Monday 4 June 2012

June 4

June 4


 Ashmolean Museum

 View from the top!
Last Friday we had a great class in the Ashmolean museum. It's a really nice museum with stuff dating all the way back to Egyptian and Ancient Greece and Rome. It also has a good bit of Anglo-Saxon weapons and china etc etc. Well we had class there because our teacher was a curator there for many years and that's where he did his research for his new book. We walked around for awhile, and then we went to the top of the museum to have low tea, since it was only 1 o'clock.
Had a good dinner that night at Pret A Manger, which is on like every street corner. They really are yummy though.
That night we all went together to the boy's house in Jericho. We just hung out with the big group, and interestingly enough the only movie on in Oxford was the Patriot??

Saturday we got to wake up and take a bus trip to Windsor! I'll say it again, I do not know why I'm not a princess and live in a castle like that. But we got there with the hoards of tourists just like us, yay. The castle is absolutely huge but they only let you see a couple parts of it. It's just like Disney world where you wait in line for a long time. We waited in line to see Queen Mary's dollhouse, which is pretty amazing. It's perfectly to scale and has real plumbing and everything. Then we saw the photo gallery, which for the queens jubilee had 60 photographs of her over the past 6 decades. Really fabulous. Then we made our way into the state departments where they would entertain or have formal ceremonies. It is unreal, I can't even describe everything there is to look at in there. Its so ornate that it's almost too overwhelming. It showed lots of rooms that King Charles had decorated. The guest bedroom that King Henry VIII had decorated for Napoleon III was beautiful. Then there's a room with the crest and shield of every Knight of the Garter. That was really cool. There are only two ladies in the Order of the Garter. Lady Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill's daughter. We left that part of the castle and went to St. George's Chapel. That was very nice, and you can see where the Queen's mother and great grandparents are buried along with Henry VIII. Windsor is a beautiful place to see, and it's the oldest castle in England. Oxford castle doesn't compare at all. I walked by it and all they have in it now is a krispy kreme. How modern of them.






Sunday we woke up and had a garden party at Trinity college. Except this garden party wasn't in much of a garden because it was pouring rain all day yesterday. Finally its living up to all the rumors. It was freezing and rainy all day and Melissa and I tromped around in our high heels. But we had a nice time at the garden party for a little while. Then we just regrouped all day, because sleeping here is definitely optional. I choose not to sleep, you only study abroad once! When I got hungry at midnight I sprinted on down to the Kebab stand at the end of my street. There's these Kebab stands all over. Lamb and chips. Melissa was so concerned that they get this lamb right off a spit just in the open air, but I must say that I have a weakness for greasy street food in foreign countries. Its the best way to taste local and city food. So my room smelled like an onion until this morning. Then we had class again today. After that we wandered and shopped around a little bit. Boots and Marks and Spencer are wonderful. Like a better Walgreens and Kroger. This afternoon I took a walk down to Port Meadow to take pictures and it was filled with swans. Beautiful.  Now its back to studying, with maybe some Jubileeing thrown in later!

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