Under Stars and Over Seas: Angels, Stars, Markets, and Pub Lunches

There are angels on the ceiling of the New College chapel. They rise from the rafters like figureheads on ships, wooden candles clutched tightly in their grasp and wings outstretched in flight.

When the choir sings it sounds like angels too; voices echoing through the cavern-like space as the organ song races the sound around carved wood and curved stone. Candles flicker beside each seat, providing just enough light for us to read our hymnals by, at least until we could walk out into the dark cloisters and shiver through the end of the service. Above our little flickering candles the ever present clouds in the sky cleared and for the first time since arriving in Oxford I caught a glimpse of my beloved stars.

There is a big difference between reading about the stars and actually seeing them. Because of my Astronomical Mythology course I may know the constellation stories of Andromeda and Gemini, but I have missed the familiar sights of Orion and Cassiopia over my head.

The clouds have since returned to the sky, but I appreciated the clarity they gave me during my first church service in England this past Thursday evening.

Before the service, though, I had a rather busy Thursday. It started with a tutorial for Shakespeare in the morning and then moved to a lunch of fish and chips (how very British of me) at The Eagle and Child. That particular pub is famously known as being C. S. Lewis' and J. R. R. Tolkien's meeting place for their writing group every Tuesday, where they and a few other writers shared drinks and critiqued each others' work. It was incredible to sit in the building they had, aspiring writers coming together and reveling in each others' created worlds.

After lunch my roommate and I spent several hours in the Ashmolean Museum, an Oxford museum that rivals the Fitzwilliam in both size and content. We only got through about half of it (maybe three of the five floors?) before heading over to the chapel service. So we'll have to finish up sometime in the next few weeks. After the service New College was offering a free dinner in the dining hall, so it was nice not to have to cook for an evening.

The day before all of that, Wednesday, I went to the covered market down the street from the study abroad office. I wandered for a while, staring at all the bakery delights, scarves, books, and blueberries, before caving and buying a bag of bananas and a container of fresh dumplings. Worth the splurge in my opinion.

Afterwards I'd gone back up to the office and offered people bananas (I had gotten a lot of them rather inexpensively) just to see the surprise on their faces when I pulled them out of my bag. I think the term banana fairy would be appropriate, if maybe a little ridiculous.

The rest of the week was decidedly uneventful, as I needed to finish the papers for my upcoming tutorials. The majority of my day today was spent in the Radcliffe Camera building of the Bodleian doing research on Othello, a Shakespeare play built entirely upon manipulation and misunderstandings. But it was either that or Romeo and Juliet, so I figured I'd pick the play I hadn't already read six times.

When the library closed and they essentially kicked us out (I've never heard someone say so politely with a British accent, "Get out please" before now) we stopped at Sainsburys (another grocery store) on the way back to the flat. During that trip I realized two things. One is to never again go there on a Sunday. I'll spare you all the gory details, but let's just say the queue was almost out the door. The second thing I realized was that grocery shopping has become a large part of my life. There are fewer preservatives in English food, meaning that a lot of it goes bad quicker than the American food I'm used to. Thus I must frequently return to Tescos or Sainsburys for food on regular basis. No Costco bulk items here. Which wouldn't be so bad if the store wasn't a twenty minute walk both ways (carrying my computer bag and several grocery bags for that long is sometimes a painful inconvenience). But I'll survived, and as previously mentioned, this will serve as my work out while I'm here. I'll just have great calves when I go home.

Hauling groceries back to the flat today (over the bridge, down the path, under the railroad tracks) I was met by the image of a beautiful sunset over the Thames, the end result of a day where the sun was shining for much of it.

It was weird to realize I hadn't seen a sunset in so long, and I had to stop and put my groceries down long enough to take a picture.

It was an overall very nice ending to a really good week. So I'll leave you with that.

Good night Oxford and good morning California,

Sam