Drunks All Around

So tonight was our high table dinner with Michael Adams, and it was ranks high on the list of most entertaining nights since I've been here. First, he gave a speech about the increased number of university students choosing to study abroad (from 3% of the graduating class in 1997 when he started to now 30%) and made connections between Oxford University and the University of Georgia. He really did his research about Oxford and dutifully noted that it's much older and a bit more prestigious than UGA.

Then after a short question and answer session (mostly students asking about the progress on Tate 2, the expansion of the current Tate Student Center), we headed out on the lawn for champagne and general chatting before dinner. This was great because the girls I sat with had three glasses of champagne each and held their own while talking with the president. I was impressed. But their relatively stable facades quickly disappeared at dinner when they served both red and white wine with the chicken. I forgot just how entertaining drunk people can be until tonight! The most interesting conversations can come out of these encounters.

"Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with, that it's compounding a felony." -Robert Benchley

"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut." -Ernest Hemingway

"Woe to those who rise early in the morning to run after their drinks, who stay up late at night till they are inflamed with wine." -Isaiah 5: 11

"Bacchus hath drowned more men than Neptune." -Dr. Thomas Fuller

"When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading." -Henny Youngman
-quotes courtesy of www.quotationspage.com

I think what makes this experience so intriguing is how UGA's infamous drinking culture made its way across the pond to one of the most distinguished universities in Europe. To some extent, I think UGA students are isolated from the rest of the Oxford community -- we live, eat, and attend classes within the gates of Trinity College, so it's easy for us to immediately feel at ease in our own little section of town. And with this comfortable atmosphere (and a lower drinking age) comes the desire to drink. A lot. So while part of me was surprised when my classmates decided that going out to pubs every night was a good idea, the larger part of me subconsciously (and now consciously) expected it.

Today was also interesting because we watched The Motorcycle Diaries in my journalism class. This isn't a movie I'll run out and rent and/or buy, but it was very interesting. It told the story of two best friends (Ernesto "Che" Guevara and Alberto Granada) from Argentina traveling by motorcycle (obviously) through South America on their way to work at a leper colony. Along the way, they meet so many people who have lost everything they had, been kicked off their own land, or by some other unfortunate circumstance become dependent upon their neighbors for survival from one day to the next. Ernesto's letters and diary entries help narrate their adventures along the way and show why he opted not to be a doctor and help lead the Cuban Revolution later in life. Here's a good quote from Ernesto toward the end of the film:

"Even though we are too insignificant to be spokesmen for such a noble cause, we believe, and this journey has only confirmed this belief, that the division of American into unstable and illusory nations is a complete fiction. We are one single mestizo race from Mexico to the Magellan Straits. And so, in an attempt to free ourselves from narrow minded provincialism, I propose a toast to Peru and to a united America."

Tomorrow in class we'll be discussing the answers to this question: "What can you, a child of capitalism, learn from an icon of communism?" Should be interesting. :)

"This isn't Camp UGA"

In case you were wondering, when you combine copious amounts of alcohol with locking yourself out of your room, bad things can happen. For one kid in my program, it meant climbing out on a ledge, trying to open his window from the outside, and falling 10 feet. Before you think the worst, he's okay -- he didn't remember what happened and they took him to the hospital pretty quickly. He had to get stitches or staples or something in his head, but 24 hours later he was walking around and acting as though nothing had happened. But in the meantime, the assistant director of our program sent out a strongly worded e-mail and gave us a speech tonight before dinner about being responsible while we're here.

"This is not 'Camp UGA.' This is a serious course of study at a prestigious University and an opportunity you should all be proud to have, as I am sure you are. By the same token, we in the administration are not camp counselors -- I say this primarily because I want you to remember that it is neither our interest nor our job to be moral police or to prescribe your actions day and night. We intend and endeavor to treat you as the adults you are, as you well deserve.

That means, of course, that you are solely responsible for your actions, no matter the time of day or night and no matter what, ahem, 'condition' you may be in." -Jamie's e-mail

I mean, I expected most of the kids in my program to drink more while they're here because the drinking age is 18, not 21. But seriously? There's no way that alcohol can impair your judgment that much to where you think the best way to get into your dorm room after locking yourself out would be to climb from one window to the next. That just has BAD IDEA written all over it. Thankfully, nothing worse happened. He seems fine (albeit pretty embarrassed), which is good. Hopefully no one else will do anything close to that for the rest of the trip.

On a lighter note, I'm almost 100 pages into Northern Lights by Philip Pullman, from which the new movie The Golden Compass is based. It's pretty good so far, and after looking at the trailer, I think the movie will be good, too.

And another cool thing on this trip -- Michael Adams will be here on Wednesday to give a speech and join us for our high dinner (he's the president of UGA, for those of you who don't recognize the name). More to come on his visit later.

Filming All Around Oxford

Reason #12 why I love Oxford: All the filming that goes on here for major motion pictures.

I was first informed of such filming on our walking tour, when Tour Guide Andrew pointed to the different places where they filmed scenes from the Harry Potter movies. My friends and I designated today to be the day we search out all the locations from the movies, so we trekked all over Oxford and happily succeeded in finding what we were looking for!

This first picture was taken at New College...this is where Professor Mad-Eye Moody turns Draco Malfoy into a ferret in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I could practically hear the dialogue from this scene running through my head as we walked in and around the courtyard.

Restricted section, anyone? Scenes from the library, especially in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, were filmed in the Bodleian Library. Walk up the stairs and there are several rooms with books that look just like this.

Here, despite my failed efforts to keep as many people out of the picture as possible, this is where some of the Great Hall scenes for the movies are filmed. The hall was long and beautiful, just as I'd pictured it.

To see the rest of the pictures I took from this outing, you can click here.

But the Harry Potter films aren't the only ones shot on location in Oxford. The other day, my friends and I were lucky enough to witness the crew from the movie The Golden Compass reshoot a couple of scenes from the movie just down the road from our dorm. It takes place in Oxford, and they wrapped shooting about 3 or 4 days before we actually arrived in Oxford, but we were told that they had to come back to do a bit of reshooting before it was completely done. We were hoping for a glimpse of the stars of the movie -- Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, etc. -- but we were disappointed when we found out that they weren't there.

So who were they filming if not the actors, you ask?

A cat. But wait, it gets better -- a stuffed cat. Apparently, the cat is important in the movie/book, but we just found it terribly entertaining that they spent so much time and effort filming a stuffed cat. Once I finish reading the book (which is actually called Northern Lights as part of Philip Pullman's 3-book series), I'll let you know more.

They also filmed at the Bridge of Sighs on New College Lane. Here you can see the massive floating lighting they used at night. It was tied with wire to either side of the bridge and they could adjust how much or little light it emitted. It looks like a giant, glowing battery, doesn't it? This was great fun to watch.

I hope more movie crews come while we're here!

Born in the U.S.A.

Happy late 4th of July to all! As you can probably imagine, there's not a whole lot of July 4th celebration in England, but there were plenty of American students from my program perpetuating the stereotype of the obnoxious American last night. Most notably the drunk student I could hear in the quad outside my window singing the chorus of "Born in the U.S.A."

I also got to speak with my friends and family that I normally spend the 4th with...I miss them and hope they had a blast at the celebrations at Lenox last night. "Is it an alllllll play?"

What's also interesting about the "Born in the U.S.A." reference is its correlation with my international mass communication class with Dr. Andy Kavoori from UGA. This ranks high on my list of favorite classes in college, and that's saying something (considering we've had 3 days of class in total). We sang bits from that song in celebration of the 4th, and one of the kids in my class noted the irony in singing it on the holiday. If you listen to the lyrics, it's clearly referencing the Vietnam War and doesn't really serve as a good patriotic, nationalistic anthem, he said. Good point.

But seriously, this class with Dr. Kavoori is great. Our class is mainly discussion based, and we've got a great class of extremely interesting people. Yesterday, the class invited Kavoori to a local pub called the White Horse for some obnoxious 4th of July celebration, but he told us this morning in class that he couldn't go because he was taking his kids around the city all day on the 4th. One of my more animated classmates, Jen, walks in and immediately yells, "Kavoori! Where were you last night?" The entire class erupted in laughter. Then we went into a detailed discussion of his novel, The Children of Shahida, and how history and memory relate to one another in a book about three generations of an Indian family. The books is really good -- it's told in three parts, with the narrators sharing stories and thoughts on family life, culture, and other topics.

At the end of the discussion, he asked us how we thought he should market his book. "I need to sell about 5,000 copies, so how should I do it?" he asked us. My classmates and I came up with a number of ideas, ranging from easily manageable to completely ridiculous. Here are just a few:

• make a video of a scene from the book or make a movie trailer for it and post it on YouTube
  
• go to the Indian Cultural Exchange club at UGA (which is the largest student organization on campus)
• find a way onto a tv show like the Today Show or get the book added to Oprah's Book Club list
• the idea his son came up with -- rename it Harry Potter and the Children of Shahida
• make a Facebook or Myspace group (for those who don't know, these are popular websites for teenagers and college students) to promote it
• get it on other book club lists

The possibilities are endless.

EDIT 1: More pictures here!

High Dinners and Harry Potter

11:34 p.m. Oxford time
Day 2 at Oxford -- Lots to see and do today as we acclimated ourselves a bit more to the town of Oxford. We took a walking tour of the city this morning, taking note of several of the 39 separate colleges that make up the university and their personal libraries and chapels. There were plenty of references to celebrities that attended different colleges and even some Harry Potter locations! Scenes from the hospital wing, the library, and the courtyard where Malfoy was turned into a ferret all reside within New College, University College, and the Bodleian Library. My new friend Michelle and I plan to set aside a day sometime this weekend to fully explore said locations.

Take the building in this first picture for instance -- our tour guide Andrew told us that Hugh Grant and Kate Beckinsale both attended New College, pictured here (more pictures of this building to come later...this was the only part of New College we saw on the walk). This college is also interesting because it's dedicated to the Virgin Mary...that's her in the middle with the Archangel Gabriel on her left and William of Wykeham on the right, who founded the college. Added bonus: behind the left wall is where the Malfoy scene was shot in the Goblet of Fire. As I said, I will be checking that out later.

Our next trip (after Michelle and I stopped in a sandwich shop for lunch) was to the Bodleian Library. Now, I'm going to bore you for a minute with some details about it, so feel free to skip a paragraph or two if you don't care too much about libraries. This one is one of Oxford's 34 libraries and it contains over 12 million books! After the Reformation took its toll on the library (most books with any associations to the Catholic Church were burned), a man called Bodley reinstated it and turned it into a reference-only library and made a deal with the government so that it became a legal deposit library -- it's "entitled to claim a copy of every book and periodical part published in the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland," according to our information packet.

Other cool facts about it:

• The scenes from the hospital wing and the library in the Harry Potter movies were filmed in it!
• The 12 million books are stored in the main building (pictured here) as well as another building across the street and one around the corner. The building across the street has more floors below the street level than above the street, where there are MILES of stacks of books.
  
• When looking for a place to study and to find books, you choose the room that best suits your studies. There are reading rooms designated for different subjects, and if your book isn't located in it, you request it online. But this is the best part: once you order it, it's put in a crate in the underground floor, then put on a conveyor belt underground that sends it to a lift in the main building and a librarian takes it to the proper room. How cool is that?!
• When being admitted to use the library, you must recite and sign an oath saying that you will not take a book, set the place on fire, and abide by the rest of the rules. After this, you get a reader's card with your picture on it that must be shown to the porter to get in. Only Oxford students and graduate students with specific needs ("...who need access in order to undertake serious study which they cannot easily do elsewhere") can go in.

We had some free time after the library orientation before meeting the Oxford dons who will be teaching our tutorials (I'll meet with my Romantic Lit professor every Wednesday afternoon from 2:45-3:45) and having our first High Dinner. Everyone dresses "smartly" and we have a 3-course meal with the dons. Tonight's menu:

1. 1/2 Ogen Melon with Earl Grey Sorbet
2. Poached Barramundi Supreme with Chive Mash, Pea Puree and Asparagus Veloute
3. Iced Strawberry Souffle

Everything was delicious -- even the second course, which was fish with a layer of mashed potatoes and mashed peas underneath and asparagus cut in inch-long pieces. I'm usually not a fan of fish, but this tasted more like very bland chicken, so it worked. I'm looking forward to next week's Monday-night High Dinner.

Okay, I think I've said enough. And you're probably bored reading all this. So I'm off!

EDIT 1: If you want to see more pictures, just click this link and enjoy!

"A Rainy Day in London Town"

8:37 p.m. Oxford time
I'm finally here!

Jolly old England. Oxford, to be more precise. I'm staying in a dorm at Trinity College, right on Broad Street in the heart of Oxford. The trip here was...interesting...but it doesn't matter now because I'm loving it here!

The flight from Atlanta to London was pretty enjoyable. We departed at about 6:45 p.m. Atlanta time and arrived earlier than predicted (6:45 instead of the previously anticipated 7:30) early in the morning in London. I've definitely decided that international flights beat the pants off domestic flights -- better (and more) food, a personal screen at every seat, plenty of radio/movie choices, higher ceilings, and flight attendants with British accents in my case. Word to the wise, though -- if you want to sleep sometime on the flight, either take something like Tylenol PM or get a first class seat where you can recline your seats all the way back. Otherwise, don't count on getting much sleep.

Once we arrived, the only real hitch was making it through the passport check-in area and finding our bus to Oxford. The masses of people arriving into Gatwick Airport (including myself and my fellow UGA at Oxford people) stood in long, zig-zagging lines to reach the five or so desks where attendants stamped your passport. It seemed very unorganized if you ask me...

I slept on the bus ride between London and Oxford and woke up when we were heading into the main streets of Oxford. I've taken lots of pictures already, which will be up in the next few days. My single occupancy room with loft next to the Broad Street entrance and the Trinity Library definitely helps lol. And I've already walked along the main parts of town.

My first stops were, of course, at the several bookstores within a block of campus. I reserved my copy of the last Harry Potter book and bought my remaining textbooks. Can I just say that Blackwell's 3-story bookstore makes me so happy -- there should be more bookstores like that in the States!

More to come soon. I'm off to bed. Thanks for reading and I'll post again soon!

Crazy Headlines

In my news editing class, we've been talking recently about how to write a good headline for a news story. This doesn't seem like a difficult task at first glance--write a complete thought that tells the reader about the main thrust of the article. Easy enough, right?

Well, in some cases, copy editors and page designers who create headlines accidently write ones that have more than one meaning or seem just plain silly. In my Creative Editing textbook, the authors list several "ambiguous and confusing" headlines that were actually printed in newspapers across the country. Check these out:

In the category of stating the obvious, we have:

• "War Dims Hope for Peace"
• "If Strike Isn't Settled Quickly, It May Last a While"
• "Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures"
• "Farmer Bill Dies in House"

Funny Claims:

• "Hospitals are Sued by 7 Foot Doctors" (7-foot doctors or 7 podiatrists?)
• "Eye Drops off Shelf" (I'd like to see that)
• "Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge" (avoid that bridge at all costs)
• "Air Head Fired" (hahahaha)

How could you read these and not stop and think about it?

• "Include Your Children When Baking Cookies"
• "Kids Make Nutritious Snacks"
• "New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group"
• "Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead"