not enough hours in the day!!

So first off, I feel the need to apologise for my obvious lack of commitment to this blog. And for the absense of promised pictures (although I AM working on that--camera charging as I write this!)

I'm never going to be able to recount everything I'd like, but here's an attempt at some of the highlights!

Friday night was my first chance to breathe, I think. Everything is so beautiful and captivating and distracting here that one is constantly craving solitude in which to just soak everything in. So Friday night I grabbed my journal and some reading material and found a courtyard to enjoy. I don't think there's a single place here that I couldn't just sit and revel in all day. The old stone and beautiful viney flowering plants everywhere create a different kind of peace than the shores of Lake Madison. Equal, maybe, just an entirely different feeling.

Anyway, Saturday was exciting; several of us hopped on a bus and headed to London to watch the start of the Tour de France. We also walked around the bridges by Parliament and Westminster as well. Beautiful sunshine, loads of people, and huge screens everywhere so that you could see the racers up close--with sometimes hilarious expressions on their faces. :) Afterwards we all met up at a pub, had some drinks, and headed back to London...very very tired.

Sunday was probably one of the best days I've had here so far. Four of us started the day off punting in the Thames, where we had a bit of an accident resulting in Jessica hanging from a bridge and consequently falling into the river. The art of punting is much harder than it looks! (It's done in a flat-bottomed canoe, with one person standing on a ledge in the back, steering and propelling the canoe with a 20-foot metal pole. ) I'll try and get pictures up of that....I think one of the guys even got an action shot of Jess falling in....I'll have to get those from him.
After punting, we visited the Natural History and Pitt Rivers Museums with a huge variety of artifacts, including shrunken heads! So fascinating!!!
After the museums, we climbed St. Mary's Cathedral tower and got the perfect view of all of Oxford. Upon descending, we took tea in this beautiful tea/desserts room that used to be Oxford's University Chest, where all of the money to pay tutors was kept.

Skipping ahead a bit, Tuesday was our trip to Stratford Upon Avon to see MacBeth at Shakespeare's Royal Theatre. I seriously cannot begin to equate the performance to anything I've seen before. We were second row in a theatre built to resemble the Globe, so we literally had swords right in front of our faces and sweat flinging past us. (probably on as well) :) I have never seen acting like this, or an interpretation so interesting. Or brutal. I was barely able to stomach parts of it; at one point, when Lady MacDuff and her children were murdered, they actually made it look like they were ripping the baby from her womb--blood, baby and all--and it was RIGHT in front us, looking way too real....ok I hope I haven't grossed you out too much...oversimplified, the production was in a realm of its own; impossible to classify as the type of theater I've seen before, beacause it was SO REAL.

Anyway, :) ... Wednesday my Roman Britain class took a trip to Fishbourne to see the Roman Palace recently excavated. Apparently in the 1960's, someone was digging to put in water pipes, and dug into the remains of a roman palace that had burned down in its day and had pastures grow to hide it. The floors remained relatively untouched, however, and the mosaic work was amazing--especially considering it was all cut, dyed and laid by hand. Every room in the palace had different mosaic floor patterns. We also got a tour of the archived artifacts by the director of the museum himself, and even got to hold some pieces! ...not something you get to do every day...
...time is going so incredibly fast here...always doing something, seeing something, getting ready for something, etc...I know I'm not finding the time to record as much as I'd like. And I'm already half done! And there's so much more to see and do!

A list of what I hope to see/do in the next week:
1. Explore the Bodliean
2. Explore Merton's Library
3. Visit the Eagle and Child (Tolken and Eliot's fave pub)
4. Visit Christ Church's Hall (where Harry Potter was filmed)
5. Attend a service at Christ Church
....and I'm sure there are more, but those have been nagging at the back of my mind.

Today started with breakfast, lecture, tea and another lecture--the later one by a Lord from the House of Lords on Labour Party Prime Ministers, particularily Blair and Brown and the differences between the two. One of his points that was particularily interesting was that Brown's politics will depend heavily on who we elect next year. Apparently Brown and Obama get along quite well...(that one's for you, molly!)
Tonight we have High Table and then out to enjoy another beautiful night. The weather here has actually been extremely pleasant--usually sunny and dry with cool nights.
Tomorrow after lectures and classes, some of us are tentatively planning on seeing Oxford Theatre Company's Open Air Production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. Hopefully the good weather continues!

Thank you to all of you who have been emailing, sending messages with the goings-on back in SD!!!! I really appreciate all of them and will get to replying eventually. It's really hard to find a spare minute here. I miss everyone a lot; Oxford is breathtaking and exciting, but I've always believed that you're happiest surrounded by people who really know you and love you anyway. And it's nice to know I'm missed as well!
Love you all** and hope you're having a relaxing, agreable day.
Bye for now!

[correction: There are 39 colleges within Oxford, not 12.....that's a bit embarassing...thanks to Sam for pointing that out.]