Excuses, Excuses

After a receiving a handful of concerns regarding the lack of activity of my blog, I am showing it some attention. Of course, I have several good reasons as to why I haven't updated it, some of which include:

- I'm working hard! While I know that the marks I earn here do not count towards my Kenyon GPA and all I have to do is get over a C in order to pass, it turns out that I don't know how to do "C-work." Yes friends, I am a nerd and I will work my butt off to get a grade that will not count. Brilliant.

- As a result of said work, I've written a lot of words in the past 6 weeks. A LOT. So, once I've turned in my essay(s) for the week, the last thing I want to do is write... : ( I'm beginning to wonder if there's a certain number of words an individual can use in their lifetime before running out - something along the lines of "you're days are numbered" but like "you're words are numbered" and then one day I will begin a brilliant sentence and will be unable to finish it. Scary thought.

Beautiful Gardens at Hampton Court Palace

- I've been doing some touristy things including a day trip to Hampton Court Palace and Windsor Castle. That same weekend, I spent the night in London with a group of my high school friends to celebrate a 21st Birthday! We hadn't seen each other in quite a while - ironically, it just takes us all studying abroad to see one another. Why would we want to get together in Ohio when we can conquer London together? It was a wonderful time, but it meant that there was little work accomplished that weekend and consequently no time to sit down and update this thing.

- Speaking of "touristy things," all of the American visiting students here at Hertford have been eagerly awaiting the 7 week Spring Break (er, Easter Holiday?) that starts in just T minus 2 weeks. As a result, we've all been scrambling to figure out where we want to go, how to get there, what to do, who to see, etc. etc. I keep oscillating between being so excited to being completely frustrated with this process as a result of the amount of internet researching hours I've done in order to figure out the cheapest travel methods (no, I refuse to go to from Paris to Dublin in order to reach Vienna... it just makes no sense!) or when would be the best time to visit another student studying abroad (yes, I realize you'll be working, but can I still come see you? I promise I won't be too much of a distraction). The one thing I've learned so far is that communication is key. Not just any communication though, GOOD, SOLID communication. Not just an offhand "Yeah, you should definitely come visit" but a "I'm coming on the 16th-19th of March, meet me at the train station at 3:30." As I have found out, some people are better at communicating in this "GOOD, SOLID" manner than others... but alas, what can we do? I will just have to hope for the best and see what happens... It will be an adventure!

- Quite honestly, I've forgotten that I hadn't updated my blog in a while. Oops! I have recently discovered one of Blogspot's hidden features, something called "Stats." Basically, it's a page shows me anything from how many people have looked at my page to what posts were most popular to what country you hail from to even what type of browser you used to look at my blog. Needless to say, I've been creeping on you all almost daily and have been really curious about the person who's been reading my posts from the Turks and Caicos Islands... who are you?! Go out and enjoy the sunshine rather than this un-updated and rambling blog!

So, on the topic of "sunshine" (and now that I have given you enough excuses as to why I haven't told you of my most recent weeks in Oxford), I am going to risk filling my word-quota in order to provide you with a brand-new entry.

I was told England was rainy. Granted, my first view of England was a semi-obscured sight of rain drops collecting on the plane's window - I was wedged within the center row of seats, craning my neck to see past a rather (ahem) rotund man and an eager couple who kept leaning forward and enthusiastically pointing out the window at things that only privileged window-seat sitters get to see. Upon stepping out of London Heathrow, my suspicions were correct: it was raining. No surprise.

Inside the walls of Windsor Castle,
the Queen's Residence - note the sun!

What was surprising however, was the beautiful day that followed. Sunny, glorious, lovely and warm. Significantly warmer than icy Ohio, in fact. Even more surprising... the amount of sunny days that have followed it. I could probably count the number of times I've actually had to use an umbrella... maybe I've just been lucky so far, but I would even dare to say that England is not so much rainy as it is "damp."  Within a single day, it will most likely become "damp" at some point - whether it's rain, mist, or a gentle shower, some sort of precipitation will occur - and then the sun will come out. Granted, it may be behind some cloud cover, but you still know that it's shining... somewhere... far away.

The fact that the Brits have so many different ways of describing cloudy weather shows you just how much the weather varies from the stereotypical constant rain. Two of my favorite are "white cloud" and "grey cloud" which puts our American "cloudy" to shame: not only can I expect it to be overcast, but I now know what kind of cloud will be gracing the sky. I guess it's similar to the Eskimo's extensive vocabulary devoted to our limited idea of snow: the Brits know their clouds in a way this poor Ohio-girl can't seem to understand.

... of course, as I write this, it begins to pour and I have somewhere to be in just a few minutes. Alas, c'est la vie! Sorry for the length - hope it makes up for the lack of attention I've been showing! xx K

Academia

Seeing as this entire process that I've embarked upon is called "Study Abroad," I should probably provide some insight into the whole "studying" aspect of my "abroad" experience. Well, here goes...

The Radcliffe Camera, one of the
Bodleian Library's many reading rooms,
convienently located next to Hertford.

The way things work at Oxford, at least for the humanities, is that each student takes two tutorials: a primary and a secondary. As their titles suggest, you supposedly spend more time on your primary tutorial than you do your secondary, mostly due to the fact that your primary tute meets twice as often as your secondary. That is to say, for Oxford's 8 week terms, a primary tute meets 8 times (once a week) and a secondary meets 4 times (once every other week). For those of us who are less inclined to math (or, rather "maths"), the discovery that I would only be meeting with my tutors for a grand total of 12 hours over the span of 8 weeks was quite shocking. Compared to the approximately 12 hours of class a week at home, this seemingly tiny number of hours spent in tutes at first seemed quite laughable.

Now, before any Kenyon-ites feel the need to express their outrage or even jealousy, I must make it clear that I am working. No, let me rephrase using the proper amount of text-based emphasis: I am WORKING, bold, italicized, and underlined. While I may "only" have 12 hours of actual tutorials,  most of my daytime hours are dedicated to the study of Arthurian Legend (my primary tute) and Modern British Drama (my secondary), which both require (unsurprisingly) numerous hours of reading, many word documents full of note-taking, and late nights of essay-writing. As of now, the end of 4th Week, I have written approximately 41,940 words either total, 11,961 of which belong to essays. Not that I'm counting. Or that I used this tallying as a way to procrastinate last night as I finished up my essay for my tute this afternoon....

The "mysterious" entry to Hertford's Library.

A tute is not really comparable to a class back in the states. It's more like office hours: you have a prearranged meeting time and come to your tutor's office to meet one-on-one for an hour. For me, I must bring two copies of my essay for the week's tutorial with me, one for me and one for my tutor. Why you may ask? Well,  because both of my tutes begin with me reading out my essay to the tutor as he marks up his copy. Depending on the tute, I might be stopped and asked to explain myself or to clarify along the way, or I will have to just keep drudging through my paper as I hear my tutor busily scratching out, editing, and tearing up the words that I have just read to him.

Needless to say, it's just a bit stressful. Reading a 2,500 word essay isn't exactly easy, especially when you have carefully avoided reading anything aloud all your life, preferring to hear other people's eloquent voices to your own voice's inability to do more than stumble and stagger its way across the page. Also, those words that keep tripping you up are your own, not some published author who most likely has been paid to string together the trickiest set of phrases with the express purpose to be read aloud by poor, unsuspecting students. No. I only have myself to blame. By the end of page five, not only am I winded as a result of choking on my own ineloquence (ha, ineloquence is not a word... I'll leave it in there irony's sake), but my mouth feels like I just attempted to eat six saltines in less than a minute.  Awesome.

Luckily enough for me, my primary tutor always makes tea. That is, if he hasn't accidentally kicked the teacup across the room in attempt to find a stapler. True story.