Hey everyone,

I’m writing this entry Saturday night before bed, though I don’t think I’ll be posting it until Monday. I figured I’d write it before I got to the lab because I’m going out to London again tomorrow and I’ll probably have even more pictures and things to write about. Today my class went to Oxford. We left early and it was a two hour bus ride out to Oxford. As it turns out Oxford is made up of a bunch of different campuses scattered all around the city of Oxford. When you apply to the university you actually apply to a certain college or campus and then if you get in there you are in Oxford as a whole. The tour guide compared it to applying to join a state in the US. If you get in New York, you are a member of America. If you get in St.John’s college you can say you are a member of the university. My British Life and Culture professor applied to get Queen’s college when he was younger but he was denied. Once you are denied you can’t apply again. Also at the college you have class once a week but there are no assignments and attendance isn’t mandatory, but once a week you have to meet with your tutor and justify your being there. So that means you have to just give yourself assignments and do things by yourself. I thought it was interesting. Also interesting, it’s the same tuition to go to Oxford as Kingston if you are an English citizen. Still just 3000 pounds.

The first stop on the tour was at the Shepariton (not sure with that spelling) Theater. This is were they induct all new students and give diplomas to all graduating students. So everyone who has ever past through the university was in that building. It was pretty cool. Afterwards, we got to walk up to the top and get a nice view of the whole town. Pictures below.

After that we had a short break before another tour. My group decided to get a bite to eat and we picked this pub “The Eagle and Child”. I really love all these pub names in over here. They are much better than New Paltz names: P&G’s, Murphy’s, Snugs... Here I’ve see “The Elephant Head”, “Elk in the Woods” and a few more raunchy titles that aren’t appropriate for my younger Egan readers. Anyway the pub we went to was the favorite of J.R.R Tolkien and C.S Lewis the authors of the Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia, respectively. So that was really great, we saw the seats they used to sit at regularly to eat, talk and write together. That place was really nice, good food and drink, I’m glad we were able to get seats because supposedly it’s a tourist hotspot.

After that we went on a walking tour of the town. We saw a lot of the different campuses and the river where in the summer time they have gondolas. It was all really interesting. I saw the house where Edmund Halley lived. He’s the guy who discovered Halley’s comet. I didn’t know that either. Its pretty weird to walk around the town because everything has been there since Medieval times. They’ll talk about the “new” stuff and its still over a 100 years old. Its funny because things that are over 100 years old in America are the historical sites. We then went to the Christ’s Church campus for a tour inside an actual school. Most of the real campuses are closed to the public and we had to look from the outside. Inside the Christ Church Dining Hall is where they filmed the Harry Potter Great Hall! Much to my dismay the ceiling was still there and the candles didn’t float. I have a picture below. If you ask me they must have done some fancy camera work on that place because while it was still really cool and impressive and it must be awesome to eat there it didn’t look quite as big as Hogwarts. The rest of the campus had a big quad, a really nice Cathedral and a gift shop with the British Harry Potters, again pictures below. It was all really interesting, it must be a really cool place to go to school. After that campus we only had about an hour left. My friend Joel had heard about this cool pub so we stopped by. It’s called “The Bear”, a little less creative compared to the other pub names but the really cool part is that this pub has been around since 1242. Yep, the same establishment for 766 years, three times older than my entire country! So that was a fun place to stop in and have a drink. Needless to say the beer was very skunked.

We then met back at the bus and headed home. I browsed Mary’s DVD collection and watched the first Batman. Now I’m writing this and I’ll probably go to bed soon because I’m waking up early again tomorrow to go to London for Chinese New Year.

Some fun facts:
- The Chinese New Year in London is the biggest celebration of the holiday outside of China.
- T.S Eliot went to Oxford and was going to graduate, he even wrote his thesis, he just never handed it in, so he never got the degree.
-It is really hard to find a garbage can in England. In the city they are pretty much ever street corner. Here you can go blocks and blocks without seeing one.

Enjoy the pictures!

Thanks for reading,
Roy