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.

View from the summit of the Hill - a short summary

I know it's been a long time since my last post. There's a reason for that...work. Well that's what I came here to do, so we can't complain. Hilary term has come and gone and I'm nearing the final haul. I spent the 8 weeks of term finishing up my Historical Linguistics tutorial essays and working on my thesis. In fourth week we had a great week of outreach talks put on by the Christian Union called "Born Loved". We're now into the second week of the 6 week Easter break. 

This is a working holiday, as I have a number of things due at the end of the break (well the first Friday of 1st week - 26 April). I have to submit my thesis (of up to 25 000 words) and my Syntax option assignments (which are the equivalent of an exam and include a 5 000 word essay and two 2 000 word exercises). After that I will spend the rest of next term revising and preparing for my three exams in June.

My thesis and essay are coming along, though are leaving me frustrated from time to time. I'd appreciate prayer as I work on them.

Well, that's my brief update. Winter is refusing to leave us and we had more snow yesterday, which is a stark contrast to last year when we had a mild March and an early spring. I really hope April is better than last year which consisted of almost non-stop rain.

Thanks again to everyone that reads my posts and thanks for your prayers and support. :-)

Linguistics department in the snow in January

... and a Happy New Year

Starting from where I left off in my last post, I came back to Oxford for two days before leaving again, this time to Somerset to stay with Bethany. Despite it being a longer journey overall, my trip was much less troublesome than the one to Hungerford (not having to go through Reading probably had something to do with that) and I arrived in Yeovil the afternoon of the 29th. That evening, Bethany and I watched (parts of) three films: Northanger Abbey, a recent version of A Christmas Carol, and the second half of The Duchess.

The next day Bethany had to work and her dad was out for the day. I occupied myself by watching The Fellowship of the Ring (extended version) on my own - which was quite nice because I haven't seen any of the Rings films in years and Bethany wasn't that keen on watching it again. After Bethany got back from work, we took her adorable spaniel, Ollie, for a walk (or rather romp) in a rather soggy field, which was a lot of fun. That evening, we had planned to go to church but it turned out Bethany's church wasn't running an evening service that week with it being in the middle of Christmas and New Year. So we went back home, I finished The Fellowship of the Ring and we chatted online with some other members from The Lions Call.

On the Monday, New Year's Eve, we went to Yeovil town centre. I hadn't had the chance to see much of it when I stayed with them over Easter since we spent so much time visiting other places. It was pouring with rain when we set off and too windy for umbrellas to be of much use but we bundled up in coats and made our way there. Yeovil has a rather nice town centre with many of the standard high street shops I'm becoming familiar with in the UK. Bethany had a few things on her shopping list that she needed to get, so our main goal was visiting places that had the things she needed, which was a good excuse to explore various shops. We went for a cheap option for lunch by visiting the local Burger King. It's still nowhere near as good as Steers (the South African equivalent fast food chain) but better than the MacDonalds burger I'd had a week before. After lunch, the rain had stopped making our afternoon traipsing about town much more enjoyable. I found a really nice jersey (or sweater or jumper - depending on your dialect) marked down from £14 to £5 (they have crazy mark-down sales after Christmas here which really makes you wonder about their mark-up prices).

St John's Church, Yeovil

Yeovil centre

Yeovil centre

Yeovil house on the way home

Bethany's aunt and her dad's friend, Julie, came over for New Year's Eve. We had very yummy finger snacks for supper followed by charades,  a game of Trivial Pursuit and a QI Christmas quiz. There were two questions in the quiz relating to Danish Christmas traditions which I could guess the answers to based on my limited knowledge of Danish Christmas vocabulary. I felt it necessary to clarify that I really don't know any Danish besides those and other food-related terms. At midnight, we let off a few small fireworks left over from Guy Fawkes. We also watched the London Thames fireworks display on TV which was beautiful.

On New Year's Day Bethany's dad, Simon, drove us down to the Dorset coast. They'd been thinking of taking me to Cheddar Gorge, but were worried it might be closed due to the floods and/or the holiday. We went to a small town called Abbotsbury where there is a pebble beach bank (with sea on the one side and a lagoon on the other) known as Chesil Beach. On the way, we stopped at the Hardy Monument, a structure built in 1884 in memory of Vice Admiral Sir Thomas Hardy. He was flag captain to Lord Nelson and was with Nelson when he died. According to tradition, Nelson's dying words to him were "take care of my dear Lady Hamilton, Hardy, take care of poor Lady Hamilton. Kiss me, Hardy. God bless you, Hardy". The monument is well positioned to give a beautiful view of the Dorset countryside as far as the coast. The weather was sunny and clear though there was a freezing icy wind that made us glad to get back in the car as soon as possible.

New Year's Eve

View from Hardy's Memorial

View of coast from Memorial

Hardy's Memorial

Looking back

At Abbotsbury we went via the swannery (swan farm) but it too was closed for the public holiday. We struggled to find parking as there was a mock hunt going on and the first parking lot we went to was full of horse trailers. We found another one, slightly less full, though very muddy, which was very close to the beach. Besides also being a pebble beach, it was very different to the cove beach they took me to over Easter, as this was long and straight with small though regular waves. After sitting and enjoying the view and a lunch of leftovers from the night before, we took a walk along beach. It was a strange sight for me having beautiful rolling green hills on one side and sea on the other with a pebble beach underfoot, but was amazing none-the-less. We could see the swannery from a distance and came as far as some concrete barriers which had been used as tank barriers during World War II. After rescuing a lady whose posh car had become stuck in the muddy car park, we headed back to Abbotsbury. We had tea or hot chocolate and cake in a lovely tea place which was an old school house. We got back and after a roast dinner (or as they call it, "tea") we watched all watched Miss Potter, the biographical film about Beatrix Potter, together. It made me much more keen to visit the Lake District at some point while I'm here (probably in the summer after exams).

Chesil Beach

Chesil Beach

Naturally smiley-faced stone

Bethany and me

Abbotsbury hills

Chesil Beach

Abbotsbury swannery

World War barriers

On Wednesday, Simon was back to work and Julie went back home. Bethany and I took a bus ride to a small village not far across the county border called Sherborne. It's a small quaint village with one main street of interesting shops and an old abbey. We browsed the shops and then visited the abbey which has an interesting history. It actually has links with Winchester Cathedral, which I'd just seen a week before, since the earliest church on the site was created when the Diocese of Winchester was divided in 705 AD. After the Norman invasion, the seat of the regional bishop was moved to Salisbury, but worship continued on the site. In 998 Benedictine monks had been brought to work at the abbey. This angered the community as the monks replaced the secular canons who had been running the church before. Not only that, but the towns people were no longer allowed to meet in the abbey itself but in a smaller church attached to it.

In 1437, tensions between the townsfolk and monks grew, mainly over the baptismal font which was located in the main church and which the townsfolk had to get special permission to use. They commissioned their own font to be built but the abbot was not impressed and got a "stout butcher" to break into the church and destroy it with a hammer. After that, a riot broke out and a flaming arrow caused damage to the part of the abbey. Eventually the pope intervened and the towns people were made to pay for the damage. With the reformation, the abbey was taken away from the monks and returned to the towns people who proceeded to tear down their separate small church. The abbey still operates as a working church today.*

After a packed lunch in front of the abbey, we headed back through town, visiting some of the shops we had missed. We had tea and coffee in a quaint and unusual tea place which had long wooden tables taking up the length of a room or side tables against the walls with seating for two. We chose to sit in one of the latter.

Sherborne Abbey

West Window

Fluted Ceiling

Nave

Saxon kings burial

Oldest English gospels

Chapel next to Abbey

Sherborne high street

Sherborne town

Waiting for the bus

We headed back to the bus stop which (like the rest of the town) had an archaic flavour to it with a wooden bus shelter, and waited for the next bus. When we got back to Yeovil, we watched some TV and had dinner. I packed my stuff and we headed off to the train station for 9.00pm. I'd booked a late train because the price for the trip was about half what it was during peak hours. It was quite nice travelling by night, as the trains and stations were fairly quiet and empty. The only mishap along the way was that I left my lovely orange hat which my mum had knitted and sent for Christmas on the train when I switched at Bath. I'd been wearing the hat almost non-stop since Christmas and it matched my coat so well. I was really sorry to loose it, though apparently mom has enough wool to make another. I should have had to wait half an hour at Didcot station for my train back to Oxford but when I arrived, the previous train heading to Oxford had been delayed and arrived about 10 minutes after me, so I could take that one instead. I got back to Oxford just after midnight - tired but happy. It was a really good New Year and I'm grateful again to Bethany and Simon for being so hospitable.

*Information on the history of Sherborne Abbey from the tourist information leaflet they handed out to us