The First Few Days in Oxford

The flight, bus ride, and taxi ride all went smoothly, and I got to my flat at about 3:00 pm. It's pretty nice and cozy. I only have one flatmate so far, but I am under the impression that the extra room may be filled when the British students arrive in a couple of days. My flatmate, Amanda, wasn't here so I just settled in and waited for her to get back home. We went to bed pretty early.
On Friday we had an orientation day with the programme. We found breakfast near the office and then listened to the founder of the program, Robert Schuettinger, lecture about the program and some different aspects about England. He was just an old cynic who obviously greatly prefers the Oxford education system to those in the US. Then we formally met the four guys who are on the office staff. Then we went to lunch. Ryan is a guy who lived in England for a year during high school, so he knows all about it. He mentioned how pasties are a quick lunch option, so we tried those for lunch. When we got back to the office, we watched a documentary on Margaret Thatcher. Throughout next week, the office will continue to enlighten us on British history and customs.
The 50 or so kids in the OSAP/WISC program were divided up into smaller groups, and local tour guides brought us around for two hours or so.


This is the chapel at Exeter College, which was our first stop on the tour.
In their punting races, if you aren't bumped from the boat behind you throughout the four days, you get to draw on your college's wall. The Exeter kids are the artsy ones apparently, so their graffiti is pretty classy.
The round building is the reading room of the Bodleian Library, which is the main library for all Oxford students.
The door to the Bodleian is at the right, and all the books are underground. Apparently the fence around the grass was just added a few years ago after Steven Spielberg directed or produced some movie that I had never heard of, and the crew ended up destroying the grass. So now no one can chill on it any more.
This is the Theology department and library, which the Hogwarts infirmary and library were modeled after.

I'm not really sure about this corner, but our tour guide either said the Philip Pullman studied there, or he modeled something after it. Anyway,this is where the His Dark Materials trilogy originated.
This is in the Dining Room at Jesus College. When it was established, some Welsh noble wanted to fund it, but the Queen Elizabeth did herself. They just found this portrait of her in the basement about ten years ago.
The medical school at the original university.

A place in the street designating where to burn Protestants at the stake. Excellent.
I can't remember which college this is. Either Jesus or Oriel or Christ Church.

After the tour we went back to the office and had a small party. The Magdalen students were able to meet our advisor, Robert Jacobs, so that was nice. Then the members of the staff took us on a Pub Crawl.
This is the last pub we went to, and where Tolkein and Lewis used to chat about Middle Earth and Narnia. ha.

We were up pretty late Friday night, and with the addition of Jet Lag, we stayed in bed until about 2:00 pm on Saturday. We eventually got out of the flat, and I bought a cell phone plan. We then grabbed some dinner and then found the grocery store so that we stop starving ourselves. I went to bed pretty early, and then this morning we made tea and crumpets.. how cliche.
That's Amanda. She's from New York and Florida. She goes to Stetson College and is a Molecular Bio major. She's a big nerd too. We'll get along fabulously.