays into one piece (responding to claims that Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Gaskell’s North and South are anti-Christian) before realizing I should probably start reading Daniel Deronda, by George Eliot, since it’s 600 pages and I need to finish my essay about it by Friday night. I watched the BBC production of it, though (if you like Masterpiece Theatre, I recommend it. Gorgeous costumes, and Romola Garai makes a fabulous Gwendolen Harleth), so the reading should go by faster, since I'm just looking for quotes/examples not overall plot and themes.

This is essentially my fifth “finals week” in a row. If I had known I could handle this workload I would never have complained at APU. Each week I read between 450 and 650 pages of fiction—one or two novels—followed by parts of one or two books about the author, and between three and eight scholarly articles or chapters out of books that pertain to my essay question. This takes about three days. The next day and a half consists of drafting, revising, reading aloud, and editing my essay. Every Monday morning, I read my latest essay aloud to my tutor, who has already critiqued it in writing.
In your average American university, I would have at least two weeks to do this. Even as an English major, I had less than three papers like this per class per 16-week semester.
All this to say, I was glad to have the diversion of my Statement of Purpose this week, even if it put me a little behind.

Tomorrow I have my third Creative Writing tutorial, where I’ll read the first draft of my latest story. It’s almost completely in dialogue, which was HUGELY difficult for me since I’m most comfortable writing description.
I’ve been realizing how much writing changes the way you see the world. I can’t believe I stopped for so long. When I was a child, I wrote stories and poems all the time, but I haven’t done anything like that—except for journaling and an occasional creative school assignment—for years.
Now, I listen for juicy details in the conversations of people I pass on the street; I scribble metaphors on napkins or band-aid wrappers so I won’t forget them; I take a few minutes to write a descriptive paragraph about that barefoot girl in the library who looks like she just walked out of a Dutch painting (seriously).

Today, I had coffee at Blackwells with an Irish friend from church. She’s a third year studying English here, and she writes too. Speaking with her was such an encouragement; I couldn’t help but think of Anne of Green Gables’ “kindred spirit” philosophy. She never raises her voice, but has enormous, expressive blue eyes and the loveliest accent I’ve ever heard. I fall into a kind of sing-song English when we speak; it’s impossible not to imitate some of her phrasing and intonation. We talked about how we feel we belong in Oxford; it’s like we never realized how little we fit in with most people at home until we came here.
I asked her if she saw the moon when she was walking to Blackwells. It is full and the sky is clear, and I stopped on the sidewalk to take a deep breath in when I saw it, fat, round, and glowing creamy white. She laughed and said, “Jennifer, if I phoned any of my flatmates right now, I’m sure they wouldn’t know what the moon looks like right now.”
Writers notice the moon.

It’s such a blessing to find someone so far from home with such important similarities. Ok, maybe noticing in the moon doesn’t seem like an important similarity, but it’s an example of a Lewisian alignment of the minds, trust me.
Discussing what God’s been doing in each of our lives, what opportunities are coming up and what we are passionate about, was an incredible reminder that our God “is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine.”


XX Jennifer

P.S. Coming up this Saturday, a trip to Stonehenge and Bath!

"I believed in the existence of other and more vivid kinds of goodness, and what I believed in I wished to behold"--Jane Eyre, vol. I, ch. XII

Term is in full swing now. This was the first day of Third Week.

THIRD week, people. That’s out of eight. I’m already 3/8 done with Michaelmas term!
Time has been absolutely flying by; our program coordinator warned us that once it started our feet wouldn’t touch the ground, and he was right.


My primary tutorial is on 20th Century British women novelists. My tutor is fairly young (in her 30s), and we meet for one hour each Monday morning. She gives me a reading list and an essay topic, and I send her my essay on Sunday evenings. Our Monday meetings begin with me “reading out” my essay to her, and then we discuss it. Well, in theory we "discuss" it, but in reality she gives me a mini-lecture on all sorts of fascinating historical, political, and geographical context for whatever novel(s) I wrote about. Every so often, she asks me a questions, to which--since I generally don't know the answer--I reply, “uhhh I don’t know,” and then feel ashamed of my ignorance. And then, since she's so sweet and interesting, I become engrossed and forget about my shame until she asks another question.
Life in the tutorial system is about feeling humble and ignorant.


It's also about reading. LOTS of reading. For First Week, I read Charlotte Smith. In three days, I was in the libraries for about 30 hours. I would move from the English Faculty Library (which closes at 5pm) to the Bodleian (which closed at 7pm First Week, but now—thankfully—it stays open till 10pm), to the library at New College (which is open till 12am, seven days a week!). I have never read so much so quickly—well, maybe once, many years ago, when I read The Lord of the Rings. But I didn't have to write an essay about it in one day after I finished.


Second Week was even more difficult. I was reading Maria Edgeworth, and—unlike First Week—my essay question was about TWO novels. That meant twice as much criticism to read, and twice as much support to sort through in an essay. Also, my secondary tutorial began that week. My secondary (which meets every other week) is Creative Writing—Fiction. I meet in my tutor’s house, about a ten-minute walk outside the city centre. Our first assignment was to write a story that evokes Oxford. I wrote about Oxford at 2:30am (it’s quite different from the Oxford you encounter as a daytime tourist), based on my observations walking to the bus station the night I left for Italy, and walking home a couple of nights during Fresher’s Week.
Now, the last time I wrote a story was when I was about 11 years old, so I was dreadfully nervous at our first meeting. He had me read it out, and then pause after two pages so he could go fix our tea. During that awful pause, I sat in his little front parlor, sweating and thinking of how horrid my writing was, while the names and faces of Aurora Leigh and Bob Dylan and Thomas Hardy stared at me from the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining three walls.

He returned, and I finished the reading, and then things improved immensely. After giving me plenty of praise, he gently suggested revisions. My tutor is absolutely brilliant; he can pick out the good bits and shift the bad bits with a word or two. Also, he's hilariously random, and we talked about “Americanisms” (like “trash”), and The Great Gatsby, and how British actresses in Hollywood don’t actually speak like British women (apparently they don’t pronounce their “p”s and “b”s strongly enough, it just all melts together as they push air out their of barely-open mouths), and why girls go to clubs and call themselves "girls" instead of "women" (why DO we do that, anyway? The "girls," not the clubs). When I left, as I walked over the bridge on Botley Road, I could not stop smiling as the thought, “I’m a writer. I’m a writer,” sang out in my mind over and over. It’s an intimate, frightening experience to share your writing with someone. To receive praise, to be taken seriously, and to learn how to improve—it’s empowering and exhilarating.


Over the weekend of Second Week, unfortunately, the constant coughs of my housemates finally infected me, and I came down with a horrid cold. Last week was a blur of sleeping late, coughing in the Bodleian (where it echoes dreadfully), waiting in line to buy cough syrup at the drugstore—sinuses pounding, and writing a truly mediocre essay on Jane Austen. I read Mansfield Park and Persuasion, and watched the film versions of each. That part of the process was lovely, but trying to sort through the mountains of Austen criticism to answer an overly broad essay question was not an easy task, especially in the haze of having a bad cold.


It’s over now, though. Time is truly the enemy at Oxford, but once you accept that there’s only so much you can do, life is joyous. I’ve found an amazing church, St. Ebbes. It is what I would describe as an ideal church for me. The songs have lots of verses, we read a corporate prayer of confession, the preaching is challenging both mentally and spiritually, and, the people are lovely; I can’t believe how welcoming and genuine everyone is! I joined a small group, and one of my leaders is a, Irish Third Year reading English (translation: senior English major). The rest of the girls are a mix of years and majors, but we all got on beautifully. God is so good; I’m really happy to have met some British girls, since up till now I’ve only been spending time with American students.


Saturday, I went into London for the day. I met up with Bri, who was an RA with me last year. She’s an au pair in Spain for the schoolyear. We saw all of the major sights in London via bus, and ate some great food. When I arrived on the bus, Bri and her friend were still at breakfast at a friend’s house, so I went to a Pret (there’s a chain of cafes here called Pret a Manger, but everyone just calls them “Pret”s so they don’t have to attempt to pronounce French). I sat inside, reading Atonement, by Ian McEwan, and occasionally scribbling down some descriptions of the street outside (you know, in case I ever write a novel set in London). For an hour, I sat in there, absolutely blissful because I was in LONDON. Reading in a café in London on a Saturday morning, where Wicked is playing at a sparkling theater across the street, what could be better?


Sunday, I got up early to finish my Austen essay, went to St. Ebbes for the church service, and then went to a potluck lunch with the APU students. We’ve started having “family dinners” each week (Hannah, Heidi, and I were inspired after crashing the one at Dorothy’s place in Florence). This week, it was at our faculty advisor’s house. Everyone’s culinary skills blew me away; one girl brought a British friend, and she said, “Wow, if you tried to do this with British students everyone would just bring crisps.” We had everything from grilled ham and cheese sandwiches to strawberry trifle. Afterward, a few of us stayed to watch Notting Hill. ALL I want to watch these days are films set in Britain; too bad I didn't bring any!


Today, I was in New College library for about six hours (with a break in the middle to eat lunch in the gorgeous dining hall), reading a third edition of Jane Eyre (printed in 1848, I believe). It’s bizarre that you're allowed to study with books that old here. It's also bizarre that everyone actually studies in the libraries here. At home, no one goes to the library except during Midterms, Dead Week, and Finals because most students buy their books. At the Bodleian, you can’t check anything out, so you find a place to set up and stay there all day with your stacks of books. Even at the college libraries, where you can check books out, people stay inside and study.

The Bodleian is a wonderful place to study (though I prefer New College at night, since it's always warm in there). I sit in the Radcliffe Camera, under the stone arches, surrounded by dark shelves lined with ancient red and blue tomes. All around me at the T-shaped tables are doctorate students from India or China, old men with beards and mussed hair frantically scribbling notes, and blonde freshers sniffling because they’ve all caught colds from being so sleep-deprived.
And it seems that there’s always a ginger-haired rugby player or a dark-eyed European guy sitting across from me, which doesn’t help my concentration. I have to admit, I'm a sucker for a boy in the library.

The girls here wear boots, cozy sweaters, and all seem to have long, curly hair and glasses; the boys wear tweed jackets or cableknit sweaters. Everyone has a scarf, and most people have a hat. People actually dress for the weather here.
And after I take a break to go outside and sit on the stone steps to eat the nuts or granola bar I brought for a snack, it hits me: this is my favorite place to be. This city, this world of stone buildings and old books and chilly air is paradise to the girl who has always loved to read.

If you could follow me around Oxford with a camera, you’d probably catch me smiling for no apparent reason. Those are the moments when it hits me that I’m here; I’m studying in the place where great minds have been studying for 800 years. I love it, even when it means staying in the library until 11pm on a Friday night. Those moments, looking out the library window to the enormous stone chapel at New College, or turning down Turl Street on the way home to see a full moon over the St. Mary’s Cathedral, are the times when I take a deep breath and think,
This is bliss; there is nowhere I’d rather be but here.



And now, I’m going to turn on my heater, curl up in bed with some tea, and finish reading Jane Eyre.

~Jennifer the Oxfordian, professing Anglophile

That Week I Spent in Italy

Before term proper—Michaelmas Term (essentially Fall Quarter in Oxford) began, we had a travel break. Thanks to Gregory Seahurst Swim Club and Grand Central Bakery, I had enough money to spend a week in Italy.

Well, I think I had enough money. I won’t know for certain until I get to the end of term and find out if I can still buy food. But it’s Italy, so it’s worth it either way.

The day after our pre-term class ended, I went into London for the day with three other girls in an attempt to see a play at Shakespeare’s Globe. We found out that the Globe is only open through September, so this would be our last chance. We walked in and got £5 tickets for the matinee without a problem. Since we were a few hours early for the show, we went to the modern art exhibit at the Tate Museum for some culture.
Then, we went back to the Globe and stood one row back from the stage for about three hours, soaking up every word of Much Ado About Nothing.
This just happens to be my favorite Shakespeare play, and the one I’ve read the most.
Of COURSE.
God is so good.
I was standing there thinking, This is exactly what people did 400 years ago. This is where they stood. This is what they laughed at. It was the best theater experience I have had. EVER. The acting was phenomenal, and the venue was brilliant. We laughed; we cried; we “awww”ed at Claudio; and we “booooo”ed at Don John. And, of course, we went to a pub afterward and had some really great conversation.

RANDOM FACT: I watched the 1999 film version of Mansfield Park yesterday, and the actor who plays Mr. Yates is the actor who played Benedick!! And somehow, he was better looking onstage, 12 years later, than in the film.

The day after my trip to London—Saturday— was spent freaking out, packing, and freaking out some more. Traveling, especially for the first time in foreign countries without someone else planning everything, is stressful. Thank God that before I left I wrote out several passages on worry from the Bible in the back of my journal. They were running through my mind over the course of the trip, reminding me of God’s gentle control.

Italy—The Basics
Who? Heidi—who played one of Zangler’s Follies with me in Crazy For You last spring, and her roommate Hannah. Both easygoing middle children with really sweet hearts. They were the perfect balance to my first-time-traveling-detail-oriented-firstborn-girl anxieties.
When? We left on a bus at 3:10am, Sunday morning, and returned at 10pm the following Sunday
Where? The first two nights were at a B&B in Rome, next three nights in Florence (two at a Plus Camping hostel up at Michaelangelo, and the last one crashing in a student flat), and the last two nights in Vicenza at a hospitality house run by an ex-military couple.

Side-note about that 3:10am bus: Oxford at 3am is an interesting place. Two guys who live with me walked me to the bus station (for which I am SO grateful to them), and we saw a very different side of Oxford than the one daytime tourists see. My observations from that late-night walk ended up becoming my first short story for my creative writing tutorial.

ITALIA
What did we do?

Rome/Roma—

1. The Colosseum

2. The Roman Forum

3. The Pantheon

4. The Trevi Fountain (including having a random guy ask if he could take a picture of us)

5. The Spanish Steps. A thunderstorm broke while we were there, and we walked home in the pouring warm rain.

6. Vatican City—Saint Peter’s Square and the Sistine Chapel. We missed the memo on having to cover your shoulders and knees, so we spent an hour shopping for inexpensive Italian clothes (those words do not belong together) so they would let us inside.


Florence/Firenze—
1. Ate breakfast at the Ponte Vecchio (one of only four bridges in the world with shops built on the sides)

2. Put our hands in the lucky boar’s mouth at one of the markets

3. Took pictures at the Piazza de la Signoria (go watch A Room With a View right now).

4. Stood in line at the Accademia and the Uffizi so we could see Il David, Birth of Venus, and looooots of other famous works of art. It’s Florence; you have to see del arte!

5. Overlooked the city at Piazzale Michaelangelo as the sun set. We even witnessed a romcom-worthy proposal there!

6. Went to a house party on a rooftop! Ok, not a real party. It was a DINNER party, Mom. Somehow, I met up with one of my AWANA camp friends from sophomore year; I definitely hadn’t seen this lovely young lady for five years, but she and her housemates were models for hospitality. They even let us crash there for free that night! That may or may not be illegal in Italy, shhhhh.



Vicenza, Verona, e Venezia—
1. Spent an afternoon in Verona, visiting Juliet’s house. And, along with dozens of tourists—from 60-year-old women to 15-year-old boys—we felt up Juliet’s right breast hoping to be lucky in love. Ironically, the statue was only placed there in the 1970s, so it’s just a moneymaking ploy. Oh well.

2. Spent time with my cousin Renae and her family. Her husband is a soldier stationed in Vicenza, and they have two small children (SO precious!). I hadn't seen them in several years, so it was great to reconnect. We went to church on the Base Sunday morning, and they took us to the commissary where we could buy some American snacks for the plane (a welcome treat after a month of British supermarkets).

3. Showed up at the hospitality house and got a free meal. Also got to hang out with some American soldiers stationed there. Lots of man love, just like home.
The couple that run the house are absolutely precious. They made us waffles from scratch for breakfast. And they gave us detailed instructions on how to buy tickets at the “REAL little old Italian train station.” It was an experience. You have to buy tickets at the bar across the street ‘cause it’s an unmanned station.

4. Spent the day in Venice, wandering the streets and Saint Mark’s Square. I also spent several hours in the Doge’s Palace. After chatting with a couple from Denver in line, they paid for my ticket! We had a great time exploring the palace together. They were my surrogate grandparents, sharing their audioguide with me because it was “such a good history lesson.”
You know that moment in Anastasia where she’s singing “Once Upon a December” and the imaginary couples swirl out of the windows and dance with her? I was in that room. Well, not REALLY that room, because it’s in Russia, but I definitely had a moment like that. It was the largest room in Europe until sometime in the 1800s. Enormous! And it had balconies overlooking the Adriatic, which is the most beautiful blue sea I’ve ever seen. The tour included a visit to the prisons and a walk across the Bridge of Sighs.
I know why millions of people visit Venice every year. It is a city from a mysterious fairy tale, and every street is unique. Venezia, queen of the sea, was my favorite stop of the journey.

5. Had gelato for the 14th and final time. Yes, we had gelato twice a day, every day. We calculated how much we spent on it, and were horrified for a minute. But then we remembered that we stayed for free three nights, so that balanced it out. And really, it was a money saver, because we just had gelato for lunch every day, which was cheaper than buying real food.


There you have it, Italy—the high points.
And now you can FINALLY look forward to a post about Oxford academics!

Whitehaven: the Edge of England (and Land of Adorable Sheep)

I promised I’d write about Whitehaven, and so I will (even though so much has happened since I went there!).

A few weeks ago, I took the train up north to spend a long weekend in Whitehaven, Cumbria. I stayed with the family my mum stayed with when she came to England 28 years ago.

I walked to the Oxford train station early in the morning, only to miss my train by going to the wrong platform. I could not believe it! Missing a train produces the most awful sinking feeling, and I stood there forlornly on the platform wondering what on earth i would do.

Fortunately, my ticket was for “any route,” so I got the next train two hours later. I consoled myself saying that I had gotten it out of my system before going to Italy, where the trains might not be so accommodating.

The B-----s, H and J, picked me up from the Penrith station looking exactly the way I remember them from their visit when I was 12. On the way home from the train station, we stopped at the Rheged Center, which had an exhibit of costumes from British films like Sense and Sensibility and Shakespeare in Love. We had lunch there--broccoli soup and soda bread (which is AMAZING).

Arriving at their house in Whitehaven was the only time that I have felt homesick so far in England. I kept thinking, “Mom should be here,” and then they showed me a collage of pictures of my family on their wall. So, though I'd been rolling my eyes at Betsy's homesickness at the beginning of her Europe trip in Betsy and the Great World (immediately after she arrives anywhere she throws herself on the bed and sobs), in that moment I finally understood how she felt.

That evening, after I composed myself, we took a walk around Whitehaven Harbour, and I was consoled. There’s something about the sea that I can’t get enough of. It's enormous and constant, and the waves have a rhythm, but it is also different every time you see it--never quite the same color. That evening, it was a slick and shining periwinkle that melted into a broad golden strip of the sunset's reflection. Walking around, H and J gave me a history lesson about the coalmines and their tragedies, and about John Paul Jones’ failed invasion during the American Revolution (when his men deserted him to drink at the pub).

The next day, we set out for Muncaster Castle—supposedly one of the most haunted in England. On the way, we stopped at Wasdale, the place with the deepest lake, the highest mountain, the smallest church, and the biggest liar. We saw the lake and the church. This was a place my parents had gone, and it was strange to walk into the tiny church and recognize it from a picture I've seen of them.

What I remember about Cumbria most is the landscape. The hills are steep, and low, 300-year-old stone walls curve up and down them. Between those walls, hundreds of black, white, and brown sheep roam. They lie next to the roads or mosey up to the tops of the hills. I have never seen so many sheep in my life. Have ever noticed how adorable they are? They cuddle up together and doze in the rain. It's impossible not to drive by and exclaim, "Sheeeeeep!"

The land itself is the most beautiful I have ever seen. The rainsoaked grass and trees are deep green, and often topped with mist and clouds that are every shade of gray. In a way, you could say it looks like the Pacific Northwest. And yet, it’s so much more wild. The hills are called "Fells," and, as it’s the Lake District, many of these fells touch lakes, “meres,” or “waters.” Even the water is wild—choppy and slate gray; it's not difficult to imagine ancient seamonsters swimming in their frigid depths. Stone farmhouses are scattered along the fells, each more charming than the rest. I grew up reading authors who lived in places like this--James Harriot and Beatrix Potter--and because of their writing, I felt like I was returning somewhere I'd seen before. It was familiar like a land from a dream.

Muncaster Castle is also the home of an owl preserve, so I saw Hedwig and many of her friends, as well as the haunted bedroom in the castle. It’s an odd shade of deep blue-green, and always quite cold. Near the end of our self-guided tour, a scruffy old man in a cap and fleece jacket asked us if we were local. H said that I’d come all the way from Seattle, and the man said, “Well, if you look in the next room, you’ll see me on the wall.” It was Lord Penningtone himself! His family has owned the castle for generations, and he lives there now.

The next day, I went to Michael Moon’s bookshop, which was absolutely magical. Bookshelves are stacked from the floor to the ceiling, and there are piles of books all around the floor. I crawled down the hallway, picking out Thackeray, Chesterton, Shakespeare, and Dickens. I bought 17 books, several from the 1800s, including a beautiful little royal blue volume containing famous poems about flowers. H and J had to drag me out of the shop so we could get to the Beatrix Potter Museum. There, we walked through the tales of Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny, Squirrel Nutkin, and many more. There was a flowery potpourri scent throughout, and gentle flute music played in the background; H kept saying that it reminded him of the Shire in The Lord of the Rings.

That night, we went to Crosby’s for some real fish and chips. The fish was fabulous; doused with salt and vinegar and accompanied by mushy peas, it melted in my mouth.

One of the parts of the trip I enjoyed the most was listening to H and J talk about my mom. She visited them for the first time when she was exactly my age, and they immediately formed one of those relationships that can only be described as providential. They said it was like she had always been there; she would sit in front of their open coal fire, and it was like she was one of the family. It was a gift to listen to them describe the impact she's had on their lives.

The next morning, the J and I went to the neighborhood church, and then I took a train back to Oxford.

Aaaaand there happened to be an RAF guy from Scotland sitting next to me on the train, so I got to listen to that accent for a couple of hours, learning all about haggis and Robbie Burns nights.

"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty"--John Keats

Too much happens too fast here! Some new pictures are up on facebook of my visit to New College and to Hampton Court Palace. Brief descriptions of those times are below.

New College, Oxford
Rachel (one of my residents from last year) and I visited New College last week. Most of the colleges are fairly private, and New College is especially so. Each college has a porter who lives in an apartment near the gate and directs visitors. We told him we were going to be studying there for Michaelmas term, and he said, "Let me guess, you want to have a look around the place?" Yes, we did. And it was absolutely amazing. It looks like a castle. The grounds have flowers and trees everywhere, and there is an enormous lawn around a mound with steps like an Aztec temple. The mound is off limits to everyone except students, and shrouded in trees. Rumor is that we sacrifice students from the other colleges up there. They also say that if you stand on it and clap, it “claps” back. We couldn’t go in the chapel or the JCR (Junior Common Room), but we’ll see all of that when term starts in October. The cloisters are lovely and very quiet, and there are funny little gargoyles around the tops of the buildings. The New College gargoyles are featured on many, many postcards in Oxford.

Hampton Court Palace
Outside of London, this palace was built by King Henry VII, I believe, and was the home of several Tudor monarchs. Later, King William and Queen Mary renovated two-thirds of it. Finally, King George renovated the back section. It’s been remarkably well-preserved, and the gardens are extensive.
The fountain courtyard and the Chapel Royal (which, unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to photograph) were my favorite parts. I sat in the chapel for about 20 minutes. I lit a candle and prayed, and then sat and stared at the place. They had angelic music playing in the background; the ceiling was painted royal blue with little gold stars, and all of the molding was golden, with cherubs everywhere. The red carpet and wood paneling of the walls were beautiful, but everything made you want to look up. I can’t imagine going to church every week in a place that beautiful!


That's a bit of what I've been up to, but I'll post about my weekend in Whitehaven (and put those pictures up on Facebook) soon!

"I wonder anybody does anything at Oxford but dream and remember, the place is so beautiful"--William Butler Yeats

I'm in my flat eating honey, plain Greek yogurt, and raspberries. I feel like you can't understand the biblical honey imagery unless you've had honey and plain Greek yogurt. I want to live in a land flowing with milk and honey; what is sweeter than honey on your lips?

But now about Oxford, haha. I just got back from the Ashmolean Museum. Really gorgeous exhibits. I took pictures of jewelry across many centuries. I also stood face to face with a bust of Nero, gaped up at an enormous statue of my favorite goddess, Athena, and stood with my nose six inches from an Assyrian relief.

Last night, we went to the Turf Tavern. It's through a winding alleyway under Oxford's Bridge of Sighs (Hertford College). The wall in the back courtyard is from the 13th Century. Amazing!

One of our lectures yesterday was on Children's Lit authors circa WWI: Lewis Carroll, Kenneth Graham, A.A. Milne, J.M. Barrie, Rudyard Kipling, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien. Many of these authors had ties to Oxford that are evident in their writing. Carroll's Alice, for example, searches for little doors leading into wondrous gardens. Oxford is full of these. Many of the doors are just as tall as me, and lead into the gorgeous, lush grounds of the colleges. It's easy to feel like Alice, for many of them are locked, as if the city is keeping you out of Wonderland. Once you get in, it's not quite as pleasant as it seemed, for someone may well shout at you for a confusing reason. I haven't had that experience yet, but some of the other students here have been shouted at or laughed at on a bus or in a store. It can be a little harrowing walking around here, because you forget you're in a foreign country and all of a sudden you've offended someone by saying "cents" instead of "pence."

Though prices are expensive here, there's a market in Gloucester Green every Wednesday that is very affordable, if you can stand to walk a few miles with your arms full of groceries. They had HUGH bowls of apples, oranges, and bananas for £1 each. I was shopping for a flatmate and myself, so I carried 2 bunches of bananas, 7 nectarines, 6 oranges, 6 apples, 4 peppers, and 1 HUGE butternut squash (only 80p!!), around town all afternoon.

My first night here, I took a shower, but since then I've only taken baths. Many British homes still don't have showers. And, if you take longer than a 15 minute shower, you've used more water than it takes to fill the tub. I brought Maud Hart Lovelace's novel, Betsy and the Great World, with me. It's near the end of the Betsy/Tacy series, and tells of Betsy's trip to Europe as a 21-year-old in 1914. It's also impossible to read without wanting to take a bath. Have you ever taken a shower in the morning? Or when getting ready to go out in the evening? It is fabulous! Especially when you're living in a narrow, four-story flat in Oxford, Oxfordshire. Plus, next to drinking a steaming cup of tea, it's the easiest way to warm up while feeling British.

Our first travel break is coming up, September 23rd-October 2nd. If all goes as planned, I'll be in Italy for the second part of it with APU girls Heidi and Hannah. We might go to Italy for the whole time, but I'm also considering Paris for the first couple of days. I have another travel break from December 5th-13th, and I just received news that I may have a place to stay in Switzerland (cross your fingers!). It's amazing how random friendships from my past are popping up. God's definitely taking care of me. A girl I went to AWANA Camp with in 10th grade and have kept up with on facebook is in Florence for the semester, so we'll be seeing each other when I'm in Italy. If any of you have suggestions for things to see/do in Venice, Florence, Rome, or Verona, feel free to comment!

Before I go to the Continent, however, I'll have at least three amazing adventures here in England.
First, next Wednesday, we'll be taking a field trip to Hampton Court Palace (home of the Tudors). This will be my first castle visit!
Second, Saturday I'm going on a trip to the Kilns (C.S. Lewis' house!). Our tourguide is a G.K. Chesterton expert, and we're going to go visit a pub GKC used to frequent.
Third, next Thursday I'll be taking a train to Whitehaven, Cumbria, in the Lake District. My mum, as some of you know, went to Capernwray Bible School (Carnforth) when she was 20, and did a homestay with the Bowmans (Harry, Jennifer--for whom I'm named--and their sons Warren and Elton). They've visited us in the States a couple of times, and I'm going to stay with them Thurs-Sun. I spoke with Jennifer on the phone a few nights ago, and she listed some of the extensive itinerary they're planning for me, including a trip to see Beatrix Potter's house!

I really can't describe how grateful I am to live here for this term. There's so much to see--so much history--that it's overwhelming sometimes. Today, in the Ashmolean, I was looking at art from hundreds and thousands of years ago. I've been listening to lectures from absolutely brilliant scholars. I'm going to be in college with future authors and politicians, come October. It's a heavy and beautiful opportunity, and I'm still in shock that it's happening.



P.S. For pictures of some of the things I've described in this and previous posts, look at my Oxford (Beginnings) album on Facebook.

Exploring

Yesterday was orientation, and we received all kinds of information on where to shop and eat, how the term will go, and who/what our resources are. As an APU student, I'm studying through something called OPUS (Oxford Programme for Undergraduate Studies). The way this program works in the Fall is that for the month of September we go through a lecture series, with about 7-8 lectures each week from various Oxford faculty. During this time we write some papers, go on some field trips, and become acclimated to Oxford. The first week of October, we begin Michaelmas term (Fall Quarter, essentially). That's when the rest of the Oxford students arrive, along with the very hard work of tutorials. For those of you who don't know, Oxford, while it has some seminar classes, uses the tutorial system, where students meet one-on-one each week with their tutor (professor) to discuss the paper they have written for that week.

Last night, I could not sleep at all. By 1am, I got up and washed a bunch of dishes, read a magazine, and watched the first half of Breakfast at Tiffany's. I finally went to sleep around 3:30am. My alarm went off at 9, but I turned it off and went back to sleep.
Next thing I know, I'm waking up and looking at a clock that says 3:35. Yes, it was 3:35 in the afternoon (I confirmed with one of my roommates). And the APU students were meeting at the train station at 4pm for a bus tour. I threw on jeans and a t-shirt and ran out the door. Thankfully, Oxford has an excellent bus system, and even directionally-challenged American Jennifer can navigate it. Paying is another thing, however, since I can't decipher the coins without reading them yet. I got on a bus to the station, spent about five minutes digging the correct change out of my wallet, and made it just in time. The tour was fabulous. We got a map of the city, and our tickets are good for 24 hours. It's a hop on/hop off tour, so tomorrow I'm going to get on again and do some exploring. I cannot believe how beautiful the colleges are here. From the outside, the architecture is gorgeous, but that's nothing compared to the vast gardens and lawns inside. They say the easiest way to recognize a tourist is by hearing them say, "Where's Oxford campus; I want to see the university campus." There's no such thing. Oxford is made up of 38 separate colleges. They all share the University administration which examines students, confers degrees, and keeps the Bodleian Library up and running. The Colleges, however, admit the students and teach the classes. They're each beautiful and unique, and I can't wait to walk through a few tomorrow.

After the tour, we went to a pizza place and then to our APU Faculty Advisor's flat for dessert. It was really lovely. To get there, we walked along the canal that connects to the Thames, and past Port Meadow. Port Meadow is an enormous expanse of grass where the law permits any Englishman to graze their cattle and horses. It has a path through it where people run or bicycle.

It's becoming very difficult to keep an American accent. The more I'm around the British the easier it is to slip into it without thinking. We'll see if I sound different when I come home.

Signing off now; hopefully I'll sleep tonight!

Departures and Arrivals

I'm in my flat in Oxford, after 24 hours of traveling. Packing was a nightmare, but I finished and got out of the door somewhat in one piece.

Travel went without a hitch. In fact, it's very apparent that God is watching out for me. The worker at Seatac who checked me in didn't weigh my checked bag because he said it "felt right around the weight limit." I found out during my layover in Calgary that it weighed 64 lbs (that's 14 overweight). The lady in Calgary said she couldn't charge me because they should have done it in Seattle. But, she weighed my carry-on (who's ever done that before?), and it was overweight, so I had to shuffle things around a little. All in all, if they charged me for both bags as overweight, I would've had to pay $170.

Traveling alone wasn't lonely at all, as it turned out. In line to check in at Seatac, the woman in front of me asked me where I was going. 5 minutes later, she and her husband (who were going on a Rick Steeves tour of Europe) declared me their adopted daughter for the trip. We waited for our flight together. In Calgary, I hung out with a recent UW graduate who was meeting a friend in London to travel before she starts grad school in 3 weeks. We talked about travel, the Philippines, and school during the 7 hour layover.

I got out of the airport and managed to find the bus to Oxford. I fell asleep on the bus, and woke up incredibly confused. Oh yeah, I'm in England. That's when the jetlag was hitting me. But I forced myself to stay up, and my goal is to stay up at least 5 more hours.

The appliances in my flat are pretty new; the kitchen's gorgeous, and there's lots of natural light in the rooms. There are 8 or 9 of us in this house, and I got to pick between 3 rooms. I'm on the bottom floor, and my room has its own sink. I'm just probably going to need earplugs, because sound carries here, and we're right on the street.

Time to go unpack!