10 Weeks & 1 Term Down

That's right, the first term is over and survived, and Monday marks 10 weeks abroad.  The time has flown by, largely due to how busy I am.  Between school and 15 miles of cycle commuting daily, I barely have enough time for grocery shopping and feeding myself 1,000,000 calories a day to fuel my commute, let alone much time to relax and explore.  But overall, I'm still really enjoying things -- classes are challenging but interesting, my research (what little time for it between course assignments) is also fun, and the people in my department and college are great.

During what little time I do have for exploring and wandering, I'm still enjoying the great access to really picturesque farm and pasture land scenery.  Also an unexpected thrill each time I hear them are the church bells that echo across the countryside.  Downtown Oxford, of course, is full of them Sunday mornings, but I also occasionally hear them from Eynsham and Church Hanbrough as I'm out riding my bike or taking a short walk, seemingly quite a distance from the churches....

Birdlife
I realized after my last post that I've been enjoying watching the birds outside the patio windows of the Lambing Pen, and hadn't yet commented on it.  My identification of US bird species is mediocre at best, and the species are, generally, totally different here, so I can't give as much info as I'd like, but I have spotted and identified a few interesting varieties.  About a month back, riding home unusually early in the day, two or three 'common pheasants' darted across the road and into the hedge surrounding our yard.

I've also seen common quail in the yard (which don't resemble the American variety at all, except for the shape of the beak, and are much smaller).

I also spotted a grey partridge in the yard one day.

In the field across the highway from where we live, for about a week there were several swans hanging out, I presume in the middle of a migration, though I'm not positive about that....  No picture because I didn't get close enough to identify the specific type of white water-bird....

The last species I've identified in the area are magpies, conjuring up not-so-fond memories of the magpies that attacked me during nesting season in Australia a few years ago....

In case you were wondering, none of those photos are mine -- thanks Wikipedia....

Lots of other colorful varieties of birds have been in the yard, but I'm slower at identifying them since there are so many online photos of flying birds to wade through to make IDs....

Kebab Vans
Not many restaurants remain open too late here -- the British evening meal comes significantly earlier than several other European cultures, and after the evening rush, the restaurants all close, especially during the week.  At this time, your only options are the pubs, but many of them have pretty limited selections of (probably microwaved) meat pies and various deep fried snacks.  Enter the kebab van.  Starting at about 6:00 pm and remaining open well past midnight, the city center becomes dotted with Kebab Vans, which are basically the equivalent to the Mexican taco trucks that can be found in Southern California.  I've tried the fare twice now.  On the first occasion, I learned that one should NEVER purchase a burger from a kebab van.  The lettuce / tomato were American fast food quality, and bun was tasteless, and even more concerning was the tasteless, undercooked meat patty that didn't seem much like beef.  I've not thought too much about what it might have been, but hope that none of you will make the same mistake that I made.

My second experience was much better.  This time, my local friends had alerted me to the rule that you only buy kebabs from kebab vans (duh!) and so this was the course I took.  For a mere 6 or 7 dollars, I purchased a lamb kebab that was meal enough for two.  Great naan bread stuffed with peppers, really tasty lamb kebab, and lots of other tasty spices and veggies made for a wonderful and cheap late-night snack.  The degree of difference between the burger and the kebab was shocking.

MCR Dinners
Speaking of food, I've tested out several college-offered options this term.  I eat two or three times a week in the college "Hall" where the college-subsidised food is good quality and very economical compared with pubs and restaurants in town.  The meals are fairly standard and not noteworthy, but as I said, a cheap, quick, and easy option for midday meals (or dinners).

I have treated two friends to lunches at Lincoln in exchange for a day out at their respective colleges.  So I've also sampled fare at lunchtime at Trinity College and Lady Margaret Hall, two other Oxford colleges.  The food, again, was not particularly noteworthy, but it was great to get an insider's view of those two colleges.  I plan to continue this tradition as often as possible, mainly for the opportunity to get a member's only tour of some of the other Oxford colleges.

Once or twice a week the graduate student body (Middle Common Room) offers up a special MCR Lunch or MCR dinner that is open to the first MCR members who reply to the frequent signup emails.
I tried an MCR lunch early in the term, and the food was basically the same as standard lunch food, but served rather than buffet style, and eaten not just in Hall, but at "High Table," the table equivalent to where the teachers sit in the Harry Potter movies and reserved only for college fellows and graduate students.  That was nifty.

I also signed up for one of the terms' "MCR Exchange Dinners" where a small contingent from the MCR head over to dine with another college in Hall one night, and return the favor in our own Hall.  The Exchange I did was with Brasenose college, our friendly rival that shares a back-wall with our college....  Again, not particularly noteworthy food, but fun to experience another college's Hall and dining experience.

But the culinary highlight of my time in England thus far has definitely been the two special MCR Dinners I've signed up for.  I was totally expecting another standard meal in Hall, with the extra money shelled over funding the pre-dinner sherrry, the white and red wines during the meal, and the after-dessert port, all of which I really wouldn't be consuming much of.  To my pleasant surprise, these meals were the best I've had in England, including several quite nice restaurants I've been out to when Ariana has been in town.

At the first meal, which I went to with a college friend, we had a delicious fish appetizer, an amazingly prepared pheasant for the entree, and creme brulee for dessert.  It was at this meal that I discovered that not only do you pay extra for alcohol, tablecloths, and a service staff rather than a rushed buffet, you also are paying for a substantial hike in the quality of the food.  That meal was, at the time, the best I'd had in Oxford.  And pheasant, tasting somewhere between dark meat turkey and duck, was not a type of meat I would have enjoyed particularly had it not been so well-prepared.

On a recent visit into town, the MCR had their annual "Christmas Dinner" which actually occurs during the 8th week of the term before many of the students leave town for the holidays.  As it fell this year, that happened to be the Tuesday after Thanksgiving.  Ariana and I had tried to find a Sunday night turkey roast for our makeshift Thanksgiving meal (still don't have the kitchen equipment to have even attempted cooking ourselves, and I had a nasty problem set due the day after Thanksgiving which precluded much celebration Thursday night).  We ended up at a pub in Witney, an Oxford-sized town just west of Eynsham.  The food was good, and the turkey was nice, but certainly not up to the home-cooked standards by which we've both become spoiled.

We were just able to get our names added to the Christmas dinner list at the last minute, and were delighted to see that we'd get a second shot at a good Thanksgiving meal, as the main course was turkey.  Again, the meal was fantastic -- and perhaps the reason that Lincoln seems to have a reputation for some of the best food in Oxford.  As usual, the black-tie meal was accompanied with sherry before hand and wines during the meal.  The appetizer was a really nice potato soup, which was followed by turkey, stuffing, gravy, potatoes, carrots and brussel sprouts that were all amazing.  Not my favorite, familystuffing recipe, but the rest was just as good, and the turkey was close....  After the meal we had mince pies and Christmas pudding, retreated to another room to sing 30 minutes of carols (all the men actually willingly sing in this country) and then a return to the Hall, where a fire had been lit and mulled wine was served.  All-in-all, a really nice evening, and amazing food.

Vocab Primer
Another couple words for your consideration:

Magdalen - the name of a college both at Oxford and Cambridge.  Pronounced as it looks if you're at Cambridge, but pronounced 'mod-lin' if you're at Oxford.  Make sense?  No, not really.

Duff - a great word meaning broken or defective.  I like this one....

Geordie - slang term for somebody from the northern English region around Newcastle, or alternately for the slang dialect or accent that with which they speak.

Dark at 4:30?

Well, I've officially survived the first month of my program as well as life in Oxfordshire. Some of the highlights of my life north of the 51st parallel:

Tea Time - Tea time in England seems every bit as prevalent as the stereotype would imply:

I've adapted quickly to some of the tea culture -- odds are very low that you'll ever be able to spot me without a mug of tea sitting next to me, regardless of whether you're checking while I'm home or at the office.

Other bits I'm struggling more to adapt to.  My department takes a tea break at 11:00 every day (just a social gathering over tea in the kitchen or the roof if the weather is nice) as well as at 4:00.  Call me a work-a-holic American, but I am having trouble reconciling two daily 30-minute breaks on top of a 30-45 minute lunch break.  Add to that lectures, seminars, and research group meetings to attend, and I'm not sure I'd ever get any work done.  I'd say I've settled into a routine of going to about 3 or 4 of the 8 official tea breaks a week.  Plus, as I mentioned earlier, probably 15 trips per week to the kitchen to grab hot water and refill my office mug....

And other bits still, I've probably adopted with a bit too much ease.  Tea (excepting of course High Tea, which is like the tea you might go to in America with sandwiches and scones and desserts) is generally accompanied by nothing more than simple 'biscuits.'  But there's a catch.  'Biscuits,' you see, are actually cookies.  Partially because the kitchen is directly next door to my office, partially because I like cookies, and partially because 'biscuits' are clearly healthier than cookies, I'm among the top 3 or 4 consumers (according to the spreadsheet on the kitchen wall where we log our biscuit consumption for future billing by the departmental coffee club) in the department.  60 cookies in the first month would be absurd, but 60 biscuits isn't nearly as silly.  They are healthier, right?

British Wildlife
Living in the British countryside has been eye opening as far as seeing a range of different animals than I'm used to seeing around CA, both in and out of town.  For those of you that know me well, it's probably no surprise that I've been reading up on British flora and fauna in preparation for hopefully some great hikes and camping trips.  Among the three species of hare and rabbit that live on the island, I've seen at least two of the types running across our driveway as I bike to and from work.  Also seen deer on occasion in the field in front of the house, and am eagerly awaiting the first sighting of a badger or hedgehog.

I've also started to think about what animals will be wise to consider when letting our pets outside here.  There is a species of poisonous snake, the adder, though it's not nearly as poisonous as the rattlesnake is, and since Nissa has been trained to avoid rattlesnakes, I think there's minimal concern there.  I am a little concerned about the badger population, whom I'm pretty sure Nissa will want to befriend, and am equally confident will want nothing to do with her.  They're reputed to be pretty feisty little guys.  Also of slight concern is the hedgehog, and while probably no permanent damage could be done, I'd prefer Nissa not find out the hard way that hedgehogs are not plush toys for her amusement.

It was nice to see in my reading that the cats should be pretty safe outside at night (or so I thought -- read on).  The carnivores on the island are:

  - stoat (referred to as an ermine in the US -- about the size of a cat)

  - pine marten (very similar to the marten species that some of you may have seen in the US -- about the size of a cat)
  - otters (probably not going to mess with a cat, and probably not as far from the river as we live)
  - various smaller carnivores (inc. weasels, mink, polecats)
  - badgers (slight concern, but not really interested in eating animals the size of cats, so probably no concern)
  - european wildcat (apparently very rare and only remaining in Scotland today)
  - red fox
That last one was the big question mark in my mind when it came to the cats.  But in my reading, it sounded as if the foxes in Great Britain, though technically the same species as the foxes in the States, were generally much smaller, and this definitely set my mind at ease.  That is until I almost hit one when riding my bike up the driveway one night as one darted in front of me.  And this was not a small fox at all -- I'd say definitely 25 - 30 pounds, which is about the largest red foxes can get to be on any continent.  So apparently our little community in the country sits on top of a behemoth red fox's territory -- I think the cats will be coming in each night.

British Cuisine

I've been preparing meals for myself from supplies that I've purchased at one of two of the small markets in Eynsham near the house.  I am missing some things (the nut and trail mixes available at Trader Joe's, for example) but for the most part have been able to find lots of good fresh fruit and veggies, as well as lots of interesting ready-made meals for nights when I don't want to do something elaborate.  The variety of pies is overwhelming -- shepherd's pies, steak and kidney pies, cottage pies, mince pies, the list goes on.  Not that I mind -- though I do go for the gourmet foods every now and then, there are few comfort foods that I enjoy as much as a good meat pie with some mashed potatoes and veggies.  So that's been great.

I did take on the challenge last weekend, though, of preparing one of the meals that a British friend told me I wouldn't be able to find here: Mexican (the other being Japanese).  It took some searching through the small and limited "international" food section of both markets, but I was able to compile the fixings for soft tacos.  Some of it looked a little different than I was used to, but I figured I'd give it a shot.  I'd say the experiment was a success, and I'm sure I'll be able to improve upon it in the future.  The weaknesses in the endeavor were the salsa (very odd, full of beans) and tortilla chips (not really good Mexican tortilla chips at all -- plain Doritos is more like it), as well as the fact that I couldn't find refried beans anywhere.  So there is room to improve, to be sure, but the tacos came out just fine and kept me very happy for two dinners last week.

Of footpaths and countryside....

Took a few hours today to explore more thoroughly one of the public footpaths that takes off from close to the house.  This "circular walk" between Church Hanborough (that 'H' word is two syllables, by the way) and Eynsham is about a four mile loop that is on town streets for about a tenth of a mile, and for the rest of the trip is along bridle paths and footpaths that cut through the farmland that surrounds our house. It was about 105 minutes today, and will be a very nice jogging route with the dog.  The path was through rolling hills the whole way, and in addition to dedicated footpath with trees on both sides, cut through numerous cow pastures, sheep pastures, and local crops.  Check out the route here: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=3306458  You can zoom out and in (with the plus and minus symbols) to see more or less of the route, and make sure you're in "hybrid' mode (upper right) to get a sense of the terrain.  Also, some photos:  

IKEA 

I survived another trip to IKEA, this time navigating by myself (only made one wrong turn) and now have a complete dresser, rather than the disaster they sold me last time (one missing drawer, one drawer with no bottom or front, and 4 more drawers with no bottoms.  It looks better now.

Vocabulary

Finally, a quick vocabulary primer of my favorite recent British and Oxford words:

   knackered - a personal favorite, just cause it's way more fun to say than "exhausted."

   DPhil - what an Oxford PhD is called -- see the last post about Oxford preferring to be a bit different

   ronnie - a northern British slang for "to damage beyond repair" which can apparently be used as any part of speech.  I'm not sure if I can pull this one off myself yet, but some examples would be: "Careful you don't ronnie yourself!"  "I stumbled and gave my ankle quite the ronnie!"  "That computer program I've been working on is completely ronnied!"

I'm a Legal Alien

Hello Brave Readers,

I'm not sure how much time I'll have to post here, and I'm not sure how many people will actually bother to read it, but I wanted to have some way for people to stay a bit connected, even a the times when I'll no doubt be buried in too much work to actively communicate with the outside world. So with that, and with no idea where this will take me, your ride on my stream of consciousness begins....

Arrival
Well, almost a month ago now, I stumbled off the plane with two enormous, overweight duffel bags and a broken down and boxed up bicycle. I miraculously navigated Heathrow with these things, didn't run over anybody as I wheeled them down a long ramp to the lower level, and managed to get onto the Oxford bus. After arriving, my landlord, who has proven incredibly helpful and accommodating, squeezed me and my stuff into his VW Golf, and we headed off for my first glimpse of the property. As the trip progressed, I was more and more thankful that he had offered to pick me up at the bus station -- I would still be stumbling around the British countryside in all likelihood had he not. Our place is well off the beaten track, at the end of a single lane road that connects with a two-lane, apparently unnamed road, that heads of of Eynsham. Eynsham is quite a small, but very cute, little village that is about 5 miles from Oxford, and of which only the locals seem to have heard. After a tour of the place, I was immediately invited in for tea by our landlord/neighbors, and the tea has been flowing ever since.

From Pasadena to Solitude
Well, I knew I was moving from a bustling metropolis' suburb to the British countryside, but the contrast couldn't have been more stark. Not only is our place surrounded, for the most part, by fields of grazing cows, horses, and sheep, for at least a mile in every direction, I also moved into an empty house. Appliances (mostly) were here, as well as my air matress. Soon there were neat little piles of clothes all over the floor of the bedroom that made that room feel very homey and welcoming, compared to the vast and empty living room. After Ari's visit a few weeks ago, we made a trip to IKEA (see that section later) and remedied that situation at least partly. I now am the proud owner of a desk (at which I'm sitting on a chair borrowed from my landlord), two wardrobes, a dresser, and a sofa-bed. In all honesty, it hasn't been that bad, though, as I've spent very few hours here at the house -- the amount of running around Oxford I had to do initially to set up utilities and bank accounts and so on, and now the amount of time I need to spend working at the office keep me away most hours of most days.

"A Land Separated by a Common Language"
This phrase, as I've learned, could not be more true, of England to a degree, but of Oxford in particular. Oxford is a multicultural town full of every accent you can imagine -- the graduate student population is well over 60% foreign, so in some ways, it's the Brits who are the minority. But throw onto this jumble of accents the different vocabulary and colloquialisms of each region of England (which vary considerably more than the entire US) and you've really got your hands full communicating. And on top of all that, Oxford as an institution seems to take pride in being, well, a little different. Even the British nationals have to learn "oxfordspeak" when they arrive on campus. Tuition bills and called battels, mailboxes are called pigeon holes or more often 'pidges,' the reception desk workers are called porters, the hospitality crews are called scouts, ID cards are called 'Bod Cards,' 1st, 2nd, and 3rd quarters are referred to as Michaelmas, Hilary, and Trinity Terms, and the list goes on and on.... These strange words, as well as a growing collection of British colloquialisms, are rolling my tongue pretty naturally now, but I do have to wonder if anybody is going to be able to understand me outside the city limits....

Tourist Town
I suppose I lived in a tourist town, LA, before, but the number of tourists per square mile here is definitely much, much higher. This doesn't effect life too much when you're indoors, but it is odd to be making your way from lunch back to the office and have to weave in and out of crowds of people looking at maps, taking pictures of everything, and generally cluttering up everything. I made the mistake, during my first weekend in town, of heading to the center of Oxford to run some errands on Saturday morning. Never again will I go to central Oxford on a Saturday morning. It was a complete zoo. The oddest tourist related incident so far was at our matriculation ceremony, as the 200+ new students in my college were arranged on bleachers for a photo, we had a small crowd of people who stood around for nearly an hour taking photos and VIDEOS of us getting our picture taken. It was very strange. So I snapped a picture of them:



Matriculation
This was the event that visually, at least, has made it most apparent that Oxford likes to be, like I said earlier, a little different. Basically, each new student on campus for the first time (all colleges, grads and undergrads, heads into the Sheldonian Hall, the Vice Chancellor (like the President of the University) reads some phrases to you in Latin and then speaks to you for about 10 minutes telling you to "work hard and play hard" while at Oxford, and then you go back to your individual colleges for photos and brunch. But the visual element of the day comes from the fact that all members wear to the induction their "sub fusc" and academic gown (more Oxfordspeak!). Sub fusc for me means basically a tux and white bow tie, with this gown, little more than a cape with a long tail on each side, and the girls all have similar black/white regulations. Thankfully, as a physics graduate, I basically only have to wear this whole outfit to matriculation and graduation, but the undergrads still take all their exams in this full getup. 800 years of tradition, evidently, is hard to change. So picture this: my day consisted of waking up really early, putting on formalwear and a gown/cape, strolling for 30 minutes through sheep and cow pastures to the nearest bus stop, riding the bus in a tux, having some Latin yelled at me, having some tourists take pictures of me, and then heading back for another walk, in formalwear, through the British countryside. The best part of it all was, in Oxford, nobody looked at me oddly in the slightest.






A note on the weather
Everyone says the British love to talk about the weather, and they do. Every Brit will tell you the weather is terrible, but it really isn't. It's just very inconvenient, and very annoying. Variability is the name of the game, as it's not at all unusual to check the weather, see that it's raining, head outside to find it sunny, walk back inside to drop off your umbrella, walk back outside to find it pouring, head back in for the umbrella, you get the idea.... It doesn't seem that it's really going to get all that cold here (it rarely drops below freezing in any month) and the rain is generally fairly light, at least so far, though the 'wettest' months are apparently still on their way. But the really odd thing about the weather here, and I think the only thing the Brits truly have much right to complain about, is that it's totally damp, all the time. Every other cold place I've been it gets very dry when it's cold. Wisconsin winters were this way, CA and CO mountains are this way when they're cold, as is the CA deserts. But here, the lowest humidity I've seen so far was 75%, and it's generally more like 85%. This, combined with cool weather (50s and 60s mostly so far), combined with no mountains to stop the winds from picking up, make for a moderate cold that really can dig in and make it unpleasant. Bundling up too much just gets you clammy and wet because it's so humid, and not bundling up just exposes you to the damp wind that cuts through your skin. So getting used to the weather here will be an adjustment, though probably not as bad as I thought it might be.

IKEA Nightmare
As I mentioned earlier, Ari and I made a trip to IKEA to get some basic furnishings when she was in town. The closest one was about an hour away, so we rented a car and I successfully negotiated the left-side driving and left-handed shifting (only stalled twice!) and we headed up to Milton Keynes. After an hour of driving through the countryside, we suddenly hit a traffic jam and a bunch of massive warehouse style stores, including a home-improvement place, an enormous WalMart, and an enormous IKEA. I'm not sure if it was the stores or the football stadium nextdoor, but it took a looong time to make it into the parking lot and find a spot. That accomplished, we spent hours and hours lost in IKEA, measuring things, comparing things, hunting down salespeople that never seemed to be around, and always finding that the things we wanted were out of stock. Finally after literally 5 or 6 hours, we had a long list of things to pick up from the warehouse, and after determining that a few more things were out of stock, we had our cart full of flat-pack boxes. There was a mislabeled box that they made me replace, and I think security nearly got called on me as I returned, as they'd told me to, with a fresh box to our cart at the end of the line. Finally, it was all packed in the car, with other pieces scheduled for delivery later in the week, and we drove home, thinking the worst of the nightmare was behind us. We put the boxes in the house and forgot them, and my plan was to return to them the following weekend and have a building spree. This I did, but in the process discovered that the box they made me replace was no longer mislabeled (which really wouldn't have been a problem at all) but simply had about 10 important pieces missing, and 10 other important pieces duplicated. We're not talking nuts and bolts, either -- I mean large pieces of wood. So now my bedroom contains a dresser with missing drawers, partially missing drawers, no top, and no back. And it sounds like usually when this happens, they send out the necessary parts by courier. No problem, right? Well, wrong. The parts I'm missing are so large, that apparently the couriers can't handle them and it's up to me to trek back up to IKEA to resolve things. There may be more on that later.....

Oh ya, and that school thing....
So in between all these other adventures, I'm going to school too. The department is really great. I'm one of 7 new grad students this year. I've got lectures to attend, which unlike US schools are taught by a rotation of all the professors in the department rather than one lucky soul. They each lecture a hand-full of times over the year about the topics they specialize in most. It definitely keeps things interesting and is a great way to get a feel for each of them individually. In addition to the lecture classes of 40 or so, there is a grad student "problem class" when we go over problem sets in a small group with one professor. These classes are very intense and challenging, and I'm learning that my calculus skills are very much in need of polishing. But it's already going smoother than it did the first week, and I'm learning a lot and enjoying it all very much. By the new year, my class schedule will already by highly reduced, and I'll be spending most of my time doing research, which I'm just getting my feet wet with now. I'm looking forward to it all!!!

College vs. University
The last thing I think I'll put in what has become a massive first blog is a little note about the other strange Oxford (and Cambridge) organizational scheme. Each member of the University (undergrad, grad, professor, everyone) is a member of, in Oxford's case, one of more than 40 colleges. For the undergrads, the college is central to their degree -- in charge of teaching many of their classes, housing them, feeding them, and only occasionally do they students come together for educational experiences with students from other colleges of the university. For grads, it's not so crucial, as my entire program is coordinated through the physics department, but I am a member at Lincoln College, where I can have meals if I like, and there are many social events planned to keep me busy in my free time (though I'm not exactly sure when I'll be having much of that). As sad as it is for me to have to relate the system to fiction, the best way to think about the college/university thing is to think Harry Potter. Basically Oxford is my Hogwart's, and Lincoln is my Griffindor. (On a related and interesting side note, the mess hall in the Harry Potter movies is filmed right around the corner from Lincoln in the Christ Church Hall -- I'm working on making a friend who is a member there so I can go for a meal and eat in Hogwart's).

Congrats if you made it through all that. More to come, I'm sure....