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.

Thesis

21-26 April 2013


I ended the last post rather abruptly. I realised I could never get in an account of the final week leading up to my thesis submission in that post. I apologise for the length, and possibly dullness of this post. It's probably here for my sake more than anyone else's that I have this account of this week. I promise that the next post will be more like the other posts, covering more interesting events (with photos!).

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Thesis and syntax-related books

As the deadline* for my submissions loomed, so did my stress levels. I spent much of the Sunday of first week, working on my syntax essay. I thought I'd finally come up with a decent account of the data I had been looking at. On the Monday, I sent a copy of it to my tutor, fairly pleased with what I'd done. I hoped that it would only require minimal corrections to polish it up and that could focus on my thesis for the rest of the week.

On the Wednesday, my syntax tutor sent a copy of my essay back to me with comments. She wasn't satisfied and recommended some major revisions. In particular, she didn't like the fact that I was wavering between two alternative explanations and suggested that I pick one of the two and go with it. I was very reluctant to have to do that, since I knew neither explanation was without problems. I thought it would be in my interest to show that I'd thought through both alternatives rather than only one. It took the rest of that afternoon, not a few tears, and a walk outside, to convince myself that it was not a lost cause and I could make the necessary changes. I reluctantly cut the one of the explanations almost completely from the essay and just focussed on the other. This had the added advantage of cutting down my word count (which was slightly over the limit) and, after reading up a bit more, I was able to strengthen the analysis I'd picked significantly, while still pointing out its flaws. This was probably the toughest moment of submission week, but I somehow got through it.

In the mean time, I was on the final stages of my thesis; really just polishing it up and finalising the introduction and conclusion. At about lunch time on Thursday (the day before it was due) I printed out a full copy of my thesis, all 78 pages, and began to do a complete read through. I had been doing most of my work in my room in college, so, having gone to the the linguistics department to print, I stayed there to work on my edits for a change of scenery. My plan was that I wouldn't go back home until I'd finished the read-through, made the necessary corrections and printed the final copy. The read-through took a few hours longer than I had expected. It was sometime near 6.00 pm when I was done reading and marking corrections on the printed copy. I decided I had better go home and at least have something to eat before continuing. So I took all my stuff back to my room (I lived about a two minutes' walk from the department) and continued my work there.

I made myself microwave porridge for dinner because it was quick (with the plan to make scrambled egg on toast later), and proceeded to transfer my corrections from paper to computer. I could tell that the stress and shortage of sleep that week was getting to me when I added far too much salt to the porridge. It was horrible, and under normal circumstances I would have thrown it out and made more, but I ate it anyway. The transfer of corrections also took far longer than I'd anticipated, and finalising the bibliography was also quite time consuming. I think it was around 11 pm when I was finally done and happy with my work (or too exhausted to care any more). I could have waited until the next day, but I wanted my thesis printed just in case anything went wrong. I also had to have it bound before submitting it, and had been so busy worrying about getting it done, I hadn't quite figured out how and where I would have it bound.

I headed back to the linguistics department (using the side door because the front was locked by this time). I made my way around in the dark until I could find a light switch, and printed out the two required copies of my thesis. Then I headed back home (narrowly missing tripping down a couple of steps in the dark). It had started raining very lightly, but I had my thesis in a plastic folder so it was safe. I got home, relieved my thesis was done, but unable to relax as I still needed to finish my syntax essay.

The original plan had been to have my thesis printed out by about 6.00 pm so I would have the rest of the evening to work on the essay, but, well, things hadn't exactly gone to plan. It was looking like I'd have to pull the first all-nighter of my academic career. Finalising the essay (but not the bibliography) took me till about 3.00 am, when I had a quick shower. By this time, I did not feel like going downstairs to the kitchen to make my still-overdue scrambled egg dinner, so I used up some cold meat I had in the fridge on cream crackers. I then did a proof-read through, before working on and completing the bibliography for my essay (which again, took quite some time). Satisfied at last, and certain that I had multiple back-up copies, I finally climbed into bed at about 5.00 am. I set my alarm for 7.00, because I still needed to print my essay, get my thesis bound and buy envelopes in which to put the pieces of work I was to submit.

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Despite my bed feeling more relaxing and softer than usual, I couldn't fall asleep. Naturally! At about 5.30, I remembered I'd meant to have a bowl of cereal before I went to bed (and I was feeling queasy - from some combination of tiredness, hunger and nerves). So I got up and poured myself some Rice Krispies. I can't decide whether that meal counts as a really late dinner dinner or early breakfast - maybe I should coin a new word and call it supfast or something. Anyway, I somehow managed to doze off for perhaps an hour, but woke up again sometime between 6.30 and 7.00. I had some more breakfast (or second breakfast) and coffee, got dressed and headed to the college computer room to print my essay. I had until 12.00 midday to hand my assignments in.

Print-out of thesis

After printing the essay, I would still need to get the copies of my thesis bound. I had briefly noticed that the secretary of the linguistics department had mentioned in an email that the department had a thermal binder, but I was so distracted by my work at the time I hadn't had a chance to follow up on it. I thought it might be easier to take my theses to the printing-and-binding shop just outside of college. I had checked at some point during the night that they opened at 9.00am and decided to head there as soon as they were open. I thought I might find envelopes there too.

But as I paged through the essay I had just printed, to make sure everything was in order, I discovered that I had printed the entire document without page numbers. The tiredness and stress was getting to me again. The printer at college, like the one in the linguistics department, is an industrial style printer-copier, and I had no idea if or how I could run the pages through again, just printing page numbers on the bottom corner. I tried to think where I could find someone with the printer that would let me do that, and decided to go to the linguistics department to see if I could use the printer of a staff member. Neither the secretary nor my supervisor were in their offices that early in the morning, and I began to panic just a little. Knowing I still needed to sort out binding and to buy envelopes, I decided to go to town and come back and sort out my essay's page numbers when there were more people around.

Just as I was leaving the department, I bumped into one of my course-mates, Christelle. I told her what had happened with my page numbers (or lack thereof), and she told me to calm down, stop worrying and just reprint the entire essay using the department printers. I realised she was right, and though I loathed the waste of reprinting, it made the most sense and would mean I had one less thing to worry about. I'd want a copy of the essay for my own records in any case. I also mentioned to her that I was on my way to the printing/binding shop and she asked why I didn't simply use the department thermal binder the secretary had mentioned, since that's what she was going to do. That took a second weight off my shoulders, but I still needed to buy envelopes.

In addition to needing A4 envelopes in which to put my thesis, essay and problem sets, I also needed small letter envelopes. We weren't allowed to have our names anywhere on the assignments, but we also had to have a signed declaration that what we were submitting was our own work. As a result, the declarations had to be in sealed envelopes that would be checked by someone other than the markers.

On my way to town, I met the linguistics department secretary, who hadn't been in her office earlier, and I double checked with her that I could use the department's binder. That confirmed, I relaxed a great deal. She was the second person God had placed in my path that morning to help with the panic I was experiencing.

The envelope-finding trip took far longer than it should have. None of the stationery shops sold single envelopes of either kind and I really didn't want to buy packs of 10 or 20. In the end, I went to Poundland (across the other end of town) where I did end up buying multi-packs. But since they only cost a Pound for the whole pack, I didn't mind the waste so much.

Hot and tired, I headed back to the Linguistics department and got instructions on how to bind my theses. The machine wasn't too hard to operate, but it required patient holding of the document in the machine while it melted and set the glue that bound the spine. And it wasn't guaranteed that everything would stick. The first copy of my thesis came out perfectly. The second, was a flop, and I had to start on it again from scratch. Eventually I got most of it to stick and decided I wouldn't loose marks for a slightly uneven binding. While Christelle worked on getting her documents bound, I put mine into the required envelopes and double checked the (rather complex) instructions on how we were to address them. Christelle also had problems getting her documents to stick. While she tried to get the machine to work, she asked me to help address her envelopes. She had many more pieces of work to submit than me because I only had the syntax option evaluated by written assignment. All Christelle's options were examined by written assignment, hence the extra work due.

Time was ticking (it had passed 11.00am), but Christelle wasn't panicking and I followed her lead. What neither of us realised was that she was going by the wall clock in the room where we were, which was between fifteen minutes and half-an-hour slow. She suggested, since things were taking so long, that we order a taxi to take us to Exam Schools. I know I can do the walk from the Department to Exam Schools in 15 to 20 minutes, if I hurried, but a taxi should make it much quicker. At about 11.35 (or perhaps a minute or two late), the taxi arrived. But when the taxi driver heard where we were going, he pointed out that there was no way he could get through Friday midday traffic in Oxford faster than we could walk it. Many of the streets in central Oxford are closed to vehicles or one-way, meaning the taxi trip would not be direct. We should have figured this out beforehand but, well, it had been a long week. The taxi driver offered to take us as far as Broad Street (a street taxis could not enter) and we could walk the rest of the way. This did save us some time, and we all but ran from the corner of Broad Street to Exam Schools (dodging tourists), getting there just before 11.55 by my watch.

Walking round Worcester the evening of submission

I thought once we got to Exam Schools, all we'd have to do was hand over the documents and be done. But when we got there, we discovered that there were forms to fill out. Among other things, they asked for us to fill in our exam candidate number. I hadn't memorised my number, and there had been no instructions to write it anywhere on the outside of our envelopes. So the only copy I had of it was inside the envelopes, now sealed. I was loathe to tear them open and have to reseal. When one of the officials keeping an eye on us, learnt of my dilemma, she told me to stop worrying (knowing how close it was to the deadline). She said that there were few enough of us taking the course, and they could look up my exam number and fill it in for me. I should just take my documents to the submissions counter and hand them in. That lady was the third God-send of the day.

I went to the counter and someone there started to put up a fuss about me not having my exam number on the envelope (something that no one had requested before then; it was for the form that I needed it, not the envelope). My watch by this time was reading 11.59. Someone else behind the counter, overruled the instruction, however, and they handed me a receipt to say my documents were submitted at 11.55. Both my watch and the clock at exam schools read 11.59, so I can only assume that their time stamp was 5 minutes slow to benefit students who were so close to the deadline like me.

As we left exam schools, it took me a while to realise that it was all over. I felt sort of numb, and wanted to laugh at the same time. It was bizarre. A week of stress, a night of no sleep (or only one hour) and a rushed, chaotic day will do that to you.

We headed to a pub for lunch where we were to meet up with the rest of our course mates and celebrate our submission. After hanging out together till about 2, I headed back home. I had one of my rather bad headaches from a night of no sleep and all the anxiety that had piled up. I tried to take a nap, but the headache and adrenaline were not much help. I might have dosed for about an hour before waking again.

That evening Emily and I celebrated by going to Pizza Hut for pudding. I had a banoffee cookie ice-cream sandwich. On Saturday evening, we went out to the Inklings' pub, the Eagle and Child, with some a couple of our friends. We also celebrated with Mary by watching five episodes of Doctor Who between Friday and Saturday night. Emily gave me a mini daffodil plant and a sachet on which she'd cross stitched a hedgehog pattern as "thesis completion" gifts.

Gifts from Emily

Once again, I'd like to thank everyone who helped me with (or put up with me while I was working on) my thesis, and to give praise to the Lord for the many ways in which he helped me get through the difficult patches and how he provided for me on the day.

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* I've mentioned this before, but as a reminder, my Master's course consisted of 5 components: a thesis (max 25 000 words), three specialist options and a general exam paper. The specialist options could be examined by written submission or exam. The written assignment/s were due at the same time as the thesis (the first Friday of the first week of Trinity Term in my second year) and the exams were set for the end (8th week) of the same term. My specialist options were Syntax, which was examined by written assignments (a 5 000 - 7 000 word essay and a "problem set"), and Historical Linguistics and The History and Structure of Ancient Greek, which were both tested by exam. As a result, in the first week of Trinity Term, to which this post refers, I was working on finishing up my thesis as well as my syntax essay and the problem sets. They all had to be submitted in sealed envelopes to Exam Schools (a building in Oxford used for lectures during most of the year, and exams at the end of the year) by 12.00 pm (midday) on Friday 26 April 2013.

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.

Visits to The Kilns, A baptism, Thanksgiving and Some lovely Americans

Five weeks since the last post, and term is over again - it's scary how fast these eight-week terms speed by. So much has happened since the last post, I'm going to write about it in two parts: The first will be on the second half of Michaelmas term and the second on the last week since term ended.

I was still sick with my cold and cough for much of 5th week, which wasn't a whole lot of fun. On the Monday night (not Tuesday as I said in my last post) was Guy Fawkes. I could hear fireworks all around but couldn't see any, even when I took a short walk in the freezing cold around the neighbourhood. I had, however, seen some out of my window on the Saturday, which was better than nothing. I might have mentioned last year that I'd forgotten how pretty fireworks can be since the ban in SA seems to have limited the amount and variation of fireworks that are available.

The highlight of that week was the Saturday evening when I went to the Kilns to watch a performance of An Evening with CS Lewis by David Payne. David Payne is a British Actor who started up this one-man-show after playing CS Lewis in a stage performance of Shadowlands, a dramatic biography of Lewis' life. People would come up to him and ask him questions about the life of Lewis which he couldn't answer, and he thought it would be interesting to research and come up with a performance in which he, pretending to be the man himself, could answer those questions. The show has been running for a number of years all over America and also in Canada and he has eventually decided to bring it to Britain. From 7 to 11 November, he performed it in the library at CS Lewis' old Oxford house, the Kilns. The show was free of charge and a collection was taken up to aid the running of the Kilns Centre. I had heard at least two members of TLC talking about having seen the show in America and Canada, so I was quite excited to be able to see it myself. It was also the first time I got to see the inside of the Kilns, having only seen it once from the outside when I first arrived in Oxford last year.

An Evening with CS Lewis is a one-man-show in which David Payne pretends to be CS Lewis talking to a group of American authors in the final years of his life. He sits in a chair drinking tea and tells them his life story. Usually he does the performance for large crowds in theatres and the like, but the library of the Kilns could only fit in 20 people at a time. The show was excellent, although you could tell that it was written with an American audience in mind (he made a joke about iced tea) and that he was less used to acting in such an intimate setting (sometimes he came across as a little too theatrical, which I could see as working fine on a stage, but this made it less convincing as he sat on that chair in the library not far in front of a small group). I tried to imagine that he really was Lewis and couldn't quite convince myself. I think he also missed a few opportunities to make use of the fact that he was really in Oxford, in Lewis' house. For example he would refer to Headington (the town/suburb of Oxford where the Kilns is) as "the village" rather than just "here", and when he referred to the first house Joy, who would later be his wife, lived in, he could have said "just down the road" and pointed in the appropriate direction. But in all, it was a great performance and a privilege to be there. I had the opportunity to greet and thank him after the show. I also met two old ladies who were attending the show, one of whom said she was at Oxford 60 years ago and used to attend some of Lewis' lectures. The second lady (who it turned out was a Classicist, and like me, prefers Greek over Latin) had been to some of his lectures in Cambridge when she was training to be a teacher there. Apparently earlier in the week, a man had come to a performance who was a childhood friend of Douglas Gresham (Lewis' stepson) and used to play in the woods by the Kilns with him.

The following weekend, my friend Emily's parents came to visit from America. Mary (my other friend who likes hedgehogs) and I got to meet them on Saturday evening when we went out for dinner at the Eagle and Child. I also got to see them again on Sunday evening at and after church and on Tuesday before the weekly CS Lewis Society meeting. They are a lovely couple and it was great to meet them. On Sunday evening, one of the guys from the Worcester CU, Rob, who became a Christian earlier this year, was baptised at St Aldate's Church. I went along with a number of others from Worcester. It was the first time I had been to a service at St Aldate's (the other large evangelical Anglican church in Oxford) and we were treated to testimonies from a number of people who were to be baptised. It was an amazing evening, hearing how God has worked in the lives of these various people and especially in our friend Rob's. After the service those of us from the CU went up to pray with Rob which was a really powerful experience.

On Thursday 22 November, Maryanna hosted another Thanksgiving meal to which she invited all the LingPals and a number of her friends from Wolfson college. It was a great time, especially as I don't get to see the LingPals so much this year since we have fewer lectures together.

Thanksgiving group photo

Christelle and me

The turkeys

Carving the turkey

A plate of thankfulness

That Friday afternoon, the Worcester CU held a "Text-a-Christmas-Treat" event. It was like the Text-a-Toastie sessions we have except this time college members could text in for Christmas treats (mince pies, gingerbread men or carrot sticks) along with a question about God or Christianity. We had some very interesting questions and discussions that resulted from that. That evening I went out with Emily and two of her friends that are also here for their year abroad at Worcester, Michael and Peter. It was the evening the Christmas street lights were turned on and although we missed the lantern parade and switching on ceremony, we went to the evening fair and market in St Giles Street, which was lots of fun though rather cold.

St Giles Christmas fair

Peter, Michael and Emily

St Giles fair

St Giles fair

In case you are starting to think that I didn't do any work in the second half of term, I really did. I finished my essay on Greek verb stems (mentioned in the last post) which was the last of my History and Structure of Greek tutorials. Since then, I have had three tutorials for Historical Linguistics (one of the other options for which I will be writing an exam in June). I wrote three essays on grammaticalisation (the process in which words in a language lose their lexical/word-based meanings and become grammatical forms like prepositions or prefixes and suffixes), analogy (the process in which forms change in a language based on other related forms) and the comparative method (the method historical linguists use to reconstruct the ancestors of language families based on what we know about the descendant languages)*.

In addition to the essays and tutorials, I was forced to come face-to-face with my thesis topic as I had to give a presentation on it on 27 November. It meant sitting down and working out exactly what I'm trying to do in a way that I could explain it to my course-mates, which was a good exercise. For those interested, my thesis is looking at Hellenistic/Roman Period Greek word order as used by the 2nd century Greek novelist Achilles Tatius. Greek word order is really free and I am trying to find out if there are any patterns that could help us identify a "standard" word order and am using Chomsky's syntactic framework (the Minimalist Program) to see if I can explain why we get the variation we do. (I may at some point write up a clearer explanation - "My thesis for dummies" (?) - for those for whom that makes no sense. Those who do understand what I'm talking about, I can send you the handout from my presentation if you are interested, though I don't know how much sense it makes in isolation). I was extremely nervous for the presentation, but it went pretty well in the end (though I went a bit over time).

The evening after my presentation Emily and I were treated to something I've been looking forward to since Myriam told me about it last Christmas. Every year on the last Tuesday of term, the CS Lewis Society has a Christmas party at the Kilns. There was a lovely spread of Christmas and other snacks (mince pies, cakes, cookies, Turkish Delight ;-) ) and mulled wine. Mulled wine is a Christmas phenomenon that they have here in Britain that consists of spiced heated wine. I've never tried it as I don't drink alcohol, but at the party they had alcohol-free mulled wine so I could finally try some. It tasted kind of like warmed grape juice with All-Spice added (probably not as exciting as the real thing) but at least I could get an idea of what the fuss was about. Part of the tradition of the evening is a reading from a short piece written by CS Lewis called Xmas and Christmas: A lost chapter from Herodotus. It's a piece I have loved ever since I first read it and has become even more special since I became familiar with Herodotus' actual works (and Herodotus became my favourite Greek author) and could see just how Lewis was imitating him. It's a satirical piece about this strange tribe that lives in Niatirb (Britain in reverse) and practises this strange annual festival called Exmas, which involves the stressful activity of sending Exmas cards and Exmas gifts to friends and family (a terrible task as one has to guess which of one's friends will send cards and presents and what the value of each gift will be so one can send a present of equal value to the friend). It also involves over-eating and drinking and and wearing paper crowns is on the whole a very stressful and depressing time. He goes on to talk about another festival practised by a smaller number of Niatirbians called Crissmas which takes place at the same time. Some say the two festivals are related, but he doubts this as observers of Crissmas, "doing the opposite to the majority of the Niatirbians, rise early on that day with shining faces and go before sunrise to certain temples where they partake of a sacred feast. And in most of the temples they set out images of a fair woman with a new-born Child on her knees and certain animals and shepherds adoring the Child." The passage was read out to us by Richard, one of the older members of the Society with an amazing knowledge of all sorts of things. He was the one last year who told me, after a Tolkien-related talk at the society, about the time when, as a boy, he met Professor Tolkien.

The evening was to get even better. We had been told we would be given a tour of the Kilns. What I didn't know is that one of the tour guides would be Walter Hooper, the literary advisor of Lewis' estate, who has been responsible for publishing much of Lewis' work posthumously. Mr Hooper is often present at society meetings and I always feel slightly in awe of him since he actually knew Lewis during his lifetime. I didn't realise that the man had actually lived with Lewis and his family at the Kilns in the later years of Lewis' life. Lewis believed that once an author published a work he had written, it was his responsibility to answer every letter his readers sent him. Lewis' brother, Warnie used to help with the letters (as he could use a typewriter and Lewis could not), but Warnie suffered from alcoholism and would go off for long stretches at a time. As a result, Walter was asked by Lewis to help with the letters (making him I guess a kind of secretary). More than a tour of the house, we got a first-hand tour of Walter's memories of Lewis. We would go into one of the rooms and Walter, being old, sat on a comfy chair while we stood around (or sat on the carpet like little children) listening to the stories.

Photos of the outside of the Kilns from my trip last year - I didn't get any from my visits this time around:

Grace and I at the Kilns

The Kilns door

The Kilns

Outbuilding near the Kilns

He told us about the first time he came to visit Lewis in his house. After a few of cups of tea, he (being an American man) asked Lewis if he could use the "bathroom". Lewis proceeded to take him to the room where the bath is (the toilet being in a separate room) and gave him soap and a towel and left him there. Eventually he plucked up the courage to tell him what he had really meant and Lewis laughed saying that that would teach him to stop using American euphemisms. He also told us about the time (not long after that first meeting) when he was invited to a gathering of The Inklings at the Lamb and Flag. One of my favourite stories was about how Lewis gave away all his earnings from the initial publication of The Screwtape Letters and the radio broadcasts that would become Mere Christianity to orphans and widows in need. He then got into trouble because he was supposed to have paid tax on those earnings and didn't have the money any more. He managed to work something out with the lawyers and after that set up a charity fund where he would give (I think it was a third) of his earnings so he could still pay tax and look after himself and those he was responsible for. He also shared how Lewis lived a very simple life, despite being an Oxford fellow and successful author. Apparently years after the end of Word War II, the Kilns still had black-out curtains because Lewis couldn't be bothered spending money on having them replaced. Eventually they had to be replaced after a lady insisted they be washed and they disintegrated. Walter said they could have lived a much more comfortable life, but Lewis was happy as he was and settled for "digestives and beer" over more luxurious food and drink.

The most ironic story was from after Lewis' wife, Joy died. When people learned that he had lost his wife, they thought to encourage him by sending him copies of a recently published book on grief: A Grief Observed, by NW Clerk. The book was actually written by Lewis himself, but published under a pseudonym. To kept up the secret, he made Walter write thank you letters to those who had sent the book, the poor people oblivious that Lewis himself was the author. A fun fact we learnt from the "tour" was that Walter Hooper's cat is named "Blessed Lucy of Narnia". Apparently the Italian town of Narni, after which Lewis named Narnia (Narnia was the old Roman name for the town) really has a saint called Lucy - Blessed Lucy of Narni. I was quite excited when Mr Hooper referred to the Kiln's gardener, a man named Fred Paxford, who is said to have been the inspiration behind the beloved overly pessimistic character Puddleglum in The Silver Chair. When Lewis and Joy were about to leave for a long-planned trip to Greece, Paxford insisted that they really should not go as there had been a tragic plane crash in the last week and they were likely to die while flying over. I wish I'd been taking notes - there were so many more awesome stories. Emily and I were sitting with out mouths agape half of the time. While I really enjoyed David Payne's Evening with CS Lewis that I attended earlier in the term (listening to a man sitting in the Kiln's pretending to be Lewis tell us about Lewis' life) it paled in comparison after being in the Kilns while Walter Hooper as himself told us stories of his memories of CS Lewis. It was an evening I will not easily forget.

I spent the rest of the week, finishing off my essay on analogy. Although it was the last week of term, I had one more essay and tutorial last week, in "9th week", as I had missed a week earlier in term when I was unwell.

I'm going to end my account there for now. Last weekend (between the last two essays), Bethany (my friend from TLC whom I stayed with in Easter and who went to watch The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe stage show in London with me) came to visit. Emily and I also did some fun and touristy things around Oxford, but I'll keep those accounts (with pictures) for the next post.

Thanks again for reading my posts (apologies for the length of this one). I hope you enjoyed reading about some of the experiences from this term as much as I enjoyed experiencing them.

* These are gross simplifications of the topics. If you want to know more about them you're welcome to send me a message, email etc.