Putting the Ox in Oxbridge: My Visit to the Dark Side

Given my loyalty to Cambridge, I was surprised to find that one of the only cities in England that I still felt a pressing desire to see was Oxford, their long-time rival (in the States, we talk about college rivalries dating back to the Bowl game of ’68 – Oxford and Cambridge have been going at it since the 1200's). So, feeling like a bit of a traitor, I planned a stop in Oxford on my way up to Scotland, just to better inform my conviction of Cambridge superiority ;-)

 On the whole, the trip was successful, but that’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy Oxford. In the end, it just seems that they are in fact two very different universities and cities, so much so that it’s hard to compare the two. Oxford feels much more like a city than Cambridge does – more cars buzzing through, fewer bikes – and the colleges are bigger and grander as well. One thing the two cities definitely share, though, is the amazing quickness with which city fades out again into the country. My first night there, I went for a run along the Oxford Canal on narrow little pathway with the canal on one side and the Castle Mill Stream on the other. Less than 20 minutes later, I was in the open country: horses were grazing in the fields and the uncut grass along either side of the running path was three or four feet high. In the States, cities fade out into suburbia and that fades out into not much at all; I think I would need to run more than a marathon to get from Rice’s campus out to anything like the country.

The highlight of my visit to Oxford, ironically had nothing to do with Oxford, Cambridge, or even British people. It was Google-chatting with Mary Grace only to be interrupted when the guy next to me used the phrase “not a lick of room”- the realization that even here, in the intellectual heartland of England, I was surrounded by the warmth of the American South. 

ps: Note to fellow Rice students - it turns out that Cambridge has a version of "Martel is not a college." They cheer "I'd rather be at Oxford than at John's" (St. John's being the much-hated rival residential college ;-)

Well, I couldn’t spend Independence Day in their country...

I tried several times to use this explanation when asked why I spent 20 hours traveling to spend 72 hours in the US – but I never managed it with a straight face. In truth, the only regret I had when I got my first scholarship was that I would miss July 4^th Fellow’s Weekend at Wiess... so when I got a second grant that also covered airfare, the decision was made. If only for three days, I would be back in Houston.

In the first week of my trip, when I was homesick and scared of all the uncertainties that come with travel, the promise of those three days was a lifeline. Every time I took my vitamins, I was 600 mg of Calcium – half a day – closer to home. Surely it’s crazy to imagine Houston in July as anything like Heaven, but I did. I couldn’t wait to be back.

What was the weirdest thing about being back in the States, you ask? Something that has nothing to do with having travelled internationally for over a month: it was unspeakably weird not to have a car. I lent my baby to my friend Sherry for the summer, so when I flew back into Houston I found myself relying just as much on the generosity of others as I’m forced to when abroad. On the morning of the fourth, I found myself in such distress at making the 20 minute walk to campus in the crazy humid heat that I called one of the Head Fellows and made him send a car to pick me up. I don’t know how anyone without a car survives in this city.

Speaking of that generosity, though, I’d like to send out some Oscar-style thanks to those of you who made my weekend the wonderful holiday that it was. So thank you Erin (Walsh) for you hospitality and delicious air conditioning, Mary Grace just for being in Houston – I loved every second we got to spend together, Joel for the ride from the airport, Richard for taking me back to the airport again, Jordon for indulging all my Dave Matthews talk, Stephen for figuring out how to zip up my bag, Kathryn for driving all the way from Katy for dinner, Kelsey for doing crazy things to your hair just for my amusement (haha), Jesse for not meaning all your inappropriate jokes about hitting on our freshmen, Kimberly for meeting me at the airport, and to Aparna and Veronica for reading this blog and telling me so :-). Y'all made my weekend in Houston the most refreshing, exciting, comforting three days of my summer – I can’t wait to be back again for good. 

The Accidental Suitor: My Jane Austen moment in Bath

In the course of the very limited planning I did for my trip (mostly in the hours before I left for the airport), I faced a critical decision: where should I arrange to be on June 27^th, my 21^st birthday? Ideally, I suppose, I’d be at home, in a country where I’d get IDed, with people who knew it was my birthday, where people even thought a 21^st birthday remarkable. Failing that, I chose Bath.

Bath has what I’ve come to think of as the three criteria of cities worth visiting: history, beauty, and literary connections (Larry McMurtry, it should be noted, is the only person who keeps Houston from failing this test completely). The city centre lies in a valley through which is River Avon winds and from which seven rather steep hills arise. As my hostel and apparently every secondary school in Bath lie in these hills, I spent a great deal more time looking down at Bath than I did actually in it. The first day of hiking around (going up and down those hills definitely felt much more like hiking than walking) I was snapping pictures left and right, but by the end of my six days there, I was almost as blasé as the natives: to find a break in the houses or trees that afforded a break-taking panorama of the city seemed nothing so remarkable at all.

 I spent my birthday walking ten miles down the Kennet & Avon Canal to the nearest town, and when I got back to the hostel, sweaty, tired, and hungry, it was to find that all of my stuff – my books, my backpack, even my drying socks and underwear – had disappeared from my room. It was in the process of getting my things back that I met Graham, the unfortunate hostel worker who happened to be at the desk when I came to retrieve my things (they realized they had put me in the wrong room, so they confiscated all my belongings?? Hostels...). Graham was older than me, shorter than me, and his buzz-cut hair was grayer than mine, but he was helpful and friendly and when he offered to give me some travel tips over a couple of drinks, I thought nothing of it. This is the classic mistake of any heroine: allow yourself to be caught completely by surprise.

The next night after Graham got off of work, I was waiting for him by the hostel mini-bar, guidebook in hand, ready to learn all about the Lake District. But he’d been in the hostel all day – would I mind going somewhere else? Acquiescence being another classic heroine trait, I agreed, and a few minutes later we were headed off to Bristol, a nearby port city. Once there, Graham showed me some of the sights (check out my Bath pictures to see the giant disco ball in a fountain!), until we realized that, as it was a Sunday night and things closed early, we needed to run to get to the bar on time. It was a great little jazz place that boasted live music every night: that night, a one-man blues band was jamming away. Afterwards, he drove me to see the city’s suspension bridge, lit up over the Avon River Gorge. It was all lovely. We did not talk about the Lake District.

We were walking up to the proverbial doorstep (in this case, the doorway to the hostel’s reception) when Graham asked: “Would it be too forward if I asked to kiss you?” My mind was flooded with so many objections clothed in so many clichés that all I could manage to say was an awkward “Yes” (as in, “no”). And finally I’d broken the mold, because while heroines might very well find themselves in awkward positions at the end of accidental dates, I doubt any of them could manage to end the evening quite as ungracefully as I did :-)

Edinburgh: King of the Hill

My introduction to Edinburgh was much like the grand entrance David and I made to Venice all those weeks ago: once again, I opted for taking the nightbus, but instead of going to Glasgow, where I would be staying that night, I continued on to Edinburgh to allow myself a couple extra hours of bumpy bus sleep. 

The city I awoke to find was as steely and gray as the castle that towered over it. Edinburgh Castle rises up out of an inactive volcano, with the 'old town' flowing down from castle like the tail of a comet. That first day, it was hard to look at anything for long without my eyes wandering back to the castle, to the sheer slate edges that are wrapped in a sort of netting, as though without its flimsy support, the fortress would crumble and fall.

Definitely my favorite moment of Edinburgh, and, so far, of my whole trip, was hiking up to Arthur Seat, the highest peak amidst what Wikipedia describes as "a remarkably wild piece of highland landscape" just outside of the city. The wind was so strong that we had to be careful as we crested the various hills; holding a camera steady enough to take a picture was almost impossible to do. But even in the middle of that hurricane, the sun was shining huge slanting shafts that cut through the clouds to give the whole landscape a glittering golden glow. Finally standing on Arthur Seat, I wondered if would-be Edinburgh invaders had felt as I did now: that by hiking 45-minutes up a hill, I had conquered the city and everything in it. 

Rainy Days in Glasgow

Greetings from Glasgow! Today is my last day in the city, so I'm taking shelter from the rain in the Mitchell Library to write this post. It seems crazy, but it was 10 times easier to get a library card here, where I'm staying for 4 days, than it was to get on in Texas, where I've lived for 3 years. What gives?

I should start by saying that I don't know why I chose to spend the weekend here rather than in Edinburgh - but I'm glad I did. On Sunday morning, I met a fantastic couple at a Baptist church down the street from my hostel; they are in international student ministry, and who knew, but I'm an international student here ;-) So they took me home for lunch and I ended up staying for dinner. It seemed crazy to find myself having a backyard lunch with a couple from Scotland, a writer from Seattle, and 4 horticulturists from the Czech Republic.

From the exterior, Glasgow seems quite forbidding; it's always overcast, everything seems huge, and it's all too easy to find yourself in a dangerous-looking neighborhood. But I've quite enjoyed my time here all the same. The vastness of the buildings and streets is beautiful as well as daunting; when I finally saw the wide sweep of the River Clyde, I couldn't stop taking pictures. There's a park near my hostel called Kelvin Grove, where I ran for an hour along the river, hardly aware that I was in a city at all. And the best part of Glasgow by far has been the people: the couple that took me in and the Australian and American friends I've made at the hostel. The other night, four of us stayed up drinking and talking until 3 am like we'd known each other forever. It's crazy and unexpected - but that's Glasgow.

Saffron Walden and the Dreaming Tree

This post is the Where are They Now? edition of my Cambridge experience. As I described earlier, someone set fire to my hostel on my first night in town. When I returned to the hostel the next day to find out about alternate accommodation, I was told that the nearest hostel was in Saffron Walden, a little town 40 minutes south of Cambridge.

Initially, I was disappointed to not be staying in the city center. Still, I did as I was told and hopped on board a bus bound for - what was the name again? Pulling into the town almost an hour later, I could not believe its beauty and its quaintness: the streets were steep and narrow, hedged on both sides by medieval-style thatched roof cottages and local shops. My hostel turned out to be the oldest inhabited building in the town, built in 1402. I'm afraid I must refer you to my photos (picasaweb.google.com/erinmwaller) to really see what that experience was like.

I was so enchanted by what I saw of the town from the bus that I immediately unpacked my running shoes to jog out and see more more. I haven't a single picture from this run, and yet it is this that I'll take from Saffron Walden. I headed out along the main road that leads into the town, pursuing the Audley End House, a manor house I'd mistook for a castle on the drive in: sweeping green grounds, a pond, stately yellow stone. Then it was all countryside - that vast English countryside with hills rolling on forever. I detoured (trespassed?) down one of the farm roads, cutting across fields and creeks and, at one point, a fence. I felt like I was in a Runners World's photo shoot: Rave Run in Saffron Walden. And all this blessing, all this green because my hostel caught on fire.

The title for this post comes from the DMB song by the same name, which I listened to for the first time on this run; along the way I saw a likely dreaming tree standing tall and alone in the middle of the field, with the sun setting behind it.

Cambridge: You're like coming home

Cambridge has probably been my most-anticipated destination of the summer - looked forward to beyond Prague, beyond Venice, more even than Paris. What, you ask, does this college town have to offer that the major cities of the world lack? Simply memories.

When I was 15, I spent a month studying at the University of Cambridge with a program for high school students. The summer was amazing: for the first time, I was studying with students who were bright and interested in what we were learning; I met people and made dear friends from all over the world; and mostly, I fell in love - with the city :-)

So when my bus deposited me in Cambridge, I could hardly wait to leave the area of my hostel behind and make my way back to Magdalene College. I put on my running shoes, not just because I wanted the exercise but because I literally didn't think I could stand to get there any slower. As I was running past a pub toward the city center, I saw a sign for the England v. Kazakhstan World Cup qualifying match, but even that only held me for 10 minutes. I watched my boys score their second goal, then was gone again. Finally, slowing to a walk, I was back on Magdalene St., walking past where Garfunkel's used to be, past Cafe Uno, over the bridge... I slipped into the private entrance to the college as another student walked out. I had arrived.

When I was at Cambridge in 2003, I studied Creative Writing, and my contribution to our literary magazine was a vignette describing my moment of arrival in England, in Cambridge, the overwhelming sense of finding myself, my home, in this foreign place. And returning to Cambridge ultimately felt quite similar: it was like coming home, but not a home you live in day-to-day. It was the feeling I get when I drvie back to Buford and in the midst of nostalgia recognize that this is no longer where I live. I was a visitor in Cambridge, a tourist; for all my knowledge, all my memories, that's all I was: a girl standing, heart tight, in a place she had once lived.

Hostel on Fire: Get me my pants

I interrupt the normal rhythm of my blog to tell what is hopefully the most dramatic story of my trip. For a more objective account, check out the Cambridge News article at: http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/cn_news_home/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=423394

This past Saturday, I was showering on the second floor of the YHA hostel in Cambridge when I began to smell something funny. As I dried off, I looked all around the shower stall, trying to imagine where on earth such an awful, acrid smell could come from. I was suddenly convinced that my running clothes, hanging from the hot water heater, had caught fire, but this was not the case. Then a worse suspsicion crept materialized in my mind: outside my shower stall, some creepy foreign guy (like the two I'd already met) was no doubt smoking a cigarette and waiting, creepily, for me to come out. I held my towel and toiletries close to my chest and braced myself as I opened the door. The bathroom was empty, but the smell was worse.

As I reached to open the door that led back onto the hall, the fire alarm finally sounded. Great clouds of white smoke hung about the ceiling, as did a swarm of flies, apparently driven out from wherever they'd been by the smoke. I walked (it didn't feel quite as dramatic as it seems now) down the stair and out the building, where a tour bus had just pulled up and a bunch of people were unloading their stuff. Two women ran by warning that it was "a legit fire" and calling more people out of the building.

And that's how I found myself standing on the corner of the road in Cambridge with bare feet, wet hair, and nothing on but a thin cotton dress.

A crowd began to form across the street from the hostel: the just-arrived tour group, people who'd been in their rooms, the kitchen staff (still with chef hats on), an unfortunate man wearing nothing but a bright yellow towel. The firetrucks sped in and began unwinding the hoses. All we could see from outside was black smoke coming out of a second floor window, just below my room, and the human drama unfolding along the street.

One man tried to get his wife (an elderly woman) to come down from the 2nd floor, where she was standing at the window talking to him as the hostel evacuated. "Close the window and go down the stairs," he yelled up at her. "What did you say?" she asked, trying to open the window further to hear him. [talking to them this morning, I found that he had actually locked the door behind him as he left the room earlier in the day, leaving her to sleep off her jet lag]. Unbeknownst to me, two members of the hostel staff were being carried out on stretchers, having passed out as the went up the stairs to get more guests out.

Just then, two very down-to-business Aussie women ran around from the other side of the building, calling to the fireman who was trying to rescue the old woman, that there was a man trapped on the other side, banging on the door. When the fireman seemed slow to respond, on of the women got an ax from I don't even know where, and tried to take it around to the other side; a wrestling and shouting match began between her and the firemen as they tried to convince her to let them do their jobs. Eventually, the whole cluster of firemen, Australian women, and the yellow-towel man ran around to the backside (leaving the old woman straddling the window ledge, one foot in the burning building and one on the ladder). I went around to watch as the civilians dragged the trapped man (ironically, one of the creepy guys I'd met earlier) out a second floor window and onto the roof while the fireman axed away obliviouly at the door. They were crouching over the man, trying to resucitate him, when the yellow-towel man yelled "Get me my pants!" Someone tossed up a pair of shorts, which he grabbed, whipping off his towel to put them on.

As the drama finally subsided, I walked back around to the crowd, finally conscious of being cold. Southern girl that I am, I wondered why no guy had offered me his jacket. As though he'd heard me, one of the guys from the tour group suddenly turned around and insisted that I take his blazer; meanwhile, several of the older women from the group gave me a bag for my little pile of belongings and flip-flops for my feet. They turned out to be from a Christian school in St. Louis, touring for a couple weeks around the U.K. There were 16 in total, half high schoolers, half parents and teachers, and one very in-charge British woman named Francis who was their tour guide. 10 minutes after the alarms went offm, she had already found alternative accommodations for all of them just down the road. These kind people not only insisted that I come with them: they took me out to dinner, gave me a hotel (!) bed to sleep on, and walked me back to the hostel in the morning. Had I not been able to get my stuff out of the hostel, I think they would have taken me with them back to London.

We couldn't get up to the hostel that night, as the police had roped it off as a crime scene. (On the news, the fire has been labelled arson). When I was finally able to go up the next morning, I got to see the charred second floor and the hole in the ceiling where the fire had begun - four feet away from the stall where I was showering and worrying about creepy foreign men.

London: It's Not Always This Nice Here

After concluding my vacationing with David in Venice, he went on to Rome and I returned to London (I love saying "returned" as though I live here...). Now the real mission of my summer begins: ethnographic research on the British school system.

And that's how, on Wednesday, I found myself getting off a train at the Virginia Water station, about 40 minutes southwest of London. TASIS: The American School in England doesn't seem like an obvious place to begin my research, but it turned out to be a great transitioning point from the American curriculum I've grown up with to the British system that still feels unwieldly and foreign (practice saying A-levels, 6th form, and worst of all GCSE's in a casual way). I arrived in the midst of the last day of the year for TASIS and thus had upperschool exams and lower school picnics forming the backdrop to my interviews. (As to what I'm finding, what I'm learning, I might need a separate blog for that :-)

London has been...rainy, characteristically so, I guess. Compared to the other cities I've visited, London seems so much more a part of the work-a-day world; my favorite experiences have been times when I felt a part of that world: riding the tube home, reading The London Paper, shopping for groceries at Waitrose. My hostel is nestled in Swiss Cottage, a beautiful area just enough removed from the smog and the congestion of downtown. There's an amazing park, Hampstead Heath, just up the road. I went for a run there yesterday and the panorama of London took my breath away (or maybe that was just the climb ;-)

The title for this post comes from what a Vodafone salesman said after asking how I was enjoying the (then sunny) weather. "It's not always this nice here," he explained.

The Days are Longer in Venice

On this holiday weekend in May, Venice has been filled with tourists, and for good reason - Venice is inescapably beautiful, even with the crowds. From the top of each of the 400+ bridges in the city is a postcard-worthy view; half-way through our first day, David finally had to ask: was I going to take a picture of every one? My options seem clear to me: either take hundreds of pictures to remember the city, or move here. I prefer the latter.

Potentially my favorite thing about Venice is the lack of cars. Throughout the rest of the world, we have carved out pockets of carless spaces, parks and plazas and such. But here there's an incredible sort of independence to be found in walking, especially since Venice is so small that you could walk from one end to the other in less than an hour. Most of our time here has been spent in such roaming: ducking into sidestreets and impossibly narrow alleyways, stepping off the cobblestone walks into pastry shops or private gardens. And here, as in Prague, flowerboxes seem to be a mandatory addition to every windowsill. I honestly believe they must always be in bloom.

By a fantastic stroke of luck, the weekend we chose to visit Venice happened to be the weekend of the city's largest "boat parade:" Vogalunga. Rowers, canoers, and kayakers from all over the world swarmed to Venice to compete in the 30 km race around the island. As a coxswain, my heart was warmed by the sight of spandex and oars, and I loved getting to watch all the different styles of rowing and types of boats. Screw Head of the Charles; Rice Crew should row here.

The title of this post comes from astrological fact and also from our first day in Venice, when we arrived by bus at 5 am and explored until past nightfall.