Port Meadow

Before it all got completely submerged, back in late October we went and did a bit of exploring around Port Meadow which is a massive open space/common grassed area near to our house. There are some horses, allotments, completely wild areas and lots of grass. It seems quite strange to me that these type of areas exist - there's even mention of being able to graze your animals here in the Doomsday Book!


During summer the whole area is grass, but slowly (and then a lot more rapidly!) it gets wetter and wetter until now (December) it seems like there's a huge lake in the middle of it. The allotment that I'm working on with some friends from class is on the edge of it, so I've been spending more time there lately - and hopefully more when the weather gets better!

More photos here.

St John's bops

A 'bop' is one of the bizarre Oxfordisms that you have to get used to around here - not using them would be worse than trying to get people to understand the accent! A bop is basically a party at a college bar or common room and has a theme (with our without dress-ups). Each college generally has two or three bops per term, ours were 'Heaven and Hell' and 'Jungle' themed.

We were a devil and St Peter for the first one at my college (home made costumes thank you!) and as Adrian was in London for the second one, I was a bird of paradise for the second one - although maybe the beak that I made looked more like Gonzo than a bird!

Hope you enjoy the rest of the photos here.

Matriculation

We had the matriculation ceremony for the 2008/09 freshers on the 18th of October - think graduation except in reverse! We have to wear sub fusc with our gowns which made us all look like penguins (and the girls look like some sort of errant country western singers with velvet ties).

Ok, this is all sounding a bit random so I'll explain the day as it unfolded. Matriculation is the ceremony whereby you enter as an official member of your college, and thus the university. It's normally held in the Sheldonian Theatre, which looks pretty splendid, but as that's closed for renovation at the moment we had ours in the Exam Schools (which was also pretty fancy). We all met at 9am at college (my college is St John's) and then signed the register to make it all official. One of the college Fellows (senior academic members of the college) gets to use his privilege of walking on the beautifully manicured lawns - which are strictly forbidden for the rest of us mere mortals! After that there was a whole lot of waiting around for our 10.30am ceremony...

Finally we were on the move and headed off down the road to the Exam Schools. Having my own personal paparazzi was brilliant - but he wasn't alone! Apparently Oxford on matriculation day is pretty popular with tourists and we had quite a few random groups of people wanting to take our photos! Bizarre...

The actual ceremony took about five minutes. One guy says literally two sentances in Latin and that's it! But, just to pad it out a little, we had a speech in English as well to explain the point of what we were doing. Unfortunately I managed to explode into a coughing fit as a result of my 'freshers' flu' so didn't really catch most of it...

And then it was over! Hope you enjoy the photos - there are heaps more here.

New photos of Oxford

Here are some new photos of the first few weeks in Oxford - enjoy!

Field trip to Dorset

As a way of the MSc class getting to know each other, the deparment organised for us to all go down to Dorset for the weekend (as I mentioned in the previous post). There are about 35 of us so it was good to get everyone's names sorted before we had to start debating things in class!

We went to the Isle of Purbeck and during the charming English rain, freezing cold, and horizontal wind, we visited Corfe Castle, Tyneham, and Kimmeridge Bay. It was all about how we conceptualise landscape and we spent many hours discussing things like 'what is nature' (ask yourself - it's actually pretty interesting, or that may just be the geek in me...).

It was all very quintisentially English, with lots of autumnal blackberries to munch on, and old pubs to visit. Anton Oliver is actually in another one of the MSc classes that the Geography department runs and so it was a bit of a shock to look up from my cornflakes to see him there the first morning! Tried not to be too star struck though...


The class is a good mix of people, about one third or a bit more from the UK, a decent sized group from the States and Canada, and then us odd balls, like an Australian, Russian, Indian, Irishman, and even a Mongolian! Considering that 63% of all postgrads at Oxford are from outside of the UK I think we're doing a pretty good job of sticking with the statistics.

Here are some more photos of the weekend!