List: Some things change, some things never do

5 Things That Have Changed Since I came to Oxford:

1. I stopped obsessively checking the weather since it's essentially the same every day: Chilly, clouds, chance of light rain or snow in the afternoon.

2. I started procrastinating terribly so I'm up writing papers until 2am the night before they're due. :-/

3. Sometimes I go places on my own. Shocking, I know.

4. You may have noticed, I am constantly signed into chat which is never true at home. I feel I should make myself available though since you all in the States (or in Botswana! shout out to my most regular reader/commenter) can't just call me up.

5. I am addicted to Cadbury's.

5 Things That Haven't Changed a Bit:

1. I check the Hall menu just as often as I check the Café Mac menu at Macalester.

2. I still love matching.

3. I still have Kaija read over my papers (absolutely necessary due to my procrastination this term!)

4. Every day starts with a cup of tea.

5. According to all, I am as chatty as ever.

Pizza Express and the Ghost Tour of Oxford

Two weeks ago (yes I am still THAT far behind) we got taken out to lunch by IFSA Butler at Pizza Express. It sounds like the name of a cheap pizza chain but it's actually a rather nice restaurant in downtown Oxford. Apparently no one wants their picture taken but I took it anyway:



Friends at the lunch. Here's me with Andrea on the left and Erin B. on the right.


Here I am with Mike Wright who was kind enough to share his brownie sundae with me even though we had literally just met.


Mike and I became fast friends. Right after lunch, we even went vitamin shopping together. Awwwww. Since that day, Mike has been known as Multivitamin Mike to distinguish him from the three other Mikes I know also studying abroad at Oxford. For once in my life, there are no other Katies. I could seriously get used to that!!

Later that week we picked the coldest night EVER to go on a ghost tour. I really wanted to wait until next term to do this, but my friends were all excited about it so I went along.


Interrupting bus!!! (It made quite cool picture, though)



Oh no! Bill Spectre cut himself! (I forget what supernatural Oxfordian incident this had to do with...)

Don't worry. He was fine!

Christchurch Cathedral/Chapel and the Patron Saint of Oxford

Built in the 12th century, the Christchurch Cathedral is one of the oldest buildings in Oxford. It is the only building in the world to be both a cathedral and a college chapel.


The picture above is the window of Saint Frideswide, the patron saint of Oxford. Frideswide was a princess to the king of Oxford. Her mother died so she was raised by nuns. As she grew older, many suitors came to seek her hand in marriage, most notably King Algar. She runs away but he follows her, searching everywhere. The bottom of the second panel of this window shows her hiding from Algar in a pigsty. She escaped, became a nun and healed people of blindness and other ailments to the end of her holy days.


Here's her tomb, however her body was removed during the Reformation raids on Catholic churches:


The chapel also has a window dedicated to Saint Catherine of Alexandria, one of Frideswide's saintly advisors from beyond the grave.


Saint Catherine of Alexandria is also the namesake of my college, not to be confused with Saint Catherine of Siena. The wheel on our college crest is her symbol for she was tortured on the wheel which miraculously broke and shot splinters into hundreds of pagan onlookers.

Since I wrote an entire paper about her last semester at Mac, I feel compelled to regale you with the rest of Catherine's story (the short version, I promise) but feel free to skip it and save your precious blog-reading attention for when I post more pictures.

Catherine of Alexandria was a noble/princess who was incredibly smart and beautiful. A hermit told her about Jesus and she decided she wanted him and no mortal husband as he was the only one who matched her in beauty and intelligence. The emperor Maxentius wasn't very happy about this because he wanted to marry her so he sent 50 philosophers to try to convert her back to paganism but she converted them instead. This is why she is the patron saint of philosophers.

Catherine dreams of Christ and he gives her a ring to as proof of her marriage to him. Many nuns are depicted in hagiography as brides of Christ but Catherine's relationship with him was extra-special. Her supernatural marriage to Christ is one of the important aspects of her story.

Enraged, Maxentius ordered her to be tortured and killed. She was beaten and bloodied and put on the wheel which broke killing pagan onlookers. Maxentius then beheaded her himself but instead of blood, miraculous healing milk poured forth from her wounds. Ah, saints.

Here's me wearing my Catz sweatshirt with the crest:

Negligent Blogger, Much?

Life has changed dramatically so first let me update you on the important parts and then MORE pictures and MORE touristy fun to follow over the next few days.

Yae Na left the program for family reasons which was sad. We spent one last lovely day doing touristy things together before she left. Here she is at New College which is very close to Catz but much much older, despite the misleading name.

Here I am at New College, looking wistfully out onto the quad.


Here we are outside the Bodleian Library famous for being giant, and old. No seriously. It is the oldest library in the UK and the second largest. It is so big that the books are underground and offsite. The Bodleian Group now cares for some 11 million items on 117 miles of shelving, and has a staff of over 400. The Bodleian is also not just one building. It is made up of five buildings on Broad Street in the center of town and nine off-site libraries elsewhere in Oxford and even more offsite storage. The main buildings contain "reading rooms" such as The Radcliffe Camera (Rad Cam) lower or upper reading rooms where you request books and then you read them in the library. Bodleian books are confined meaning they go in and never come out so you have to read them on site.


Inside the Bod. This is a highly illegal picture through the door to the Duke Humphry's Library. These books are rare and old. This is the restricted book section in Harry Potter. Literally. These books are alarmed.


Yae Na and me at Christchurch, home of the Harry Potter dining hall, Harry Potter staircases and so on. We went in their chapel too! Stay tuned for a post about the patron saint of Oxford!


After all that hard work taking pictures of beautiful old buildings and oggling beautiful old books, we took a break at Ben's Cookies which makes totally delicious cookies and is located in the Covered Market. They have plain chocolate chip and milk chocolate chip but I don't know what the difference is....

After our last day, I helped her drag her suitcases to the bus stop and we said good-bye.

Then there was Grace:


No double to myself, sigh but now I have Grace as my new roommate. She was here last term and both our roommates left us this term so she got moved into my room. Grace was a blessing in disguise..or not really in disguise at all. She is friendly and has a famously amazing laugh. She also comes with accessories including: a bath mat, dishes, another kettle, and a hair dryer. Yay!

Grace went into town the other day and she saw these and bought them for me :) Life is good in 5.27.

Don't Let Lunch Get Lost in Translation

As you might've guessed, there are some things we say in the States that don't mean the same thing across the pond. Here are some tips to help you not lose your lunch in translation:

Salad- in the U.S. has lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes and dressing. In the U.K. salad is something you put on your sandwich AKA just strips of lettuce.

Chips- in the U.S. chips mean Lays or Doritoes but in the U.K. chips are french fries.

Pudding- in the U.S. pudding is a creamy goopy dessert but in thr U.K. it's just a general word for all dessert, so for example tonight's pudding could be spice cake.

Also note that if you're going to drink with your meal, a pint is not equal to a beer, but is in fact 4 more ounces of alcohol than the typical 12 oz. bottle you might find at home in the States. This might not be important for your one drink over lunch, but it might be handy to know when you're watching your level of drunkenness on an oh-so-English pub crawl.

Unrelated to food, it might interest you to know:

Conditioner isn't something you wash your hair with but something you wash your clothes with and there's no such thing as dish detergent, what you're looking for is called washing up liquid. Clearly, not all British terms are superior...

Hall, anyone?

The closest thing to Hogwarts in the Muggle world has to be Oxford. This week formal hall began! This is when the students all come in and sit at huge long tables. Once we are there, the professors enter and we all stand as they walk past in their black robes and find their places at the head table perpendicular to ours. Then the headmaster says something in Latin and bangs a gavel and we sit down to be served a three-course meal.

Here's a view down my table to the profs and a closeup of lovely Lexi's face:

There they are in all their glory:

Aileen and Lexi both of whom live in my stair:

After dinner, we mosey into the JCR, the subsidized St Catz bar and lounge. Cider for 88p anyone?

Alexis and Erin H. in the JCR:

Lexi and me, AKA "the worst," as per usual:

Then, some people head out to the pubs from here but if you're me, you're still recovering from pneumonia so you might head home, and stop by study party in Erin B.'s room on the way:

Like Erin, Nick loves Oxford for giving him so much great reading material!!

After that I head home and get into this comfy bed with my penguin pal. In the morning, I roll over and flick the switch on this nifty new (far too expensive) kettle I bought. So beautiful, so convenient.

What is it with me and ending posts with appliances?

Introducing Home Away from Home

Here at St Catz, I live in a small suite with my roommate Yae Na who is a sociology major from Harvard. She's hard at work at her desk here :)

Behind that curtain is our bedroom:


You can see that Yae Na is showing me up in the decoration department, except for this calendar I bought on Tuesday at Blackwells with one Charlotte Martin who I LOVE. Every month has a picture of a precious piglet in some kind of artsy black and white photo wearing sunglasses or something. Isn't it adorable?


Yae Na and I also have our own bathroom with the tiniest sink I may have ever seen. Anyway, I live in 5.27 which stands for Stair 5, room 27 which is how you express where you live or where you work. That is, even though the building looks the same on the outside and all the stairs are connected, you have to go outside to get from one to the other and some are actually secretly offices and not dorm rooms at all and you would never know from the outside!

When I go outside, I find myself in the snowy quad on the other side of which, someone has made a snow man:


At Jesus College, Charlie showed me the toppled snow phallus on her quad which was funny. She thinks staff knocked it over because all the parents are dropping their kids off this week for the beginning of term.

This week is called week 0 so there aren't classes but returning students have "collections" which are a kind of exam that's taken at the beginning of term supposedly after revising over break. (I'm going to start posting an Oxford term of the day because there are so many different words for things. This post has a few in it...stay tuned!) So because there are no classes, we visiting students have time to settle in and see the town. Here are some pictures of Oxford town centre:




Covered market:

After walking around by myself, I met up with Charlie who helped me pick out a European cell phone and the pig calendar or as the English would say, a swine calendar. Here she is in Blackwell's enjoying an Earl Grey tea while we caught up about our lives:

Here we are together, reunited at long last:


Yesterday I went to town with Erin and bought groceries. She bought rainboots too and I wanted to take a picture but it was snowing and we were cold so I didn't. I'm sure she will feature in another post eventually.

When I got back I unloaded my tea and milk and sugar and my new mugs and attempted to make a nice hot cup of English tea. There is a kitchen on my floor and all kitchens come with a kettle and a toaster. Nice! The English love their tea and toast. Unfortunately, our kettle is broken or I was using it wrong so I had to resort to inferior microwave tea which proved quite complicated. Do you see how to use this microwave? I just pushed buttons until it would start:


Microwaves are one of the many things I didn't expect would be that different!

Here I am enjoying my tea anyway:

Oxford terminology recap:
collections: exams
stair: building is the equivalent except it's not quite accurate because the stairs are connected to each other, you just can't get from one to the other without going outside like you could in a hall.

Quiz yourself:
If I live in 15.2B, where do I live?

That's all for now!

Cheers!