Trinity Term 2013

 28 April - 14 June 2013

On recovering from my hectic thesis submission, it wasn't quite over yet. On the Tuesday of the following week (i.e. Second Week) I had been asked to give a presentation on my thesis to the graduate Philology Seminar (one of my coursemates was to do the same, and another was to present his the following week). Fitting a 25 000 word thesis into a short talk was not easy. I also had to tone down some of the specifics of the linguistic detail as most of those attending wouldn't be familiar with the Chomskyan framework I was using. I was extremely nervous since a number of well-versed faculty members would be in attendance and most of those present probably knew more about Greek than I did. In the end, the talk went really well. There wasn't too large a turnout and I think I was able to answer the one faculty member who bombarded me with questions afterwards quite well. (In most cases, I could say that I had thought about his objections even if they hadn't been directly implemented into the thesis). A number of people congratulated me afterwards on making the subject matter accessible to those who were unfamiliar with it.

The remainder of trinity term involved me preparing for exams. I had three exams over two days (13 and 14 June): General Linguistics on the first day and Historical Linguistics and  History and Structure of Greek on the next.

Between studying for exams, I had a little spare time this term. The two social highlights were a dinner organised by Emily with a bunch of college friends who were all quite special to us: Mary, Rosaria, Rex and Zoe. The second was a River Baptism held by my Church (St Ebbes) on 2 June. Two of my friends from the Worcester College CU (Chris and Yiyi) were among those getting baptised. It was a lovely day weather-wise, and it was nice to see two of my friends share their testimonies of what God had done in their lives and show their commitment by being baptised.

Rosaria, Zoe, Emily, Rex, Mary

Rex, Mary, Me, Emily, Rosaria

Baptisees

Worcester crew attending baptism

Emily, Mary and I also continued watching Doctor Who once a week and we succeeded in getting to the end of Series 5 by the end of term. Mary's birthday was in early May, so we doubled up one of our "Dinner and Doctor" evenings with birthday cake. We also had a break from our normal mince-based dinner one week by eating fish fingers and custard. This will make no sense to people unfamiliar with a particular episode of Doctor Who. (If you really want to know, watch this link).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo2RKAHu-kI

Mary, as the most sensible of us three, kept her custard for pudding and ate the fish fingers separately, but Emily and I actually dunked out fish fingers in custard. Let's just say it didn't taste too bad....

Emily and Mary

Mary's cake

Fish fingers and custard

Yum!

Exam week was quite stressful, but in a different way to thesis week. The thought of writing nine essays in two days, with an hour per essay, was more than daunting. But I prepared as best I could by revising the preparatory essays I had written. Oxford has a rather bizarre tradition when it comes to exams in that we wear a "uniform". This consists of "subfusc" (a white collared shirt and black skirt or trousers with a black bow for women, and a dark suit and bow-tie for men) and our college gown. We also have to carry graduation caps into the exam, though we are not allowed to wear them. In addition there is a recent tradition of wearing carnations to exams: a white carnation for your first exam, pink for any intermediate exams and red for the final. Since I had exactly three exams, I got to wear one of each. Exams were written in a building in the Oxford High Street aptly named Exam Schools (the same Exam Schools where I rushed to submit my thesis as recounted in the last post). It is used for lectures outside of exam time.

My carnations

Morning of first exam

At the Rad Cam between exams 2 and 3

After last exam

The exams themselves were, for the most part, all right. The structure and set-up was not that different to what I've been used to at UKZN. Although I didn't get all the questions I was hoping for (and sometimes the wording was slightly different or specific in a different direction to what I'd prepared for), I was able to write answers for three questions in each paper, which was what I needed to do. Although I panicked a little in the days leading up the the exams, the Lord gave me a sense of peace and calmness as I was writing. And looking back, it's an enormous privilege to have been able to write exams in the same location and similar circumstances as countless great academics who came before me. I had two hours between my two Friday exams, so I didn't go back to college, but stayed around the High Street area and had lunch. The matter of most concern on the day was that my left wrist (I'm left-handed) was very sore from writing the first exam and I didn't think it could handle another on the same day. So went to Boots (for South Africans that's a medical store roughly equivalent to Clicks) and found a wrist support. I had to find a very cheap one as I had little money on me (we had to leave our bags outside the exam venue), but I managed to do so. The support was basically elasticated fabric that wrapped round my wrist but it was enough and I was able to write the second exam without much problem. During the break between exams, I spent some time with two of my course mates who also had two exams that day and, although we were writing on slightly different topics, just talking to them helped me with my preparation for the second exam. During the break, Emily also came to find me and brought my red carnation so I could switch it with the pink one I was wearing.

Another Oxford tradition is that when you come out of the final exam, your friends "trash" you by throwing confetti and other things on you (the less pleasant forms involve champagne or even worse, raw eggs - though the latter is banned and you can be fined for making a mess). Emily (and her parents, who had arrived in Oxford that day) came to trash me. She threw confetti on me, and gave me a fun party hat and balloons. Her father took lots of photos :D

All done!!!

Maddy and Charlotte

With Rex

Bubbles!!!

Walking up Cornmarket

And with that, my studies at Oxford were over. It was just a matter now of waiting for results (which we would not hear about until 2 July).

That night was a strange evening, since it coincided with the last day of term and so many of my undergrad friends were packing to go home and I had to try to say goodbye to all of them, many for the last time. On top of it, Emily's parents had arrived, so they were getting settled in and Emily was getting most of her stuff packed up. That Sunday, I was going with her family on a trip to Angelsey off the coast of Wales (but that will be another blog post all of its own).

That evening, we celebrated by - you guessed it - watching Doctor Who. It was essentially our only opportunity to finish series 5 with Mary (and since they were her disks, we needed to do so).

It was all a bit of a whirlwind, and the sense of relief and joy and appreciation took some time to sink in. Of course, there was also the little niggle,that I still had no idea what my results would be (up to this point I still hadn't had a single mark for anything I'd done at Oxford). But those were worries for the future and for now I just enjoyed being finished.

I close out this post with some pictures that my TLC friend "The Happy Islander" drew and sent to me as encouragement in the days leading up to and during exams.

Easter (Not-exactly)-Break

Made by my friend The Happy Islander - my floor did look pretty much like this during this period

The 6 weeks from 10 March to 20 April were Easter Break for most of Oxford. But for me and the others on my course, it was the final haul before our theses and other written assignments were due on the Friday of first week of Trinity Term, 26 April.

It was a tough but productive 6 weeks for me. My friend Emily stayed with me through a portion of the break. She left me alone during the day while I worked on my thesis and syntax assignment. She also assisted by doing the grocery runs during the day and with dinner and washing up at night. It was really helpful to have someone coming home in the evenings and holding me accountable to the work I'd done each day. Her encouragement during the times I felt most frustrated about my work was invaluable.

The first week (Emily was away for most of it) was probably the hardest. The nice part was that it snowed again, and I got to see snow for the first time with my glasses. Last year, March was really warm and sunny and the daffodils were in full bloom by the last week of Hilary term. This time, they took longer to flower and were fewer in number (although it did mean that I got to see daffodils in the snow). The weather was unseasonally cold for the time of year. Officially it was the second coldest March on record (or something to that effect) with an average temperature of about 3 degrees Celsius.

My thesis (I know I still owe some kind of basic explanation of it) was rather frustrating but when I realised what I could and couldn't do, and all the sections started coming together, I felt a lot better about it. My supervisor, Philomen Probert, was also a great encouragement. For those interested in my "conclusions", I found that if we assume that the Word Order used in the Greek of Achilles Tatius was predominantly Subject-Verb-Object, we could account for many of the instances of other orders using transformations based primarily on pragmatic assignment (in overly simplified terms: elements in the sentence that the author wanted to emphasis for a topic or focus reading tended to be moved to a prominent position in the sentence). There were, however, some examples I could not explain using my methodology. I came to realise that this was not a bad thing - a null result ("this theory doesn't work for all cases") is still a result.

My syntax assignment, though shorter, gave me a lot more headaches than my thesis. I looked at instances of Afrikaans negative sentences that seemed to break the traditional rule that the second negative marker ("nie") always comes at the end of the sentence. I struggled to come up with a unified explanation for these inconsistencies that worked for all the examples and had no problems. In the last week of the holidays, I came up with two potential explanations, though both had at least one major problem with them.

Lest you think my holiday consisted purely of work, I did have some rest and relaxation periods. On evenings when I had accomplished a satisfactory amount of work, Emily and I would watch Doctor Who (with Wally and Toffee). And I also took a break over the Easter weekend by going to stay with the Frenkels in Hungerford. The only work I took with me that weekend was two "problem sets" (in reality a summary and a data analysis question) that had to be submitted with my syntax essay.

An unusually high number of thesis-related books were green

Wally and Toffee watching Doctor Who with us

Wally going through his monk phase

I headed to Hungerford after attending a Good Friday service in Oxford. It was a combined service held by the two large evangelical Anglican Churches in Oxford (St Ebbe's and St Aldates) and was a very powerful and uplifting service. I was reminded strongly during this period of what I had gone through two years before to get to Oxford (as it was over Easter in 2011 that I had gone through the struggle of giving up all hope of getting there and surrendering my will to God's) and I was filled with a sense of gratitude to see where God had brought me over these two years - to the point where I was actually finishing up my master's thesis.

On Easter Sunday, we went for a walk through the moor area along the Hungerford Canal and had tea at a lovely tearoom in the countryside. I also spent the break (and, in particular, my train rides to and from Hungerford) knitting a navy blue "Oxford" scarf for Emily's teddy bear, Wally. In all it was a lovely break and helped prepare me for the remainder of the working holiday.

Hilary Term II

Apologies for the sudden drought of posts. Things got kinda busy (degrees tend to do that to you) and then life took over but now I'm going to try to catch up. I've got about 6 months to cover so I won't include it all at once. Here's the first instalment.

In my last post, I gave a very brief account of Hillary Term (Jan-Mar) 2013 in Oxford. Now I'll give a bit more detail. During 0th week, from Monday to Wednesday, I went on the annual Oxford Christian Union retreat known as "House Party". We spent three days focusing on God and planning for the term ahead and the mid-term mission "Born Loved". We also went on a walk in the Shropshire countryside, in the rain.

Something we found on our walk

Shropshire countryside

A group of us on a walk

Shropshire countryside

Born Loved was held in 4th week of Trinity and included a set of lunch-time and evening talks, exploring some of the big questions around and objections to Christianity, as well as looking at what it means to be Christian. In a slightly ironic turn of events, this week of talks opened my eyes in a completely unexpected way. Actually, it made me realise I couldn't quite see properly and that I needed glasses :-P. It happened because we held the talks in St Aldates Church, which uses large flat-screen monitors, and I noticed that the writing on the screens was a lot more blurry than it ought to be. This, along with general observations from walking around town (blurry signs and people's faces) and sitting in the back of a seminar and noticing I couldn't read the board, confirmed that I needed my eyes tested, something I hadn't had done in about 5 years. At first, I was quite worried about this revelation, as it seemed to have happened quite suddenly. Also, I didn't know much about optometrists in the UK. After some enquiry, and the advice of a friend that I go to Boots (for my South African friends that's pretty much the equivalent of Clicks), I managed to book an appointment that only cost me £10 (thanks to a 50% off voucher they were offering online). It was confirmed that I needed a low prescription for distance, but my near vision is still fine. I got the cheapest pair of glasses they offered, for only £25. I found it quite difficult choosing frames, but my friend Emily helped me decide, and in the end we both agreed that we liked the cheaper pair better than a more expensive one I'd tried on. I'm not sure how long these glasses will last, but they've done me well thus far and made a big difference. For the first couple days I was walking around Oxford in a daze, since it all seemed so much more beautiful than before. Nothing like a new pair of glasses to make you appreciate better what you'd come to take for granted. I'm sure ought to be a spiritual metaphor in there somewhere.

New glasses!

Well, aside from the Born Loved talks and visiting eye doctors, most of Hillary was spent finishing off my Historical Linguistics tutorials and reading for and working on my thesis. For my tutorials, I wrote essays on language contact, sound change and semantic change. My supervisor gave me a number of deadlines for my thesis throughout the term which helped me to space out the work but keep working on it regularly. I also attended the weekly philology graduate seminar. Hilary term seminars are always spent looking at one of the lesser known old Indo-European languages and that term we looked at Faliscan, an extinct Italic language related to Latin. It was really interesting to see how it compared to and differed from Latin.

Hilary term also saw the beginning of a weekly event that came to be known as "Dinner and Doctor". Two of my friends from the Worcester college CU, Emily and Mary, came over on Friday or Saturday nights. Most times I'd make a mince dish (spaghetti bolognaise, South African bobotie or cottage pie) and after that we'd watch a couple episodes of the British SciFi series Doctor Who. It was Emily's first time watching and I had only seen them for the first time last year. Mary, as the Brit among us, was the most familiar with the show and we watched her DVDs of the show.

I mentioned in my post on Michaelmas Term, my excitement in getting a tour of CS Lewis' house, the Kilns, by his former secretary, Walter Hooper. In the 5th week of Hilary Term, he was the guest speaker at the weekly CS Lewis Society meeting. Members of the society are allowed to sign up to have dinner with the guest speaker beforehand, and so Emily and I signed up to have dinner with him. As mentioned before, he is a very sweet, humble man. On introducing ourselves to him, he pulled out a little notebook and had us write our names in it so he could remember who he'd met. As is custom in the UK, we got to discussing the weather, and in particular the recent heavy snowfall. I, of course, was still ecstatic over the snow but some people had already had enough of it. Mr Hooper, having grown up in a part of the US that saw lots of snow, told us how when he was a child, his mother used to make them "snow ice-cream". She'd wait an hour, till all the "dirty" snow had fallen, and then put out a container to collect fresh clean snow. Then she'd bring it indoors and add vanilla to it and make ice-cream. I also asked him to autograph a book of CS Lewis excerpts that he edited, which I happened to have with me in Oxford.

Outside Franks Building

Worcester Orchard

Oxford in snow

My first robin

             

                                                                   Autographed book                                          Dinner with Walter Hooper 

                                                                                                                                picture courtesy of Jason Lepojärvi

The 8 weeks of Hillary term sped by and before I knew it it was the Easter break. Break isn't exactly the right word in my case, however, as it was time for the final haul on my thesis and syntax essay, both of which were due not long into the following term, the end of 1st week of Trinity Term - 26 April.

Celebrations through the bleak midwinter

The last month has been one of travels, visits, strengthening friendships and, of course, celebrations. On Thursday 20 December I headed off to Hungerford to spend a week with the Frenkels. Most of you know this but for those who don't, I know the Frenkels though Averil, whose family my mother knows from childhood. Her husband, Louis, also grew up in South Africa and his daughter, Myriam, is studying at Oxford and is the secretary of the Oxford CS Lewis Society which I attend. So in all they were a good family to spend my birthday and Christmas with. 

I took the train from Oxford to Hungerford, which turned out to be more of a chore than expected. I arrived at Oxford station just in time to get my first train, and had just gotten on board when an announcement was made that the train had been cancelled due to signal failure in Slough. The strange part was that Slough is past Reading (where I was due to change trains). The train itself was bound ultimately for London Paddington, and those going all the way would have been stuck in Reading, but I still don't know why they cancelled it in Oxford. Especially when everyone taking the train was advised to find the next service to Reading and find a train from there to London. Anyway, there was another train heading Reading-ward soon afterwards and we were told our tickets would be accepted on any service so I took that one instead. I was only about half an hour behind schedule but the second train was slower than the original as it stopped at more of the little stations along the way. That was not a problem for me, however, as I had all day. It was a rather miserable rainy day, and as we travelled I noticed the effects of the recent flooding in the countryside as many of the fields we passed had become pools of water.

When I got to Reading, I had missed my connecting train (as I suspected I would). This was not a problem as I could easily take the next one heading to Hungerford. Only I did not know what that next train was (when it was leaving or what its final destination was). After being shuffled from one platform to another and told a number of different things by different officials, I went into the station and asked at the help desk. The whole of Reading station was completely chaotic both because large-scale construction work to the station meant platform numbers had been moved around and because the signal failure at Slough resulted in a large number of trains being delayed or cancelled (Reading being the closest big station to London meant many of its trains were heading from or to London).  Eventually I found my platform and had to wait about half an hour for my train. It was particularly miserable watching the pouring rain as I sat under the shelter of the platform, but the arrived at last and the trip from there to Hungerford was relatively uneventful. Louis came to pick me up from the station and I arrived at the Frenkels house in time for a late lunch; wet and tired but otherwise happy.

The next day, 21 December, was my birthday :D (my 25th). It was about the best day in terms of weather we'd had in a long time. In recent weeks, most days had been either freezing cold and sunny or warmer and rainy. This day was both sunny and "warm" (by which I mean it was close to 10°C as opposed to the near 0° temperatures of the weeks before). I visited Hungerford town (which consists almost exclusively of the High Street) that morning and came home for lunch. My mum also phoned me to wish me happy birthday. That afternoon, Averil and Louis took me to the closest "bigger" town, Marlborough, for tea. We went to this family-run coffee shop that served the most amazing hot chocolate (it tasted like genuine liquid chocolate) and lovely fresh cakes. For dinner we went to an Indian restaurant in Hungerford. In all, I had a really lovely birthday. It is the first time in my life my birthday has fallen on mid-winter's day (last year it was on the 22nd and every year before that I have been in the Southern Hemisphere, where it is summer). Despite fears that the Mayans had predicted by their accurate calendar system that the world would come to an end on that day, Jesus' words "no one knows the day or hour" were proved true again and we are all here to tell the tale.

Birthday cake from Averil

Nativity display in local gift shop

Hungerford town hall

Marlborough

The next day we went to Newbury (the other bigger nearby town - slightly further away and bigger than Marlborough) and Averil did some last minute Christmas shopping. On Sunday I went with Averil and Myriam to the church which is right next door to their house (they live in what used to be the parsonage for the church). It was probably the first time I'd been in such a formal, liturgically-based Anglican service, which was kind of nice for a change though I don't think I would enjoy going to such every week. That afternoon and the next day, Christmas Eve, were fairly relaxed. 

Although it was my second year in the UK, it was strange having a Christmas Eve that did not include the big family Christmas dinner, which we usually have the night before Christmas according to my mother's family's Danish tradition. What kind of made up for that was that we went to a a Midnight Mass service, again at St Lawrence's next door - my first midnight mass ever. On Christmas Day we started the day at Church again and then went home to prepare for the big Christmas lunch. Apart from my birthday, the weekend had been very rainy and there had been more flooding around the UK. Christmas morning, however, was mild and sunny, and though it clouded over later, there wasn't much rain. For lunch we had nut roast instead of traditional British turkey, as the Frenkels are vegetarian, with all the normal trappings.

St Lawrence's, decorated by Averil

St Lawrence's interior

St Lawrence's tree

St Lawrence's Christmas Morning

Christmas Lunch with the Frenkels

That evening I went with Myriam to the Church vicar's house, a family she is very good friends with. She warned me it would be a rather crazy evening, and it was - involving a whoopee cushion, large pea shooters and balloons. At one point the vicar said something about bringing out the bagpipes and I thought he was joking until - well he went and fetched them. The two men there (his daughter's partners) both took turns trying to play them and while neither got much of a tune out of them, the mere fact they got them to make a noise was quite an accomplishment. To top that, he then brought out an accordion. Not only was that the closest I have ever been to an accordion, but he actually showed me how, and let me try to play it. I can't play much without any sheet music, so it wasn't very tuneful but it was kind of fun and seems pretty easy to learn. The only problem was that it felt like a terribly right-handed instrument (for some reason more so than the piano, although the principle is not much different and I play that right handed without much struggle).

On Boxing Day, Averil offered to take me to Winchester Cathedral which is not too far a drive from Hungerford. There has been a cathedral on the site from Saxon times and the current building dates back to the Norman period. Among its interesting features is the grave of Jane Austen. It also has a number of chests with the bones of Saxon kings such as King Cnut. Unfortunately the chests were not on display as they are currently undergoing scientific tests. The contents of the chests were mixed up at some point (I think during the reformation) and so they are now trying to see what they can find out about them. There is also a crypt which it was recommended we see as it had flooded, resulting in a beautiful reflection of the arched ceiling. The cathedral was full of other interesting bits of architecture and decorations, numerous side chapels from different periods, beautiful choir stalls, stained glass windows and other interesting bits of history. 

After visiting the Cathedral we had a quick lunch (it ended up being at a MacDonalds because it was getting late, many places were closed because it was Boxing Day, and we needed somewhere that sold vegetarian food. On the walk back to the car, we passed a statue of Aelfred the Great who is said to have been the first West Saxon king to have styled himself "King of the Anglo-Saxons" and had his capital at Winchester. That evening, Myriam and I watched the Doctor Who Christmas special together (she was the one who lent me her Doctor Who DVDs last year which got me to start watching the show).

Winchester Cathedral

Nave

Jane Austen grave

Old Chapel

Flooded Crypt

West Window

Sign for Mortuary Chests

Old Quire

Aelfred the Great

Winchester Town

The next day, I headed back to Oxford. The trip was less problematic than the ride out although it was raining again, and the first train heading from Reading to Oxford when I arrived there had been cancelled and I had to wait for the next one.

But in all I had a great birthday and Christmas week with the Frenkels. My only disappointment was not getting to see a white Christmas. Instead I got a wet Christmas (which we do pretty well in Durban anyway). But at least with it not snowing, it was relatively warm. And my next Christmas will be back home :D