Catch Up

I thought I should take a second to catch everyone up on what's been going on in my life. I haven't written in about a week, mainly because I have had so much writing and reading to for all my classes. Though the summer term is winding down, the homework is picking up! I have two final papers and a final project (don't worry...one of the papers is related to the project). And on top of all that, I'm going to Scotland this weekend! It's going to be hectic, but ultimately rewarding...I hope. I'm sure I will have loved this experience this summer when I look back on it in a few months, when things are less confused and stressful. AAAGH!

I'm fine. I'm fine.

Okay, so last week we went punting and played some Ultimate Frisbee. It was some great group time and I really enjoyed it, even though my team lost at Ultimate, and some British punks decided to bother our group from the bank. Grrr... It was still a really fun time, though.

This is me punting. It really is very easy.

The Childers and Bill being smug about the fact that they are better punters than all of us.

A duckie!

ULTIMATE!

Don't say I didn't try really hard to win the game.

I tried to block Bill most of the time, since he was on the other team. It didn't really ever work.

Later in the week, I managed to get out to Port Meadow early in the morning to feed the ducks and take pictures of the horses. After that, I went and picked strawberries at Medley Farm. They were scarce, but I managed to get enough to fill half of my tub and the woman at the counter took about 20 pence off of my final cost for my "hard work," as she put it. I certainly agreed with her. I accidentally put my hand into a patch of Stinging Nettles in my search for strawberries and, let me just say, their name is very accurate. Ouch.

A cute foal and its mom at Port Meadow.

Me petting one of the horses at Port Meadow. They were very interested in my camera.

I'm leaving for Scotland with my friend, Nikki, in about 3 1/2 hours, so I'm going to sign off so I can pack and maybe get a few hours sleep before I leave.

Phoenix Rising

Yesterday, we took a trip to a cathedral known as St Michaels. It's in Coventry, England, which was one of the industrial centers of England during the Second World War, so it was therefore bombed for 11 hours one night in November, 1940. Instead of tearing in down and building a new cathedral on top of it (as is the American sensibility), they built a new one (in the 60s, mind you), right next to the ruins of the old, which they keep from becoming too wild, though wildflowers are rampant in the stone and on the windowsills. They have made the ruined church a monument for peace and friendship. And this isn't a new development. The people of Coventry decided to forgive the Germans who attacked them the day after the attacks (well, perhaps not all the citizens - but they were led by one brave priest). They have a sister church in Germany that was destroyed by British bombs, so I think the British and the Germans understand each other. The cathedral was an amazing sight. The old cathedral's windows still have broken stained glass in them and the stones are blackened by the fierce fires that burned it halfway to the ground. In the new cathedral, there are hundreds of pieces of art from different countries all representing peace and the love of Jesus, including a four or five story tall tapestry that took 3 years to weave, depicting Jesus and the four gospel writers (as the four animals of Revelation - the eagle, the lion, the ox, and the winged man).

Coventry was much like Stratford-Upon-Avon or Oxford in the way of its ancient, beautiful buildings before the attack. Now, you can hardly distinguish it from a modern American city. It's still an industrial center and has rebuilt from the devastation of that blitzkrieg. The only scar that remains is Coventry Cathedral.

I suppose we can all learn lessons from each other's scars.

Back Online

This picture is mainly for Andrew. Stonehenge was great, but not my favorite. :)



Ok, for my regulars. I'm terribly sorry there's been no blog for the past week. I've been a bit lazy in switching it from .Mac to blogspot. But, here it is!

Now, for updates:

Class went on as usual this week. Lit. Crit. continuing to become harder and harder to comprehend and tensions are growing and easing in our Symposium as we continue to debate various topics.

We took a trip on Thursday to various sacred places around Britain. Avebury, Stonehenge, Salisbury Cathedral, and Bemberton Church. If you have a Facebook, look me up and you'll be able to see the pictures. I can't put as many on blogspot, I don't think.

My favorite part of our trip was Avebury. It was beautiful and amazing. Exactly the sort of little village to which I want to retire. There weren't any ropes around Avebury (I mean, how could you without roping off the entire town?), so you could go up and touch the stones, though we were encouraged not to climb on them by various signs. :) There were also sheep grazing in and around the stones, ditches, and mounds. They didn't like being touched.

All in all, it had a completely different feel from Stonehenge, which has been commercialized to the point of madness. They sell Stonehenge Rock Cakes for heaven's sake! - they are quite good, but that is beside the point! The druids wish that somehow Stonehenge could be given back to "its natural environs." I learned quite a bit from the audio tour that came with our package (you go around to various points and press buttons on this little device and then hold it up to your ear and it tells you the history of and speculations about Stonehenge), but I really preferred the mysteries and quiet contemplation that Avebury offered. No offense, Andrew.

Our next stop was Salisbury Cathedral, which was awe-inspiring and extremely photogenic. Genius architecture generally is. We had a wonderful old guide who talked our ears off about the history of various artifacts (including a 750 year old clock with no face that still works!) and tombs about the place. He knew quite a bit and was a sweet old man. I don't think, though, that he expected our group to be a bunch of Christians. He began to explain the various scenes in Genesis and Exodus carved on the upper walls of the Chapter House, but when we began to name all the stories before he could get to them, he stopped. :) And we moved on to the only other copy of the Magna Carta still in existence, I believe. The other one was at the British Library and so badly burned it wasn't legible. But this one was pristine and...amazing to look at.

Bemberton Church just outside of Salisbury (Bemberton and Salisbury have kind of grown together). It was a small Anglican chapel and very quaint and wonderful. I would have loved to go to church there. Our group sat down in the chapel (and filled it!) and discussed the merits and disadvantages of going to a church like Salisbury and one like Bemberton. One symbolizes the awsome, though distant power of God and the other promulgates a more intimate, friendly God, which we Protestants are more used to. And of course I prefer the friend-God, though the omipotent-God from Salisbury is something I definitely need to be aware of.

This weekend I just hung around the houses while half the group had excursions. Stacie, Scott, and Nat went to Ireland and Emily went with her family to Wales. I decided to do a bit more exploring of the town in my off time and discovered this cute little antique shop. And antique here means anything from the late 1970s to before the time of Christ. It was amazing.

Just yesterday I decided to see what the big deal was about Port Meadow. I've been told I need to go there by just about every Childers and Rankin. And I would definitely recommend it to anyone as well. It was only a 15 minute walk from the houses and the moment I stepped through the gates the trees fell away and a saw the vast meadow rise up before me. It had to be at least 200 acres. There were wildflowers everywhere and a marsh and pond in the middle that is probably always there because of the rain. Beyond that, I could see small black, white, and brown shapes that had to be the grazing animals, since Port Meadow has been free-range grazing for all the farmers in Oxford for hundreds of years. I wandered around and watched the ducks and their ducklings in the pond, then went on a nature hike around the pond (another section of Port Meadow), then went out over a bridge into the grazing land. I was aware of nothing but horses, grass, and sky. It was really breath taking. I sat down and watched a particularly impressing yellow dun stallion grazing, since he reminded me of Cutter, a horse I used to ride a long time ago. I let him sniff my hand and then walked back (around the pond the other way, beside the canal and all the boats) to the houses. I plan on going back there soon, with some carrots. :D

So, I think you're up to date. Except for church today. I went with Rebekah, Amara, and T'auna to the Quaker service. It was odd. They all sit in silence for 45 minutes and people speak when they feel God moving them to do so. We had a "loud service" today, which means 4 people spoke for about 3-4 minutes each in the 45 minute period. And it took a half hour of compete silence before anyone spoke at all. And at the end, the to "leaders" of the service got up and shook hands and everyone came alive! There were announcements and we were invited back for tea and coffee. We chatted with various "Friends" - as the Quakers call themselves - and I was asked who I was voting for in the election this fall! Caught me off guard, but I think my answer satisfied her.

I hope I haven't bored you to tears. Please comment! They are the entire reason for this switch!

Mind the Gap

Well, I really think this picture speaks for itself. I’m really a witch and I’m going to Hogwarts now. Goodbye!



This past weekend was my first excursion to London. It will probably be quite a bit of fun in my memory once I start looking back on it, but right now, I’m just tired and have tons of homework to finish.

We started out really early in the morning to get to the bus station and got on the Oxford Tube, which took us London in about 1 1/2 hours. Our first stop was the Globe Theatre, which is really amazing. I got some great pictures. It’s a round theatre with an open top so, rain or shine, the play goes on. It’s about as real to Shakespeare’s time as you can get and I hope I can see a play there sometime soon, but not standing in the courtyard. I think I would faint.

Our next stop was British Library, full of different artifacts, mainly related to literature, though there was also music. They had tons of illuminated manuscripts, which were really something, and the Magna Carta, a handwritten copy of Jane Eyre, the original, handwritten score for Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, the lyrics to different Beatles songs on the backs of napkins and envelopes. It was really amazing.

After that, we concluded our tour of London’s many museums with the British Museum. This, my friends, was the mother lode. They have a room in there as big as the Parthenon was, with all of the marble decorations (Elgin Marbles, I believe they’re called) that went around the outside, and many of the statues that were inside. They’re all crumbling to bits, of course, because of the modern pollution and vandalism that happened to them in Athens. It was still, of course, magnificent. Apparently, Athens really wants them back, and I thought, Well, maybe if you took better care of your national artifacts, they wouldn’t have to be taken away. I also fervently enjoyed the Egyptian mummy section. They were all really beautiful and, at the same time, incredibly creepy. Especially the cat mummies.

After our turn about the museum, we were on our own for the weekend, to go around London or go back to Oxford as we pleased, so long as we were back before the Sunday night church service the Morgans put on in Number 9 at 9:00 pm. I was with Michael Swindle and Emily Rankin and we had decided yesterday to spend two nights in London and see a few plays. It turned out to be harder than we thought it would be.

Negotiating the subways is an interesting thing. It’s called the Tube in London. There are about 10 different lines and it’s a bit confusing at first, but we soon mastered it. At certain stations, the train is a long way from the platform (well, about a foot), so we are told to “Mind the Gap” as we exit. Emily, Michael, and I went to see The 39 Steps on Friday night. We found it just beyond the Picadilly Circus Tube Station and were delighted. We found tickets for only £15 (though they had a restricted view) and laughed our heads off at the antics of the people on stage. The 39 Steps is a play, not a musical. It’s very minimalistic, and better for being so. There are only four actors and only one of them plays one role. Two of them switch back and forth between about 120 different roles throughout the entire production. They hardly use any set, besides a few tables and chairs and whatnot and put on a splendid Hitchcockian production that was also hilarious.

Our hostel was out in the boonies of London in a place called West Croydon. It took us about an hour and a half to get there from the play, but the room was nice and we had our own shower, so we fell into bed gratefully. The next day we tried to make it back for a show at the Globe, but didn’t quite make it because London is doing construction on the Tube and the line we needed to get to the Globe on time was closed that day. What a bummer! I will have to go see a show in the Globe at some point, because it would be utterly amazing. So, we twiddled our thumbs around London (dropping by King’s Cross station at least! - as you can see by the picture) until that night and went to see The Lord of the Rings musical. I bet many of you didn’t know there was a musical version. Well, there is, but it’s closing in a week due to bad reviews, so of course we had to go see it! I will give it to them. The set was amazing, even if the acting and story adaptation was sub-par. It was a revolving, circular stage that had sections which rose and fell, giving you the impression that the heros and villains actually were traveling across different kinds of country and entering massive towers and castles. The costumes for the orcs and ents were also pretty amazing as well. Gollum, before the second act, climbed headfirst down the curtain (which was covered in tangled tree branches) and, try as I might, I couldn’t seem to find a harness. How neat is that?

After the show, however, we ran into more trouble. We had a new hostel to find and we couldn’t! We searched up and down the road it was supposed to be on (witnessing a spectacular cat fight between these two girls in front of the cinema - we think one of the girls’ boyfriends was caught with the other!) and eventually had to call Emily’s dad to get better directions. All in all, it was one in the morning when we finally got in our rooms. We woke up and came back and now I’m trying to finish all my homework due on Monday! I think I’ll be alright, though, because lots of other people haven’t finished theirs yet either, and they were at the houses longer. At least I have a better work ethic than that!

Well, I’m sorry you’ve had to get so many entries at once. My blog service provider (.Mac) has been down doing scheduled maintenance, and then I was in London for the weekend. Do know that I have extremely painful blisters on my feet that don’t look like they’ll be going away any time soon.

Also, I’ve now discovered that on top of problems with publishing, I now can’t seem to get my comments to come up online. If this problem persists tomorrow, I’m going to move the entire thing over to blogspot.com. I mean, your comments are what keep me going!

Walking

Today was great fun because I decided to break off from the group. After the Symposium at Linacre, Rebekah, T’auna and Emily decided to have a picnic in Oxford Parks, and I didn’t really want to walk all the way back home just yet, so I walked toward the city center, which is the intersection of the High Street and Cornmarket. I got £40 at the CashPoint and went into the Blackwells book store (they have Paper Blanks there! Just sitting there! I have to order my Paper Blanks off of Amazon!) and got a sandwich. Then, finding nothing there worth paying as much in pounds as they cost in dollars in the US, I went to the Oxford Parks myself and sat and ate my sandwich in the shade of a tree. It was lovely.

The best part about strolling around Oxford by myself was that I could set my own pace and really just gape at everything (not really, though, because I want to blend in). I eavesdropped on conversations, listening to the various accents and languages. I find that if someone says something to me in a British accent, if I respond with only a few words, I repeat the accent back at them without meaning to. It’s quite funny. I took the time to appreciate the sights, the sounds, and yes, the smells of Oxford. Actually, Oxford doesn’t really smell like a city except in the heavily trafficked areas. It’s more of a flowery-decaying smell, since everything remains wet for most of the year.

And, I know most of you reading this don’t understand my Lit. Crit. class, but today we talked about the nature of the Trinity. How God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are all interdependent. The Father relies on the Son to be the path to him and the Holy Spirit to be the one who sends his message out. Without the Father, the Son wouldn’t have anything to point to and without the Holy Spirit, the Son would have no way to convey the fact that there is a path. And Holy Spirit needs both the Father and the Son to have something to convey: truth and the way. At least, that’s how I mostly understood it. I had a headache after this lesson, trying to wrap my mind around it.

We’re going to London tomorrow! I’m taking my camera and will have many neat pictures to put up soon!

Seriously?

*bangs head on desk*

It’s STILL raining. It’s been raining for three days. Will it ever stop?

Don’t get me wrong, I love the rain, but I have grown accustomed to a certain ratio of sun to cloud and this is just silly.

I think part of the reason for my bad mood concerning this is the fact that I was sick this morning. I think I’m still getting over jetlag and I have no idea if my tea with milk last night had something to do with it. I’m lactose-intolerant, for anyone who doesn’t know, but I can eat yogurt and ice-cream, so it’s not a life or death thing. I don’t know. I’m feeling better now, it being about 1:45 pm. Sherry Rankin (that’s Bill Rankin’s wife) had some anti-nausea medication and she gave it to me. It helped tremendously and I was able to participate in class quite a bit (since 20% of my grade is participation, this lift was greatly appreciate).

Our lesson in Lit. Crit. today was primarily about the difficulties of learning concerning different languages. You see, according to St. Augustine of Hippo, human language is only a way of describing God’s primary language of actual things. In God’s language, light simply is just that. But humans have to use a secondary language (like French or Swahili or whatever) to describe light. In English, it’s “light”, in Spanish “luz”, in French “lumiére” and so forth. Also, with all the diversity of language brought forth by the fall of Babel, translations have to be done for the entire world to be able to understand God’s primary language (we like to call it “truth”). Therefore, good knowledge is difficult to obtain and that is why it’s so valuable to us. Humans believe things are only worth the hard work used to obtain them (“Beauty is pain”, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, ect.). I’m really enjoying this class and hope to learn a lot more of it. I hope you don’t mind me talking about it, but it’s the only way I can bring all of my thoughts about the lesson together in my mind. And I think coming back on these blog entries will help me write my papers.

The symposium was once again delightful. We talked about different kinds of community, including that of the university, and how one can sometimes learn more from the thoughts of one’s peers than in an actual class. I’ve certainly seen that that’s true in my life. We also talked about the nature of sacrifice in LOTR, especially that of the hobbits and the elves, but I won’t bore you with the details.

Today will be filled with much studying because the reading for tomorrow is, I think, perhaps the longest of all. I have a Mars bar and a Lilt by my side (I wanted to try the local candy and soda, so sue me. Lilt is like Sprite, but grapefruit and pineapple flavored instead of lemon and lime (it has an interesting aftertaste) and Mars bars are a bit like a combination of a Three Musketeers and a Snickers).

I promise promise PROMISE to get some pictures up soon. It’s been a bit too wet for my camera. I hope you understand.

First Day

I still haven’t unpacked...

I should probably get on that.

But today has just been too full!

We started off going to our separated classes at 8:00 am BST (I that might stand for something like British Standard Time, now that I think about it). I’m taking Dr. Bill Rankin’s class, which is Literary Criticism. He went over the syllabus and then did a quick overview of the background of Literary Criticism, which I thought was very interesting. I’m constantly seeing examples of the Hegelian Dialectic in every class I take, especially when we do overviews. The history of literary criticism starts out with a Classical/Medieval period (know one actually knows when this period starts, because their isn’t much literature on the subject until the Middle Ages, but it continues until about 13th Century CE). That period was primarily filled with metaphysical thought, which is thought that flows beyond the physical and into the spiritual. There was an geocentric, God (or gods) - controlled view of the universe. Everything was affected by God or gods. If it rained, Zeus was angry. Spring was caused by Demeter being happy that her daughter, Persephone, was back for a visit from Hades. And so forth.

In the Modern Period of Literary Criticism (13th Century CE - 19th Century CE), however, there is a shift toward a more physical point of view. The advent of the modern sciences, for one thing, helped bring this along. Everyone was obsessed with reality, with structure. Painters wanted to make sure human bodies had correct proportions and that muscles were drawn correctly. Modern medicine began to be researched. The world was now heliocentric, because it had been proven. There was only one way to look at things: the right way.

But in the Postmodern Period (19th Century CE - Present), the period we are currently in, or trying to move beyond, there was a pendulum swing back to the metaphysical. New age philosophy and alternative medicine and many other things are becoming more and more popular with people as they try to rebel against the cold hard facts of the Modern Period. Though astrology isn’t held with the same kind of respect as it was in the Classical Period, people still check out their horoscopes today. And, eventually, the pendulum will swing back, and we’ll find new ways of revisiting the realistic, physical-minded thought of the Modern Period.

After the first class, everyone got together and we went to Linacre College (I lied to you before - it wasn’t Exiter, but Linacre where I was to get a £4 lunch). We didn’t exactly stroll through the Oxford Parks. We booked it behind Jeff and Bill because we were running late and they wanted to have time to do a proper class. They opened it up, once we got to the classroom, and explained much of the syllabus to us, as well as the Experiential Reflections we need to do (I can’t wait to get started on those!). We then had a bit of a discussion concerning Individualism vs. Communtiy and talked about the Vietnam War and church shopping (in two different conversations. The debate was lively and quite enjoyable. We have some very differing views all across the board and I think I’m going to learn a lot.

Next we had lunch. I had some lasagna and some lovely chips (fries) as well as a few other things. Then I went with T’auna, Stacie, and Rebekah to Primark, where they sell £4 shirts and other things. I didn’t buy anything, but I think I will be visiting there quite soon again in search of my very own raincoat (I’ve borrowed my mom’s and while it’s lovely and has gotten many compliments already, I’d really love one of my own).

I hung around the houses for most of the rest of the afternoon, once we got back, but then, around 5:30, we decided to go to On the Hoof to get sandwiches, but it was closed for the day. We did however, get some help from the owners of a panini shop called Le Parisien. They were just hanging out by their car because, as they told us later, it’s really slow during the last hour of business, so they don’t make any more bread and sell what is left of the sandwiches, paninis, and pastries to anyone that happens in. I got a Roasted Turkey and Bree sandwich with basil. They cooked it right there and it was hot and delicious. On the way back to the houses (it’s only a 2 minute walk to Le Parisien), we ran into a group of Italian boys and one of them held up his hand to me and said, “How you?” And, slightly surprised at his friendliness, I slapped his hand and said, “Good!” It was quite an adventure. And I hope to have many more like it.