Getting to Work: or, How I Took a Break from the Bronte's and Met Celebrities in a Garden

Hoorah! Here I am blogging in rapid succession to my last post and keeping my promise to myself and to all of my faithful readers (or just you, Mom). Unfortunately, this post, like this week, starts on a rather melancholy note. Will informed me late last night that our little hamster, Bruce, had passed away in his sleep. He was very special to us both as he was our first pet together, and his sweet presence will be sorely missed. We were lucky to have close to two years of cuddles with this little guy:

Bruce, aka The Muffin

This may seem like a small occurrence to some, but, in truth, it only added onto the emotional turmoil I was already experiencing this week. Precisely in line with every pamphlet I read about studying abroad, the beginning of the third week of my trip came with a twinge of homesickness. After talking with some of the other students, I think many of us have reached a similar revelation: We are all very, very far away from home. For many of us, classes are starting to get tough, sleep schedules are beginning to diminish, and the stress of impressing an Oxford tutor while still leaving time to explore England seems an impossible task. Here’s how we’re managing the stress:

On Sunday, I buckled down to begin tackling my first tutorial paper. I’m trying to establish a connection between the narrative styles of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and Anne Bronte’s Agnes Grey. Both novels seem to construct a distance between the author and the story line by using multiple narrators which creates a complex layering effect (i.e. a story within a story within a story). While Wuthering Heights has long been a favorite of mine, I was not familiar with any of Anne Bronte’s major works, including Agnes Grey (#BadEnglishMajor). So, I got up bright and early Sunday morning to remedy this situation…and ended up reading the entire novel…in one day. Time flies when you’re reading about a governess’s repressed desire for the local curate. Am I right?? Ok, maybe I’m alone in this.

The Bronte Sisters

Although a day spent reading is never a day wasted, I was ready for a break come evening. Because the day was a study day for many of us and because Lien’s lovely friend was in town from Belgium, we decided to treat ourselves to a night off. Good conversation, overpriced drinks, and one ice cream run later, we finally settled in for some much needed sleep.

Ready to resume my studies this morning, I made a run to the Radcliffe in search of some literary theory books for my upcoming Shakespeare paper. I’ll admit, the one place that still seems to make a spectacle of my American-ness is the library. I think it might have something to do with the fact that most of the Oxford students are in the process of studying for their exams and appear to consider it a mortal sin for outsiders to intrude on their library space. I’ve been through a few finals weeks of my own. I feel their pain. So, after much aimless wandering around until a kind librarian put me out of my misery, I found and copied my materials and was on my way.

Jamie, Sally and I spent the rest of the afternoon perusing Oxford’s botanic garden where we found beautiful fountains and flowers...

Oxford Botanic Gardens

Poppies! :)

Tolkien's favorite tree!

This wall reminded me of The Secret Garden

Rose garden and maze, very Alice in Wonderland-esque

 Oh yeah, and we also found Phil Keoghan, the host of The Amazing Race. That’s right. He was filming a short clip on punting, which the contestants would have to do on the next leg of the race, and was gracious enough to take a picture with us. As if that wasn’t bizarre enough, we also saw one of the contestants, Bethany Hamilton (you probably know her from the movie Soul Surfer), on our way back to our flat. I think it’s fair to say that it’s been a pretty odd couple of days in Oxford.

It’s already week three. I feel like I’m on my own amazing race here in the world of academia! Stay tuned for more strange occurrences from across the world (though I can’t promise they will always have such a well known cast)!