Leaving Oxford

Well, I'm leaving Oxford today, and I want to leave with a little story.

Open-access internet community be dammed, I'm gonna come out and state the very, very obvious: my first few weeks here were miserable. I was convinced I'd never meet anyone I'd like, that I'd just be drowning myself in work and play rehearsals and generally have an awful time. I'd met a few nice people, but keeping in touch proved difficult. I was depressed, and I was crying on a number of shoulders (my girlfriend, Matt, David, my Dad, anyone who would listen, really). But then, after about two and a half weeks of living in Britain, J.T Erbaugh (bless his soul) invited me to the Oxford Union for the first-week debate, on whether the Muslim Veil is a barrier to cultural integration. There were a lot of Muslim students there, and there was a lot of blood boiling, a good deal of shouting, and a lot of people delicately extending their hands and saying "point of information!" It was a fascinating in the way that watching Parliament on C-SPAN 2 is fascinating; you're amazed at the intelligence and passion on the floor, all the people so invested emotionally and yet arguing so intelligently. But, more importantly, up in the balcony of the debating hall I met Shari Levine, Ryan Doody and Claire Rann. Or maybe Ryan wasn't there. I can't remember. Anyway: they invited me to their house for some tea. We sipped and had a fantastic time. It was without doubt the best night I'd spent in Oxford up until that point. Things were finally getting better.

I'd kept in contact with all of them over the next couple of days, getting up early, doing my work during the day and then heading over to their house at night. It was great to have a good place to go, to not just sit in my room alone and wipe the tears from my copy of Troilus and Criseyde. But pretty soon my housemates (or should I say "mate") and I were getting more and more frustrated with one another. There was one last flare-up, and one of my housemates threatened to speak to the program director about "my behavior", maybe about kicking me out of the house. Then I though, "Wait...would that really be so terrible? I could move into 26 Binsey! They have a spare room...I could stay with them and avoid all the day-time misery I've incurred while I'm here."And so I did. I talked to Deepak, sent my housemates a short, curt e-mail, and traded in my 123 Botley keys for a set to 26 Binsey. I was greeted with a big "welcome home!" from all three housemates, and from that moment I knew my time in Oxford would improve.

And it did. The next two months were probably some of the best fun I'd had in my life. To all the people at 26 Binsey, both the housemates themselves and those who were practically housemates anyway: you guys are absolutely fantastic, each and every one of you. Thank you so much for taking me in. I was the cold, homeless orphan on Christmas Eve, and you were the charitable family who let me in, treating me to a warm fire, good cheer, and a hearty portion of mince pie (I have been in England for too long). I hope to see you guys in back in America. Please, please, please.

Now off to Bath, and then to a rousing trip around Europe. Bye, bye Oxford. I hope this won't be the last time I see you. I still haven't punted. I still haven't been to the Botanical Gardens, or a great deal of the colleges. I still want to see all the secret hidden bits of the Bodelian I never got to see. Maybe one day, Oxford. Maybe I'll come back, armed with a fine Bachelor of Arts degree, and finally be admitted into all your secret little nooks and crannies, not as a mere visitor, but as a full-fledged student.

*sigh*

Wait, what the fuck am I saying? Fuck you up your tight, elitist ass Oxford! I don't need you! I give you two middle fingers! Two of them! Ha!

It's been a long, long, long time

I haven't updated my blog in a while, so I'm going to try and remember everything that's happened in the past few weeks and write it down.

David and I went to Nice a few weeks ago. For those of you who don't know, Nice is a kind of resort town in the south of France, right next to Italy, and in fact, it has shifted from Italian to French rule several times until 1860, when Napoleon III and struck a deal with Camillo Benso di Cavour to exchange the Nice and Savoy region in exchange for military aid (Thank you Wikipedia!). Nice has since become a big resort town, what with the weather being very nice and the beach being right there. The place is clearly thriving, but it still has this Belle-Epoque-Pleasure-Palace-That-Is-Rotting-From-The-Inside kind of quality, even though it isn't really. The whole town was under construction at the time (I think they're trying to build tramways on the streets), but because the older part of town has been around for a few thousand years, all the excavation has unearthed these old stone structures. You walk past all this metal fencing and concrete dividers, and suddenly there's a giant hole in the ground with the bleached stone foundation for some ancient Greek hovel (The Nice region was not originally Gallic, but Greek. Thanks again!).

David and I went for Carnival, so there were parades all weekend, with huge fuck-off floats that were both whimsical and disturbing. Take, for instance, the "togetherness" float: it was one of those mixers, I don't know what they're called, it has two whisks and a bowl and you turn on the machine to mix the contents of the bowl...anyway, on top of the mixer was part of a globe with all the peoples of the world holding hands, and in the bowl itself were babies with different colored body parts, like a black head against a white torso, or an Asian head against a black torso. Really weird shit like that. In addition to that, there are all these street vendors who sell confetti and silly string, and your average French child (and even the occassional rascally adult) will spray strangers with the string and toss the confetti in your face, much to the dismay of the humorless elderly and American tourists who aren't used to that kind of thing.

All in all it was a good time, but as soon as I got back I started vomitting. A lot. I hadn't been sleeping well before I left, and when then when I got to France I started eating a lot of shellfish and nutella, so God knows what it actually was. Fortunately, I didn't have any more work to do. I will write another post about other Oxford times, because there is far too much information to put into a single, readable post.