aleksavich: Post 10- Oxford Excursion

My excursion this past Thursday was to Oxford.

Before we go there, though, I should update you on a couple things that’s happened this past week.

Number 1 is: my host brother and I made a movie.. It’s called Bubbles. I thought you might like it..

Also, this past Tuesday, Feb 24^th, was Pancake Day. That’s right, you heard me correctly.. Pancake Day. On this day, everyone here eats pancakes. Pancakes here are a little different though from what we know as pancakes in America. They are thin here. (Russian people reading this, they are exactly like Blini.) Non-Russians: They are almost as thin as a crepe, but not quite, and not that light cream color like crepe, but a similar color to our pancakes. Anyway, they also do not have them with syrup, or fruit. The traditional pancake topping here is lemon juice and sugar. So that’s what I had along with everyone else here.

If you’re wondering what the point of Pancake Day is, as I did, I will tell you. I looked this up on Wikipedia. (Oh! When I just wrote “pancake day” in the beginning of this paragraph, I put it in lower case, and Word capitalized it! Word knows about Pancake Day!!) So Wikipedia tells me Pancake Day is always the Tuesday before the first day of Lent. So it is supposed to be the last day you get to indulge yourself with Pancakes, as well as get rid of your sugar and stuff. Cool eh? I guess IHOP celebrates it in the US though, because someone told me IHOP was giving away free pancakes last Tuesday. I’ll have to remember that next year!

Also, before I tell you about Oxford, I will show you two pictures I took this week. The first is down my street. I like the sky:

The second is an Ice Cream truck.. Don’t forget to watch your kids.. or as they would say here.. Mind that child!!

So, on to Oxford.

Everyone knows Oxford for the famous super prestigious Oxford University. But unlike what most think of University, as one big place, Oxford Uni is 39 colleges that are all over the city. And when you apply, I guess you apply to the specific college you want.

The first thing we did in Oxford was take a “tour” walk around the city. We didn’t have a tour guide for this, just Mari. Mari is our trip organizer, she put together our host families, got us here, and put together our Thursday excursions. She is not a tour guide, but I guess she decided to try that role today. So we walked around the city, following Mari, who was following her map. We didn’t really learn much from this tour other than walking around and looking around, me not really realizing when I am looking at something important or not.

These are my pictures from walking around.

Who likes my bright blue leg warmers?

That’s the Radcliffe Camera, one of the most photographed buildings in Oxford:

Then we had some free time for lunch. I had lunch, and bought an “Oxford University” sweatshirt.

After lunch, was our awesome tour. This time we did have a guide. This is Stuart:

If you could see the details of this nametag, you would see that he is the “head custodian.” I thought that was funny, when I read on our itinerary that we would be given a tour by a custodian, because in our English, custodian means janitor, right?.. but I guess not here. I looked up custodian in a dictionary, and it made sense because it said that it is someone who has the responsibility of looking after something. It comes from the word “custody”.

Anyway, this tour was of Christ Church College. Christ Church College is one of the 39 colleges within Oxford Uni. It is one of the more famous ones. There are 2 biggest things it is famous for today.. and we will get to that soon. This is the college:

Stuart started off by telling us that there is something strange about this college. There are NO classrooms. Sounds weird, right? A lot of the teaching is done 1 on 1. So the teachers (called tutors) might come to your room (I know, in the US, this would cause lawsuits left and right). If there is a lecture, it takes place outside. I thought that was really cool, except that maybe this would fit better in a place like Hawaii, where it’s warm outside? But anyway, it works for them.

Stuart took us to this one area with this crazy old tree. Notice anything weird about this tree?

Yes? No? How about that big vertical branch on the right side of the picture? Notice anything strange? The branch grew into another part of the tree. How weird is that!!?? I noticed it right away because it looks crazy, and Stuart also told us that this is very rare.

Here’s a pic of the tree I took that I really like:

Anyway. Ready to learn the 2 big things Christchurch is known for?

Actually there are some other things too. I’ll make you wait on the 2 big ones that I like.

Christ Church is the only college to have its own church in it. It was built in 1525, and if I understood correctly, the church itself is from the 1100’s.

Anyway, I know you’ve been waiting patiently. The 2 most important things, in my mind, are 1: the first 2 Harry Potter movies were filmed here. And 2 has to do with a little girl named Alice. We will get back to Alice.

Stuart was there when the movies were filmed. He met the crew and actors, and he watched the filming. This first picture, (blocked by people so its hard to see..) is of a scene with a lake in front of it. I don’t know what scene he was talking about it, but maybe you’ll recognize it.

I guess those archways are in the film, but over a lake, or behind a lake.

This next one I don’t remember either. (If you can tell, I am a fan of the books, haven’t seen the movies in a few years.) This pic shows one of the ending scenes in the first movie. Where Harry comes out of the hospital, and this is where he first sees his friends, he at the bottom, they on the balcony.

Now this last part I will tell you about Harry Potter is that this is NOT where the dining hall was filmed, but they loved this dining hall, and recreated a set to look like it. They wanted to film here, but the room is not big enough to fit 4 long tables, as you might notice, they only have 3 here. So this is the inspiration for the dining hall in the movie.

Cool eh?

Ok, so a little girl named Alice.. Alice in WONDERLAND!!

The real Alice lived in this college because her dad was the dean. Lewis Carroll, (author, for you slow ones), lived there too because he was a Math professor. I will even show you where he lived when he wrote the book.

This is a painting of him; it is in the dining hall. (His real name was Charles Dodgson, as you can see on the plaque; Lewis Carroll was his pen name)

And he lived in these dorms when he wrote the book.

He lived in the dorm on the first floor, on the bottom right corner. (Corner of the building, not corner of the pic.. at the far point, before the building starts coming towards you.. does that make sense?..)

Anyway, I had known that Alice was a real girl, but I did not understand her importance until Stuart told us the parts of her life that affected the story. His imagination was pretty wild to write such a story, but he had a lot of inspiration from where he lived.

For example, this is the little doorway that he saw, and sparked the idea of the little doorway Alice has to unlock and go through.

Also, Alice really did have a cat that would get stuck in a tree all the time. The same tree. We saw that tree. The one behind the wall. Home of the Cheshire cat.

Another bit of information Stuart told us was something I’ve heard before. On our Bristol tour, Felicity had told us that Bristol was 11 minutes behind London time before the railways were made. When they were making the railroads, they decided that to have timetables for the trains, they need England to have one time zone. Stuart explained the same thing to us, except that Oxford was 5 minutes behind. The difference though between Oxford and all the other cities in England, is that when the proposition was made to unite all the times, Oxford would not conform and kept their time. They run 5 minutes later than London time. The big clock on campus is in the correct London time, but to keep their tradition, even today, the church bells ring at 5 minutes past the hour, dinner in the dining hall is served at 6:05, etc.

Anyway, the white rabbit, in Alice in Wonderland, is Alice’s father, and do you understand now why he’s always running 5 minutes late!???

It was very cool to see the origins of a story like that because it is a very different story from most. It is often associated with hallucinations and magic mushrooms. So it was very cool to see where the ideas came from, because they all came from something real, not just an insanely wild imagination.

Unrelated to the book, but Stuart told us that when Alice grew up, Queen Victoria’s son attended Christ Church college. Due to his status, he hung out in the Dean’s lounge a lot, and so did Alice. They became good friends, then more. When Queen Victoria found out about it though, she ended it, because Alice did not have royal blood.

Funny thing about Queen Victoria, though, when she read Alice in Wonderland, she LOVED it. She loved it so much, she wrote to Lewis Carroll and said that the next book he writes, she is to receive a copy as soon as it is published. She was not happy though when she got the next book, because it was an Algebra book. (Ha! Remember, I told you he was a math professor!)

This is Queen Victoria’s son’s name up on the wall of the college. (Fifth one down, Leopold)