Mid-Michaelmas Update

I've been back in Oxford about a month and a half now. It's been a very busy few weeks. During the weekend 27-30 September the Christian community in Oxford ran a number of events to welcome international students to Oxford: a free diner and two paid-for cream teas with guest speakers. I volunteered to help host a table at the dinner and the Friday cream tea. It was a great opportunity to meet new students and welcome them to Oxford. It turned out that one of the girls at my table both days is a literature student at Worcester college.

The following week was "freshers" or "noughth" week at Oxford. This involved a number of social events to meet up with the new students in college. There are four new linguistics masters students at Worcester this year (which is exciting since I am the only one in my year).

On the Saturday of noughth week, one of my friends from primary school, Lauren Pearce, came to Oxford and I took her on a short tour around the city. She and her family were having a holiday in London after being at a family wedding in Ireland and they came to Oxford for the afternoon. We went up the University Church of St Mary's tower to get a bird's-eye-view of the city. If you've been following my blog since last year, you'll know that I have already been up three towers in Oxford: Carfax (the popular tourist one which I went up with my dad when we first arrived last year), The Saxon Tower (which I took Sarah Docksey up when she came to visit last year) and the Magdalen College tower which Prerna took us up when Maryanna's parents were here in June. After doing these four, I think the University Church tower wins the prize for having the best views of Oxford. Magdalen comes close, but the beauty of St Mary's is that it looks down into a number of colleges including All Souls, Brasenose and Exeter with their beautiful quads as well as the splendid Radcliffe Camera (which are on the whole prettier from above than the roofs of buildings). I think as an architect, Lauren particularly enjoyed seeing Oxford.

 

Term began officially on 8 October. I don't have a lot of lectures to attend this term, but there are a few that I missed during Michaelmas term last year because of timetable clashes. These include the Introduction to Philology lectures, a Homer and Early Greek class and a class on Greek Dialects. I'm also continuing to attend the weekly Philology (Historical Linguistics) seminars which are themed "Towards a synchronic grammar of Proto-Indo-European". In addition, I have weekly individual tutorials this term. So far I have been having tutorials for the exam paper I will be writing on The History and Structure of Greek. I have written an essay on the Greek Middle Voice and another on the Greek dialects. Currently I am looking at the tenses (in particular the different tense stems).

During second week, one of the American ladies from the Narnian web community I belong to, The Lion's Call, came to visit Oxford with her husband. We met at the Eagle and Child (the Inklings favourite pub) for dinner, and I showed them around Worcester College including our lovely chapel. We had considered going up to the Kilns, CS Lewis' home, but there wasn't enough time for that. The two of them had taken themselves on a tour of Oxford during the day while I was in lectures and were immensely pleased that they not only got to see where Tolkien's room in Exeter College had been, but the girl who is staying there now let them take a photo of the inside.

 

I've made a couple of great new friends in the Worcester CU. Emily is doing her year abroad, studying Linguistics and Philosophy. She was naturally "introduced" to me every time another CU member learnt she was studying Linguistics, until "have you met Sonja?" became something of a joke between us. It turns out and is also a fan of CS Lewis. Mary is a first year biology student and shares my fondness of hedgehogs. If you should hear us simultaneously break out in to a squeal of excitement or an "awww!", it's probably something hedgehog related. They are both in my CU small group together with Emma, another graduate student (yay!) doing Mathematics.

Last weekend, Tim from CU had a fancy dress birthday party with the theme "London Underground Stations". I had no idea how that was supposed to work until I looked at a list of the stations and saw Paddington on it, which made me think of going as Paddington Bear. I already had the right coloured blue coat and could get away with wearing my pink gum boots (wellingtons). I was looking for the right kind of hat, when I remembered that "teddy bear" hats are a phenomenon here. So I ended up buying a cheap teddy hat from Poundland (where everything costs a pound) and making him a red hat out of the socks I got for free on the Virgin Atlantic flight over. I bought some toggle buttons to add to the coat, and made a "suitcase" out of one of my boxes I'd used for storage when I went home. I was worried that my coat would be too warm to wear (since it was my really warm one), but it turned out that temperatures were down to 4°C that weekend, which was annoying in general, but handy for my costume. It did get a little warm indoors, but I could keep the coat on long enough for people to see my costume. One of the guys, David, also went as Paddington, but since we did our costumes quite differently, it didn't really matter.

Me (Paddington) and Mary (Chalk Farm)

Me and David (Paddingtons)

Me and Tim

Sometime over last weekend, I picked up my second cold of term (I had "freshers flu" during first week). Unfortunately, I haven't been able to shake it and am still feeling congested and coughing. Hopefully it won't last much longer.

And that pretty much wraps up the last few weeks. I can't believe we're half way through Michaelmas Term already. It's Guy Fawkes on Tuesday and the big bonfire and fireworks celebration is happening tonight, but I guess I won't be going with this cold. The Christmas lights have already gone up in the streets, though they won't switch them on until December. I suppose I should start thinking about putting up my Christmas tree again (yes, the one with the cheery fairy lights that I only took down in June). Clocks went back an hour last week, so it's now starting to get dark decidedly "early".

Until next time, I hope you are all doing well, and thanks for your continued support and prayers.

... And back again

South African winter's passed and it's back to the UK where wintry weather reigns (or rains) eternal. The break was really good. It was lovely to see the family again and meet Jackson (our new dog) for the first time. He's really lovely (except that his colliesh nature means he nips visitors' legs, mistaking them for sheep) and a good addition to the family. Somehow he recognised I was part of the family (from seeing and hearing me on skype - or recognising my smell from my bedroom?), and decided I didn't need herding.

Jackson

Everyone back in the UK is asking what I did over the "summer". I guess a (summery) summary  would be: hung out with family, especially mom, took part in the TLC Summer Challenge (in which we read through The Silver Chair in a week and wrote reflections on each chapter - if you're curious, you can read mine here), watched Olympics on TV (I saw all of our medal races), did some Greek text analysis for my thesis, read stuff for and tried to come to grips with my thesis and syntax essay topic, visited friends at UKZN (my old uni), finally went on the Moses Mabida stadium arch skycar (from which there's a cool view of Durban and the sea), watched Paralympics, went on a family weekend away to the KZN Midlands and tried to get as much sun as possible. I was most impressed that we had a couple days of over 30°C weather in August (which is still technically winter). One day even may have topped 40°.

Moses Mabida Stadium

View of Durban from Stadium

Family trip in the Midlands

Natal Midlands

I departed for the UK on 11 September (the safest day of the year to fly(?)). I decided to take the shorter, more direct flight this time which meant flying up to Jo'burg (my first domestic flight ever) and then heading from there to Heathrow where I arrived at about 7 the next morning. I preferred having one longer (11 hour) leg to two short ones (7 and 9 hours via Dubai), and I even got a teeny bit of sleep (maybe half an hour - an hour at the most). I flew on Virgin Atlantic. It was pretty nice - their food wasn't quite as good as Emirates but the service was good in general and there were lots of empty seats (including the one next to me).

I arrived in Oxford around midday on 12 September and got the key to my new room in Franks Building, which I'm very happy with, despite the higher rent. I only got my boxes back from Tam 'n Heather's place the next evening. This meant eating out for a day and sleeping in a sleeping bag at night, but that was okay.

On Friday 14, I left Oxford again (having hardly unpacked anything) as the Worcester Christian Union had a weekend away (called "House Party" - the official UK term for such CU events). We had an amazing time catching up and preparing for the year ahead, studying the bible and worshipping God. We stayed at a converted vicarage at Viney Hill in the Gloucestershire countryside (an extremely pretty part of England). One of my highlights was going through a walk in the Forest of Dean (which I believe is one of the oldest and largest forests in England). We were only on the outskirts and following well defined paths and roads. But it was still really amazing to think that when I read about such places as a child, I never dreamt I'd ever find myself actually walking in the English countryside. It was about as believable as finding myself in Narnia :-P.

The Vicarage

Forest of Dean

The walking party

Old church

I came back to Oxford on Sunday afternoon and spent most of last week unpacking, settling in to my new room and relaxing. This week I'm back to work on my Greek analyses and readings. There are still two weeks till term officially kicks off, but there are a lot of events for new students (some of which I'll be at to welcome them) so it will be a fairly busy two weeks.

Home for the winter

Sorry this is so very late. I started it weeks ago, but never got it finished. Here at last is my account of my last week in Oxford and my journey home.

And so my first year at Oxford has drawn to a close, and I'm back in Durban for the Summer...I mean Winter...holiday.

As I imagined, the packing wasn't fun. But somehow, I managed to get it all done. The college doesn't provide storage space, so it had been something of a challenge to get everything worked out, but thanks to friends and people from church it all came together. I was kindly given boxes by a girl from church who works at a chemistry lab and another lady from church offered to help with transport. Originally a guy from church had offered me space in his loft to store my boxes, but he lives in Didccot, which is something of a drive from Oxford. So instead I asked Heather and Tam if I could store my boxes at their house in Oxford. (Tam's doing Linguistics with me and Heather is his girlfriend, who counts as an honorary member of the "LingPals"; especially after organising our Linguists' Christmas dinner last year and an end-of-year barbecue - which was unfortunately rained out and turned into a pub lunch). I owe all these people a great thanks for their generosity in helping me out.

The lady helping transport was free on the Thursday before I left (28 June), which meant taking my boxes to be stored a few days early. This was challenging as I still needed things to eat out of and with, as well as bedding, for three more days. I eventually bought some cheap things from Poundland (the shop where everything costs only one Pound) which I didn't mind leaving behind. My bedding (that which didn't belong to college) went into a backpack which I took to church on my last Sunday and left with one of the ladies there.

On my last Friday in Oxford (29 June), I had a pub lunch with the Ling-Pals (one of the final ones with most of us there together). Sadly we had to do it without Maryanna who was travelling with her parents, but thankfully I'd been out with her and her parents the the week before. Christelle didn't make it to the lunch either, but some of us saw her later and she's still with us next year. I had to say my last good bye to some of the one-year master's students (especially Xavier, Camille and Patrick - although none of them will be too far away for an occasional visit to Oxford next year).

The Sunday I was due to fly (1 July), I went to the "early" (9.45) church service at St Ebbe's. Unfortunately most of my friends are from the 7 pm service so I didn't see too many of them, but I did get a pleasant surprise anyway. There was a notice on the bulletin saying that there was to be a barbecue after the service for those who wanted to stay for lunch. With all my stuff packed, I didn't have much exciting planned for lunch so I thought I would stay. Then, during the announcements they told us that it actually wasn't a barbecue but a South African-style braai with real boerewors (South African spicy sausage) on the menu. There are a few South African families at the church who had arranged it. I was in hysterics that the day I was due to fly back to SA, I would be treated to a braai. In typical English style, it rained a little, but it was still very enjoyable.

After that I headed back to my house finalise my packing and get my bags ready. I was to take a special coach (bus) service that goes straight from Oxford to Heathrow. I planned to get to Heathrow in advance of three hours early - in case anything went wrong - so I caught the coach at around 3.00pm. The trip was pleasant but uneventful. I got to the airport really early, as expected. But that gave me time to find my terminal, and then go hunting for a lock for my bag (my original lock I came over with was a combination lock that's mechanism somehow failed and I had to have cut off when I arrived in Oxford). I had a spare lock, but forgot that my case has two zips which need locking. It turned out to be handy though because, in looking for a lock place, I also found the place that wraps your bag in plastic to it doesn't get torn while it's roughly handled by the luggage packers.

I was slightly worried when I was packing that my hand-luggage was overweight. While Emirates allows up to 30 kg of checked baggage allowance, we are not allowed more than 7 kgs of hand-luggage. I wanted to bring both my netbook and new laptop home and had to have those in hand-luggage so they didn't get damaged. Without a scale I had no idea what it all weighed. When I got to the check-in counter, they told me I was way over the limit, and asked me to repack some things into the main luggage. Unfortunately, I'd already had my big case plastic-wrapped. So the lady suggested that I repack what I really needed into my laptop bag and check in my wheelie hand-luggage case (my check in luggage was under the limit). This worked out fairly well in the end, although it meant I had to carry my laptop bag with laptop and netbook as well as other stuff in it around Dubai airport, instead of having the wheelie bag to drag around (the checked luggage goes straight through so you don't have to worry about those bags at the lay-over).

My first flight, on board one of the big multi-level Airbuses, left at about 8.30pm. We saw a bit of the start of the Euro Soccer final on the big screen in the waiting area. In between that, I had a lovely view of planes taking off into the lowering late summer sun, which was beautiful. The flights were okay. Unfortunately, I was again unable to sleep, which made the second flight in particular drawn-out. The air-conditioning makes my nose really dry which is also annoying. But the Emirates food and service is good. I managed to get a window seat on my first flight as I had a couple with seats booked on either side of me who asked to swap. That was fun as I got to watch the late sunset over Britain and Europe and the rising moon. I also got to see the early-morning sunrise over the Arabian gulf approaching Dubai. 

Approaching Heathrow

Leaving England

Sunset

Moonrise

Sunrise over Arabian Gulf

I spent four hours in Dubai. Waiting to get on the plane was quite exciting because I was suddenly surrounded by people with South African accents for the first time in 10 months. Our plane was a bit late arriving and then even later taking off as we had to fly over Omani air space, and the window period in which they were allowed to fly over it wasn't open yet. About half an hour into the flight, the entertainment and television systems all went down and we were without any of that for almost an hour. I thought to myself "as long as that's the only type of technical problem they have". Thankfully it was. We arrived in Durban as the sun was setting (my third sunrise/set from the air in two days).

Approaching Dubai

Over Dubai

Over Dubai

Sunset over Durban

It took a very long time for my baggage to arrive, but at last it did. Weary from about 34 hours without sleep, I made my way to the arrivals. Hilda-May was waiting for me, ready to run past the barrier to say hello. My parents were a little further behind. I was home.

It's been a really good year. A lot has happened, but I'm glad to be home for a spell. I'm really enjoying the Durban sunshine. Thanks again for everyone that has supported me and especially to the Lord for keeping me safe and helping me settle in well; for giving me great friends and for helping me deal with the various challenges I've faced, both big and small. I'm in awe of just how much I've been blessed in this past year and look forward to what the year ahead had to offer.

The year winds down

I can't believe my first year in Oxford is over. Term officially ended on 15 June and I leave for South Afric on 1 July. The last couple weeks of term were spent finalising my topics for my thesis and syntax essay. For those interested in such things, my thesis is going to be an analysis of Hellenistic Greek word order from a Minimalist perspective and my essay on Afrikaans negation. I'll be working in particular on my thesis while I'm at home over the summer/winter.

Speaking of "summer", the beautiful week of warm and sunshine I mentioned in my previous post lasted a whole nine days. After that things turned cold and wet and have been fairly miserable since then. We've had a few bursts of excessive rain. On three separate occasions, there has been pretty bad flooding in different parts of the UK. Thankfully, Oxford has not suffered. In between, however, there have been a few warmer days and patches of sunshine, but maximum daytime temperatures have mostly stayed below 20°C, occasionally getting as low as 15°C.

The first weekend in June was quite a fun one as it marked the Jubilee celebrations of Queen Elizabeth's 60th year as Queen. It was an extra long weekend with holidays on the Monday and Tuesday but, as Oxford doesn't take holidays off, we had to continue working. I did manage to watch quite a few of the events on TV, however, which included a Flotilla Pageant of over 1 000 vessels down the Thames on the Sunday, a concert in front of Buckingham Palace on the Monday evening and a thanksgiving church service on the Tuesday morning. On the Sunday afternoon we also had an MCR (college graduate community) "garden party" to mark the end of term. Unfortunately, it was pouring with rain that day so we had to move it indoors. At one point, we did have to go out in the rain for our annual group photograph. It seemed like a typically British situation with us standing there on the photo platform in the pouring rain with our umbrellas up. We had to put down our umbrellas for the photo itself so all got quite wet. The only thing that put a damper on the Jubilee celebrations was that after spending an entire afternoon standing on the royal barge on a rainy afternoon (following the Queen's example), Prince Philip took ill and had to be taken to hospital. He missed the Jubilee concert and thanksgiving service. Thankfully, after a week in hospital, he recovered enough to spend his 91st birthday with the Queen and his family.

I've done a fair bit of "Narnian" stuff the last couple weeks. On the last Tuesday of term I went with a small group from the CS Lewis society on a walk through the Wytham Woods near Oxford. The walk took about two hours and ended at a pub where we had dinner and from which we took the bus back to Oxford. One of the fun moments was when we crossed the Swinford Bridge which is one of the last remaining private toll bridges left in England. Thankfully, they no longer charge pedestrians to cross the bridge, though it would probably have been only a couple pence considering how cheap the toll on vehicles was.

View of Oxford from Wytham Woods     

Wytham Woods     

Wytham Woods     

Swinford toll     

Swinford toll house

The highlight of the last few weeks was when I went with Bethany (my friend whom I stayed with in Sommerset) to watch a new theatre production of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe in Kensington Gardens. We met in the Gardens at about midday and had lunch at a nice Italian cafe nearby. It was a moderately nice day with intermittent sun and cloud and quite a strong wind. After lunch we spent some time watching the swans swimming in the lake in the Gardens before making our way to the temporary theatre where the play was to take place. The play was quite different to what I expected, but very good and very loyal to the book. I have written a review of the play for the Narnia fan site that I belong to, The Lion's Call, which you can read a copy of on my other blog on the link below:

Narnia Show in Kensington Gardens - a review

Swan lake

Pavilion next to theatre

Bethany and me

Writing a message from TLC

Inside the pavilion

The 360° Theatre

Squirrel in Kensington

Kensington Palace

This last week, I have been making the most of my final days in Oxford by doing some of the things I've been wanting to do but hadn't gotten around to yet. On Sunday 17, I went punting with a group of guys from the Worcester CU. A punt is a small boat that sits quite low in the water and is driven by a pole (kind of like a gondola). That evening we had a Linguistics department end-of-year barbecue.

On Tuesday, one of the rare sunny days, I went to the Oxford botanic gardens with another CU friend, Catherine. They are a lot smaller than Durban's botanic gardens and don't really have a place for picnics and such (there are plenty of other places in Oxford for that). Many of the plants, especially those from more tropical climates, are grown in Green Houses. I was really exited to see a number of South African plants or plants we have in our garden back home.

On Wednesday, I spent the evening with the other linguists from my year as we got to meet Maryanna's parents, who have come over from from the USA. On Thursday morning, I met them again and went with them to Magdalen College where another linguist, Prerna, who is at that college, took us up the Magdalen Tower (the tallest tower in Oxford). The stairway up was a narrow steep spiral one with about 115 steps, but the view from the top was spectacular and made it worth it.

Magdalen Bridge

Maryanna and Prerna

Magdalen College     

       Oxford City Centre  

Tower stairs

My main plans for the coming week are to get things packed up. I will be leaving most of my things in Oxford at a friends' house and  am currently going through the arduous task of packing my things in boxes. It's a weird experience for me. I've never moved house before (except coming over here, which involved packing just one suitcase with the necessities and buying what I couldn't bring over when I got here). Now, for the first time, I'm actually having to pack things in boxes. And I need to decide carefully what I will take home because I will have no access to the things I leave for two and a half months. It's not a fun task, but it's a necessary one.

So, I now head into my final week in Oxford (for a while). I can't believe how quickly these last ten months have gone. I have seen and done and learnt so much. But I really can't wait to get home and see my family and doggies again (or in the case of Jackson, for the first time).