Cows, Kids, and Other Blessings

Hello again, friends!

I can hardly believe that tomorrow marks two weeks that I have been here. As is usually the case with short-term adventures like this one, it seems that I got here yesterday and that I have been here forever all at once. So much has happened, and time is flying.

This week was the first full week of our Worldviews class. It has been phenomenal! Every day, our group of eight students takes the bus for about 20 minutes out to a little quaint village called Eynsham where our director lives with his family. They have a beautiful stone English home called “Lane House” where we spend from 10am to 6pm sitting around a huge table with coffee and “digestives” (a delicious English cookie!) looking at passages from the Bible, the Qur’an, and various other texts. I don’t think I’ve done this much reading in such a short concentrated time in my life! But I am learning so much and loving it. I cannot say enough about how great the director’s family is! They are so hospitable and have THE cutest children: three girls and two boys (with bright red hair!) ranging from 14 to 3 years old. Every lunch break, we get to play with them. Sometimes when we are in class, they run outside and press their faces against our windows to get our attention or to spy on us. Sometimes we even get notes like this under the door:

We get to have “family dinner” with them every Friday night for the rest of the term.

This week we went to The Eagle and Child for dinner, a pub famous for being frequented by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein back in the day. Appropriately, they named their closet “Narnia.”  Another cultural difference between the U.S. and the U.K. is that at most pubs (that I’ve been to anyway), instead of being waited on a table, you order up front at the bar and they bring your food to you. When we walked in to The Eagle and Child, I asked the group of people clustered in the doorway if they were in line. They gave me a funny look for a quick second and then realized what I was asking and quickly nodded “yes.” Later I was informed that the proper way to ask this is to say “Is this the queue?” (pronounced “Q”)

Which leads me to this post’s vocab section:

“the tele” (rhyming with “belly”) = TV

“quid” = pounds. (like “bucks” meaning dollars)

“lou roll” = toilet paper

"takeaway" = food "to go"

“school” = elementary, middle, or highschool. NEVER college, which is always “university” or simply “uni.”

Today was a pretty epic day.  This morning, instead of attending the church that will be my home church while I am here in Oxford, we gathered with over 30 other churches from all over the city of Oxford for a corporate event of worship and prayer in the very street where the Oxford Martyrs were burned at the stake in 1555 for refusing to recant their stance on truth. Two people were baptized, including a former 20-year alcoholic as well as a former drug-dealer who had been imprisoned 13 times and experienced the power and love of Jesus four years ago. He now helps others who are in the same place he once was to find freedom from their addictions. It was powerful to witness him break down crying as he came out of the water, praising God for His grace and mercy.

The other epic part of today (although in a very different way that doesn’t really compare to the Love Oxford event) was that I GOT 10 FEET AWAY FROM A HERD OF BABY COWS!!! One of my favorite things about England is that it doesn’t get dark until almost 10p.m. So I have made it a habit of walking or running to a beautiful field called Port Meadow every evening around 9p.m. to watch the sunset. (At least the days it isn’t raining!) These lil guys snuck up on me today! Here they are “in a queue!”

Annnd here are a few more pictures from the week:

Melissa and little Harrison

Path to Port Meadow

Pretty sure these reminders have saved my life more than once...

Classic

Perhaps slightly cliche, but couldn't help myself ;)

Until next time,

Cheers! 

I LOVE ENGLAND

When I first started this blog, I was worried about not knowing what to write about. After just a few days, I’ve realized the hard part is going to be knowing what NOT to write about! There’s just too much. I hardly know where to start…

I LOVE ENGLAND!

The past several days we have had various lectures and meetings and tours to get us more oriented to the city and university of Oxford. Lectures included topics like “British Manners” and “Anti-Americanism” which gave us fascinating perspective on the fundamental differences between the way the English and Americans think.

One of the primary cultural differences is that the British tend to be more reserved. It is their way of respecting for each other’s privacy. Walking around the neighborhoods, you will rarely see a front porch. Instead, homes have backyard patios and gardens where they will not have the obligation to greet everyone passing by. We were also told that in addition to this tendency to be reserved, they have an incredible talent for understatement. So if a student were to ask a tutor (professor) how he or she is doing in a subject (and that would never happen here, by the way), and the tutor replied “Not bad,” that would mean the student was actually doing pretty well. Needless to say, I took notes on that little piece of information. 

Another point the professor made regarding differences between the two cultures struck me: “Europeans are more pessimistic, whereas Americans believe death is optional.” In his opinion, this largely contributes to some of the anti-Americanism that exists in the world. We don’t “know our place.” According to his lecture, “Europeans have what Americans lack: a sense of the tragedy of life. Americans have what Europeans lack: a sense of the infinite possibilities of life.” 

Perhaps the most striking difference between the two nations was their approach to education. But that’s an entire blog post in itself.

A little more about my program! There are eight students total that are doing my particular program with Summit: four lads and four ladies. I live in a flat with the three other girls about a 20-minute walk away from the city centre (and up 5 flights of stairs, so we certainly get our exercise!) Apart from a few quirks—having our washing machine/dryer unit under the kitchen sink, no hot water in one of the bathrooms, and blown-out light bulbs in half the sockets—it’s rather quaint.

Jessie, Melissa, Yours Truly, and Meggie! 

Even though I don’t normally eat seafood, I DID have a plate of fish and chips at one of the local pubs for tradition’s sake. 

Which leads me to another topic: vocabulary! As they say, England and America are “two nations divided by the same language.” One word here can mean something totally different back home. Here “pub” is short for “public house” and basically just means restaurant (not like the American bar I first pictured when they announced at church on Sunday that the men’s meeting would be at the pub promptly after service!)  When I went to purchase a British phone, I was standing at the counter and the young gent working there came over and asked, “You alright?”  I looked up, surprised, and said “Oh yeah, I’m fine! Just trying to pick a phone...” And wondered if the jetlag was really making me look sick or something. When I went to a second store to compare prices, the guy working there came up to me and asked the same thing! After wondering what on earth must be wrong with me, I remembered a friend telling me before I left the States that that just means “How are you?”

More vocabulary just for fun:

Foot path = side walk

Lift = elevator

Bathroom = where you bathe. Restroom = where you rest. (You must ask for the “toilet,” as odd as that sounds to us)

Specks = glasses

Another part of life in England that has taken some time to get used to is the traffic! Though it should be so simple, I cannot seem to get used to the fact that they drive on the opposite side of the road! Apparently, that is the leading cause of death for tourists in England, so they’ve been kind enough to paint at their crosswalks “LOOK RIGHT” in big bold white letters. Not only do they drive on the opposite side, they BIKE on the opposite side too, and I barely escaped getting hit by a biker…twice. They also walk on the opposite side of the “footpath” which has led to a couple awkward but funny encounters already.

Saturday we took a fieldtrip to Bath and Stonehenge along with other students studying abroad at Oxford. Both sites were incredible. In this case, pictures will do more justice than words, so I will post them below.

English countryside on the way to Bath

View of Bath from the top of the Abbey

Some of my group! They're great :)

From inside the Bath Abbey clock tower. Climbed 212 steps to get there!

The famous Roman Baths

Stonehenge! I felt like I was in a movie or something.

Below are a few more pictures from my time so far. More to come! 

Chapel at New College, Oxford

The daily walk into town

Evensong at New College

Evensong at Christ Church tonight

Miss you, friends! Please update me on your lives!

Cheerio!

Greetings from the Beautiful City of Oxford!

 'Ello there, friends!

Below is my first blog post that I wrote on the plane, but have been unable to upload until now:

I am currently sitting on the plane on my way to LONDON!  It's 1 a.m. and after several attempts, I have given up the idea of sleeping...at least for now. I have decided instead to read a book given to me by a friend about all the sights and stories of Great Britain. Already I feel how short the eight weeks will be, and I want to fully experience as much of the area as I possibly can while I am there.

The flight attendants must have thought I was crazy when I first boarded, but I could not help smiling from ear to ear when every single one of them spoke with the British accent I've been in love with ever since my childhood BBC addictions (Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and of course all the Dickens classics: Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend...the list goes on and on. I’m sure some of you remember those days ;) When someone talks to me about American TV shows, I am usually clueless as to what they're talking about, but mention a BBC classic, and I’ll quote it beginning to end. The accent is an art form I have pursued for years, and I'm hoping this language "immersion" experience the next eight weeks will help me perfect it!

As many of you know, this opportunity to study abroad is a dream come true for me. When I began looking at colleges as a junior in high school, any time an admissions counselor asked me if I had any questions about the school, the first (if not only) question out of my mouth was "Where would I be able to study abroad?" Nursing school, however, does not allow for this during the semester due to mandatory clinical rotations, so for a while I was unsure whether or not I would be able to go abroad at all. But through a series of events, this opportunity presented itself, and I am so grateful.

Quick summary of what I will be doing during my time here:

There are essentially two parts of my program: the first two weeks consists of an intensive Worldviews class with Summit Ministries followed by a six-week Oxford tutorial. (http://www.summitoxford.org/) The tutorial I decided to do is bioethics. Other than that, I don’t actually have much detail about what we will be doing, so more on that later. 

Fun fact: Oxford--which is a city, not just a university, by the way--got its name because its location happens to be a great spot to cross the river (ford for oxen…Oxford!).  

One of my goals is to do a photo-a-day, so I will definitely try to post many of those on here. 

Losing steam...bed time :)

Cheerio!