London

I was in London this weekend, doing a lot of reading, writing, and thinking. And wandering -- lots of wandering. London is probably my favorite place to wander in the whole world, and it's at its best in the fall. I got in at about lunchtime on Saturday afternoon and dumped my stuff at the hostel where I've stayed quite a few times now and set out exploring with a few books and a notebook in my bag. Here I'm going to make a horrifying, shameful admission, so all you high-culture lovers out there, avert your eyes now: I stopped into the British Museum to use the bathroom, and then left. (OK, I had a quick peek at the Rosetta Stone to assuage my conscience. And I went back to see the Elgin Marbles yesterday, so don't write me off yet.) The thing is, I came to see London in October 2007, not Egypt several millennia ago. I came to feel what makes London in the fall different from London at any other time of year; to sense my place in this city, this country, and the world; and to figure out what was going in my head by taking my thoughts for a long, leisurely stroll. My aims may not have been sophisticated, but I'm feeling a lot more peaceful this Monday morning for having accomplished them.

The dots that connected my wanderings were some of my favorite places to visit. On Saturday, I hit the Bertie and Jeeves-reminiscent bits of Piccadilly (including Fortnum & Mason), Green Park, Knightsbridge (I looked around the Harrods food halls and went to the Saturday vigil Mass at the Brompton Oratory), Piccadilly Circus at night, Chinatown (I had some yummmy fried noodles with prawns and got some crazy looks for reading Plato at dinner). Sunday was alternately drizzly and rainy and a little less pleasant, but I still saw quite a bit, including the Tudor section of the National Portrait Gallery, the 19th century section in the National Gallery, Covent Garden, and South of the Thames near the Eye and Parliament. I spent a while reading in the library of the British Museum (it had to get done sometime), and planned to look around some but only got to the Parthenon gallery before I realized it was time to get a train home.

I got back in time for the CASSOC dinner last night, and it's back to business this morning. I hope I haven't given you all coronaries with my almost total disregard for cultural artifacts this weekend. If you'd like to take a look at what I did see, check out my pictures from London here.

Spiritual evenings and crazy nights.

One thing I can say about our calendar of events here at the chaplaincy: it's extremely well-balanced. We have Mass here every Tuesday evening at 7:30, and we alternate between holding an event of either a more spiritual or social nature afterwards. Last week we had adoration and night prayer; this week we had a massive CASSOC pub crawl. Alphabet fancy-dress parties and pub crawls seem to be a big thing here: often people will come up with a costume corresponding to a certain letter of the alphabet for a night out, or as in this case, we planned our route to spell out CASSOC. I wanted to get some work done, so I caught up later and only spelled SSOC (lame, I know). We cheated a bit, actually, to cut down on the number of location changes, and combined the S's and the O-C. We went to a quite swanky bar called the Severn Shed on the waterfront and then proceeded to a huge, multi-level dance club called Oceana. It had several elaborate themed rooms, including a hunting lodge complete with roaring fire and antlers and a dimly lit, velvet-covered French boudoir. Bristolians are serious about their clubbing, it seems.

I don't have class 'til German tonight, so I'm going to try to get a bunch of reading done before the next CASSOC event, our fortnightly pub lunch this afternoon. I've been reading lots and lots on Augustine this week, still hoping that if I keep this up, a blinding beam of light will break through the library ceiling above my carrel and flood my head with the inspiration and clarity I need to get through the next couple months of writing and thinking. Seems reasonable, right?

Thermae et rugbius.

We're in the middle of a "fine" spell here, so yesterday Matt and I decided to take advantage of the perfect weather and make a day trip to Bath. It was pretty darned exciting to see the steaming green waters of the Roman baths after years of seeing them in textbooks! You can go right down to the side of them, walk on the original (70 A.D.) floors, and touch the water. We also saw lots of altars dedicated to Sulis Minerva and folded up curses asking for retribution upon cloak-snatchers and other scoundrels that were found in the baths. The price of admission also includes a glass of warm water from the spring, which you collect in the Pump Room (Jane Austen enthusiasts, get excited!). The stuff is NASTY -- pretty much like drinking molten metal -- but I'm happy to have had my health fortified!



Aside from the baths, the rest of the town is completely charming: the well-kept Georgian buildings that make up the center make it look uniformly stately, and you can picture the carriages that would have held Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth driving up and down the streets. We got Cornish pasties again for lunch and ate in a really gorgeous park down by the river Avon, watching pigeons peck around our feet and the boats on the water. We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around, up to the Fashion Museum, out to the Georgian crescent, through some more parks, and back to the center. With the great weather, the turning leaves, and all the town out enjoying themselves, it was a perfect day. It will be easy to go back, too -- it only takes 15 minutes on the train to get to Bath from Bristol! Look at my pics from Bath here.

When we got back, rugby fever had overtaken Bristol, as the World Cup Final between England and South Africa was set for 8:00. We went down to a pub near here to watch the game (mostly the fans, really), and to cheer on South Africa -- as Matt is loyal to Wales and I to Scotland, we are both honor bound never to root for England against anyone. South African stomped them, so we went home happy.

It's down to business the rest of the weekend, and this week. I'm trying to stave off panic as the next round of grad school applications and a new batch of essay deadlines approaches --help! But I'm sure it will all get done somehow, and I'm glad to have made time for a little play this weekend.

Forget work. Let's eat cake.

After the first week of (a few of my) classes, I'm still trying to figure out exactly what I'm going to do with myself here. The resources are here to learn a lot and do really good work, but I find it a little strange that, for example, no one cares whether I know or learn any Latin or Greek. Postgrad courses in ancient languages aren't even offered, and you can get away with working in translation in all the MA seminars. So, it's up to those of us who do think it's important to read things in the original to place ourselves in whatever undergrad courses are best suited to our needs. It's a bit of a shot in the dark coming from the American system, and this week I think I missed, at least with Greek: we only read about 15 lines in a 2-hour seminar, most of the problem being that the undergrads don't know or care to look up any Greek words. So, now I'm looking at jumping into a different course a week late and having a go at something else. It seems odd to have to fight so hard to learn anything.

That all sounds pretty negative, but all in all, there's still no doubt in my mind that I'm in the right place. Our MA seminars should all be quite good, if a little ancient language-less, and there are a ton of brilliant people here to help me do whatever it is I want to do. Once I figure out my essay and dissertation topics, things should really pick up.

The pleasant surprise of the week was German on Wednesday night. The teacher didn't speak a word of English until the last ten minutes of class! It was a little shocking at first, but we all caught on quickly, and she had us introducing ourselves, saying where we were from, and talking about the genders and professions of Claudia Schiffer, Karl Marx, and other notable Germans by the end of class. James from the house is in my class, and he already seems to know quite a bit, so I'll have someone to practice with at home.

We just finished our first week of the cooking rota at home, and I'm pleased to report that it's going to be a year of good eatin'. I'd better keep up the running, though -- I've had cake for dessert every night this week! Other than eating, we've all been doing a good bit of just vegging out together watching trashy TV and movies. It's not all EWTN in the chaplaincy, don't you worry.

Vive la rugby.

This weekend I got swept up in rugby fever. My friend Matt (from the house) and I made a day trip to Cardiff on Saturday just for fun. Matt's Welsh, so he was a great tour guide. We knew when we set out that the World Cup of Rugby quarterfinal between France and New Zealand would be going on that evening and that things were going to get a little crazy in town, but I wasn't expecting the place to be mobbed before noon by thousands of rabid fans in crazy outfits! There were French and New Zealanders all decked out in team apparel when we went to Cardiff Castle first thing, and by the time we came out total madness had descended upon the city. We were surrounded by French fans wearing berets and chicken heads (very confusing at first -- our French housemate later explained that the cockrel is the official symbol of France) and wielding baguettes, and Kiwis with black-and-white painted faces and wigs and wearing an alarming amount of spandex. After stopping to have a Cornish pasty on the street and watch everyone, we wandered down to Cardiff Bay and saw the new opera house and assembly building. All really pretty and impressive. By the time we got back to the city center, the fans had overtaken all the main streets that had been full of traffic earlier. The pubs had long ago overflown, and huge crowds were drinking and yelling and singing in the streets. We got some fish and chips and stood by and watched it all, then headed back to Bristol just before game time. Such a fun day.



The term has now officially started! We had our first Mass at the chaplaincy on Sunday night, followed by a buffet and drinks downstairs in our bar, and I had my first Latin class yesterday. I am quite pumped to get to read some of the Confessions and the City of God under the direction of a really accomplished Augustinian scholar. Greek starts today -- cross your fingers that I remember any.

In other news -- I made the BBC! Check out this link to an article on BBC Bristol featuring a picture of some of us handing out tea and cakes during Freshers' Week.

Also, new pictures are up! Click here for shots of Freshers' Week and Cardiff.

That's all for today! Happy week!

Catholics have the best free food.

To follow up on my last post: yesterday I did indeed meet lots and lots of classicists at last! I got my course schedule sorted out in the morning -- complete with meeting dates and times for everything -- and in the afternoon met all of my coursemates. We had a library tour (first they won't let me in, now they want to show me how to take advantage of all its resources -- will these people make up their minds?), then a meeting with our personal tutor for the MA, then an all-school party. There are about 15 of us doing the MA, and it's a pretty chick-heavy group -- only 4 guys! Quite a few of them did undergrads at Bristol (I guess it's a good sign that they liked it enough to stick around), and the rest are British except for me and a girl from Omaha, of all places. Everyone got on really well, so it should be a fun group to hang out with. Unfortunately, it will be a while before I see them again, because other than our theories and approaches seminar, postgrad classes don't even start until the week after next! It will be almost Christmas before we get around to doing anything. But I do have Greek, Latin and German next week, so I'll definitely be able to keep myself busy.

For the past two afternoons, I've been helping to represent CASSOC (the Catholic students' society) at the freshers' fair. We've been handing out free tea and cakes outside the chaplaincy and signing people up at a table in the union, enticing them with the offer of a free buffet after Mass on Sunday night. I walked around in all the mayhem today and, along with a zillion fliers that are now in the recycle bin, picked up a few useful things such as a flashlight-cum-rape whistle and a spatula.

In other exciting news: I am now in possession of both a Young Person's Rail Card and tickets to Edinburgh for St. Andrew's Day weekend! The big swanky party and ceilidh at the chaplaincy there are not to be missed. Plus, the German Christmas markets and the ferris wheel will be up on Princes Street and the Christmas lights will be strung up all over town, so everything will be extra magical. Oh boy.

I am a mouse, and education is my cheese.

Today, after two weeks here, I met a real, live classicist! Since Monday when I registered and began to try to figure out what courses are being offered, when they are supposedly to be held, and whether the professors assigned to teach them actually exist outside of cyberspace, it has seemed increasingly unlikely that such an event would actually take place. As much as it pains me to say so, and as little as I ever expected to have to make this admission, here it is: KU's bureaucracy is a paragon of efficiency and transparency when compared to the British university system.

At KU, although it may take you twenty visits to various offices all over campus and cost you hundreds of dollars to change your schedule after you have enrolled, at least you know what classes are being offered and when and where they will meet several months before the new semester begins. And as unpleasant as it is to spend one's time in, say, Wescoe Hall, no one has ever physically been prevented from exiting the building if it is his or her will to do so.

Things work a little differently here.

I received an email over the weekend, just above one week before the start of classes, informing me of what classes are on offer. The accompanying instructions seemed simple enough: go to the classics building on Monday afternoon at an appointed time and put your name down a sign-up sheet outside the doors of the professors whose classes you are interested in taking. Sounds doable. When I showed up at 11 Woodland Road after lunch on Monday, though, I found that the door was locked and that I couldn't get in without entering the proper security code, which of course nobody gives you, on the adjacent keypad. Luckily, a student in the know came along and let me in behind him, and was even kind enough to tell me the code. Getting in, however, did me little good: none of the professors whose classes I wanted to take had posted sign-up sheets, and there was not a human being in sight. OK, I figure, I'll go home and email them. So I head for the door. I push. I pull. I twist the lock. I even grunt a little. Nothing happens. Somebody comes up behind me. I get embarassed and head back down the hallway. I don't want anyone to know that I can't open a door! I turn a corner soon enough and find another door. I push. I pull. Someone else is coming. I flee. I realize with horror that the entire row of buildings on Woodland Row is connected in the back by a massive glass maze, and I am trapped. All around me, people are walking up and down hallways covered in unopenable doors, and nobody else seems to be trying to escape. Whenever I find myself alone for a moment, I frantically push and pull on the nearest door, until I realize this is going nowhere and find myself standing staring abjectly out at the wide world beyond -- so close, yet so far! Suddenly, the fighting spirit revives. I will not be defeated by the Arts Faculty Building before I even enroll. I find one last door, and it has a keypad beside it. Holding my breath, I punch in the code the student gave me. The door clicks open! I am suddenly standing in the rain in a carpark I have never seen. But it doesn't matter. I am free.

Since my escape from the hamster playland of hell that is Woodland Road, I have made contact with several professors and begun to get things sorted out. I have appointments with several of them tomorrow to enroll in classes that have not been assigned meeting dates, times, or places -- but if this doesn't concern them, maybe it shouldn't concern me. The classicist I met today was more precisely my Greek tutor, who is also American and equally mystified by the workings of the university. I look foward to meeting the British segment of the faculty tomorrow, and maybe finally getting some answers. That is, if these people actually exist.