Week Two: Oxford, Oxfordshire
September 5th - September 11th |
| C.S. Lewis's Cottage |
We arrived in Oxford right around noon, just in time for one of Dr. Brint’s “pragmatic” tours of the city. My first impression was nothing short of petrifying – I have never been more scared and nervous before the start of a semester in my life. The more we wandered the city, the more uneasy I felt. Everyone was dressed in their Ivy-league-best business attire. It didn’t help that the world rankings were released that day as well with 1. Cambridge 2. Harvard 3. MIT 4. Yale, and 5. Oxford. What is the average IQ in such an oasis of ridiculous amounts of knowledge?! In addition, Balliol College, the subset of Oxford that we are visiting students of, argues back and for with Christ Church College of the University of Oxford who educates more prime ministers. I bet the public schools in Oxford are uniformly “GT,” and only arrange special education for “normal” kids rather than the other way around. This is the most intimidating place I have ever step foot. Take me back to Palestine.
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| Street artist holding the painting I bought from her of the Bodleian Library |
The next day, Tuesday, September 6th, we were matriculated into the Bodleian Library by signing and reciting this oath:
I hereby undertake not to remove from the Library, or to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any volume, document, or other object belonging to it or in its custody; not to bring into the Library or kindle therein any fire or flame, and not to smoke in the Library; and I promise to obey all rules of the Library.
We were then given official library cards, picture and all, for access to over 9 million different volumes of written word. Only 10% of all Bodleian library card holders reside outside of the UK, and we are now among them. We explored only a few buildings, including music composition books 400+ years old and an underground tunnel system. Dr. Brint then took us on an abbreviated Bodleian Library tour and Balliol College tour, which unfortunately(?) did not include all the creepy paintings of former Masters of Balliol in the dining hall. PS – the dining hall at Hogwarts was based off of ours :) We eat hearty breakfasts and dinners with some of the best staff at Oxford. Jane, who helps serve us our meals, is referred to as “mum,” and we are quickly learning the names of the other staff members. They seriously give us more food than we could ever imagine, with at least three courses per dinner. Lunch is on our own typically, so if we’re not out in the streets trying local cuisine, we’re PBJ-ing it back at the Jowett Annex, our “B&B” dorms for the month.
Today for lunch we met at the infamous Turf Tavern a block from our dorms with Dr. Brint, fully intending to have a Politics and the Arts tutorial while we eat. Seating arrangements didn’t work out too well, so we took it back to the entertainment room of the dorms instead. However, our beverage of choice was a tad bit stronger than any of us had anticipated…which just made the tutorial THAT much better haha. MacBeth will never be the same. Immediately afterwards was our first official Oxford University tutorial called Rectifying International Injustice with Dr. Daniel Butt, whom we refer to as Dr. Dan. He was absolutely hilarious. Just like any philosopher, he talked his way around every point of interest for the hour. We were quite entertained and excited for the next meeting.
It was so difficult trying to soak in all that Oxford has to offer, both the city and the university. In a classic attempt to procrastinate and distract myself from worrying about my tutorials, I bought a map and picked out things to wander towards. When I saw the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and the local Synagogue, I remembered that the UN International Day of Peace is September 21st. So I decided to go for a walk around town Wednesday morning. I spoke with the receptionist at the Islamic Center, got some information and learned a little bit about what they do during term (which unfortunately does not start until we leave Oxford). Then at the synagogue a gentlemen gave me the contact information for their main community development person. Now all I have to do is find a service project…hopefully the Red Cross or Salvation Army will have something going on that day. I would absolutely love to make it an interfaith service project as ambassadors of California Lutheran University. Ironically, the synagogue is located in Jericho, Oxfordshire, which is on the outskirts of Oxford and also shares a name with Jericho, West Bank/Palestine. Upon entering the city I saw a mural of the little town with a quote (pictured below). I couldn’t help but wonder to which city of Jericho the quote is referring. Just FYI Jericho, West Bank, is also where I found the Peace Pole of which CLU is a proud advocate. That afternoon we took a tour of Oxford from the perspective of C.S. Lewis, J.R. Tolkien, and the Inklings guided by a professor of C.S. Lewis and an Inklings specialist. In addition to my cross-city adventure earlier in the morning, this tour itself was over two hours. Needless to say we were very familiar with the area by the end of it.
One of the beauties of Oxford is the immense amount of networking within walking distance. The Six Degrees of Separation theory does not apply here – there are only two or three degrees. Thursday a few of us (including the former news producer for Iranian World TV) met with Victoria Nash, Director of Graduate Programs and of the Oxford Internet Institute to discuss social media in global social movements, particularly the Middle East. She helped us formulate quantitative research methods utilizing Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and other 21st century phenomena for gathering data. She is also well aware of the different research projects the Oxford students are working on, and could help network us to the right people for collaboration.
Later that afternoon Maryalice Marston and I had our first tutorial with Professor Walter Mattli in International Political Economy. As if I wasn’t scared enough, we walk into his office in the Canterbury Quad of St. John’s College of Oxford, and everything was white. Of course we were wearing black boots because of the misty nature of the weather. We sit down on a huge couch in the office of his office, and begin discussing the weather haha. He then began having us regurgitate information that we had read from his three books prior to arriving in the UK – and we had no idea what we were doing. It seems very simple now, but he had us recollect the integration hierarchy from the city-state to supranational schemes. One in particular that stumped us was the “kingdom” haha – us non-cultured Americans have no recollection of a history of kingdoms, it’s always been counties/districts lol. We forget that there was a world beyond America. We then racked our brains with Game Theory and the Prisoner’s Dilemma. We had read all of this beforehand, but we have stuffed so much information into our brains that it pushed everything else out it seems. As I re-read Professor Mattli’s first book for an essay and presentation next week, I can see from where his tutorial questions stemmed. I just hope next week is not a repeat of dumbfounded Americans staring blankly into space. It is beyond embarrassing to be at one of the top five greatest intellectual institutions in the world, and perform so terribly. We need to be completely focused and work not only three times harder this month than a typical school month (because one semester is condensed into one month), but also we need to perform at the Ivy level. Work hard now, play hard later. I really shouldn’t even be working on this blog, but I know if I wait like I did for Israel it will never be finished, assuming I remember everything we do.
Friday, September 9th, we turned in our first essays for Dr. Dan’s Rectifying International Injustice class. I answered the question “Should distributive justice be forward-looking or backward-looking?” with an analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. He basically responded to my essay by agreeing with my opinions, then saying that the region is too messed up to spend time debating it, in a very nice and humorous way. He added that not only is it an extremely unique situation given its unique history of injustices, but also that in the case of property ownership, there is no original possession – it belonged to the earth, not mankind, initially. In which case the theories of legitimate ownership does not apply, so there is no agreed upon theory for distributional justice. Anyways, our brains were too fried by the end of that conversation that we ended up getting sandwiches at the “Alternative Tuck Shop” a block from our dorms and walking around to find a park to eat. We became too hungry and impatient, so we settled into a cemetery a couple blocks away haha. Which brings me to the question – is it immoral to eat blackberries that grow in a cemetery? Certainly none of us did, but it’s an interesting concept :)
Later Friday afternoon we went “punting” from the Magdalen Bridge Boathouse near the Thames River. Punting is basically a combination of a canoe, kayak, paddle board, and Italian gondola. Dr. Brint made us a drink called “Pimms,” which is a particular brand that he combined with 7-up, strawberries, oranges, lemons, apples, cucumbers, and mint leaves. Needless to say, all the Englishmen who saw us were quite jealous. Lastly, that evening we all ventured to Dr. Brint’s home to celebrate his birthday. It was the least we could do for someone who gives so selflessly and does so much for his students, way beyond the call of duty. He is the reason this program exists and why CalLu has become mini-oasis of Oxford out in California.
Saturday we welcomed Dr. Mike Shaw’s arrival in Oxford. He is a physics professor at CalLu and is coming to explore “the dark side” (he attended Cambridge) and teach us some photography. We all met up at the Turf Tavern for some “communion.” Then, finally, Sunday was the last day of our first round of tutorials. I finished my readings that morning bouncing between the Turf Tavern (closed still, but there was outdoor seating hidden in an alley), the Holywell Music Room, and Café Nero’s. The Holywell Music Room had a coffee concert that morning, so I brought my iPad up to the back corner of the concert hall to read while pianist Chiao Ying Chang performed Liszt’s “Two Legends” and Schubert’s “Sonata in A D959.” This particular venue was built in 1748 and is the oldest of its kind in Europe. Today is September 11th, and I had run into an imam yesterday along one of the market streets, who invited me to a 10-minute moment of silence for the 10th anniversary of 9/11. So at 2:00 PM (equivalent to 9:00 AM in New York) I joined the Oxford Council of Faiths in commemorating the day and issuing a declaration of peace in front of a plaque that said peace in four different languages, including Hebrew and Arabic. You can find youtube videos of the Imam’s speech and a portion of the introduction to the moment of silence.  |
| http://youtu.be/1Hskv_lT1t0 |
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| http://youtu.be/WucOy25oTu8 |
Until next week...Cheers!
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