Oxford Adventures: Day One.

So, if you're reading this, you most likely know that I'm in Oxford, England right now.

Yes. I know. Awesomeness to the extreme. I'm here with the mother-bird for the Oxbridge Convention, put on by the C.S. Lewis Foundation. In a nutshell, it's a celebration and study of philosophy, literature, drama and art - all in reference to this year's theme which is The Self. (oooh, it's gunna be deep.)

So! I'm going to try to blog daily about my adventures here in the Old World, just so my dear, dear comrades at home know what I'm up to.

Ok. It all started Sunday night, about 5:30 PM, when we rolled out of the homebase - Dad drove me and Mom to the airport. Everything went smoothly, we had lots of extra time in which I ate pizza and found a beautiful German newspaper! Attempts at translating kept me busy 'til we boarded. It was actually quite amusing... What would you make of this: "Daniel Richter: ,,Ich bin Reprasentant weiBer, mannlicher, heterosexueller Erfolgsmalerei." ? In all seriousness though, I did figure out some words which was pretty exciting. My 15-word German vocabulary has expanded! :O

Ok, so on the plane. It was a large aircraft... one of those Boeing-747 deals. 2 floors (or so I was told) and FINALLY... a plane built with leg room!
The stewardesses were pretty friendly and humourous, which was splendid. On our seats we found a bag containing huge DJ-esque headphones, earplugs, a sleeping mask, socks (!?) a little toothbrush and the tiniest tube of toothpaste ever manufactured.
The food was inconsumable (surprise!) but the movie selection was killer. There were 3 pages of movie titles to pick from, mostly new ones, but a lot of old classics too. I ended up choosing "The Oxford Murders" not only because it was filmed on the location that I was bound for, but also because it starred Elijah Wood.
Well. It started out with some promise. And then my favourite character died about 5 minutes in. Things went downhill from there. Elijah... what were you THINKING!? It turned out to be a stupid British thriller with a wonky plotline revolving around static characters and ending with a ridiculously unlikely twist and no resolution to speak of! In my opinion... the Brits should stick to comedy.

Anyways, since we were losing 5 hours, I tried desperately to get sleep. So I got out the old iPod and tried to lull myself with some melodic In-flight Safety (the band choice wasn't intentional.. they make relaxing music!) The sleep didn't go well - despite the leg room, there were no comfy sleep positions. So I ended up with a demented spine and a severe lack of sleep upon our arrival in London.

Ok, first impressions of coming out of the Heathrow airport: very much like Toronto - there were even cranes everywhere. But, as we drove around in our cab (headed to the centre of London to go on The Eye!) things got better. The townhouses were so quaint and some of the old architechture was breathtaking. Then we passed Buckingham Palace which was like... WOW. Unfortunately, no royals were sunbathing in the courtyard, so yeah. No paparazzi photo-op for me.
Then came Westminster Abby which I wasn't able to get a reeeal good look at (driving is INSANE in London... apparently they don't believe in the whole 'one cars length between' rule. The rule here is more like 'drive as fast as you can until you're one cars length away and then slam on the brakes so that you stop within 2 centimetres'. )
But our cab driver was a sweet old man - he was really helpful and acted as a tour guide and told us how to get everywhere and stuff. Yeah, he was great :)
He got us to the Eye of London in one piece, so we went on that which was reaaally sweet, though I would have enjoyed it more if I weren't running on a couple hours of restless sleep.
(I'll put up pictures from the Eye and other stuff from today later.. this laptop is being lame sauce about importing.)

After the Eye, we took another cab to Victoria Station and went on the Oxford Express coach to.... OXFORD! This place... is amazing. It really is. All the buildings are Medieval and beautiful and lots of the streets are cobblestone and there's little shops everywhere and the colleges are awesome! The atmosphere is wonderful too. There's not a lot of traffic - mostly pedestrians. The town is full of students, so the majority of the population are young people. Yay!

So we got off the coach and were met by a nice American lady who is also attending the conference. She helped us decipher our map and gave us directions and stuff - very helpful.

We got to Keble College, where we're staying on campus, showered as soon as we got in our room (jubilation!) and then we went and registered, then walked in Oxford for a bit (I checked out a sweet art/book store and then a music store which wasn't as good as expected... I was hoping for some rare Brit-pop CDs but all they carried was opera and classical - it was upon entering this store that I figured out I may not be classy enough for Oxford.)

There was a big dinner in one of the great halls at Keble which was very good, and again, very classy. We met some other conference-goers and I was delighted to see that I wasn't the only young person there. I met some cool people and then after dinner we went to the opening address which was held in the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin - a beautiful cathedral in which John and Charles Wesley once preached and where Thomas Cromwell was tried and convicted (and burnt at the stake out on Broad Street) and yeah. I forget all the cool stories the preacher told us about the cathedral. The preacher was Irish - he had a beautiful accent - and he was an incredible speaker. Very captivating and humourous; intellectual but still very easy to understand. He introduced the conference's theme of the Self which I'll obviously be getting more into in the coming posts.

After the service (which was full of singing by a crazy talented chamber choir) I made my way back to Keble to see Mom (who was exhausted and had gone back to our room after supper). I tried a different route so I got to see more awesome buildings and got tons of ideas for photography (I didn't have the camera with me at the time). When I got back to our room, I still felt like walking around so I went on a long, exploratory stroll. I passed the grounds to Trinity College and saw some young gents playing a friendly game of crochet on the lawn. Why can't guys in Canada do that? Sheesh. I continued my walk, taking random turns and going down streets I hadn't been down yet. I passed the gates to the grounds of the Bodleian Library and caught the distinct smell of old books. And this was just at the gates to the library grounds. I wonder how strong it is in the actual library...
I scouted lots of sweet little shops I plan to stop in throughout the week, but soon I think I strayed into the busy nightlife section of town - the people were a bit rowdier and then my walk wasn't quite as care-free. When I heard two guys talking non chalantly about getting arrested, I decided it was about time to be getting back.

Later, Mom and I went to the Bag End Cafe and got a drink, and then I started blogging. And now it's very late. And I'm extremely tired. So I apologize that this post is long-winded and most likely full of grammatical mistakes and spelling errors.

Goodnight!

-CH