Update from Portugal

[Author's note: posted from Houston, Bush International -- hello America, success in returning from the UK!]

Greetings from London Heathrow! Where I’m trying to get off the ground for the second day in a row… After a week full of travel, I lugged my bags from Oxford to Heathrow yesterday, only to wait for several hours as my flight back to the States was delayed… and delayed… and finally cancelled. Not the best way to start my travels home, but United put all the passengers from said flight up in a hotel, and here I am again this morning, hoping I’ll have some better travel karma this time around.

A very Iberian church in Faro, near the house where we stayed

The travel karma has been strange this week indeed: sometimes horrendous, with delays and awfully early wake-up times, but mostly full of new places, new discoveries, and good company and good food. (Sitting by myself in Heathrow excepted.) Last week, after finishing my big Oxford paper and figuring out how to submit it in the examination schools at long last, I celebrated the end of the term through doing some Christmas shopping, running around Oxford doing some errands, and teaching the Rhodes ASL group how to sign some Christmas songs (too fun). Then, after making a brief appearance at another Rhodes House “meet and mingle” event on Friday night, it was off to bed – since my friend Rachel and I had to get up at 3am to make a 3:45am bus from Oxford to the airport. Ouch. We got to London Luton, one of London’s secondary airports, all of which are painfully far from Oxford, at 5:30am for our 7:30 flight, only to find that air traffic control was down in the UK (for all UK airports; what a travel nightmare) and our flight was about to be delayed for three or so hours. We sat on the plane, since the flight crew warned that we ought to be ready to take off in case the radio broadband system came back up and aircraft could get off the ground, but didn’t leave until around 10am. So much for that early wake-up call…

Faro streets during "magic hour" lighting

An afternoon lounging by the Mediterranean to make up for English weather? I think yes

Still, once we got to Faro, on the southernmost coast of Portugal, the amazing sun, blue skies, and warm weather made it all worth it! (Though that wasn’t the end of the travel woes; two of our friends, who had planned on joining us in Faro later on Saturday, wound up having their flight cancelled and couldn’t come until late Sunday, with several massive travel headaches along the way. Clearly we’ve been passing around the bad-luck jar for flights in the past week.) I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed the sun and the sky until I stood in a T-shirt again, with sunglasses on, feeling hot and soaking up the rays. Rachel and I joined up with a few other Rhodies studying for a big end-of-term exam in Faro, and while we largely left them to their own devices and studious vibes we did get to enjoy a few dinners and outings together, including a beach afternoon on Sunday. Wandering around the old part of Faro, grabbing cheap Portuguese coffee, taking photos, and sitting out on the beach with a good book and nothing else to do was the perfect way to wrap up a hectic Oxford term. Faro is small, quiet, and empty, especially in the off-season, and it’s very easy to see the effects the recession has had on the city, but the architecture was still striking, whitewashed with red brick roofs and tiled walls and bright colors.

The American and Canadian ladies in Faro

Chapel of the Bones: detail (alas, poor Yorick! /many Yoricks?)

On Monday morning, the three study trippers we’d been staying with headed back to Oxford to take their exam, and Rachel and I met up with the two other aforementioned friends (both Canadian Rhodies who are in St. John’s with me) for another quiet day in Faro. We visited the cathedral and one of the other main churches, both of which had bone chapels. Yes, chapels made of human bones – apparently of hundreds (actually, thousands) of monks who had lived at those churches at some point in local history. The chapel of the bones is apparently a Portuguese tradition, and it’s something I want to write about more at some point, it raised such chilling and fascinating thoughts in me. Alas, poor Yorick, and all that – except we’re talking about the bones and crumbling skulls of hundreds and hundreds of Yoricks, looking down on visitors from the walls of the chapel. I think two or three of us were similarly engrossed, though one of my friends was definitely very creeped out. Anyway, after our sightseeing we found a restaurant in one of the city plazas, sat out in the sun for a glorious two-hour-long three-course meal with wine and coffee for only €8.50 (cheap travel win), and then boarded the train to head up to Lisbon.

Lisbon square with Portuguese flag flying

Lisbon is quite a different city from Faro, though parts of it had the same quiet, crumbling, engrossingly melancholy feeling. The four of us spent Tuesday and Wednesday wandering around the city (and continuing the same pattern of eating, chatting, relaxing, and avoiding thinking about anything academic) before Rachel and I flew back out on Wednesday night. We kept our pace slow across the course of those two days, but still saw a great deal: Lisbon Cathedral, the Castelo de Sao Jorge (a medieval castle up on a hill), some plazas and museums and churches and monasteries, and some waterfront fortresses and monuments to Portuguese seafaring and discovery. One of those fortresses is the place where Magellan began his voyage back in the day, and is also one spot where Christopher Columbus stopped on his way back from the New World. At the far end of Europe, along the Iberian peninsula, I did feel the vast space of Atlantic Ocean calling to me. Photos abounded, of course.

Lisbon skyline from Castelo de Sao Jorge

Lisbon Cathedral, with tram lines

Like Faro, Lisbon wasn’t at its most outgoing and touristy, probably because it was the off season, but we enjoyed ourselves just the same – and I appreciated not shoving my way through a large city consumed by crowds. The place reminded me quite a bit of San Francisco, not in terms of architecture or city vibe but by virtue of being built on a series of steep, winding hills. We took the famous Tram 28, a wire-car trolley that winds up and down the hills through the old part of Lisbon, on Tuesday and it felt much like riding one of those cable cars from the wharves through downtown San Francisco. Add in the fact that Lisbon is built around a large bay, and that the 25th of April Bridge across the bay is a suspension bridge that looks remarkably similar to the Golden Gate, and I was yearning after NorCal a bit over the course of the two days. The food wasn’t NorCal food, exactly, but it was rather amazing in its own right – lots of good seafood, egg custard tarts and other pastries, the aforementioned cheap coffee, and a Portuguese wine called vino verde (“green wine”) that was incredibly cheap but incredibly good. We had it for sangria one night and I could have drunk it all night – good thing it ran out after a few refills. I also think I had the best salmon of my life while in Faro. (The others agreed, since we went back to the same seafood restaurant two nights in a row and gorged ourselves.)

Another view from Sao Jorge

All in all, I’m glad for the opportunity to get out of Oxford for a few days, get to know some incredible people better, and appreciate a different slice of the world before heading home. There’s honestly no better way to get to know people than traveling with them, talking with them, and figuring out how they tick over the course of several days together, and I got back to Oxford late on Wednesday night (slash early Thursday morning, aka 4:30am) itching to go out and take more Euro trips with friends. I’ve got one planned already, an epic week in a castle in France during the last week of winter break, and am thinking about others for the spring vacation. Can’t wait for more wanderings, more food, more prolonged conversations about interesting subjects, and more discoveries about myself and others and the world around us. All of those things are best achieved through travel, I think, or just about.

Torre de Belem looking fortress-like

Jerónimos Monastery near Belem; the interior had some of the most fascinating Gothic architecture I've seen

But, first, one more bout of travel – all the way home to Albuquerque, where more friends and family await, and where I’ll get to enjoy the comforts of home for a few weeks before new horizons beckon again! Now just to get on this plane…

Oxford Term: Done!

Or close enough. After holing up in the aforementioned study cave for the past week, reading critical articles and writing and spinning myself in circles thinking about melancholia, loss, kinship, and language in Toni Morrison's Beloved, I've just about finished my long C-course essay for the term. After one more glance over in the morning to make sure my tired eyes haven't missed any glaringly awful sentences or arguments or pieces of nonsense (which at this point is very possible), I'll print it out and submit it by lunchtime tomorrow.

Which will be quite a process in itself: turning in a paper at Oxford isn't at all the same as turning in a paper at Stanford, or probably at any other institution. At Stanford, if I had to turn in a hard copy of my final papers at all, I dropped them off at my professors' offices or department mailboxes. Most of the time I just emailed them in, and pressing that "send" button felt so sweet. Farewell, dear paper! Done. Oxford, however, has strict and rather detailed assessment criteria -- for instance, my paper will be read not only by my primary lecturer/professor for the class, but also by a second reader within the department, who will be someone thoroughly unfamiliar with me and my work. If the two don't come to a suitable agreement on what mark my work deserves, the paper will go to another third reader, this time from outside of Oxford, who will arbitrate between parties and settle on my final score. Thinking about it too much gets rather stressful! (Even if, yes, I appreciate the value of objectivity and honest feedback and all that.) On top of that, the procedures for submitting the paper itself get very complicated. Forget sending an email, and forget dropping by the academic department/faculty office. All papers submitted for official evaluation at the University of Oxford must be printed out, prefaced with a cover sheet and declaration form, and taken to the university's examination schools (a fancy, large building in the center of Oxford where all students sit for their examinations, yes in formal wear and gowns). There, I'll have to brave the queues of other tired students at the end of their term and figure out the correct submission envelopes and fill out the forms and, finally, drop off my paper to go off into the cold, unforgiving world of academic evaluation.

I just looked up the step-by-step procedures for submitting my paper to the examination schools; they went on for six or seven paragraphs, probably more. The requirements are voluminous, and I'm feeling like, by the time I walk over tomorrow and complete the submission process, I will have accomplished something indeed. Maybe that is the point?

And, secondary bonus… once I print out and submit this paper, then take an easy end-of-the-term examination for another course tomorrow, it's time for packing and then off to Portugal! Updates on that coming at some point, but possibly not until I get back to the U.S. to spend the holidays. Until then, adeus! (Goodbye in Portuguese, or so Google Translate tells me.) Can Michaelmas be done already?

In the Study Cave for the Day...

…but that doesn't mean nothing else is going on. First of all, tea! Coffee! Crumpets! Study dates! My time in cafes has increased as I try to crank out this paper, and the good thing is many of my friends are working on papers too and are willing to keep me company.

It's not all nerding out, though. Or, at least, it doesn't mean that the nerding out doesn't take a variety of forms. I've been to a few department and Rhodes House lectures this week, the first by Dame Helen Ghosh, a Rhodes Trustee and the Director General of the National Trust (and former permanent secretary of the UK's Home Office). Dame Helen's talk centered around her career background, particularly as it pertains to advice for women wanting to pursue influential careers in the public or governmental sectors. Though many Rhodes narratives seem to revolve around the idea of success, which I and a few of the other scholars find problematic (is it all we should be talking about here?), it's still enjoyable to hear the stories of those who have taken their interests and talents in many different directions.

I also attended the English Faculty's annual Professor of Poetry lecture yesterday in one of the halls of Oxford's Examination Schools. It did not disappoint, because even though I found the speaker a bit abstruse in his subject matter and presentation style, he was one of those old Oxford academic types with an incredibly bushy white beard, a cane, spectacles, and volumes upon volumes of poetry. And he burst into song halfway through the lecture, amidst discussing eighteenth century philosophic and operatic influences on the poetic tradition. Seeing someone who looks like Socrates singing in the middle of a grand vaulted Oxford hall: enough said.

The theme of poetry didn't stop there, either: I got to go to a poetry night last night at Rhodes House, in which a bunch of us sat around in a circle and discussed four different poems centered on the idea of "power." A lot of the Rhodes House events tend to revolve around policy applications or more practical things, so it was nice to have a night dedicated to open-ended humanistic discussion for a change. Wine and cheese didn't hurt either. And how refreshing it feels, to be in a community full of people (from many different disciplines) who are so unabashedly eager to spend their evening talking about poetry, or whatever other intellectual idea you toss in their paths. One of my friends was joking that the sign for "Rhodie" ought to be based on the sign for "nerd," and I think she's right. Maybe that should be the sign for general "Oxford student," too. It's too true.

Weekend Gems in Oxford

This weekend was my last weekend in Oxford before leaving for traveling and home, and while I'd been invited to go do some fun things around the UK (someone had invited me to a big Thanksgiving dinner in London on Saturday, and a friend of mine was heading up to Stratford-Upon-Avon today and urged me to go with her) I ultimately decided to stick around Oxford to buckle down and work on my end-of-term paper. Study cave time. I braced myself.

And so I headed to a cafe yesterday morning, then met some friends at the library to buckle down all afternoon yesterday… but that doesn't mean a few other fun things didn't wind up happening, some of them unexpectedly. First of all were a few lovely lunch and dinner dates at St. John's, which has suddenly decked out its hall with a gigantic Christmas tree and some garlands and other Christmas decorations. With the American Thanksgiving festivities officially over, I'm much more in the mood for Christmas and felt very much like I'd walked into the Great Hall getting ready for the Yule Ball in Harry Potter (or almost -- these Harry Potter references never get old). Food and good company: as warm and merry and enjoyable as always.

Then a few friends and I, after heading out on a long walk around the area near Blenheim Palace last weekend, decided to escape from our studies and take another tramp out in the English outdoors this afternoon. We headed out from Oxford this time, walking through the University Parks past some sports teams at play (some of them shirtless in the cold afternoon weather -- what?) and out into some farmland and sprawling fields and open space. We crisscrossed several of those fields, chatted and walked past herds of curious cows, then eventually made our way back to a glorious late-afternoon burst of sun over the meadows. The conversation had veered over several topics over the course of those hours, and we'd wound up talking about cartwheels and backflips and other aerobic exercises (while discussing physical fitness requirements for the U.S. military) -- so there we stopped, in the middle of that meadow, and let loose. One of my friends taught us what she knew, and we all tried our hands at cartwheels and backbends and handstands and then, grass-stained and a bit exuberant, headed back home in the golden sunset, probably one of the absolute prettiest I've seen thus far at Oxford. That pure, rich, beautiful light! Nothing like the UK to make you appreciate the sun.

I had planned on returning to my paper then, but one of the friends from my walk this afternoon mentioned that she was headed to see Ian McEwan speak at her college, Hertford, this evening. "No way," I said. "Ian McEwan? Why didn't I hear about that?" She urged me to go with her, and I waffled, saying that I didn't have a sign interpreter. She persisted, saying she'd write out what he was saying for me. I should come! It was sorely tempting. I've read McEwan's Atonement and have had a few of his other novels on my to-read list for a while. I'm also going to be studying him in a contemporary literature class next term. And… he's Ian McEwan. Sure, why not. I knew the communication might not be perfect, but thanked my friend and told her I would go.

Ian McEwan is thin, lanky, and wears an expression of thoughtfulness. He looks extremely astute while he is speaking, but although I'd positioned myself near the front so I could fix my gaze upon his face, I unfortunately can't say that made his British accent any easier to understand. My friend, bless her heart, took notes for me the entire time, and while looking over her shoulder I was able to get the overall thread of McEwan's thought. He talked about literary realism from the perspective of the mistakes and factual errors writers inadvertently make in their writing, which prompted him to share several passages from his own novels and share several stories of letters from readers checking his facts. As someone who is fascinated by the use of narrative detail in literature, it was a great talk, or seemed like it was. I sorely wished I'd been able to get every word, but even the bits I did gather were provocative. And I got a book signed by him afterwards! And I met him face-to-face and breathed the same air he did. (Literary groupie alert, even while in another sense I remain mystified by the exact relationship that exists between writers and their readers/adoring fans.)

Even if I had to stave off the disappointment that arose from not quite being able to access the entire lecture as well as I would have liked (GAH IAN McEWAN IS SPEAKING AND I CANNOT UNDERSTAND HIM), I still walked out feeling stirred by what it means to be here. Not only stirred by Oxford's stellar range of speakers and events and opportunities, but also stirred by the generosity and considerateness of the friends who do everything they can to include me, even when that means giving their time and their energy when the situation is not ideal. I've met many of those people here and am so reassured and so inspired by their kindness.

A great weekend, indeed. Now, back to the paper, as ever.