Well, only two days left before I leave for home. I am incredibly glad, although I have had a mostly marvelous time here in England. But three and a half weeks away from home is quite a long time.
On Wednesday night, we had our pub quiz finals. A pub quiz is exactly like what it sounds -- a trivia contest that takes place in a pub! Dr. Speck decided to allow the students to see the inside of his own personal favorite pub, The Gardeners Arms (see picture), by holding a traditional pub quiz competition between each of the halls in our dorm. We've had 3 or 4 rounds of competition, but happily, my girls, The Group That Must Not Be Named, made it to the final against a boys hall, The Moose! (If you want to see a picture of my girls and I, check out David's blog -- http://www.picsandsuch.com/. He has lots of pictures and such, imagine that, from our trip!) It was a fun time as we drank cokes and tea and munched on BBQ chips (which they call "crisps" here). The students were asked about famous Oxford philosophers, theologians, writers, colleges, movements in history, etc. -- anything and everything. However, in the end, my girls lost by a couple of points :0( The two questions that got us were 1) name all of the Oxford colleges or permanent residence halls that begin with the word "Saint", and 2) name all of the Oxford colleges or permanent residence halls that do NOT begin with the word "Saint". Let's just say, there are 39 colleges and 8 halls, and I think that all that one of those boys on the other team did the WHOLE TIME we've been here was to memorize those names. But I was still VERY proud of my team -- they have been a great group of girls, I must say.
Yesterday, we headed into London for the last time. As always, London traffic makes me crazy and London, in general, makes my blood pressure go up just a little bit. It's just so much more fast-paced than Oxford. Anyway, we were supposed to go to the Tate Modern Art Museum, but the buses had a miscommunication and ran late, so we skipped that part and went straight to The Globe Theater to see Shakespeare's King Lear. The actors were SUPERB -- the man playing King Lear was magnificent, the Fool was witty, and I loved the Duke of Gloucester (even though he does lose both of his eyes during the play.....ick). It was quite unfortunately, though, a tragedy, meaning that pretty much everybody in the play dies at the end (if I spoiled the ending, I'm sorry!). The body count on the stage at the end of the play was 7 people. I'm a happy-ending type of girl, so I much prefer the comedies of Shakespeare, where everyone gets married at the end (we DID see a HILARIOUS rendition of Twelfth Night here).
Other than that, it's been a rather lazy day today -- we had our last lecture this morning, summing everything up, and then David, Laurien, and I went off to grab a baguette sandwich at Taylor's Deli down the street (we just weren't in the mood for fish and potatoes again). Yum! I had a mature cheddar and onion marmalade baguette -- can you imagine asking for that in the States? :0) Then we topped it off with some G&D's ice cream -- an Oxford original. Tonight, we have our last formal dinner, where we get all dressed up and have hors d'oeuvres and such before a nice dinner. Tomorrow, some people are heading off on optional excursions, but me, I fully intend to hang out in Oxford on my last day and lollygag about! If anything else interesting happens, I will definitely let you know.
I love Oxford -- it's a place that makes you want to study and question and learn and just gorge yourself on knowledge. It's ancient, being from medieval times, and it's beautiful, with its window boxes of flowers everywhere, and its "dreaming spires," as Matthew Arnold puts it. It's postcard perfect. And it seems to motivate me in so many ways to want to be a better and more responsible learner and teacher. I don't know why, but, though that can happen at home, the city of Sugar Land doesn't quite have the same effect :0) But it is home.
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