Oxford, Punting, and Palaces

Our entire program spent the last week living at University College Oxford.

We took our normal classes with our normal professors (who already are 'tutors' from Oxford), but we lived in the University College dorms and did a bunch of activities.

The most eventful of the activities was probably something called "Punting." It is the picture where I am standing on the back of a boat. The deal is that four people sit in the boat and one person stands on the back and attempts to propel / steer the thing with a really long metal pole. The only issue was that we were only supposed to do it for an hour, but (long story short) we got kind of discombobulated and lost and ended up taking about three. There was even one point where Tessa got out of the boat and Nicole and I took turns sitting in the front, each of us holding an end of the pole as Tessa pulled it along from land.

The food was great in Oxford! Well... not so much at the actual school, but when we went out to eat, it was phenomenal! Our group even got to meet up with my friend Mary (who is going to Oxford this semester) one night for gourmet pizza, which was really nice.

We climbed to the top of the tower on the Church of St Mary the Virgin and got gorgeous views of the entire city.

The last night we had a lovely three course dinner... all fancy and everything. There was goat cheese and roasted figs... followed by steak on baby leeks, potato, and roasted cherry tomatoes... and ending with pear and something desserty thing (that was really really good). We all got dressed up, and attempted to eat with the correct fork and drink from the correct glass all night. It was really nice.

Today we came home, but on the way we stopped at Blenheim Palace on the way. It is a HUGE palace... I am not exaggerating! There is a lake that took a thousand men a year to dig by hand and gold encrusted everything and beautiful paintings. The best part, however, was the gardens! It reminded me of being at the Fells in New Hampshire or the Arboritum in Dallas, TX. Anyway, it was beautiful, and I'm sorry that I'm skipping a lot of details about this trip, but I have to go pack because I leave with my housemates for Italy tomorrow! SPRING BREAK!

Monday

This is the first time in two weeks that I have actually been able to sit down and say that I don't have a paper that I should be writing. I handed in the final one this morning after completing the finishing touches last night at about 1am, and I am so happy to be done with papers for a while! I have developed a very persistent cough, but other than that I am feeling great! I get to student teach twice this week, tomorrow and Wednesday and then on Friday our entire program is off to Oxford for a week. I'm starting to feel relatively at home in this city, which is a very good feeling as well as a slightly scary one... so I think it will be good to have two weeks away from Bath (although I love it, don't get me wrong).

I also just opened my bedroom window for the first time since we have been here! It is about 50 degrees and gloriously sunny. This morning I had Education in England, where we talked about gender inequality in schools in England. Surprisingly, we talked more about the underachievement of boys and how to curb that than the fact that it is becoming a very large trend for schools to be completely staffed (lunch ladies, maintenance, and teachers) by women, but run exclusively by men. I am sure that it is happening in America as well, but it has become more and more apparent to me because my teaching placement school is in that position. Then I had my Jane Austen class, which went really well, considering that I don't usually enjoy myself. We did a close reading exercise called a "silent discussion," where we were in groups of three, each group picked a sentence from a specific part of Mansfield Park, and then we passed the quotes around and everyone made literary comments on them. I found it more interesting than our class has ever been before.

Then we (a few housemates and I) went grocery shopping and made lunch. It really is nice to feel as independent as we are allowed to feel over here. To go grocery shopping for the week, do laundry, clean my room, and know that I am going to be able to get up tomorrow and go to school and at the very least see a tiny glimpse of what the rest of my life might actually be like is wonderful.

To anyone who I haven't written a postcard back to yet, I'm very sorry and I promise that I'll get them out this afternoon. Thank you to everyone who has sent mail, it is so much fun to get!

Week Six

I'm sorry that I haven't written in so long everyone. This last week and next week are "paper" weeks and I have not been doing anything particularly interesting besides writing papers for my classes. I had Jane Austen on Monday, Patterns of Power on Thursday, and I have Education in England on this coming Monday. The most exciting thing is that I get to go to my teaching placement twice next week instead of just once. I also received news last week that I got the residential life position that I applied for for the 2010-2011 school year, which is very exciting. I will be living in the Northwoods apartments, and I get to pick my housemates (which is a huge bonus). I'm sorry that I don't have anything very exciting to report, but I will keep you all updated! Thank you so much to all of you who are sending me cards, it is really so nice to get mail! Love, Emily