Avebury

Busy Weekend! I worked in the library for a few hours on Saturday and ended up meeting Matt for a little while and a walk around Oxford, but today Rachel and I went to Avebury.

Avebury is a stone henge (like Stonehenge) where you can touch the stones and walk among them. It circles a small village (like 15 buildings-very small!). On the outskirts of Avebury there is a mound, Silbury Hill, and a burrow grave near the mound. I particularly liked the passage grave because I have being studying different tumulus (meaning a barrow or mound) burials in my archaeology classes. It was especially neat to get to wander in one.

I had a great time despite the weather. It managed not to pour while we were hiking, but it was still a cold, damp, misty day. I had to wear an undershirt, long-sleeved shirt and short-sleeved shirt with my rain parka! I had my bandana to put around my head to keep my ears warm and even when it wasn't raining Rachel and I kept our hoods up to protect us from the wind. All I had were my sneakers to wear on my feet but luckily I brought extra socks to change into for the way home. It was an easy hike and I only slipped once!

Getting to Avebury is not easy. We had to take 2 trains and a bus-lots of travel time and the bus ride made me very motion sick. My feet were so cold and wet when I got home at 6 that I jumped right in the shower to warm up.

Traveling pics:

Here are some pictures of the stone henge:

Silbury Hill:

Hiking pictures. We just walked through people's fields to get around the stones and to get to the passage grave.

Some gross bugs dive bombed us while we had to walk along a river to the passage grave. Luckily I had my bandana and could keep them from entering my mouth and nose!

Here are some pictures of the burrow grave:

A pub while we waited for our bus to pick us back up.

Seventh Week

Time is just flying by. This week was not quite as busy as last week for me, which was nice because the Keble Ball ate up all of my free time this past weekend. But I'm sure I'll be busier next week; work seems to come in waves here.

 I only had to write one paper (for my Celtic archaeology class) because for my Roman Britain class I attended a Roman pottery practical with some other students on Wednesday. My tutor was leading the practical, so she decided I didn't need to write a paper (yay!). It was really neat trying to create assemblages with the pottery sherds. My tutor determined me a "lumper" and not a "splitter." Basically, I don't like to create tons of little groups. I sort the pottery into a couple of groups and call it a day.

I had my Celtic tutorial today and it went well. We finally started discussing Iron Age. The Iron Age is the period when archaeologists defined the people as "Celtics" in Central Europe. It sounds very exciting. There are lots of raids and fighting because people are trying to steal slaves to sell to the Greeks and Etruscans for fancy goods. Battles are way more fun than agricultural revolutions.

I'm having tea this afternoon at the Ashmolean Museum with some of my friends, then going to see Iron Man (yay!) and finally grabbing some pub food later in the evening. I think tomorrow I will be holed up in a library reading all day and then on Sunday I'm either going to London or to Avesbury (to see a stone circle, a passage grave-basically everything I've studied so far over here).

The Alchemist's Ball-Keble Ball 2010

On Saturday most of us attended Keble's Ball. It was a lot of fun. The Ball opened at 8 p.m. and continued until 4 a.m. the next morning when everyone left takes the "Survivors' Photo." Some of my friends and I managed to make it to the photo! For the first couple of hours, the Ball is like a cocktail party. Everyone grabs food and drinks and meets up with their friends. There were champagne and strawberries at the entrance as soon as you got in. They had some jugglers entertaining people which was good because it was cold and rainy (typical english weather). They had several food tents: Moroccan stew, donuts, seafood noodles, kebabs (the best!), burritos, and a chocolate fountain tent. So basically it was guys in tuxes, girls in nice dresses trudging around eating for a couple of hours. Apparently there was a magician and fortune teller, but I never found either of them. There was a live band and Silent Disco (more on that later) for the later evening activities.

Here is what I did (with varying people accompanying me):
Everyone got together before leaving for the Ball to take some group photos. Some people were able to grab a taxi afterwards to get to the Ball, but myself and like 8 others did not have any luck. I called a taxi company, but apparently it would have taken 30 minutes for the taxi to get to us. Therefore, we took the bus to the Ball. It must have been funny for the bus driver and everyone else on the bus to see college students on a bus in formal dresses and tuxes.
Once we got to Keble, we waited in line to get into the Ball and as soon as we did we went to get some food. I tried the Moroccan stew (gross), a kebab and the fresh donuts. Then we wandered around in the mist/rain. Around 10, we found the karaoke bar in the "Chemist's Lab." Listening to people sing karaoke and dancing/singing along was really fun.
Later, when we were done hanging out in the Chemist's Lab, we went to get ourselves some burritos and finally, at midnight, the Silent Disco started. Silent Disco is a dance room (or here it was under a tent) where everyone wears headphones to the music. Then to observers there are a bunch of people dancing and singing to no music. It sounds really weird, but it was a lot of fun.
We hung out at the Silent Disco for a while, and then headed over to see the live band. The live band was nice, but we decided we were tired and wanted to go to the bar and sit down. But then we changed our minds and relaxed under a heat lamp while people went to the loos. Eventually more UGA people found us and we all ended up at the Silent Disco until the Survivors' Photo.
After the Survivors' Photo we called some cabs and went back to the house. We decided to cook some quesadillas to eat, so by the time I went to bed it was after 5 a.m. and the sun was rising.
The end!

Following are some of my many photos from the night. I have many more I can show off when I come home.

Photos before leaving:

My Roommates!

Bus Ride:

Line at Keble to get into the Ball area:

Various pictures from the Ball:

Silent Disco:

UGA "Suvivors' Photo." This is everyone who made it until 4 a.m.

Quesadilla Breakfast:

Morning light coming in my window at my bedtime:

Sixth Week

Halfway through my time at Oxford! Yikes, I don't ever want to leave!

This week was pretty hectic (aren't they all, though?). I had two papers due this week. I had my first paper due for my Roman Britain tutorial and I had my first graded paper due for my pre-Celtic and Celtic archaeology tutorial. I spent a lot of time on my Roman Britain paper and had it ready to turn in by 5 pm Wednesday. My tutorial was at noon the next day. I (of course) arrived a good 30 minutes early. So I took the opportunity and wandered around Magdalen College. They have a deer park there so I watched the deer roam around for a while. I saw an albino deer-apparently they are really inbred. My tutorial was really good. Zena liked my paper and we had a good discussion on Roman and "Celtic" religion during Roman Britain.

After my tutorial I had to go write my paper for my other class. It was due at midnight and I had a major class of writer's block. I kept skyping Mom about every 30 minutes more to tell how many words I had left. However, in class the next day Wendy said she really liked my paper, so I guess spending 10 hours writing it was worth it.

Friday night we had another group dinner-Mexican Night! And I volunteered to cook (never a good decision). After cooking for 3 hours and making copious amounts of Mexican food we were finally done. And then the cooking staff decided to go out for a drink because it was due. So the five of us (Barrett, Nicole, Rachel, Andrea and me!) went out to a bar with the Director of the UGA at Oxford program, Kalpen Triveldi. It was fun because Kalpen had a lot of funny stories from past events. After that I came back and tried to stay up as late as possible so that I could sleep in tomorrow before the Ball!

Be excited for my Keble Ball pictures and report tomorrow! It was really fun!

Here's picture of us all looking at pictures from the Ball this afternoon. We spent a good two hours looking at everyone's and laughing.

Fifth Week-First Week of Tutorials

Wow! This week marks the end of my first week of tutorials! It was a long week because my one seminar class, Shakespeare for non-majors, ran over into this week too. I had a paper due on Macbeth on Monday and our portfolio for that class due on Monday too, but she extended them both to Thursday at midnight so we could correct more of our papers!

My first tutorial was on Friday and I had a paper due for it Thursday at midnight with a list of reading to do. So on Monday I found the Sackler Library and checked my books out. Most of the other libraries in Oxford do not allow readers (aka students) to borrow books, but Sackler, the classics library, does. I'm the only UGA student using that library so I try not to brag too much because everyone has to hole up in a library and read all day long, whereas I can read in my room, outside, in a pub or wherever. I finished my papers up after working all week on english and prehistoric Europe and turned everything in at midnight on Thursday.

My tutorial on Friday went really well. My tutor's name is Wendy Morrison (I just googled for that website for y'all. Enjoy creeping on my tutor) and she is really nice. She liked my first paper a lot, which is a relief because she said in her email to me that first papers are usually rough for American students because we write in a different style. Tutorials can be really awkward because your tutor will ask you a question, sit there in silence, and stare you down as you sweat, fidget and attempt to answer it. V

My second tutorial lady, for Roman Britain, finally contacted me and we had our meeting right after my tutorial with Wendy. She seems nice. Her name is Zena Kamash (She didn't have a nice website with a picture). I've have tutorials with her on Thursdays at noon in Magdalen (pronounce maudlin) College.

Busy week, but my weekend should be relaxing.

Macbeth

We went to the Globe Theatre to see Macbeth on Sunday for my english class, but everyone was required to go. Some people were not pleased because our tutorials were starting in the upcoming week and everyone had way too much work to do. And the weather was nasty. Not to mention that they didn't buy enough actual sitting seats for everyone and some us (myself included) had to stand up in the yard for the whole play. It was kinda neat to stand up the entire time because we had to stand under this black tarp and stick our heads through the holes. We were poor souls in the underworld. It was a very good production and I enjoyed it immensely.

We passed St. Peter's on the way.

I was really excited to walk across the Millennium Bridge. You should recognize as the bridge that the Death Eaters blow up in Harry Potter and Half-Blood Prince movie.

We had to wait for the play to start.

Rachel and I were not excited about our seats.

The Globe

Inside of the Globe

Fourth Week

It was my last week of seminars. I had a paper on King Lear due on Wednesday and my final religion paper on the wisdom writings due on Thursday. The teachers here love back-to-back papers. Unfortunately my english teacher had a wonderful idea of one extra class, so my last english class will be next week when we discuss Macbeth. So now I get to work on my tutorials and a class that was supposed to end this week.

I met with one of my tutors today as a preliminary meeting. She seemed nice, but I've heard that all tutors all nice outside of class. :) She assigned me a lot of reading for next week. When I described to mom the amount of reading I am supposed to do, she thought it was for the entire semester. I'm think the tutors know that this amount of reading isn't possible. I mean she told me not to spend my weekend in the library and to "enjoy some pints," but to do that there is no way I could read everything. So we'll see how I do this upcoming week.

We are planning on going out tonight to celebrate the end of tutorials. And on Sunday we have to go to the Globe to see a performance of Macbeth.