Island Rubies: Oxford Rocks Our Socks

Hello my friends! So this past wednesday I went to Oxford. It was grand. I'll just say this much-- we've all decided to transfer.

Ok, so we actually didn't go to Oxford first. I'm getting ahead of myself. First, we went to Blenheim Palace. I can't describe how massive and intricate it is. Actually I can. It's intricately decorated and massive. We walked around the grounds first, which are so large that you have to take a train to get to part of it. We of course decided to go to the secret garden, even though I'm not convinced that it can be all that secret since it's on the map. The secret garden was a lot more natural looking than the other gardens, but the rest of it was perfectly groomed. There were even hedges shaped like ducks. The inside of the palace was amazing, although it didn't seem at all like a house that someone would grow up in. Fun fact of the day: Winston Churchill was born there, but he didn't live there. I think that overall I liked Blenheim Palace better than Buckingham Palace. But it's a close call.

Then they let us loose on Oxford. Me and a group of other girls decided to visit Magdalene College, which was founded in like 1428. One of the cool things about Oxford is that the University is actually made up of a ton of colleges, that came together in 1242. So there isn't really a central campus; it's just a city with a bunch of colleges in it. The college we went to was really cool. All of the buildings are ancient, but they're still alive with all the students. After walking ancient halls, and taking tons of pictures as usual, I succeeded in being persistent (annoying) enough to convince everyone to go punting with me. For those of you who don't know, punting is being on a boat (picture Venice or something) and you move by using a long stick to push you in shallower waters. It seems to be a popular thing to do at old smart schools like Oxford and Cambridge. So we decided to go. We also decided that it would be a good idea to pay a little extra for someone to do the punting for us. It turns out it was a good call, because one of the other girls from the program totally fell in. Plus, one of the best parts was our guide. His name was Humphrey. He grew up in Oxford, was our age, and I'm pretty sure he was also a little intimidated by us since we were so crazy and loud. We had a lot of fun. After our punting fun we decided to attack the local bookstores and fulfill our tourist duty of buying Oxford stuff. See picture below. Then we let our stomaches guide us to a local tavern for some food. More specifically we were guided to The Eagle and Child, where authors including C.S. Lewis and JRR Tolkein would meet and dicuss ideas and stuff. Naturally we ate in the exact spot they used to. The food was even good. After our stomaches were satisfied our group met up to go to Evensong at Christ Church. It was very cool. Their voices were so pure.
Other things we did in the past week (that I can remember at the moment)

The Tower of London-- Very fun. The beefeaters give great tours. They even threaten danger at every step. I still can't get over the fact that these are the actual places where events like the beheading of three queens took place. We got to go up in the tower where the two princes were said to be murdered and walk up the stairs that their murderer would have. A little creepy. In the tower that they kept most of the prisoners you could see people's etchings that they made on the wall in their last days. It was kind of crazy.
Portobello Road-- Yes, we went again. And this time we even made it farther! I swear it's not possible to look at everything in one day.
Conference-- for General Conference we just hooked up a laptop to the projector in the classroom and watched it online. It was kind of weird because with the time difference it was from 5-7 and 9-11 at night. But luckily conference is great at any time.
St. Bartholomew's-- Since we didn't have church earlier in the morning we decided that it would be cool to go see a Anglican (church of England) service in one of the sweet old London churches so we went back to St. Bart's the great. It was really interesting to see the service. There is definitely a lot of tradition in it. Since the church was built in 1123 it was kind of cool to think that people have been going to church there doing the same thing forever. It was also fun because there was a photographer there from the National Geographic. If you're flipping through the pages of the next issue and see some people looking desperately confused at the schedule of the service that would be us. Another fun fact-- they're shooting a feature film there with Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr. or something this week. Sherlock Holmes! Yay.

Ok, more probably happened but I'm really tired and we're leaving for four days in the morning to go on a trip to the North (Liverpool, the Lake District, etc.) at SEVEN. It's already 11:30...

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