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.

Christian Stuff, Chronic Fatigue, and Crystopher

Once again, I must apologise for the delay since my last post. The last couple weeks have been an odd mix of excitement and difficulty, highs and lows...this makes it a little tough to write about, but it's about time I make an effort to.

So, where to start...I've been attending a lot of really interesting lectures this term. One of my biggest difficulties though, is that I've been suffering from a kind of fatigue that makes me really sleepy in lectures, when I'm reading articles and doing translations. This means it's been quite frustrating too. But I'm trying to do the best I can to find the source of the fatigue. Everyone I speak to has a different theory; low sugar levels, low iron, low blood pressure, glandular fever, Vitamin D deficiency or just general winter blues etc. (Having said that I'd appreciate no further advice on the possible causes, but prayer that it can be sorted out soon). I'm working with the college nurse who has given me an iron supplement and I'm having a blood test on Friday.

I'm getting by, however, so it's not all bad. On the upside, I've had quite a busy term getting involved in various Christian events. At the end of January, I attended a conference run by Developing a Christian Mind (in Oxford) which is targeted at Christian postgraduates and academics with a focus on what it means to be a Christian in academics, and how our faith and work should interact. It was a great encouragement and it gave me to chance to meet Christian graduates from other fields of study, colleges and churches. I even met a few South Africans ;-)

Then in fourth week, the Oxford Christian Union put on their Tri-annual Mission Week, called "This is Jesus" (they have a mini-mission week in the two intervening years but every three years is a big one). Two well known guest speakers spoke at lunch times and in the evenings in the Oxford Town Hall. We had over 400 people attending the lunch talks and 600 in the evenings, mainly undergrads, although there was quite a mix in the evenings. The talks were good, open and honest and dealt with real questions people have about God and Christianity, targeted specifically at Oxford students.

Moving from the spiritual to the more trivial...I finally got to see my first snow fall ever!!!! :D It fell on 4 February. When it started at about 4 pm, I was shocked at how tiny the snowflakes were (really expected them to be bigger). I was too excited to work so I went to help one of our CU Reps, Claire, write notes on the Gospels of John we'd been given to give out to every undergrad in college leading up to Mission Week. By the time we were done, it was dark, but snowing heavily and the snow had started to settle. I had dinner in hall that night and was in complete awe of how the already beautiful college was transformed under a layer of white. It's almost like God looked at the beautiful architecture and said, "Impressive, but I think I can make it look even better."

The next day, I went all around college taking pictures. Unfortunately it was melting quite quickly, and when I finally took a walk around town, there wasn't much left to see of it. The college fields stayed snowy for longer though, so when I came back I was re-cheered by the sight. By the end of the day I'd taken something like 160 photos.

It snowed again the following Thursday night. I actually walked in it on the way to the Mission Week talk. Afterwards I went with some of my college friends to the ice cream shop across the road. So I can now officially say I have eaten ice cream in the snow.

The next day, Maryanna, who's studying linguistics with me, helped me build a snow man. We were going to make one in my garden, but again the snow was melting fast and there wasn't enough left. So we made his head in my garden and carried that over to the Worcester field to make the rest of him. We named him Crystopher Icicleston after one of the Doctor Who actors Christopher Eccleston.

Maryanna carrying Crystopher's head

Me and Crystopher

Maryanna and Crystoper

Crystopher with hair

Me eating icecream in snow

I guess that sums up my last couple weeks. As you can tell both exciting and challenging. I can't believe this term is almost over already.

Thanks again for your interest and prayers,

Sonja.