Showing posts with label wildlife. Show all posts
So I left America exactly a week ago today, and while I've been doing an okay job chronicling my adventures in the UK thus far, there are naturally some things I haven't had the chance to cover. So I present to you, dearreaderwizardpeople, the
10. Pants are dangerous.
Okay. So remember those pants I bought in a fit of desperation on my first day here? They were a pair of black skinny jeans from Primark, and they were very nice considering they cost only £9 (including sales tax - God Save the Queen!). I chose them because in my brief observation of real live British girls between the ages of 16-24, they seemed to fit the Oxford aesthetic. They were also really comfortable, and black matches everything. I like to think it was a pretty smart consumer decision, given that I know next to nothing about pants.
Anyway, somewhere around day 3 I began to pay attention to my nails. The accumulation of dirt under them, specifically. While my lifestyle involves running around doing a lot of random things, acquiring scrapes and bruises in mysterious ways, and occasionally literally getting my hands dirty, rarely do they look consistently unhygienic. That's when I noticed it wasn't just my nails - my hands were covered in dirt, too. And this had been happening for a couple of days.
"I think being here makes my hands dirty," was the theory I imparted to Anna.
"Really? My hands are fine," she said.
That night before bed, I peeled off my £9 black skinny jeans (one cannot simply take off skinny jeans. It's necessary to treat your legs like a banana if you want to remove them), and found that my legs were black. My pants may have protected me from the harsh British elements, but they also dyed my skin.
I hate pants.
And the Internet agrees with me.
That's all.
9. People are birds here.
I was walking past a bench of three my-age-ish guys a few days ago, and one of them went, "Hey!"
So I turned around, even though I figured he wasn't addressing me. But he looked right at me and chirped.
Like, full-on, honest-to-blog chirped. And raised his eyebrows. At me!
Was this the British version of whistling? I didn't know what to make of it, so I just went, "Good. Good," and went on my way.
I certainly didn't expect to experience that again, but when Josh and I arrived at Christ Church later that day, there was an entire crowd of people chirping! Loudly! Repeatedly! And that night we were walking through a crowded intersection, and it was like being in a bird house at, like, a really intense zoo.
Welcome to historic Oxford!
Chirpers everywhere. It seems to be more of a recreational activity than a form of communication, but I'm hardly an authority on the subject. Most mysteriously, on first glance it seems like the sound is coming directly from the chirpers' mouths, which caused my friends and I to spend a solid ninety seconds trying to figure out how to the hell to do it. Our efforts were unsuccessful.
I later heard a rumor that some clever entrepreneur invented a device that produces this noise. How anyone would market such a thing is baffling to me, but apparently it was effective.
8. Cultural discomfort
Saw the UK tour of Legally Blonde last night. "Gay or European" shifts a bit on the funny/uncomfortable scale when surrounded by actual Europeans.
But the UPS guy was incredible.
(This was not our UPS guy, by the way. Ours was much more attractive. His entrance stopped the show.)
7. "Ugh. Americans."
When most Americans catch a snippet of a British accent - or any foreign accent, really - they're generally excited. Here, I always see the little pause when I first speak to an Oxford native I don't know. The way words take just a half-second longer to come out of their mouths before they reply to me, the blink of surprise when I automatically say, "Have a good day," or whatever after buying something. It's not like they're unhappy about it, necessarily, but they're hardly thrilled.
So Anna, Josh, and I walked into a pub (spoiler alert: this is not the beginning of a joke), and I automatically began walking towards a table. Then Anna went, "Juli, you can't sit there. That's the dining section."
Behind me, I heard someone go, "Ugh. Americans."
Which is stupid because I am at least as much of a ditz at home as I am on foreign soil.
...But maybe that's the point.
6. Grass here is nice...
...because of all the rain. But if you want to walk on it, this happens.
5. THE 414 IS REAL
Once upon a time, Mikey and I went to Summerfest in the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I find Wisconsin hilarious for a number of reasons, including but not limited to their Cheese Castle and insistence on mispronouncing basic English words. An actual Milwaukee native from NU informed me that locals have several nicknames for their great city (so Mikey and I could fit in at Summerfest):
+ The 414
+ Chillwaukee
+ Illwaukee
+ Skrillwaukee (I can only assume the dubstep scene is hopping)
+ Killwaukee (due to the high homicide rate)
And my personal favorite...
+ The Ill Mill
And I met a guy at BADA who was wearing a Wisconsin shirt...
Me: Where are you from in Wisconsin?
Guy: Milwaukee.
Me: Oh, the 414!
Guy: Whoa yeah, dude, the 414! Are you from there?
Me: No.
This might only be funny to Mikey and I, but I'm really happy it happened.
4. I'm becoming more flexible!
Oxford is full of intelligent people who seriously underestimated the hygienic needs of the future residents of their dorms. Exhibit A: every time I try to shave my legs in my tiny shower, I have to do this:
Except I don't look anywhere near that good.
3. Cloistercise
When Josh and I failed to located an affordable gym, we decided to embark on a video workout program called Insanity. If you are considering doing Insanity yourself, here's what I can tell you: you're gonna suffer, but you're gonna be happy about it. On the first day we tried it, three other kids joined us, and due to the aforementioned grass rules, the five of us worked out in a cloister.
So I guess I can cross that off my to-do list.
2. Fine dining
On Sunday night we had a Welcome Feast - a formal, multi-course meal in Magdalen's dining hall, which is also incredibly Harry Potter-esque. Before dinner there was - shockingly - a drinks reception on the lawn, and then a man in a waiter's uniform came out, rang a bell, and went, "Dinner is served."
You guys. I am not important enough to dine in this manner. But I attempted to dress like I am.
NU killing it as usual.
1. I am Aladdin
Unfortunately, eating in our picture-perfect dining hall is less exciting when we're not being served. I'm convinced now that the Great Hall at Hogwarts only operates effectively because of the house elves. Normal meals are self-serve, so all 100-odd BADA students and faculty have to make our way through a buffet line to get food. This is made far more challenging than it should be due to the tiny tiny kitchen area preceding the dining hall itself.
By far the most coveted items at every meal are the rolls, which are in a bin by the cutlery. Not only are they warm and consistently delicious, but they're also one of the few things I can eat as a vegetarian. But I'm never at meals early enough to get the rolls. It's become a law of my existence that the last roll will be taken at approximately the time I enter the dining hall. Luckily, I figured out that the roll bin is refilled throughout the dinner hour, and also that no one will yell at you if you're stealthy about re-entering the kitchen.
I should maybe be more concerned that Disney lyrics are suddenly so relevant to my life, but the rolls are delicious so I decided I don't care.
Today marks my third day at BADA, and while I regret to say that I have not yet acquired my own cool accent, met David Beckham, become best friends with Alex Day, or seduced a member of the British royal family, I HAVE...
1. not yet been run over by a car (and while this may sound rudimentary, any of my friends in the US will tell you that it's hard enough for me when the traffic goes the normal way),
2. been given a free, legal sample of some sort of alcoholic beverage,
3. conversed with a BADA faculty member who refers to Maggie Smith fondly as "Megala,"
4. located excellent Thai food,
5. and three Pret a Mangers in a one-mile radius,
6. managed to dress somewhat appropriately for the weather,
7. caught up on So You Think You Can Dance (not a Britain-related activity, but VERY VERY important), and
8. gained Arthur Weasley levels of British plug knowledge.
If you're wondering why so little of this is acting-related, it's because classes at BADA don't begin until tomorrow. We learned the groups that we'll be with for the next four weeks today, and by total happy accident I'm with my friends Anna and Josh from NU. There's definitely a Northwestern Mafia presence here - seven of us - and anyone who has someone else here from their acting class is in a group with the person from their acting class. I don't know what the odds of that are, but I'm guessing pretty minuscule. Of course, I've also concluded that this place is magical, so all normal bets are off.
Anyway, we've had the weekend to sort of run around doing whatever we want. The only all-BADA event so far was dinner on the first night, which was preceded by a free drinks reception on the lawn of our castle. On the first day of college in the US, you're immediately bombarded with videos and presentations and lectures about how Drinking Is Bad, If You Drink You WILL Get Pregnant And Die, etc., and on the first day of summer acting school in Britain everyone's all, come! have free champagne! Tonight is our formal welcome dinner, and it is preceded by - you guessed it - drinks.
I'm beginning to wonder if "high tea" doesn't actually, you know, refer to tea.
I did the pub thing last night and the night before with NU friends, and even though I'm two years over the drinking age here, it still feels like I shouldn't even be allowed in. Of course, I still run into #shitlikethis:
Bartender: The kitchen's closed.
Me: Oh, I'm still deciding what I want.
Bartender: It's after 10. The kitchen's closed.
Me:
Me:
Me:
Me:
And then Anna, Josh, and I left for a different pub. The place where we ended up was next to the place where we really should have been - Copa, which was filled with drunk, dancing people undoubtedly looking for a random snog and playing music you could hear across the street. So why weren't we there? Oh, because it was casually the kind of place where people in cocktail dresses enter after emerging from fancy cars. We were clearly underdressed and probably outclassed. But I still wanted to check it out, so I went, "Guys, come on, let's just take a gander at it." And the bouncer just held up a hand like, honey, don't even think about it.
Clearly, I have not yet developed British sophistication. But I'm working on it.
Anyway, pubs are very prevalent here. Less prevalent are gyms. I discovered this when Josh and I walked around for two hours yesterday looking for a reasonably-priced way to stay fit (in the American sense) and fit (in the English sense). The closest one to Magdalen College, where we're staying, no longer exists. A short membership at LA Fitness costs about $200. Our only other option was over a mile away - which I know because we walked most of the way there.
So our quest did not lead us to a gym, but it did lead us somewhere better: to Christ Church, another college at Oxford.
Reasons Christ Church is famous
1. The Cathedral is gorgeous:
(iPod took these because I didn't have my camera with me.)
2. It has a bell called Great Tom that strikes 101 times at 9:05 every night (luckily, Magdalen is too far away for this to piss me off).
3. It was the school and home of Charles Dodgson, better immortalized in pop culture as Lewis Carroll, author of Alice In Wonderland. And Alice was real! She was one of the children of Christ Church's then-dean. His relationship with the dean's kids was sort of akin to J.M. Barrie and the Llewelyn Davies kids - Dodgson told them stories about Wonderland, and, famously, made Alice the star of them. The stained glass windows in Christ Church's dining hall are filled with Wonderland imagery, which is an awesome surprise when you're expecting cherubs, or whatever.
4. This:
which, by the way, is also
this - oh, and
5. This:
which is where
this happened, and
6. This:
which casually inspired
this.
You know. Whatever.
I went here on my Unofficial Harry Potter Tour of Britain ten years ago, and while I hope to have changed in some ways since then, my thought process at Christ Church was pretty much identical.
Oh my God, Hogwarts is real.
Where is my Hogwarts letter.
This is where Harry learned to fly!
This place is amazing.
THE STAIRS I'M ABOUT TO GET SORTED.
How did they edit out the white marks on the stairs in the movies?
THE GREAT HALL.
I'm thirsty.
I want pumpkin juice.
Even excluding Christ Church's pop cultural significance, it's still amazing to be in a place where so many things have happened that mattered, and continue to matter. There's a gravitas possessed by these places and Europe that doesn't totally exist in the States.
Also, they name things correctly here. For example: in Illinois, I live near a place called Deer Park. Deer Park is having an identity crisis. It has its own zip code, like a town, but as far as I know the only area in Deer Park is a mall of the same name. I attribute Deer Park's confusion to its misnomering; it very clearly contains neither deer nor a park. So when I looked at the map of Magdalen College and saw a Deer Park, I was like, okay, whatever, it's probably a meadow at best.
But no.
You guys.
It's a park.
With deer.
And not just one deer, like you occasionally see lost in the woods at home.
A HERD of deer.
This is where I ran this morning. Around a castle. Among deer.
Did I mention this place is magical?
