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Published: August 30th 2009
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Harwick Hall
The New HOuse Greeting Earthlings!
So I'm writing from beautiful Lincoln College in Oxford. I still kind of can believe it. I totally love it here, it's small and kind of walker friendly, with the exception of the bikers who run people down and kick buses. It's been about a week already and I feel like I'm in this constant whirlwind of activity. I'm starting to tire out some but I don't really want to slow down because there is so much to be seen.
Last Sunday en route to Oxford we went to visit Hardwick Hall. It's a 17th century manor and it is HUGE!!! There are two parts the old house and the new one. Now the old house is big but it's kind of in ruins. But the new house is almost perfectly preserved. This joint totally puts some of the mansions on CRIBS to shame. There were so many tapestries in this house. Bess of Hardwick's goal was to show her success. The bedrooms were huge and it was so lavish. There were large halls and huge dining areas. She had a piano and a harpsichord. Like for real?!? I couldn't breathe for a second because it was
so gorgeous, even in its old dusty state. My friends and I decided what we're moving in and we're taking the Lincoln College chef with us.
Getting to Oxford was an exciting event even though we were all very tired. This place is so nice. It has 3 quads that are surrounded by "staircases" which are the halls where the rooms are housed. Now all of the quads have immaculate green grass with checker board pattern but you can only walk on the grass is the Grove Quad which is in the back. So when we got our keys and went to our rooms. Lucky me, my room is up four flights of stairs at the top of my staircase. Luckily some dude that works here at college was coming down when I was going up and he totally took my suitcase up all the way to my room. It was really sweet. So after that we did a tour of the grounds which was really nice. It's closed off and really like a small community. It's really odd because there's a gate where the door is and there are always tourists standing at the gate looking in a
taking pictures. We were shown where we'd be having our classes. It's totally my favorite class. There's this long, narrow hallway lined with glasses cases of old books on anything you could think of. It smelled like old books. I really just wanted to sit in the hall and just smell the knowledge (don't judge me 😊). By the time we got settled the Eastern Track had gotten there. We were so very happy to see them and it had only been a week! I wonder how we're going to do for five weeks when we go on the continent?
On Monday we went on walking tours of the city. I absolutely looovvveedd our guide. She was very knowledgeable and she sounded like a commentator for a History Channel documentary. Very cool, in my opinion. So we walked around the city looking at the sights and the different colleges. The way the university works is that there are different colleges, all having an array of students in various fields, they all come under the larger university. So if you say you attend Oxford, the next question would be which college? So we went into the church at St. Mary's,
saw the martyr's memorial, and All Saints Church (they filmed part of Harry Potter here too). We also saw the Eagle and Child, where C.S. Lewis, J.R.R Tolkien and 'nem hung out. Definitely planning on visiting, channel some of that knowledge, OH YEA. We had a lawn reception with our tutors on our quad. It was nice because we got all dressed up and the alcohol was flowing. After that we had our high table (which is usually on Thursdays), which was really nice. It's a weekly formal 4 course dinner and some students and faculty sit on the high table every week. It's also really cool because someone does a latin prayer at dinner. We get prepared meals every day 3 times a day and the chef is sooo awesome. I'm totally getting spoiled at not having to eat ramen and dry cereal.
The school week was good we take three classes every day for a three weeks and then we take three more classes, so it's really intense the amount of work that we have to do in such a short amount of time and we're being taught on the British system, so most of my "tutors"
are British. One is Australian and one is Scottish. It's interesting to listen to them lecture but also slightly difficult. Right now I'm taking Art History, History from 1300-1500 and Arthurian Literature. They're all really good classes. Our dean Dr. Dormer is the tutor for the Art History course and she's really good. Glad that I have her first thing in the morning.
We've also been doing a lot of walking around the city just exploring because we get out of class at 3:15 and everything closes around 5:30, just like in Durham. We went pubbing during the weekend at the Red Lion. It's pretty cool, I've never been a real bar-type person but it's been fun. We also went to this club called the Bridge. It was pretty fun, it played a lot of music that I hadn't heard in a while so that was fun. It's different than clubs at home, the people watching is good though.
Until next time!
Peace and Blessings,
~SC
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