Rowing

Last term I joined the Mansfield Women's Rowing team. Now, many of you are probably wondering why I would put myself through waking up at 5:45 for early morning practices on the river in the cold, and sometimes in the rain, when I had never previously rowed a day in my life. Some days I wondered that myself. But, truth be told, rowing is part of the true "Oxford experience" and I wouldn't have had it any other way. 

My first time on beautiful Thames River was absolutely dreadful. I had no idea what I was doing or what any of the commands from the cox meant. Granted, neither did any of the other novices in the boat, which isn't exactly ideal for a crew of 8. My very first time rowing I was even lucky enough to "catch a crab," which is essentially when your oar develops a mind of it's own, tries to kill you, and paralyzes you in very awkward position in the boat. 

Nonetheless, I was determined to stick it out. With each outing, I began to slowly pick up the technique and actually enjoy rowing! I began to look forward to the Christ Church Regatta, a race made for just the newbies! Two losses in the Regatta and you're out. The first race, against Trinity, was laughably horrible! We won though (by default because Trinity couldn't fill a novice boat and had experienced people in it). We had to stop multiple times throughout to prevent running into a tree or a wall. It was so much fun though, despite how horribly out of time everyone was. We were told the race was to last about 3-5 minutes, yet I am sure there were several times we were stopped on the water for 3 minutes at a time! The second race, against Christ Church, went SO much better. Granted, we still lost, but not by much and we rowed really really well as a team. Though I won't be continuing rowing this term, it was a great experience well worth doing and therefore worth mentioning in this blog! 

Unfortunately, we did not have the foresight to take a team photo, but here are photos I took at the Regatta. 

One of Mansfield's Men's boat competing

Sorry Dear Dedicated Readers (assuming I have any...)

So the last post I left here was dated November 8th. It is now January 24th. That is so sad! SO much has happened and I have SO many stories to tell, many of which I am sure will get lost or overshadowed by other events. I could literally write an entire book detailing the events of the last week alone, let alone the last 13 weeks! But, I will spare you those details and try to hit just the highlights (which is be incredibly difficult... I went backpacking through Europe for 5 weeks and returned to Oxford for the start of a new term. What is the proper definition of a highlight?) So stay tuned because I anticipate a few posts in the near future :)

But, in my defense... we all knew this hiatus was going to happen sooner or later!

Caving with the Claustrophobic

At Fresher's Fair, one of the sports and societies I signed up for was Oxford University Caving Club (OUCC). I had never been caving before, let alone been in a cave. I'm always up for adventurous things, so I figured why not!

The first novice caving trip was to Wales, but I couldn't go because I was too busy having dinner with Alan Rickman. The second, and last caving trip was this past weekend, so I cleared my schedule and made time!

We left Oxford an hour after planned because not only did the mini van driver call in sick, but so did the back up driver! The drive to Mendip took about 2 hours, during which time the 13 or so of us enjoyed an eclectic mix of tunes (anywhere from traditional Irish music to Bohemian rhapsody, to opera, to the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song, to classical) and speculated about the trip would go. Some of us (or maybe I was the only gullible one) actually though that the cave hut we'd be sleeping in was a hut in a cave! But no, the cave hut is actually above ground and consists of a kitchen, a living room, and one bedroom upstairs with about bunch of mats laying on elevated wooden structures. 

The cave hut

Our bedroom

The first thing we did after pulling up was walk to the pub down the road - just in time for it to start pouring! 

Thankfully it wasn't raining on the way back, which meant I could actually take in my surroundings as opposed to fruitlessly trying to avoid getting wet. The sky was beautiful. So many stars, the moon behind a fog and lighting up the horizon. 

When we got back to the hut, the cave leader announced that it was time for the caving games. He then proceeds to pull out a contraption made of two wooden boards held together by screws. The goal is to squeeze your body through the boards, which get tightened with each round. It got to the point where the two people left competing had to cheat and unscrew it just to get their heads through, and then put it to the right setting for the rest of their body. Oddly enough, the two rounds where the semifinalists lost was the round they each thought stripping down to boxers would help them fit through better!

It's called the constrictor... boy is it constricting! 

Couldn't get it over his head, but got it over everything else! 

How small is was at the end of the game

Our winner! Still didn't beat the all-time record though... next time...

That game left some people a lot more cut up and bruised then when they began. The next game was where there was a kitchen pot on the floor with a looped string around it. The goal was to have two people standing on this tiny pot and to somehow pull the string up from the floor and over both of their bodies. 

They did it very quickly, surprisingly. 

So did they...

Jack and I... nope.

That's Jack...

Meanwhile, Tom, one of the team leaders decided it would be funny to throw fireworks into the furnace without warning anyone...

It was pretty funny...

The next day it was time to go caving! After my first homemade breakfast in England, we got suited up! You start with a very fashionable onesie...

But these guys definitely take the award for pulling off the onesie with style

The onesie is then followed by a caving suit, a belt, rubber gloves, a helmet, and of course wellies. 

Then we split up into teams and hit the road! My team, consisted of two American fools, I mean friends I dragged along with me, an Italian PHD candidate and two awesome guides. This time, we were driving in day light and the countryside was gorgeous! We pulled up to the side of the road, parked the car and hiked to the cave, which was essentially a bunch of rocks creating an opening in the hillside. 

Hiking to the cave

We walked 10 feet into the cave and there was a tiny (I mean the tiny) hole in the ground. One of the leaders got down and just went through feet first and disappeared, at which point Grace bowed and out went back to the car. She had mentioned being claustrophobic and we had joked about it for like a week leading up to the trip, but I didn't realize she was serious! Such a shame because she rocked the caving gear...

But she was probably the only sensible one out of all of us

Here's a pretty pic grace took above ground while we were caving.

Anyway, I blindly followed, not completely aware of exactly what I was getting myself into. Turns out, the space just got smaller! We kept going down, down, down. Every once and a while the cave would open up into a chamber about the size of a vehicle. The sights were amazing, but on the inside I was scared to death! The cave was called Goatchurch Cavern. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera, but I'd venture to say that was a good decision. Judging by the bruises all over my body from squeezing into tight places, I'd imagine the camera wouldn't have made it). 

Here's a picture from someone else's camera just to give you an idea. That's a person's feet 

Here's another picture from another team with a camera

One part of the cave is called the drainpipe, and it is a 15 meter horizontal tunnel barely wider than the average person's shoulder length. I ended up manuvering like a cork screw through it, kicking my feet and twirling around inside before I made it out. And once you made it through (so triumphant) you had to go back through it again because it led to a dead end... It was absolutely insane. There were so many moments were I was thinking there is no way I can fit through there, but the only alternative is being stuck where you are... so you make yourself fit! Or there is no way I can climb that, but the alternative is being stuck where you are, so you do it! 

We did another cave that day, which was just as tight and tasking on your body; the only difference was that this cave has bats and massive spiders. The different parts of this cave were called Purgatory, Hell Series, Paradise Series, and The Garden of Eden! After we have finished with the caves that day, we couldn't get in the car covered in mud. Solution: change right there next to the road. There was a lot of firsts that weekend. Chocolate for lunch was another (only food we brought in the cave). 

After all the groups made it back to the hut, we made a massive home-cooked meal. 

So much cheese... and proof that Grace can somewhat cook! 

After a delicious dinner, we played another caving game (cavers are crazy) with a door with hole in it, and you have to make it up and down the door by weaving in and out of the holes. But all of the crazy cave games made sense after having been in a cave! 

Some didn't make it through this unscathed...

Cavers make so many games out of squeezing through small spaces. At one point, the leader of the trip climbed onto the kitchen counter and attempted to squeeze through a tiny window (and would have succeeded if it weren't for the 12 foot drop on the other side and the hook in the middle of the window frame). 

After the games, we set off a bunch of fire works outside, some of which people may of may not have been holding at the time it was ignited...

No one was injured too badly... hahah! And then we ended the night with ghost stories!

The following day we went in a cave called GB. This cave is also a wet cave, as opposed to the two we had done the day before. We drove to a farm and then walked around a beautiful field of sheep (which also had a giant sink hole in the middle of it) for a while until we found the cave. This cave had many more open chambers bigger a football field; it had your classic spiky formations on the ceiling dripping water like you would expect in a cave... don't get me wrong, it still had its fair share of very tight very small spaces. There were plenty of times where we were maneuvering through a passage by pushing our bodies against two walls because there was no floor. There was even a waterfall (and it had been raining a lot, so it was a lot more water than usual), which we descended and climbed (easily the scariest thing I have ever done in my life). I have climbed a waterfall in Jamaica before, but this was completely different. Remember, these caves are pitch black. We did all this with just a head light. It was much more vertical and there were no ropes. At one point I actually slipped on a rock and had to literally be thrown back onto the ledge. It was terrifying and amazing! People go through their entire lives without seeing what I saw those two days. 

When we finally arose from hundreds of feet below the surface, the sun was setting on the field of sheep. It was like a movie. So picturesque with us ascending from a hole in the ground and triumphantly trekking across a field in our caving gear, covered head to toe in mud. The whole trip was like a movie. In the cave it felt like we were in the Descent and something was going to jump out and kill us all at any moment (not the whole time... just a bit...)

It was an absolutely amazing trip. And as a bonus, we drove through Bath on the way back to Oxford. The lights at night were amazing! That's when I found out it's apparently it's a typical American thing to point out how beautiful Bath is at night. The experience I had was well worth the pain I am in right now! My muscles hate me!

Battle wounds... the other arm is just as bad...

So worth it! 

Don't Be Shy, Vote for A. Fly

So I decided to run for the JYA (Junior year Abroad) at Mansfield College. I had gone JCR (Junior Common Room) meetings where motions are proposed and debated, and I was very keen to foster great relationships between the 38 visiting students and the rest of the JCR.

Saturday, the candidates were assigned a task by the previous JYA rep due by noon the following day. The task was to make a video of us doing something creative to show off how American we are on a very busy Street in Oxford (Cornmarket Street, which is essentially a boulevard for walking, not driving or biking). I was working on a paper all day and didn't have time to start; plus I had NO IDEA what to do! On the way home from a Korean festival at the Oxford Union Saturday night, I saw a woman on Cornmarket street drawing on the sidewalk in chalk. Then it hit me... Amy, you can draw... American, art, Cornmarket street! So that's what happened.

I just needed chalk! But by the time i got this idea, all the stores were closed (Plus I had no idea where to get chalk in Oxford! Someone I asked didn't even know what chalk was... but maybe that's just because I asked the wrong person) And, to make matters worse, none of the stores opened until after 11 on Sundays! The video was due at 12! So i had a minor panic attack, and then got an extension after running all over Oxford in search of chalk! 

Once I got my chalk, I was ready! I started out dreading this. I didn't want to be one of those people doing showy stuff on Cornmarket Street. Don't get me wrong, I love seeing the street performers, I just didn't want to be one doing it! But, duty calls!  So I sat down on the freezing street, nothing but chalk, charcoal, and a picture of Obama.  5 minutes into drawing I started drawing a crowd! It was great! One guy even asked for my email because he wanted me to draw for him in the future. I had so many conversations with so many people! A graphic designer complimented me. A little girl, probably 4 years old said, "Wow! How did you do that? It's in 3D!" A a bunch of people asked me if I could draw them next. Someone asked what institution I studied at to learn how to draw (Self taught... thank you very much). My favorite was when a little boy asked if I was going to draw Mitt Romney next!

http://youtu.be/6pCEZ3CI558

Here's the video!

                                                                 

It was truly an amazing experience! I mean the picture turned out terribly (I did it in 3 hours - which is a record -  and free handed - usually I draw out the face and then shade, not draw and shade at the same time... and it was chalk and on the ground, completely out of my element... plus I've never drawn in front of anyone before!) and I lost the election, but I will never forget that day!  It has rained since, so the image is gone, but it was well worth it!

Do You Ever Work?

So after I've shared with you marvelous tales of champagne and chocolates, rowing, museums, towers, London, and  meeting Alan Rickman, John Mayer, and Billy Joel, I bet you are all wondering about the work load here at "the best University in the world" (at least that's how an MP described Oxford at a Union Debate last night). Well I'll tell you, but bare in mind that this is just from a visiting student's perspective. The work load varies from subject to subject, person to person!

Each JYA (Junior Year Abroad) takes 2 courses for each of the 3 terms. One course is your primary, which meets for an hour once a week in what's called a tutorial, or a tute (8 times total) and the other course is your secondary, which meets 4 times throughout term. Now you many be thinking, only 12 meetings over 8 weeks, that's a lot of free time? Well let me tell you, nothing couldn't be further from the truth!

For every tutorial, you are expected to have a paper written after you complete a massive amount of reading from your reading list. The paper is normally 2000-3000 words long and the reading list is anywhere from 6 books to 32 books (all of which you have less than a week to finish). This is not including the lectures that you should also attend. Lectures are interesting in the sense that I am currently attending lectures for 3 courses that I will not be taking until later on in the year. Some students are going to lectures on courses they may not be taking until next year! There are also SO many lectures I want to attend merely out of interest! So let's recap... that's 36 papers, roughly 7-10 pages long over the course of 24 weeks. At Dickinson, the highest number of papers I wrote in one year was probably about 8 (and I think that's an overestimate)!

So what is a tutorial like? It's an hour long conversation between you and your tutor on the paper you wrote and the readings you've read. A tutorial can have anywhere from one to three students in it. My secondary tutorial is on Comparative Human Rights. It's just me in the course and I am legitimately loving every minute of it. My primary tutorial is a different story. The course, Economic Decisions in the Firm, ended up being a Math course with 11 other students. Given that linear algebra, set theory, programming, and advanced calculus probably won't help me in my future career path, I switched into Theory of Politics at the end of second week. This posed a problem when I got an email on Tuesday from my new tutor explaining how we meet at 9 am on Weds... wouldn't have been an issue if there wasn't a 14 book reading list attached and less than 24 hours to attack it! Because of my switch in tutorials, I've essentially had to write 2 papers every week (awful deadlines! I have a tutorial and a paper due Wed morning, then another paper due Friday, tutorial Monday, and repeat! also doesn't help I am slowest reader on the planet!)

Needless to say... it's a lot of work. When I am not blogging (which you know I've been slacking on a bit), I am reading, writing, or enjoying Oxford. No down time! I haven't seen a TV in months (and not just because you have to pay for a TV license here). There is just no time! But I am so grateful for it! There is never a dull moment in Oxford.

Marticu-Crash

Matriculation, according to the wisdom that is Wikipedia, is the term used for the ceremony at which new students are entered into the registrar of the university. Before Matriculation, students are only members of their College. After the ceremony, they officially become members of Oxford University for life. There are also some rules involved with matriculation such as where you can live during term and how many contact hours you have to have. At Oxford, you are required to wear sub fusc to the ceremony. This attire consists of a motar board (a cap which you carry and don't wear until you graduate), a gown, a white shirt, and a white tie, black pants and jacket for men, and a black skirt and tights for women. Sub fusc is also worn at the Examination School during examinations at the end of the term (Exams are only at the end of term. However, 100% of your degree depends on your exam your last year. Collections are like exams that are taken at the start of term, but sub fusc is not worn and they are more to gauge where you are in your study and that you've done work over vacation. Visiting students do no take any exams... ever.) As a visiting student, or as the Brits like to say JYA - Junior Year Abroad - unfortunately I am not allowed to matriculate. However, that doesn't mean we still can't dress up, right?

Two other visiting students and I got in our sub fusc and headed to Mansfield to meet up with all the freshers and grad students. After the Principal took attendance, (though some names weren't called because they may or may not have been allowed to be there...) we all headed as a group down to the Sheldonian Theater for the ceremony. Several matriculation ceremonies are held throughout the day, with several colleges matriculating at each ceremony. 

Walking over in masses 

The Sheldonian Theater 

When we finally got to the Sheldonian there were countless students EVERYWHERE in their sub fusc taking pictures, and countless tourists taking pictures of of us taking pictures! One tourist even asked one of the visiting students I was with if she would be in a picture with her teenage sons. Crazy crazy day, but completely unforgettable! When it came time for the Mansfield ceremony, we noticed letters on the gates in front of the Sheldonian, so we figured they were taking names and we wouldn't be able to get in.

So instead, we ran around Oxford taking pictures, because in the words of a wise fresher, "At the end of the day, it's all about the pictures!" And when I say we ran around Oxford, I mean all of Oxford (which is impressive because we were in heels!) Here are some of the highlight photos! 

This is my favorite! Just on the other side of the Sheldonian Theater.

I really wasn't lying when I said we went ALL over Oxford!

A rebel, wearing the hat...

And then karma came back to bite me for wearing it... this pic is just before I fell over and ripped my last pair of decent tights!

But I didn't care and I wore the hat again :)

Then we made him wear it!

Then things got weirder... 

After the ceremony, all the matriculated students come back to Mansfield and take a group photo. Again, we weren't allowed, but we did get a pic with a few fresh freshers (who were a bit confused as to why we willingly decided to dress in sub fusc)! 

And then afterwards, we went to a marvelous Japanese restaurant that always has a line out the door! We just got a bunch of food and split everything. It was all delicious! And I didn't even use a fork (even though the waiter offered me one upon seeing me struggle with chop sticks)!

Since then, I've returned to said restaurant for sushi to celebrate a friend's 21st! I let the birthday boy order for me, because I don't know anything about sushi (I am still unclear as to the strict definition of sushi). I ended up with a dish with a bite of 6 different kinds (2 kinds of shrimp, tuna, salmon, octopus, and egg). I was a bit apprehensive because I have tried sushi in the past and wasn't really a fan, but here it was great. To top is all off, I'm now a pro with using chop sticks (don't quote me on that!)

See, total pro! 

There's the Birthday boy! 

Now by this point, you may be wondering, 'Amy, do you ever do any work?' Well, stay tuned to find out... But let the record reflect... I actually have a TON of work to do! One week of reading here is equivalent to an entire semester's worth of reading at home, just to give you an idea!