[Insert clever title here]

Friday started off with the tutorial. As I mentioned in the last blog, she thought my essay was my best yet, and we had a very interesting tutorial. Lots of ideas thrown around, lots of discussion. It was great.

Dinner consisted of going to a nearby Chinese restaurant that Dr. Snyder had recommended. I got the Pineapple "Gu Lao" Duck. Not sure why it is in quotations, but the menu had it that way. That's scary... Pretty presentation, though.

 Saturday, we went to Bath. No, it's not a giant porcelain tub. Yes, it was a giant bathhouse that the Romans built. There are naturally occurring hot springs here, so they figured it was a good place to set up a leisure house for the Roman soldiers around 76 AD after Emperor Claudius's invasion of Britain around 43 AD. It's a nice little place. They advice not going in the water; as you can see, it's quite green. And it's fairly toasty.

 This hairdo, though...

 When we were finished with the bathhouse tour, we were left to roam the city until time to go. Our tour guide offered an optional tour to tour some of the city. Some of the group acquiesced, and we were led around to various little landmarks, such as this edifice. I don't remember exactly what it was (a bridge, maybe?), but it looked cool and pretty, so I snagged a shot of it. Below it was a weir, something designed to alter the characteristics of the flow of the water? Eh. Whatevs, man.

 Sunday morning I awoke to go to my second church service in Oxford at Magdalen College. It was a much smaller service than at Christ Church, and the chapel room was much smaller as well. Me and two others arrived early, about 10:40 or so to tour the grounds a little before service at 11:00. We had to tour then, because after that, we wouldn't get the chance to see the grounds for free unless we came back for another service.

They had a beautiful little garden tucked away in the college; it looked like the perfect spot to sit down on a blanket and read some books for a tutorial class. I imagine it's quite the popular area during the weekdays.

 Inside the chapel were, as in all Oxford churches, beautiful stained glass windows. I thought that the center picture in this window looked like Jesus holding a lightsaber, so I named him Darth Jesus and snapped a shot. It's a little bit harder to tell in this light, but in the chapel, that little stick he's holding was much redder, and looked like a red lightsaber.

The choir here was absolutely stunning. Here's a link to them singing Agnus Dei.

https://soundcloud.com/heliqwopter/magdalen-agnus-dei

 After the service, we waltzed around the grounds for a bit longer, trying to get as much of the scenery as possible before we left, never to come again. I got a nice photo with a bridge and water behind me. I should have gotten the shot with the church behind me. Duh-doy.

In all gardens, flowers grow. It's the natural order of things. Well, Magdalen's gardens were overflowing with flowers, and I liked the roses. I couldn't cut one and bring it back to Bethany, but I made do with a photograph of one. She appreciated it.

 Oh, I forgot: they have a deer park. Yeah. An enclosed area where deer just frolic around. Beats the hell out of any ole drill field back in the states. I wish we had deer...

What's that? I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome this trip is

Sorry for the wait. I know you've all been refreshing the page constantly waiting for another post.

I've been busy this week. We had a Shakespeare paper due Monday that I spent my Sunday working on, and of course, my tutorial was today. I pretty much wrote the entire thing yesterday. The tutor says it was my best work yet. Not sure how that happened.

Let's start with Monday.

On Monday, I woke up, wrote a Shakespeare paper, and then went to high tea. It was a British as could be. We all had standard English breakfast tea, so that wasn't anything new. We also had various kinds of small sandwiches, like ham and mayonnaise, salmon, cucumber (nasty buggers), and egg salad sandwiches. The egg salad and ham sandwiches didn't stand a chance against me. In addition, there was pound cake with a ribbon of strawberry jam and clotted cream in the center, and scones. With strawberry jam and clotted cream to spread. I want more clotted cream. I want an entire tub of clotted cream. I want to put it on everything.

The rest of Monday went by relatively smoothly. I burned through more episodes of Orange is the New Black on Netflix. And read some of the book I checked out of the New College library for this past week's essay: significant features of French medieval romance Merlin. This was probably one of the coolest weeks for my tutorial subject.

On Tuesday, after the Shakespeare class, I went to the New College Library to look at some manuscripts and old books they had on display. A couple of the manuscripts dated back to the 12th century. Amazing. I didn't get to touch, though.

The rest of Tuesday passed without incident, as I spent the majority of it in the Bodleian Library, desperately trying to absorb as much information as I could before starting the paper that night. I only got through the introduction before I called it a night.

Wednesday, our professor mercifully let us off class so we could go to Stratford-upon-Avon. It was nice. It's a quiet town (except for the tourists, pah!), and we had a decent vacation away from work. We left at 12:36 sharp on the train, and passed by some beautiful countryside. 

On arrival, we started working our way into town, passing by the town center, where a nice little statue is located. Moving further, we came upon Shakespeare's parents' house. They lived in a fairly decently sized house, as one of the trades of Shakespeare's father was being a glove maker. So, he needed leather on hand, and therefore, cows. We also passed by a pedestal that was labeled "Shakespeare's Ghost" (see below). Nobody was there; I was tempted to throw in some coins for the laugh.

Eventually we came to the theater we were going to be seeing Henry IV, Part One at. Located nearby is the town's Shakespeare statue, surrounded by a few statues of some of his characters (Lady Macbeth, Falstaff, Prince Hal, and Hamlet). I snagged a picture with Prince Hal that's up on my Facebook page. The MSU group took a group photo in front of Falstaff. And another group photo on a bridge overlooking the River Avon. Well, either the River Avon or one of the canals that leads into it.

Our tour guide walked us along the river/canal on the way to the Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare is buried. We saw a little fuzzy swanling. Nobody was dumb enough to try and go pet it. Thankfully.

 As we moved into the church yard, I had to snag some pictures for my mother, who is a cemetery enthusiast. I know she's already seen the burial grounds, but I got more pictures because it's just pretty.

 Inside the actual church, we saw the tomb of Shakespeare, his wife, and some other weirdos.

 When our tour guide turned us loose, I had a chuckle at the name of this Thai restaurant. Seemed interesting enough. We spent a little time walking over to a nearby secondhand/rare book store. They had so many great things; I wanted the copies of Thomas Malory's works and the Canterbury Tales, but they were 50 pounds a pop. I can wait. After that, we wandered back to the theater where I was able to catch a picture of the swan statue in front of the theater.

 After the theater statue shot, we went over to the Dirty Duck/Black Swan pub, where the actors of the plays go to grab a drink when they're finished acting for the night. I had a three course meal, starting off with garlic mushrooms, then a 5 oz steak (it needed an American touch for flavor), and ended with some clotted cream ice cream. I should have gotten the chocolate fudge cake, but oh well. It was still damn good ice cream. And, of course, I had a couple pints during the whole encounter.

 In the theater is a big fake bear. So, naturally, I had to get a picture with it.

Traffic cones, Windsor Castle, Christ Church, fancy cheese, and martial arts

It's been a pretty intense past few days.

First off, somebody partied hard and put a traffic cone on top of a statue near the Bodleian Library.

Rock on witcho bad self.

Thursday, I joined part of the group in going to Christ Church for lunch. It was really good! No idea what the main dish was (some sort of mysterious meat casserole thing), but it was delicious. Gooseberry pie I could probably do without, next time. It was awesome eating in the place that Harry Potter ate in.

 And, a random Space Invader up on somebody's window.

We had plans to go see As You Like It over at Worcester College that evening. We got there at 6:30, the porter told us to go away, and we went to an Italian place to get some grub. Unfortunately, I had stopped at a Pret a Manger (a little Starbucks like deal) and grabbed a sandwich, so I wasn't terribly hungry. One of the types of sandwiches has "posh" cheese on it. Just in case regular cheese is too plebeian for your tastes. POSH cheddar. Pah. After dinner, we went back to Worcester, but they had sold out tickets! I think they just didn't want any Americans there. Well fie on them. We ended up going to the oldest pub in Oxford instead, The Bear. It's a cozy little pub with ceilings slightly taller than I am (5' 7"). So if you're tall, have fun with that. It was amazing standing in a pub that is more than twice as old as the USA, though.

On Friday, I went to my second tutorial. It was entertaining. We talked about Merlin in the old Welsh tales and in Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain, which was a great read. Those Welsh come up with some crazy tales. On the way back, I stopped by my favorite food truck and picked up a falafel and halloumi wrap. Usually I get the lamb shawarma, but I decided I'd go wild this time around. It turned out to be really good. While munching on that, I ran into a few martial artists outside of a church. They were chopping wood in half and doing acrobatics. Drumming up interest for a show later that day, I think. I've included a couple links to videos to what they were doing.

Here are the dudes doing some flips and kicks and such http://youtu.be/H2Y4qREd1YM

Here are the dudes chopping a plank http://youtu.be/1p_YY7gmZrQ

The rest of Friday consisted of going to a pub for dinner. I had liver and onions. Not going to repeat that experience.

Saturday, we went to Windsor Castle. I had been there before, so I wasn't wowed out of my mind, but it was still a cool experience. Especially St. George's Chapel. They had a room in there that was constructed in 1291. 1291, man. That's older than the idea of COLONIZING the New World.

They did have there an area called the "Pug Yard." I was very disappointed to see that it had a distinct dearth of pugs.

I ended the trip with getting some toffee gelato at one of the little shops at the bus stop. It kicked ass.

/end post

Academia Ahoy

I presented my first paper to my tutor on Friday. She thought it was pretty good. And according to one of the lectures we received on British customs, the British use understatements, so that means my paper wasn't too shabby.

She gave me some tips for the future, like phrasing the start of my paragraphs with arguments, not descriptions. But you don't care about that.

I'm going to have to start making stuff up at some point; there hasn't been much going on! Friday night consisted of five of us going to a Chinese place called The Opium Den. As far as I could tell, there wasn't any opium in the food, although I can't get my mind off the pork dish I had... After The Opium Den, we went over to Christ Church to make fun of The Hobbit film with the Tolkien Society. There was some good jesting during the film, but for the most part, the ribbing took place after the movie.

Saturday we had a small party at the professors' house. Dr. Snyder was leaving on Sunday, so we had a last get-together before he headed out. He was very helpful during the first leg of the trip. After the party, we went over to the Thames to see the final boat races that were going on. Every "Eights Week" in the Trinity Term (that's this term), they have boat races. It's fun to watch. These were taken on top of the Christ Church boathouse. I wasn't supposed to be up there, but I have buddies in the college, so I was able to get VIP access.

As you can see below, the crowd was intense. They tailgate for these events! There were stands for Pimms (a very good liquor here), burgers, and brats. You don't mess around here when it comes to rowing crew. This, of course, got Dr. Snyder and Dr. Anderson talking about forming a rowing team at State. We don't exactly have a lot of good water to row around in, though...

Sunday night consisted of us going to a cocktail bar. Only about 6 or 7 of us went. The rest had to focus on their tutorial essays (like I should be doing now!). The bar prepared a good Moscow mule. 

I tried my first maitai here. It was deliciously fruity. When I went up to the bar to order it, one of the bartenders said something quiet to the other one, who walked away chuckling. Hey, I can enjoy fruity drinks if I want!

Today I spent time in the Bodleian Library. One of my books, The Life of Merlin (Vita Merlini) by Geoffrey Monmouth, is not available in the New College Library, so I have to deal with not being able to take it home with me. While I was there, I discovered these really cool shelves that move. I don't know if other libraries have them, but man, they amazed my tiny brain. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=offMmdK57HY