Of Tutorials, Balls and Choir, oh my!

It's again been a busy few days since I updated!  I'll try to address things in order, then explain a bit more about how Oxford works, and give a few more "Things I've Noticed."

I had my first tutorial on Thursday afternoon.  It went pretty well, but I know there's substantial room for improvement.  I just felt like my tutor and I weren't entirely on the same page, as though she were trying to guide me to some greater point in the conversation and I just wasn't following her.  It didn't help that she was analyzing a favorite book of mine in ways that had never even occurred to me, and operating as though I had a working knowledge of British Victorian-era law.  Suffice it to say that I don't, and so her repeated references of the Divorce Act lead to much internal brain-scrambling and contextualizing on my part while still trying to sound at least moderately literate.  I wasn't discouraged, though, and know I'll get better at it; as Josephine has told us more than once, "If you were already good at this, you wouldn't need to be here!"

After, I went shopping to lift my spirits from the degree or so they'd fallen, and got these wonderful vintage-style posters.  I won't go into too much detail, but the main one is from a poster campaign Britain released during World War II, with the most wonderful being the pictured one here.  It was only to be released should the Germans invade Britain, and since that never happened, they were never put out.  A few years ago someone found one shoved in an old book, and some more were discovered in a warehouse, and they're just so intensely British that they sort of went viral.  I bought this one, as well as a blue one that says "Dig for Victory," (encouraging victory gardens,) and a yellow parody one where the crown is upside down that says "Now Panic and Freak Out."  I like them, and plan on having them framed and put in my living room when I get home.

Anyway, the next important thing was my first Choir rehearsal.  It's held in the Chapel, and mandatory rehearsals are Friday evenings and Sundays, with Sunday also having choral evensong.  I liked it very much.  I'm a decent sight-reader, so I don't think I did too dreadfully, and having a more experienced singer on my right was very helpful.  I should have anticipated this, but didn't; singing in Latin is particularly hard.  Only one of the songs we sang Sunday was, but since I've never had to do it, it threw me off.  I'll get used to it, though.  Exposure will make me better!  The choir had pizza and wine after, and I really enjoyed their company.  Grace, the organ scholar, is particularly nice, and I made several other acquaintances with whom I hope to form more lasting friendships.

Perhaps most exciting was the ball last night.  Unfortunately for you, I didn't take many pictures, because I was having too much fun enjoying myself without a camera glued to my face!  I did take a few, however, as did other people, so they should find their way onto facebook relatively soon where I can steal them for my own nefarious purposes.  As a reminder, all my Oxford pictures thus far can be found HERE, and that link will be updated to a maximum selection of 200 photos.  After that, I'll have to start another, and will inform you all accordingly.

Anyway, the ball.  The theme was "Gala of the Gods," which seemed to have no influence on the proceedings other than to provide a pretty cool name.  It was a relatively formal affair; "black tie" with slightly loosened requirements; knee-length cocktail dresses were permitted, and many girls pushed that envelope so far that it ceased to be an envelope at all, and became simply a piece of paper.  More on that later, actually, in the Things I've Noticed.  I wore a dress given to me by Nana, actually.  If my purse hadn't sprung open mid-photo, this would be a pretty good picture as well.  Anyway, there was a champagne reception with strawberries (really good strawberries!) in OB Quad, pictured above, and then we all moved as a group to the Oxford Union for the ball proper.  Then ensued a good deal of madness.

Apparently the event planners hadn't realized that by around 9:00, after standing around drinking champagne and eating nothing but strawberries for an hour and a half, most of the guests would be hungry.  The "queue" for the food table was ridiculous, in that those of us who had the mingled fortune and misfortune to be nearest the front were instantly crushed half to death by a swelling throng of eager and mildly inebriated college students.  This is where I met one of my new friends for the evening, in that I was jammed up against his back for the better part of half an hour.  As he remarked, "We're British, damnit!  We should know how to queue!"  I actually didn't mind too much, other than having my feet stepped on, and eventually food was had.

There was dancing, and rather a lot of drinking, and everyone seemed to have a very good time.  I met someone who wore a waistcoat complete with pocket watch, and I had ouzo for the first time; I found it really good!  The music ranged from 50's-60's era American rock and roll to techno later on, and the cover band was quite good, despite the oddity of hearing "Great Balls of Fire" from a singer with a British accent.  My feet were hurting pretty intensely by about 12:30, so I ended up leaving before the silent disco, (apparently they shut off all the music and give everyone wireless headsets that play the music that way; I'm not sure entirely what the appeal would be there, maybe someone can explain the novelty to me?)  I walked back to the Grad Centre with two other visiting students from Princeton, and hung around while they got "chips and cheese" from a kabob van.  (Chips and cheese does not equal cheesefries back home; it's french fries with shredded cheese and ketchup on top.)  All in all, it was a very good evening, and a great introduction to a very "Oxbridge" kind of tradition.

A note on Oxford, from Wikipedia:
As a collegiate university, Oxford's structure can be confusing to those unfamiliar with it. The university is a federation: it comprises over forty self-governing colleges and halls, along with a central administration headed by the Vice-Chancellor. The academic departments are located centrally within this structure; they are not affiliated with any particular college. Departments provide facilities for teaching and research, determine the syllabi and guidelines for the teaching of students, perform research, and deliver lectures and seminars. Colleges arrange the tutorial teaching for their undergraduates. The members of an academic department are spread around many colleges; though certain colleges do have subject alignments (e.g. Nuffield College as a centre for the social sciences), these are exceptions, and most colleges will have a broad mix of academics and students from a diverse range of subjects. Facilities such as libraries are provided on all these levels: by the central university (the Bodleian), by the departments (individual departmental libraries, such as the English Faculty Library), and by colleges (each of which maintains a multi-discipline library for the use of its members).

For those of you with the "tl;dr" mentality, here are the ever-popular Things I've Noticed:

• Dresses here can be way, way, way shorter than at home.  Oh, you'll still get the judging eye of your peers cast upon you, but people are much more willing to wear the shortest of short skirts I think I've ever seen.
• A lot of fathers wear those silly baby-strapped-to-your-chest thing.  I see it on moms at home, but it seems to be more of a dad thing here.  Not really sure why.
• People don't really keep their dogs on leashes, except the tiniest dogs. The bigger and more exuberant the dog, the more likely it is to be running loose a good 50 feet ahead of its owner.
• British people, the choir particularly, love to dissect accents.  My pronunciation of the word "Chilean" (chill-AY-an,) just about started a revolution.  (Apparently, it's CHILLY-en here.)

Last, for your edification, a video I took of my normal walk to Oxford; it's precisely 10 minutes long and has really terrible editing because I had to cut it down; youtube didn't like my 13 minute long video.  The part where it goes black is where I'm sneaking into the Radcliffe Camera.



And yes, as TJ spoiled, a scout is a cleaning woman.  I'll update again soon!