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It's Wednesday evening here and it's been a week since I started this journey! It definitely doesn't feel like that long ago. I left off last time after the return from Cardiff, a great trip. Sunday morning I attended Mass at this church called Holy Rood. There was a lot more singing than I anticipated, the priest even had us sing a few notes during his homily to prove a point. That requires a bit more explanation. He had us match a pitch with him, with a certain hand gesture. He raised his hands and raised the pitch, and repeated that a third time. He went back and forth with these levels a couple times before going to a higher hand position than he had sung with and we sang a higher pitch. The point he was making is that the messages brought to the people in their own languages by the Apostles was something they were already receptive to hearing as it was internal to them. It was interesting, the priest was young and humorous. The local Bishop is coming to this church in two weeks, so that's exciting. Otherwise Sunday was fairly laid back. I read a chunk of Game of Thrones and picked up some additional foodstuffs that I had forgotten about. Some former (unnamed) resident of this house left a bike and bike lock here with the key so I've been using that and a helmet that someone else left. It's worked out nicely, but some of the side streets are a little rough (still generally preferable to the traffic, bicycle and car, on the main streets). I'm still figuring out the gears, but that's the least important part to me.
Monday I was supposed to hear from my tutor and begin to set up meetings and whatnot, but I didn't. Well, I did, I just was checking the wrong email. I didn't miss anything, I just read the email around 12:30am! My tutor, John Whitehead, had suggested a meeting at 10.30am on Tuesday. When I finally read his message I promptly confirmed it and went straight to bed! Other than that excitement, Monday was another relaxing day of reading GoT, I'm roughly halfway through book three now. As far as food goes, I made myself a quesadilla, (feeling right at home!) and attempted homemade ice cream. It wasn't bad, but it was more of a shake consistency.
Tuesday started with me reading the Wikipedia page on the Crusades so as to not be entirely blind when meeting my tutor. One of my housemates looked him up on Facebook which was good, I had some minimal sense of who I should look for. We met at the Union bar. Yes, a bar, at 10.30am. They serve tea, donuts and such for the morning hours. He got Earl Grey teas for us. He is a very knowledgeable person with significant experience teaching within the OPUS program as well as with other Oxford college programs. He knows more about New York geography than some New Yorkers I know, which amuses and impresses me. As far as my tutorial, I'm studying the Crusades for the next 6ish weeks starting with the context and impetus of the first Crusade and ending with the legacy of this series of Crusades. I'm looking forward to it. After we discussed the course outline, decided on an essay topic for Monday and Friday, and set up additional meeting days/times we walked next door to the library and he explained the set up of the library catalogue and computer system. It was very helpful and I left around 12:30 with three important introductory texts in my bag. When I got back to the house I settled down and started to read. It's a little slow going because I'm making a point to take notes surrounding my essay topics to hopefully make essay writing a little more expeditious. It's a skill that is a little out of practice for me, so we'll see how it goes. For dinner, I attempted a pasta with cheesy sauce. I got the pasta right, but I was too hungry to let the sauce really thicken so while it tasted fine, it was very liquid-y.
Today, I continued my reading a bit, but I also went into town for a couple hours. We have to go by the OPUS office on Wednesdays to sign in, it's like an attendance sheet. From there I tried to find the open air market because I've heard wonderful things about the food and the prices. I got a little turned around and ended up in a shopping center called the Covered Market. The timing was really convenient because it started to rain a bit heavily. It had been sprinkling on and off all morning. There were food stalls of all varieties and I got a giant, baby sized loaf of bread for less than 2 pounds. I didn't buy too much produce while there because I still wanted to find the open air market. I remembered the street name and found a map. I now have a bunch of carrots, lettuce, zucchini, bananas, garlic, cheese, strawberries, peppers, bread, and more. There's an interesting selection of meat here, but I'm finding this mostly-vegetarian diet is working for me at this point, we'll see how this goes (it's more of a passive, oh this is happening, rather than an active choice). I brought my findings (in total, less than 15 pounds in price and just about that much in weight) back to the house. That was a long walk because the bags felt very heavy and oddly unbalanced. I've put a couple bananas in the freezer, I intend to try to make another homemade ice cream, with some more patience this time! This evening we had a drinks hour with the entire OPUS group and our tutors organized by our academic advisor, Ben. It was nice to see everyone and chat a bit with my tutor again and meet other tutors. These scholars are THE experts in their fields of study so it's fascinating to hear them talk about their subjects. It was a short evening and much wine was consumed by the group. The Abingdon house group left together when it ended and we ate dinner at the house together. Kenny, one of the chefs of our house (for clarity, he's also a student, he just likes to cook) had been making a French Onion Soup. I contributed bread from my massive bread loaf (I still have half of it after feeding 7 people, for some scale). It tasted great! After eating, we've all settled into our studies again, I read a bit more and this post is me taking a break before finishing my first book's reading. I hope to be writing this essay by the weekend.
Tomorrow will bring more reading, cooking adventures, and the Thursday Union debate!
Cheers!
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Grammy
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Love your adventure stories.