I think it's official....

This blog has died a slow and painful death. My readership is officially nill. Fun while it lasted.

*Elaine

Gulliver's Travels Part IV

Hey Everyone,

I figured just posting something on the blog was the easiest way to explain the lack of entries. Now that the floods have cleared, I've been using my BritRail Pass like crazy, going to Scotland, London, and Wales so I can try and get my money's worth out of it.

Secondly, I am in the process of writing my weekly reading responses for my literature class as well as working on a 7 page paper about the use of resorts in 18th century literature. As soon as these things are done, or at least rough drafted, I should be able to post more.

So between the traveling, writing for class, actual class, and talking to people when I get back to Oxford (blame my parents and James for this) there isn't a whole lot of energy and time to write in here after writing class assignments.

Ok, that's it for now. Tomorrow I go into London and Yorkshire on Sunday, so it's going to be such a busy weekend!

Love,
Elaine

Hello Everyone.

I got back last night from a fabulous trip to Scotland. Updates from the past week are to come, but between the traveling, class, and a few other things I've been pretty occupied. Some of you may have heard, but someone I did Student Council with in high school passed away unexpectedly [from what I understand was a blood clot to the lungs] at the all too young age of 21. She just graduated from UT in May and was getting ready to come over to England for graduate school. I am confident she is in a better place, but my heart could not hurt more for her family as well as all the memories. J-Nail will be so missed and her personality never forgotten.

On top of it all, I've been surrounded by sick people (aka people who put their fingers in their mouth all the time so they just welcome illness) so I think I'm coming down with something. Hopefully it's just a cold.

Goodnight!

Gulliver's Travels Part III

Me in London. Can you see why I like it there?

July 22, 2007- July 23, 2007
Unprecedented floods, Trafalgar Lions, Emergencies at the Globe, Texas in London, and much, much more

My misfortune is your blog update. I have been going non stop the past few days and only have a bit below that I already wrote on Thursday before I just had to go to bed. You may be asking why I can’t just put up the updates, well with pictures and proper text updating the blog is about a 2 hour ordeal. So it just isn’t that easy since I don’t half ass it.

Today, I was supposed to be outside of Disley (?) England at the estate where they filmed Pemberley for the A&E/BBC Pride and Prejudice. This morning we were all packed, and ready to go, and arrived at the train station only to find there were absolutely NO trains leaving Oxford because the rails are completely under water to the west and north of here.

This is troubling, because it is blue skies and only a few clouds today. We were assuredly damp in London both Friday and Saturday, but every small bought of ran was followed by sunshine. One would assume this is England and to be expected. Wrong.

So today was a wash. I finished one of my novels for class and just started my next, and have been posting more of my pictures, and now am updating this. I haven’t the slightest desire to go pay 5 pounds to see the top of a tower nor do I feel it necessary to go and exchange personal space with obnoxious tourists. So instead of just sitting in my room, I opened my widows for the breeze but turned on the heater to keep it the right temperature. Wasteful? Yes. But one of my very few free days has been completely wasted. I can be positive about this as long as things clear by Friday when we are scheduled to go to Scotland. If it doesn’t, not only do I not get to go but I will be out a lot of $$$$$$$$$$$ for absolutely nothing.

I am vexed indeed.

Saturday July 14: Brighton
“A whole camp full of officers!”

Brighton is located on the southern coast of England roughly facing France in an area referred to as the downs and channel coast. Historically Brighton has been a resort and vacation town, and has a huge pier amusement park. Well, our lovely program just dropped us off and said “see ya at 4” so we were roughly left to figure out Brighton for ourselves.

You’ll be able to tell by our pictures that it was cool with an enormous breeze. We lucked out again with weather, the day turned out very nicely. So we walked on the Brighton Pier, which had a lot of cheesy amusement rides. We would have ridden on them if each ride weren’t about 3 tokens (that cost a pound each.) So we walked around and amused ourselves. After that we headed to the Royal Pavilion, an “oriental” and gaudy palace built by the future King George IV. A lot of people on the trip completely disregarded it as trashy, but I admit, while it holds nothing to the power of the tradition, it was different and the inside dining room took my breath away with it’s whimsical presence.

A bit of history: When George IV was just 23 and the Prince of Wales, he a falling out with his father and moved to Brighton. He fell in love with Mrs. Maria Fitzherbert, a 29 year old Catholic widow whom he secretly married. Together they built the Pavilion. Well his father, King George III started to go insane, so he had to fill in as reagent before becoming King. Despite being in love, he was forced to officially marry Caroline of Brunswick in 1795, she had a daughter, but he quickly just ordered her to essentially come no where near him, not even to his coronation. This of course ruined his relationship with Mrs. Fitzherbert, so he just had a bunch of mistresses and died old, but he always said his happiest days of his life were with Maria.

Well all throughout the Pavilion, which actually had a good audio tour, I kept craving Chinese food because it reminded me of the inside of a gaudy Chinese food buffet and I haven’t had Chinese since I left Texas. Sad.

Also funny, Queen Victoria found the whole thing disgusting and sold it to the city of Brighton. They politely said she didn’t have room there for all her kids (I didn’t know she had had so many!) but really I can imagine her being just disgusted with it’s lack of taste.


After that, we looked outside and saw we had just beat all the mobs of tourists!

So we moved into what is referred to as the Lanes, which is a bunch of shops and restaurants. I found a really nice pub to eat at and got Steak and Ale pie, with real mashed potatoes and brown gravy which of course reminded me of Grandma. It was one of the best meals.

While we were there, this guy was taking pictures with their promotional magazine for Brighton. Well they were trying to take a picture with these older, very tipsy, Irish men with beer bellies. One of them said “wait a minute, let’s get those girls in our picture!” so they called us over and pulled Ann, who I was with, into one of their laps and another put is arm around me for the picture. It was fun.

We had problems loading the bus to come home, which seems to be a standard for all our group trips.

Monday: Tower of London after Class
I don’t really have a lot to say regarding the Tower of London. After Class, we went into London, through daytime traffic, and had two hours to see all of the Tower. Needless to say this wasn’t enough time. I made sure to see the main white tower and the crown jewels, despite the incredible lines. One way they keep the lines for the jewels moving is they have two slow moving conveyer belts running on either side, so it ushers people past and keeps it moving. What was nice about this, is you can go back and do it as many times as you wanted, (I did it two) but most people don’t bother. The jewels are in these enormous vaults, so if the world is ever ending and you’re in London, I suggest going in there.

I was disappointed in the tower as a whole too, because they made it feel more like an amusement park instead of a historical sight. Things like Anne Boleyn’s apartments were closed to the public, and very little was explained on signs unless you paid the money for an audio guide. Most of the time we were left to wonder and try and piece together everything. The few captions they did have were also misleading: they would say things like Torture Tower (and on the inside say this was an artillery room, the torture took place elsewhere) and this is the block and axe that beheaded Anne Boleyn. Wrong, she was beheaded by a sword. It wasn’t until another caption when they said “this is from around that time, not the exact one like we just said.”

I didn’t go for an amusement park with ice cream cones and popcorn (which they sold there) I went to absorb history. I mean seriously, who am I to expect that? After that we got to on a bus for like 4 hours to get through London rush hour traffic.

Tuesday and Wednesday: Quiet Days with a lot of Homesickness

I’m fairly certain I mentioned this before, but I’ve been pretty bogged down recently with academic stuff from UT and problems with the way this program is being run here. I’ll spare everyone the boring details, but regarding the program here our “planned and paid for trips” are so far being poorly run and not all paid for. Aside from the disappointment and extra financial burden, this is adding to the stress of having to plan even more trips on top of our school work here. We are all frustrated, but making the most of it.

What this has resulted in however, is the worst homesickness I’ve had since that like one day in Vienna when I had a bad day and got sick. Even though I’m pretty good at not letting things interfere with my agenda at hand, I’m getting to the point where I’m sick of dealing with things and just want to go home. This further upsets me because I really do love England, but I’m so limited with transportation and completely free days to travel that I’m bound to the tourist haven called Oxford and I feel like I’m not getting to do it proper justice. The tourists in Oxford win the award for being the stupidest tourists I’ve encountered yet. They walk in front of buses and scream, and generally have moronic behavior.

So all this being said, I’ve kind of been in and out of a funk the past few days because of the drama coming from here and back home all at the same time. And it upsets me because this is England and it’s not England’s fault.

We all know I’m one “tough young lady” so if I hadn’t just told all of you that you’d never know the better by my experiences.

Tuesday our dining hall threw us a James Bond Party. We all got dressed up and they had the dining hall decorated with James Bond things. It was so much fun, especially since I had been depressed most the day. For dessert we had frozen martinis too!

Wednesday I went to have afternoon tea at a local café, out of the normal path of tourists. I really enjoyed that and read for class. I may do that again today in fact!


Thursday: Blenheim Palace (Birthplace and Family Estate of Winston Churchill)

I organized an afternoon trip after class to Blenheim, which is just outside Oxford. It was GORGEOUS! Check out all the pictures on the link to the right of this.

I have officially stood in the room where the baby, who strangely must have looked like Winston Churchill, was birthed. I think my life might be complete.

There was this really corny exhibit there, with these half wax, half animated figures that “acted out scenes from the history of Blenheim” and it was just incredibly hokey even though the technology they used was very new.

Other than that misjudgment on their part, everything was just beautiful. We kept joking with each other because they have these gardens there called the “pleasure gardens.” That made for some fun times. In case you were wondering, pleasure gardens consist of a hedge maze, butterfly garden, and lavender garden.

I split from the group and took the Queen’s Pool Walk around the lake. I walked past an old war monument that I suppose is “guarded” by a flock of sheep.

The gates we had all entered had closed, which was by the bus stop, so I had walked around through the town back to it. Well, when I got there, I saw the rest of our group climbing over the fence in order to get out. It made for a great spectacle.

Friday: London Part I
So we got dropped off at Trafalgar Square in London. When we left in the morning it was pouring down rain, and going into London we had to go through some mild floods [our first exposure to something was wrong]. Once we arrived in London however, the sun came out and everything was wet, but blue skies.

Don’t mess with Texas.
We went over to the Texas Embassy, now a restaurant that was formerly the Embassy when we were truly the Lone Star State.

I must say it: Texas is a badass.

There you go.

Longhorn things everywhere. Damn Right, all the way in London. We ended up eating there Saturday, so I went ahead and included the pictures here.

Trafalgar Square
We found the need to climb up onto the huge stone monument and be one with the lions. Remember how it had just rained….well the huge stone platform was slippery so I definitely slipped on my stomach multiple times getting up to the platform as tall as I am. I have bruises and scabs on my stomach- so I was maimed by lions in London if you will.

Totally worth it. Made my morning.

After that we went into the National Gallery, which was amazing. Renoir, Monet, Van Gogh, and many many many more. Not to mention a lot of English lesser known artists that I really enjoyed.

We also went into the National Portrait Gallery, which I highly recommend because you can see the original portraits of the Tudor Royal Family, many famous people, and some modern but very classy contemporary portraits.

From there we walked, yes walked, to St. Paul’s Cathedral. Yet another big church, but while we were there they started Evensong, which had such a heavenly sound and presence resonating throughout the nave of the church that it momentarily took your breath away.

We then walked across the Millennium Bridge and had some gorgeous views of London and really solidified how much I like London as a city. It isn’t dirty, I never feel unsafe, and everyone is very friendly. Another plus is there are so many places to go, the crowds are thinned out a bit.

We were then over by the globe, and in the 20 total minutes I’ve spent outside the Globe from last week and this week I’ve seen about four of the young actors from Merchant of Venice walking around, getting food, talking on their cell phones etc.

What happens is they walk by you, you do a double take, and then they are gone. Something that I think makes the Globe even more special since this has happened so many times.

We had dinner at a gourmet pizza place across from the Globe, then went over for our performance of Othello.

Othello
Othello wasn’t as good as Merchant, but was still quality. I wasn’t a groundling this time and got to sit, which with the threat of rain, I was happy about.

Half way through the performance, my attention was immediately grabbed by a flurry of moving people around someone who passed out in one of the boxes on the other side of theater from us. There was a lot of commotion, the play kept going, and next thing we know we see someone doing compressions and someone run out crying. We were all convinced that the person was dead, and the ushers were moving SO SLOW. Had I only been in that box let me just say that would not have been acceptable. People would have moved. Immediately.

Well we think she either passed out because of a minor stroke or complications from medicine, because they were able to wheel her out conscious.

At intermission we were all talking about it, and one girl in the group made the comment “if we were in America by the time the ushers started to move someone would have already had out the defibrillator saying CLEAR.”

Isn’t that the truth? It made me really 1) Proud to be an American 2) Miss being in America. All they had at the Globe was a first aid kit, because that’s going to help a lot in one of these situations.

This situation also made me fantasize what it would be like to be a doctor and be able to run over and say “I’m a doctor what can I do” and get the situation under control.


The End
I’m out of steam for the day. I have other things to do, but check out the picture links and Gulliver’s Travels Part II. Now I’m only one day behind! Yay.

Affectionately Yours,
Elaine

This is the memorial to animals in war: on one said they are scared and tired and on the other they come out these big strong horses and dogs looking back. It was touching, but kind of hard to see in this photo.

Gulliver's Travels Part II

Gulliver's Travels Part I
Rat does Vienna

As many of you know, I've had a travel companion this summer. Ever since I started working in the Jones Lab, rats have been a part of my life. My mom gave me Gulliver, an Ikea bred rat, for Valentine's Day, and he has been along with my on my journeys.

Without further ado, I present the first installment of Gulliver's Travels.

PS: I've already seen one typo. My bad, everyone deal. It's too hard to change.

Life of an Oxford Student
July 15, 2007

I feel like I’m living an entire lifetime this summer alone. Whenever I start to look at all of my pictures and think of the places I’ve been I’m taken over by amazement. The people that I’ve met, the oddities I’ve seen, historical places I’ve passed through, I’m still not sure I can grasp what’s happening.

Speaking of pictures, the links are to the right. Just click on the titles and you can see a lot of my pictures. If you have problems let me know.


Typical Day in Oxford

We have breakfast in the hall every morning at 8 (we sleep in a whooping 30 minutes on the weekend!) For breakfast it is a self service style, except our servers bring us our choice of coffee or tea and fresh toast in a toast tray. For breakfast we have cereal, fruit, hard boiled eggs, ham, cheese, or yogurt.

After breakfast I have two hours before my 18th Century English Literature class at 11. Usually I go up to my room and then head off for a walk. I’ve explored many different avenues around Oxford which is just filled with parks, paths, gardens, streets, and shops. In the morning it is nice because it’s before the poky tourists crawl out of the floorboards to swarm and get in your way. Yes, I have come to despise tourists with a great passion. Only because they are about as oblivious as headless chickens.

I’ve been known to stop on my morning walk to go into Sainsbury’s, a local grocery chain. I am so glad to have everything in English again, and have similar food choices (like granola bars and diet drinks) and they have Hobnobs, which are about 34 p. so it’s a fabulous deal.

Usually sometime during the morning Magda, our maid or scout as they call them here, come by and cleans my bathroom, makes my bed, gives me fresh towels, and takes out my trash. Magda is from Poland and so we’ve had some nice chats and she said she likes it when the Americans come to Oxford because she can understand our English better! She also has given me suggestions on paths to walk, which has been nice.

Today I came back and noticed they changed my curtains in my room. Weird.

Class consists of a lot of discussion about our novels, which is exciting. After that I usually have a granola bar for lunch (cheap) and then find things to do all afternoon. I’ve gone to free museums around Oxford, gone to the tourist information office to plan day trips, walked more, email, and nap. A few times I’ve gone out expecting that it will rain because everything is grey for miles and overcast, and I’ve sat down to read in a park, and the sun just comes out and the next thing I know it’s a bright blue sky and sunshine. English weather is rather fickle. I’ve been scouting out affordable places to go have tea and scones, and last week I went for a scone that was so hot the raisins burned my mouth!

At 7 p.m. we are served our 3 course dinner, which starts with either a soup or appetizer and bread, followed by a main course, then dessert. And the food quality is very good.

Me after Champane on the quad lawn.

Right now they are filming a movie called “The Brideshead Revisited” around Oxford, and last Wednesday another girl and I went to Christ Church’s prayer service and when we walked outside we realized that the whole college (Christ Church College) was closed to all visitors/tourists because they were filming and all these guys dressed in sweater vests and tan suits were milling around! We walked right through the courtyard and a few of the extras were taking pictures of themselves, and one guy said “we look really good” and then they realized we heard them say that and we all burst out laughing.

The prayer service was really small, but very neat. The vicar couldn’t have been more friendly. As we were leaving, we looked down and I was definitely standing on John Locke’s grave, the famous English philosopher that influenced the principles behind the US Declaration of Independence.

In addition to the movie, sometimes I’m walking home and there is a random model outside Brasenose by Radcliff Camera getting a photo shoot done. It’s weird.

Other things that I’ve been doing in Oxford: I’ve been to the Eagle and Child Pub, which is the pub where C.S. Lewis met R.R. Tolkien and their later hangout. I had a tasty blush wine there and also was introduced to Pimms, an Oxford drink that I really like. While we were there I ran into the American girl who gave me and my dad directions from the street when we arrived in Oxford. So I said hi and told her I found it! Surprise!

I’ve also been to this great hole in the wall pub that is like tucked into an ally so there were no tourists! We ran into, like literally ran into, this American professor who was rather tipsy who engaged us in a “conversation” and almost spilled his cider.

Now down to business.

Friday: Globe Theater to see Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice

We had groundling tickets, meaning we stood in the middle of everything, which turned out to be the best thing. Coming from Vienna, I’ve seen some world class performances. Shakespeare has a built in advantage that it’s in English, but seriously, the quality and entertainment value of the performance can’t even compare to anything I saw in Vienna, including things like Mozart’s “humorous” Magic Flute. I know some people may be groaning, but it was THAT good considering I still was impressed by what I saw in Vienna.

The performance starts with the actors coming out from all sides. They are on the balconies, coming up the steps from the back of the theater, coming out on stage, playing music, burning incense, passing baskets and things to the front, hanging off of balconies, and just completely involving the audience with 360 degrees of action and occupying all of your senses. The acting was the best I’ve seen in ages in their facial expressions, voices, actions, aura, EVERYTHING. It helped that we were so close we could see the spit fly out of the actors mouths. It also helped that some of the guys were um, how do say in Shakespearean language, hunky? They were adorable.

The play, for the most part, was laugh out loud hysterical. The actors acted out the innuendos hidden in the play and were so perfectly expressive. I swear every scene had at least one pelvic thrust if not more.

The whole thing left me wowed. When we left for London that morning we were also convinced that it was going to be Shakespeare in the rain, but once we arrived the weather turned beautiful, again! Also, while we were watching the show, a helicopter kept flying over head, and one of the actors was in the middle of a speech, and then just chewed it out Shakespearean style, and went on! And as we were heading back toward the bus, we all did a double take and realized we had just passed one of the actors strolling eating an ice cream cone. He must have slipped out the back and gone for ice cream. We all looked at each other bewildered, then burst out laughing. It was fantastic.

Ok, I’m out of energy and need to go to bed. I’ll update on Brighton and Wallingford tomorrow! Tomorrow night we are having a 007 James Bond themed dinner where we are all dressing up and having cocktails! How quaintly British!

Elaine