Housemates

This blog is about my life in England. Since I spend roughly 97.36% of my time with my three housemates, I thought a blog post about them would be nice:


The housemate that lives closest to me is Robyn. When I say she lives close to me, I mean that my room has a removable wall, and her room is on the other side of it. We often open up the divider and chat as we "do homework." Here is Robyn:


Robyn is originally from California, but she's lived in Peculiar, MO, since before high school. (I was going to continue this paragraph with something along the lines of "She likes history and Reese's Pieces, loves to laugh, and knows more about composers than most music majors," but I decided that sounded like a bad personal ad. Then I got this song stuck in my head: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVdhZwK7cS8. (Disclaimer: in posting this song, I am not supporting infidelity. I am supporting Shrek.))

Robyn takes a very long time to get ready in the morning. No one really knows why. She "gets ready" for two hours, actually puts on her shoes, clothes, and make-up in the ten minutes before we leave, and still looks like a movie star. It's one of those mysteries of life. (Side story: when I was younger, my brother Reid would always take forever to get ready to go, and we didn't know why. My mom finally checked on him one day, and discovered that it took Reid 36 minutes to tie his shoes, because his shoe-tying process went something like: tie, un-tie, re-tie, un-tie, re-tie, un-tie, re-tie, un-tie, re-tie, un-tie, re-tie, un-tie, re-tie.)

My second roomate is Sabrina. Here she is:


Sabrina lives in Branson, and before that, she lived in Nashville. Her parents have no connection to the country music business, though. Sabrina and I share an affinity for show and Disney tunes. She knows the words to nearly every musical ever made, including the new Legally Blonde musical (seriously. They made it a musical). Sabrina is the over-achiever of the house. If A++s existed in Britain, she would get them. I suspect her tendency to listen to show and Disney tunes while working contributes to her success.

My third roommate is Erin:


Erin, to use a favorite British phrase, is epic. She's a very modern-day renaissance woman. She's from a small town in Colorado, which means she could probably climb Mount Everest while carrying her sherpa. Also, she's a philosophy major, so she talks about things that are so over my head it's like her brain climbed Mount Everest. She also takes award-winning photographs (the awards are yet to come, but I know they will), and someday I'm going to write for National Geographic and she's going to be my photographer (maybe we'll go to Mount Everest, where she will carry the sherpa and me and a huge camera up the mountain). Most importantly to my life, Erin and I have a regular backrub-exchange.

So those are my three housemates. I really enjoy living with them. Quite often, I'll walk into one of their rooms to tell them a quick something, and I'll end up standing there, leaning against their door, talking for an hour about grad school or religion or politics or philosophy (those are short conversations) or food (this conversation happens a lot) or just about homework and how our day is going. We like to dress up, we mostly eat pasta or curry, and we tend to sing songs about America whenever we feel especially patriotic. We sometimes find ourselves all sitting or lying in the hallway, we're pretty good at procrastination, and we have all developed an attachment to "House."

As four girls who live in a (slightly drama-filled) house together, we decided that we were like a very small version of a sorority. So we formed our own: Beta Rho (as in Banbury Road, get it?).


The four of us knew each other at Jewell, but I didn't know any of them very well before I moved in with them. I feel very blessed about how well our living arrangement has worked out. We spend most of our time together, and we get along really well and complement (and compliment, for that matter) each other. We're all kind of mothering each other (since our moms are, sadly, not in the same country as we are). It's been great.

So there's a really important part of my life: the wonderful girls with whom I live.

Also, on a totally unrelated note: I saw an billboard in the London Tube that made me very happy. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do:


Coming up next: a post about rowing (I know I've promised this post at least twice. I promise it's going to happen next).

Weather forecast for tonight: dark.

Thanks to the late (great?) George Carlin for that one.

So, let's talk about the weather here where I live.

According to Wikipedia, "England has a temperate climate, with plentiful rainfall all year round, although the seasons are quite variable in temperature. The prevailing wind is from the south-west, bringing mild and wet weather to England regularly from the Atlantic Ocean. Snowfall can occur in winter and early spring, although it is not that common away from high ground."

Just so you know, Oxford is away from high ground. So is London. Nevertheless, last week, Oxford, London, and the rest of Britain experienced THE HEAVIEST SNOWFALL IN 18 YEARS. I'm sure you've heard about it.

This was quite a big deal. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1132144/Its-going-week-Worst-snow-18-years-brings-Britain-slithering-halt--costs-economy-3bn.html (please note that they say Britain comes to a "slithering" halt. What great word choice. Just think of the images that evokes: cars sliding off the road, people slipping on icy sidewalks, snakes on a plane.)

According to The Daily Mail at , this snowstorm cost Britain 3 billion pounds. 6.4 million workers stayed home on February 2, and "London's buses were halted for the first time in living memory - they even continued to run during the Blitz - and the rail network ground to a predictable halt." Heathrow closed both of its runways (snakes on planes, you know), and a shortage of snowplows (which they spell snowploughs) meant that roads were dangerous and sidewalks were sheets of ice.

Now, I saw this snowstorm in Oxford. On February 2, when London was shutting down its buses and the Tube and millions of Britons were enjoying their days at home in front of radiators with cups of Earl Grey and biscuits with blackcurrant jam filling, I was crunching through the inch of snow wondering what the big deal was.

Here's what that "big" storm looked like in Oxford:


And here, to my everlasting joy, is what my neighbor girls did with the snow:


That's right. They made a pirate snowman. I think it's the cutest thing I've ever seen.

The big snowstorm didn't hit Oxford until February 5, a Thursday. You could tell it was coming on Wednesday. My rowing team went out to practice on the water, and our boat and paddles iced over as we rowed. It was quite cold. Thursday brought several inches of snow, which made everything look like this:


(PS, this is not my house. I forgot to take a picture of my house.)

And this:


My backyard.

And this:


Making us want to stay in all day like this:


That's Sabrina and Erin.



To the girls in my flat (three of us from Missouri and one of us from Colorado), the four inches of snow in Oxford wasn't a big deal in terms of stopping the world. In Kansas City, every street except N. Tracy would have been cleared and the sidewalks would have been iced or shovelled by 9 am (I say that with much optimism. This is always not true in Kansas City. But hey, when you're away from something, you only remember the good things, right?).

In Oxford, they had no snowploughs. My friend who lives south of Oxford saw some city workers clearing her street by hand: each of them shovelled his own little three-foot-wide strip of road. Where I live, they let the buses pack down tracks for tires. The sidewalks were deathwalks, except where they threw sand (as in, from a beach); then, they were muddy deathwalks.

I complain, but, truly, the snow was beautiful. The Thursday morning after the big snowstorm, my housemate Erin and I woke up at 6:15 and went down to the river (not voluntarily, it's a long story), and we saw the sun rise over brand-new, pristine snow. The sky was still filled with clouds, and so the sunrise reflected these gorgeous pinks and oranges onto the sky over the river. Honestly, beautiful.

Some snow is still here, over a week later. It's been going through a cycle that goes like this: melt, evaporate 5% of condensation, re-freeze; melt, evaporate 5% of condensation, re-freeze; melt...



And that's the weather report from Oxford. Just so you know, this was sort of a quintessentially British post. One of the first things I was told when I arrived here was to converse about weather in order to make friends here. You've heard that the British like to talk about the weather? It's so true.



Coming up next: a post about my housemates.

Procrastinators: leaders of tomorrow

Right now, I'm supposed to be writing a paper. But, see, I just don't care about Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and Mary Wollstonecraft and how they undermined each other during the pamphlet wars of the 1790s. Seriously, who does care about that? I mean, Paine wrote Common Sense and sort of started the Revolutionary War, and Wollstonecraft had some pretty radical (read: absolutely insane) ideas in A Vindication of the Rights of Women, but I don't get to write about either of those. And who, outside of Britain, has ever heard of Edmund Burke?

Actually, maybe if I rant a while longer, I'll just end up writing my paper right here on this blog. However, I will not subject you to a long-winded and short-interest essay. Instead, I figured I'd update you on what's been going on since I got back from break.

The weekend after I got back, my friend Jacque came to visit for three days. We visited several places, including Christ Church. Here I am, with my Harry Potter scarf on, in the Great Hall. Sadly, it does not have an enchanted ceiling like in the movie:



And here is Jacque on steps which you may recognize from The Sorcerer's Stone (Draco Malfoy: "Think my name's funny, do you?") or The Chamber of Secrets (Dumbledore: "Is there something you'd like to tell me, Tom?"):


While Jacque was here, my flat decided to do pedicures. I only mention this so I can post this picture:


Which makes me happy. Those are, from left to right: Robyn's legs, Sabrina's legs, Jacque's legs, my legs, and Erin's legs.

As I reminded everyone, my birthday was a week after I got back, January 16. I decided to give myself a birthday present, which was a trip to London on January 15 with my housemates Sabrina and Erin to see the musical Billy Elliot:


That's me with Erin. Billy Elliot was phenomenal: the kid who played Billy was a pretty good singer and oh man, could he dance. Sabrina and Erin and I were left speechless by the show: the songs were great (although the language was...appropriate to the 1980s British mining town in which it was set), the set was so cool and puzzle-like, and, again, the dancing rocked. Literally, rocked.

Anyway, we saw the matinee of Billy Elliot, and when we walked out, we saw the sign for Wicked across the street. We decided, on a whim, to see if there were tickets left for that night...and there were! Wicked is also amazing. So, happy birthday to me, I got to see two great shows in one day!

The next day, my birthday, I got woken up by my family via Skype, and then I opened the gifts they had sent me. I was pretty psyched to get a bunch of CDs, all of them movie soundtracks, and three out of five of them Disney soundtracks! I also got flowers sent to me again! I really love flowers. (Also, thanks to all of you who sent me birthday cards via e-mail or snail mail! I really appreciate it!)

That night I went to an Indian restaurant with my friends Erin, Brett (beard), Bill, Lena (next to me), Madison (white hat), Robyn, Lydia (green scarf), Ashton (big earrings), and Sabrina:


Then, a week after my birthday, Jacque visited again, this time accompanied (side note: I cannot pronounce that word, and I am always impressed by people who can) by our friend Nicole:


Nicole has this problem with opening her eyes in pictures. This is a chair made out of the ship in which Sir Francis Drake sailed. The wood of this chair is something like 500 years old.

That photo was taken in Oxford's Divinity School, where I learned something very important that I would like to pass on to you: British tour guides are so much better than American tour guides.

An American tour guide will take an awesome building, and proceed to tell you about the kind of rock it's made out of, where the rock was quarried, how many men carried the rock from the quarry, how much money it took to build the building, who gave the money, why they gave the money, the number of children they had, where they lived, how far that is in miles and kilometers from the building in which you're standing...basically, American tour guides, with few exceptions, talk until you feel as bored as the square stones you've been staring at for the past ten minutes. American tour guides have a script that they had to memorize, darn it, and they're sticking to it until they or (more likely) everyone on the tour dies. Don't deny it, you know it's true.

Conversely, a British tour guide tells you that the building is "typical British architecture, that is," that it's better than French architecture because French architecture is "more flamboyant," that one of the symbols in the stone is a pagan symbol, points out the Virgin Mary on the ceiling, then leaves you to contemplate the splendor of the building and ask whatever questions you have.

The next day, January 25, was the 250th anniversary of Robert Burns's (Burns'?) birth. Robert Burns was a pretty cool guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burns. To celebrate, we had dinner with our neighbors, the Mills family. We had traditional Scottish food--including haggis--read a Burns poem, and listened to Martin Mills address the haggis (as in, "hello, haggis," except poetically).

And then it felt like term officially began, because my tutors gave me homework. I have two tutorials this term: English Literature 1740-1832, which I have once a week; and Andrew Marvell (a seventeenth-century poet), which I have once every other week. I'm enjoying both so far, although I've discovered that seventeenth-century poetry is a bit over my head (which isn't hard to do, right, Reid?).

Coming up next: the rowing team, and an in-depth comparison of dinner in Jewell's cafeteria versus in Regent's Park's dining hall.