Hi, I'm a tourist (but I actually live here, too)

The last two weeks have been full of touring for me! On February 8th I joined the Newcomers' Club for a tour of the Bodleian Library and Divinity School, and on the 17th took a tour around the city.  Both tours were led by the knowledgeable (and hilarious) Marie Ruiz, who is chairperson of the Newcomers' Club this year, and both days were sunny and dry. Here are some photos from those two days:

 University Church of St. Mary the Virgin (aka St. Mary's)

 Bodleian Library

 Friends Leah, Kahli, and Madeleine in front of St. Mary's

 Inside St. Mary's

 All-Souls College (Brandon likes to study here)

  Divinity School

Duke Humfrey's Library

Did the photo of the Divinity School look familiar? If you've seen the Harry Potter films, this was the location of the dance lesson from the 4th movie (Goblet of Fire), and the hospital scene from the 6th movie (Half-Blood Prince).

Here are some more familiar-looking places (if you're a student or HP fan, at least) that we visited on the 17th:

The HP dining hall was modeled after the one in Christ Church college

Stairwell to the Great Hall in The Philosopher's Stone

Instead of boring you with names, dates, and events you don't really care about and I  don't really remember, let me share something from both tours that I found amusing. The architects and artists who were commissioned to complete these amazing buildings, stained glass windows, and paintings were not only great at what they did, but had a cheeky sense of humor. 

For instance, within Christ Church Cathedral is a beautiful stained glass window depicting the legend of the patroness of Oxfordshire, Frideswide, who was both a princess and nun. As the story goes, Frideswide was a beautiful, wealthy young woman who was only inclined toward spiritual things. When the prince Aelfgar heard of her beauty and fame, he sent messengers to ask for her hand in marriage. She refused him, having taken a vow of chastity. In his anger he sought to take her by force. The glass panes show how Frideswide hid in a forest and a pig-sty to avoid being found, but Aelfgar kept searching for her. At last her hiding place was revealed when he threatened to burn down the city of Oxford. Only moments before he would reach the princess, God struck the prince blind with a lightning bolt. (Remember, this is a legend.) The prince immediately repented of his actions and sought her forgiveness, promising Frideswide he would leave her alone if she would pray for his sight to be restored. She did, and he was healed. She remained a nun for the rest of her life, performing many other miracles and eventually being proclaimed a saint.

The last panel, shown below, depicts Frideswide on her deathbed surrounded by mourners. Notice the rich colors of the scene, the maidens' delicate faces, and... the toilet in the back right corner?? 

Yep, that pinkish-purple looking piece half-hidden by a door is a toilet.  Considering this legend is set in the 7th century (but done in the 19th), I'd say that's definitely considered as artistic license. 

There are more examples of this, probably in every building. But I thought that one was pretty unique. 

And to finish off, here are some more (mostly from Christ Church):

Christ Church

Christ Church Cathedral

Christ Church from inside the quadrangle

Stained class in one of the college chapels depicting the story of Jonah

By the end of the second tour my mind was swimming with bits of history (with very little cohesion overall!), but I'm glad to have finally taken an official tour. The best thing of all? I got to walk back to my little home here in Oxford and resume life as a local.

Coming in one month...

The Hudgins' women!

Yeah, we're related.

My mom and sister are visiting in March and I'm already counting the days. 

And making lists of what they have to see, do, and eat. Yay! Included are

• visiting Stonehenge (get excited, Mutti) and Bath
• trying authentic fish & chips (just for you, Auburn) and dessert at Ben's cookies!
• having a cream tea 
• going all over Oxford

There's lots of other things on the list too.

And, about a month after that in April, Brandon's mom and dad are coming to visit too! Their trip will be a little different because we're dividing up the week between Oxford and London. (Looks like Brandon and I are going to get another shot at the Changing of the Guard...maybe.) Now taking suggestions on your favorite things in London...how should we spend four days in the great city?

Hilary Term

Last year I said several times that Brandon would blog about his course and the things he was doing.
I wasn't intending to lie; it just...didn't happen. He was too busy and I didn't feel I could write on his studies as well as he could. But it's going to have to be written from my perspective, because Hilary term is even fuller than Michaelmas was.

As a quick reminder, Brandon is now in the second of three terms of a program named The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics, fondly known as OCCA (and said like this: Ocka. Not O-C-C-A. If you want to know more about the program, click on the link to the right of this post.) He's studying alongside 18 other guys and girls from 9 countries.
Here's a picture of the whole group, taken last term:

OCCA 2010-11 with Wycliffe Hall in background

 He spends a lot of time with these folks. Here's a screen shot of a typical week of his life, aka google calendar:

Isn't he organized?

This was his calendar from about 2 weeks ago. It's a bit different each week, but here are some pretty common themes:

•  In general, he has lectures Monday - Thursday, at differing times each week and with various tutors/guest lecturers. If you can read some of the titles above, you'll see classes like "Missiology", "Apologetics Workshop", and "The Rationality of the Christian Faith". Friday is generally a free day for study and writing (although this particular week didn't pan out that way).  
• Every other week, they write an academic essay that requires a good bit of research outside of class.  For example, the one he turned in this week was titled, "Why did Mark write his gospel the way he did?" All the students were, of course, to read Mark's gospel, but they also had to cite several academic sources in their papers. 
•  Friday nights he helps with an Alpha group at St. Edwards, a prestigious co-ed boarding and day school in Oxford. Alpha is a program originally developed by a church in central London in the late 1970s to present a basic outline of the Christian faith to new believers. It was adapted for non-Christians in the 90s and is now used in 163 countries. It involves meeting weekly for a meal followed by listening to a speaker on subjects including how God guides us and why Jesus died. Brandon's part is to help with table discussion after the talk. 
• Also on Friday evenings, Brandon and I help with an informal Bible study here at NOOC. 

This spring he'll also have 2 missions with OCCA: one at Sheffield University in March, and another in Leyland the first week of April. Both of these places are located in England and will last about a week. (I'm actually going to Leyland, too!)

It's not all work and no play, though. He's participating in a ping pong tournament here at NOOC on March 1st.  

But for now, Brandon's spending a lot of time right here:

As always, prayers are appreciated.

Feb One

Look what's starting to happen around here...

photos taken at the University Parks

All I can say is, bring it on.

Finally! to London

Somehow we managed to live in Oxford for three months and never make it into London (other than to go to the airport!). So, the week before term started, we hopped on the Tube (that's a bus) and made our way over to the big city.

I would say you can't wait around for good weather in this country to see the sights- often it's wet and, being the wintertime, cold. But I often make fun of the rain over here. What I mean is, it's generally not raining so much as misting, drizzling, or some combination (think "mizzling"). Even though rain was forecast, I wasn't surprised or concerned.

But the weather was definitely not mizzling this particular Thursday- it was raining pretty steadily. We were determined to see some places, though, so we made our way through the wet streets to our first stop of the day (which happened to be Buckingham Palace).

There were a lot of people standing outside the Palace, and soon we were being shooed into certain spots for, well, we weren't sure what. Changing of the guard maybe? I seem to remember Rick Steves saying something about that happening at 11 a.m. 

Waiting for- something- in front of Buckingham Palace

Unfortunately, because of the weather and our particular location, this was all we saw:

Yep...that was pretty much it. The above video and Horse Guard you see below was all we really saw. An Australian couple standing nearby told us that had it not been raining so hard there would have been "trumpets and fanfare" for such an event. 

(Note to self: visit on day when not raining. Also, find new place to stand so as to see this.)

The Horse Guard 

Since the weather wasn't great, we opted for an indoor activity and made our way to the National Gallery in touristy Trafalgar Square. We rented an audio tour which took us around all their must-see paintings, and by the time we were done a few hours later it had [mostly] stopped raining. 

The rest of our day was spent walking around the city and then we finished with an evening concert. We saw the London Eye, a slow moving Ferris wheel with enclosed capsules that passengers can ride to get a view of the city; the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben (well, I suppose we only heard Ben); had a snack at Covent Gardens while listening to a woman sing opera; and enjoyed a concert at St. Martin in the Fields Church

Overlooking Trafalgar Square from the steps of the National Gallery

Statue of George Washington on American soil (literally)

A performer at Covent Garden

View from inside the market

Trafalgar Square at night

Big Ben (which is the name of the bell, not the tower)

The London Eye (left) 

Brandon in front of the National Gallery 

Inside St. Martin in the Fields church (yes, there is a really weird glowing ball in the window)

National Gallery, left; St. Martin in the Fields, center

Second Cow College?

It'll be no surprise to you that we're excited Auburn University won the National Championship this year. (Brandon got up in the middle of the night to watch the game, and, at 5 a.m., woke me up to watch the very end.)

I was also really glad to see most of the name-calling come to an end. Facebook status updates featured people's thoughts about "$Cam Newton", but also oldies and goodies concerning the "cow college" -- a term associated with Auburn University since there are fields nearby with grazing cattle.  I have always wondered why people choose to use the term "cow college" as a put-down for Auburn.  I guess some associate local agriculture/farming with unintelligence? (Even though our friends the Sanders make it look easy to run a farm, there's no question it takes not only manpower but brain power.)

Well, I was in a local bookstore the other day checking out postcards when I  came across one of Christ Church, a particularly well-known college here at Oxford.  Upon further inspection I noticed something in front of the beautiful spires of the college...

We're continually proud of our association with cow colleges.

Germany- the Rundown

Happy 2011!
Yeah, I know, we're already pretty far into the new year. I have been a bad blogger, but hope to make up for it. New year, new resolutions, right?
All that said, we hope you've had a wonderful start to the new year. We enjoyed a great Christmas in Alabama and made it back to Oxford on New Years' Eve right in time for- bed. (Call us boring if you want- I call it jetlagged.)
We had a great time at home, packed full with seeing our families (including our sweet niece!!) and friends.

But I haven't even finished telling you about our trip to Germany! Because our six day trip turned to seven...

Our plan was to visit Wayne and Caryn in Berlin for 6 days before flying back to England. We've already posted a few blogs about visiting Luther's church and eating brats. All was fine and well until several inches of snow fell on England in the course of a few hours.

South London on Dec 19 - photo from the DailyMail

But it seemed as if Brandon and I were going to be OK- we weren't flying into Heathrow, but Stansted, a smaller airport outside of London. The whole week, even though flights were being cancelled left and right at other airports, Stansted was open. So when we were given the offer of riding along with the Fenwicks' to pick up their daughter (who was stuck in London on her way home from California), we said thanks but opted to stay in Germany. We had already paid for the bus from the airport to Oxford, and we would have to buy new tickets from London back to Oxford and lose the others. Plus, I was a little nervous about the twelve hour drive from Berlin to London. So we stayed.
(Was that a hefty bet? Yep. But this year is about learning- in lots of ways.)

We went to eat with Lara, their younger daughter, at a local American eatery. It was really great to hang out with her and hear how life looked as a teenager in Berlin.

A Berliner Pilsner at the '60s American restaurant

The next day, we got up at around 5 a.m. to pack and catch a train to the airport. As Brandon was getting ready, I checked to see that our flight was....

CANCELLED

Not good. We tried calling the airline, but only got recordings in German. Without many options, we took our stuff and went on to the airport. 

Upon arriving we confirmed that yes indeedy, the online information was right. (Not that we doubted it, but hey, one could hope). We were not getting on that particular flight... but could we get on another one? 

Not that day. RyanAir offered us a flight the next day to another airport- East Midlands- and we took it. As we trudged back to the Fenwicks' home in the snow, we prayed that our flight would go out the next day. We were supposed to fly back to Alabama on the 22nd, and if we weren't there for the flight and it was scheduled, we'd lose a good bit of money rescheduling the dates. 

Well long story short (or at least, shorter), we did make it back. It took trains, planes, and automobiles, but we arrived in Oxford on December 20th around 8 p.m. I've never been so glad to be on English soil. 

Please don't misunderstand- we did have a great time in Germany. Here- look!

This was in Potsdam...

Enjoying a new dessert...kind of like a healthier funnel cake

And more from Berlin...

 Checkpoint Charlie

In the Pergamon museum 

 Learning the underground...

 At Sachsenhausen, a former concentration camp site

The Berliner dome at night

Tea with our hosts and their new friends

Thanks again to Wayne, Caryn, Amey, and Lara for giving us such a warm welcome.