Spring Break Travels Part II: A Tramp Through Albania

After we left Istanbul last Saturday, our Turkish Airlines flight landed in Albania at around 8:30pm local time. It felt immediately apparent, I thought, that we had arrived in a different place. Gone was the general hubbub and chaos of the Istanbul airport, as well as the crowds of Turkish men holding up signs written in Turkish, Arabic, and other languages I didn't recognize. The Albanian airport was small and quiet, and we again opted to take a taxi straight to our hostel instead of trying to navigate an unfamiliar city in the dark.

Before I left for Albania, several people asked me why I was going there. Well, I had never been to Eastern Europe before, and my friend Cate and I were looking for a cheap place to travel, especially to go visit the Albanian coast, which we'd heard was beautiful. Albania was listed as #4 on the New York Times's top places to travel in 2014. We had read interesting things about the country's history and culture. And Albania was easier to get to and travel around from Istanbul than Croatia, another Eastern European coastal destination we were considering.

Indeed, the country ended up being extremely cheap (traveling with our stipend given to us in British pounds can be a huge gift), and the coast was beautiful. Otherwise, I think Albania surprised us in several ways. First of all, the country has a long and fraught history of being fought over and passed around from empire to empire, and it only recently emerged from a long-lived and oppressive communist government. The political situation is still shaky, and it is one of the poorest countries in Europe. (It did, however, join NATO a few years ago and is petitioning to join the EU, the status of which is looking uncertain right now.) I read, while we were there, that Albanians were not allowed to travel abroad or leave the country until 1990, the year I was born. That isn't that long ago, and the time the country has had to turn itself around from the communist regime is shorter than I've been alive. The signs of the communist state are everywhere in Albania: old clunky-looking, sometimes dilapidated concrete 1960s-era buildings, cement bunkers all over (and I mean all over), a lack of central city planning and zoning laws/public infrastructure in Tirana and other places, graffiti from recent years protesting in support of freedom and democracy. There was also a piece of the Berlin Wall in one of the main squares of Tirana. It was an eye-opening experience to consider the consequences of living under an unstable government, especially for someone from the U.S. who takes those things for granted. (And who is currently studying in the UK, where national history is even longer-lived, even though the days of empire have declined.) Albania did not feel like the first world or like Europe, and I think walking its streets and meeting its people was a good exercise for my expanding global political consciousness.

The people there were amazing for sure. We had heard about the Albanian people's hospitality and friendliness, and everyone we met was generous and willing to help us, even when they did not speak English. Funny story and one of the highlights of our trip: one of my sign language interpreters in Oxford is good friends with an Albanian woman who owns a hostel in the country's capital, Tirana. The way they met was through another British/BSL interpreter who is currently her boyfriend; the two of them live in the hostel now and are actively involved in the Albanian deaf community. Small world! I knew I had to stay at that particular hostel in Tirana, and I'm happy we did. Our new friends chatted with us about Albania's history and its sights and people and made us feel thoroughly at home. We spent one day in Tirana, wandering the streets and people-watching, before we headed to the city of Vlore on the Albanian coast.

Getting to Vlore was an adventure in itself -- it was pouring rain the morning we left, and we had called a taxi to get across town to the bus station. Due to some confusion with getting the cab to the hostel, we left a little late and were worried about missing our bus, but funnily enough Albania is such a small country that everyone seemingly knows everyone; our taxi driver somehow knew the phone number of the bus driver/bus company, and called ahead to ask him to wait for our arrival. Upon getting to the bus station (which wasn't really a bus station, but a side street of Tirana where all the buses parked alongside the road, signs up haphazardly in their windows to indicate their final destination), the bus driver took our bags, shepherded us on the bus, and we were off. We had learned that there is no printed or publicized bus schedule or public transportation schedule anywhere in Albania, but the locals all know how to get around! The miserable weather continued on the drive, and we couldn't see much of the Albanian countryside from the bus except for buildings immediately on the side of the road. Again, there are no zoning laws or permits in the country, so people have been able to build whatever they want across the green plains and rolling hills. The result was, again, haphazard, isolated and sometimes half-finished buildings popping over in assorted places and no quaint or picturesque town planning at all. And, again, many many bunkers in the ground everywhere. Apparently the communist government in its later years got so paranoid about outside invasion that the leader of Albania ordered that hundreds of thousands of bunkers be built all across the country. There was one bunker for every four people or something like that.

We got to Vlore and the rain was still coming down hard. Instead of wandering the city (which looked as grim as a lot of Albanian cities did, for all its picturesque location along the coast), we got a cab to go straight to our hotel. We'd chosen this hotel for its location right along the Mediterranean; it was built into a cliff overlooking the beautiful, undulating, deep blue sea. Once our taxi driver got us there and we checked in, we looked out on the water and decided we weren't leaving. And so we didn't, more or less, for three days. The weather wasn't as cooperative as we would have liked, but each day did bring some glimmers of sun and many hours of looking out on the water. After tramping all around Istanbul, it was nice to have a few days of pure down time, eating cheaply and reading and writing and pondering that ocean. This was my first time visiting the Mediterranean (okay, unless you count Portugal last December), and the color of the sea was mesmerizing: sometimes a dark cobalt blue, sometimes a lively turquoise or almost green. The waters were amazingly clear, and the changing light of each day made for a range of different hues and rhythms of the waves. I finished reading some books, did some writing, hit the gym for a bit each day, and watched some movies/TV. The hotel was extremely quiet, it being the off-season, and although we were ready to leave by the end of three days there we also appreciated having few people around. I'll be visiting Greece for around two weeks later this break, and this trip made me so excited to return to the Mediterranean and the other coastal panoramas and beaches there!

After our R&R at the Albanian coast hotel, Cate and I headed back to Tirana for one more day before flying back to Oxford. Again, the weather was awful and made us hole up inside for much of that afternoon after the (again very backcountry) bus ride, but the evening brought a special treat: our Albanian hostel friends took us out to a meeting of the local Tirana deaf club. The deaf community in Albania is an emerging phenomenon, since in the days of communism deaf people and other people with disabilities were more oppressed and isolated than even the average citizen. Deaf people rarely got to visit each other, were often kept at home with no access to language and other resources, and rarely got to use any form of sign language. After the fall of that regime, the community was able to come together and grow, and there are currently efforts in Albania (not by the government, but by self-organized organizations and even some help from outside entities) to give deaf people more empowerment and life skills than they've ever had before. Albanian sign language, I found, is very different from ASL, and it is also an emerging language: a few decades ago, all deaf people had was a rudimentary system of fingerspelling and some gestures, but now that the deaf community has had more opportunity to congregate publicly a broader and more complex system of sign language is developing. Fascinating stuff!

The Albanian deaf people we met were amazingly friendly, patient, and kind; a few of them knew some international sign language, which I found borrows from ASL more than I had thought. One or two others had had the chance to travel to America to visit Gallaudet and pick up some ASL. But most of the others only knew Albanian sign, and I had to resort to trying to use gestures to sort out what they meant. We somehow worked it out, even though we didn't understand most of what each other was saying. One thing I discovered about Albanian deaf people, and probably deaf people all around the world, was how eager they are to communicate in sign, even if it's a different system of sign. They were excited that an American deaf person had come to visit their social gathering, and I wound up learning some Albanian signs and they some American signs. Meeting other people who also hold that sort of communication access dear, and who are willing to try again and again to achieve it, was a wonderful experience. (I also reflected afterwards that a lot of these Albanians probably didn't know English, and yet through sign language we were able to understand each other a bit, if far from perfectly.) After the main deaf club meeting, we joined a few deaf people at a nearby cafe/bar, and I learned more about different sign languages and the international deaf community. Even if not in ASL, there's something special about taking the time every once in a while to have a conversation solely in sign. I was proud of Cate, too, for taking the plunge into the hands-flying, visually overwhelming world of sign language after only learning ASL for a few months. Always great to have that sort of signing company, especially while on travel.

We left the deaf gathering around 9pm that last night in Tirana, made our way back to the hostel, then got up early the next morning to make it to the airport. Since we'd flown Turkish Airlines, our plane took us back to Istanbul, where I had one last (yummy) piece of baklava before boarding my new flight back to London. Cate and I parted ways there, since she was headed to Paris for a few more days of vacation, and I ended up back in Oxford at the end of a long 12-hour travel day, tired and admittedly wanting to wash my clothes and shower and sit in my bed, but very very happy to have made it back from traveling without incident this time! Being able to traipse the world like this is a gift, and I've enjoyed a weekend of catching up with other friends in Oxford, as well as reflecting on some of the perspectives I've gained through visiting these very different places. Now, dissertation reading beckons, and I've got two more weeks here to dive into schoolwork before the next adventure: Greece!

Signing off for now.

Spring Break Travels Part I: Istanbul, Constantinople, Istanbul!

Well, I think I'm a little tanner (maybe?) after spending two weeks away from cloudy and damp lands! And I've certainly learned a lot and gained additional perspective on global places, different cultures, and world politics. To jump right into it:

Last Monday, after printing out and submitting my two essays for Hilary term to Oxford's Exam Schools, my friend Cate and I boarded the bus to head to Gatwick airport. Our first travel destination was Istanbul, a city both of us had wanted to visit for a while. The main connections I had with Istanbul, before traveling there, were memories of my ninth grade history class, in which we discussed the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, which followed the Eastern Roman Empire (and later the Holy Roman Empire). This time in my studies is a blur in my mind by this point, but I remember discussing trade routes, the intersections of culture, and how Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453, marking the end of the Middle Ages, at least according to some historians. I was fascinated by the idea of visiting the old city of Constantinople and seeing the architecture there, from Roman times through Christianization and later Islamic influence. I'd also gotten excellent recommendations for mosques and bazaars to visit, and baklava and Turkish delight to eat -- always a must to experience new cuisines!

Overall, the city did not disappoint. We arrived in Istanbul late on Monday evening and decided to take a taxi to our hostel rather than try to navigate foreign Turkish streets and public transportation systems in the dark. Notable on the drive was cruising past the old stone walls of Constantinople, and seeing the minarets of several of Istanbul's main mosques soaring upward in the dark. We both got very excited to see the city in daytime, and after crashing and getting a good night's sleep (always a must after a hectic Oxford term), we got up the next morning and gazed down our hostel's cobblestoned street to see a collection of Turkish cafes, hotels, and rug shops. We'd opted to stay in the Old City, which meant that we were near the main squares and buildings of Constantinople, the things we were most interested in. True to that interest, after a very Mediterranean breakfast of cucumbers, olives, tomatoes, and feta cheese (yes), we headed up the short hill from our hostel and straight to the Hagia Sophia.

The Hagia Sophia, followed by the neighboring Blue Mosque, was the place I'd most wanted to visit on this trip. It was first constructed as a Greek Orthodox basilica in 537, built on the site of several earlier churches by Justinian I. The name "Hagia Sophia" dedicates the church to the holy wisdom of God. For many centuries, the immense building functioned as a Christian church, but then with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 it was sacked and converted into an Islamic mosque. Later, in 1935, it was restored and re-opened as a museum. Clashing empires, centuries of history, and clashing religious creeds have gone into this place, and it is simply magnificent. The Muslims kept the main structure of the basilica when they converted it into a mosque, but installed more floral adornments and instances of Islamic art and covered up all the Christian motifs and mosaics (including ripping Christian crosses off the engraved stone, leaving scars to this day). But the restoration of the church in the modern era has uncovered those old gold mosaics beneath the surface, and visiting the Hagia Sophia is an experience in encountering those layers of history, time, and strife. Besides, it is absolutely one of the most physically gorgeous and overwhelming buildings I have ever seen on the inside, probably even the more so for its tarnish and its signs of age. The sun streams in through the many windows at slanted angles and lights up the golden interior, dancing off the carved marble columns and making the entire place look and feel ethereal. The eye cannot take it all in at once, and all the intricate detail begs for contemplation. This church did feel ancient, and did feel holy. It's one place the pictures absolutely cannot do justice to, but here I offer a few:

After emerging from the Hagia Sophia, we decided to grab some lunch before venturing to the Blue Mosque, or the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, located just across a square from the Hagia Sophia and constructed by Ahmed I in 1616 to rival the Hagia Sophia's grandness. Being a thousand years younger (though it is still quite old!), the Blue Mosque has a much cleaner and more unified appearance on the exterior, whereas the Hagia Sophia is crumbling in some places and has needed constant repairs over the centuries. It also still functions as a mosque and a place of worship rather than a museum, and as we filed inside we found that we needed to remove our shoes and cover our heads with scarves. I had brought along an ordinary scarf for the trip, and clumsily wrapped it around my head as I proceeded through the doors -- I am sure I appeared ridiculous and very American. The Blue Mosque was huge on the inside, worked in ornate handpainted ceramic tiles and patterns that boggled the eye to study and consider. Four main pillars support the central worshipping space and the dome, with several smaller half-domes and arched bays linked to the main dome, a design that we also observed in other Istanbul mosques. We spent a while admiring the intricate Islamic artwork -- yet I privately felt that the Blue Mosque didn't quite equal the splendor of the Hagia Sophia.

Next we walked through the Topkapi parks by the Topkapi Palace, which we would visit later in the week (more on that in a bit), down the waterfront to our third mosque of the day, the New Mosque, and then to the Egyptian spice bazaar and the Grand Bazaar. What a bustling place full of goods, spices, ceramics, silver pieces, and of course food! I got a pretty Turkish scarf and we bought a box of Turkish delight that, although amazing, would take us the entire week to finish. (Nom nom.) After that lengthy dose of visual overload, and after getting a bit lost walking back through the city streets to the hostel, we wound up back at our hostel, exhausted, and headed to bed after a quick dinner.

Day two in Istanbul dawned as bright and sunny as day one had been, good news since we'd decided to take a cruise ferry up the Bosphorus Strait that day. The Bosphorus is the canal of water that separates Istanbul's European side from its Asian side, and that connects the Mediterranean to the Black Sea. (Yes, we made some jokes about Ukraine and Crimea being just a bit farther up the Black Sea.) The ferry ride from Istanbul up to the farthest part of the Bosphorus, where it joins with the Black Sea, takes about an hour and a half, and we relaxed on the boat with some books (and plenty of photo taking on my part) before reaching the terminal stop, where we disembarked and got lunch. Our lunchtime spot overlooked a stretch of clear blue water, and I realized I was in Asia for the first time! Istanbul is the world's only major city to straddle two continents, so this technicality of borders and location and world geography made the visit to the Asian side rather fun.

After lunch we tramped up a hill to overlook the Black Sea, visited the ruins of a castle/military fortress built by the Ottomans to fortify the city proper from invaders from the Black Sea, and then sat in the sun for around an hour with some Turkish çay (tea) and pleasure reading. Combined with the ferry ride back, in which we got some great views of Istanbul's minaret-lined skyline in the later hours of the day, it was a relaxing day and a welcome break from the rushing about of day one.

In the morning of day three, we got up and prepared ourselves to go visit the Topkapi Palace, or the main palace complex of the Ottoman sultans of Istanbul. It's built on a high hill overlooking the ocean and in close proximity to the Hagia Sophia, which I gathered the sultan's religious advisors would visit immediately before coming to participate in a royal assembly in the palace. The outside walls and gates of the palace are right next to the Hagia Sophia, and we passed by some heavily armed guards (a more common thing in Turkey, where the display of large guns and military force is much more prominent than in the US) on our way through the external park complex en route to get tickets. After passing through, we found ourselves in a large garden, which led to a royal assembly hall that was absolutely gold-gilded and intricately worked with arches and tiles and geometric details. (This was a common theme inside the palace.)

Inside another set of walls were more state rooms, all built around a lovely garden with flowers and large overhanging trees. The open nature of the palace, and its construction around various garden walkways, made it more like Asian palace complexes, so I gathered, than European ones, which tend to be larger fortress-like buildings of interconnected state rooms and drawing rooms and royal chambers and so forth. We got another case of visual overload looking at the absolutely excessive and garish gems and jewels and treasures of the sultans in the palace museums, before stopping for lunch at the palace cafe, which overlooked the old walls of Constantinople and the Mediterranean Sea. Overpriced food for sure, but the view was astounding, so what can I say!

After lunch, we visited yet more sitting rooms and palace buildings, as well as the sultan's harem -- where all his wives and concubines would have stayed/lived in the imperial days. I found it a little unsettling to think about the life of being a sultan's concubine, locked into this ornate but still confined harem, which overlooked the city but yet felt very far from it. On that note, we left and ventured out on an afternoon mission to sip afternoon çay and eat more baklava and amazing Turkish pastries and Turkish delight.

At this point, I suppose I should say something about the "culture shock" factor of being in Istanbul. This was the farthest east I had ever been, and I could strongly feel that we weren't in the western world anymore. The men on the streets had what I would call a very entitled, very harassing perspective on women, and being obviously American (or foreign) we attracted a lot of attention from street vendors who would not leave us alone. I was rather more immune to the catcalls than my friend, due to my being deaf, which I was thankful for -- I find it very easy to ignore people when I need to! We certainly felt much more aware of our femaleness, and thus our relative lack of equality, in that society while we were there, although it didn't cause any problems besides annoyance. Traveling to Istanbul marked my first time seeing a woman in full hijab garb, and there were many of them around the city, usually if not always accompanied by men. Other Turkish women didn't wear the hijab, but dressed conservatively from top to bottom and wore headscarves everywhere, although often colorful ones. (One of my favorite memories of the trip: seeing women in hijabs wearing sparkly designer sunglasses, or sparkly shoes beneath their garments, or pulling out a snazzy iPhone or iPad to take pictures. Talk about a clash of worlds there, at least for me.) We rarely saw a Turkish woman working anywhere or selling anything, although the men were absolutely everywhere, loitering in the streets and trying to haggle tourists to enter and buy from their businesses and conversing and smoking in the corner of all the shops. To a Westerner, it was an eye-opening experience on the way gender dynamics function in some places of the world.

Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming. After Topkapi Palace and after gorging ourselves on Turkish sweets, we decided to culminate day three with a visit to the Basilica Cistern, which is one of the old cisterns of Constantinople, built beneath the city as a sort of aquifer and place to store water by the Romans. The Romans' extensive aqueduct system would channel water into the city from the outlying lands, and then a series of underground cisterns served as water storage for the inhabitants of Constantinople. As an example of Roman civic engineering and structural ingenuity these cisterns are very fun to visit, and have been restored and reopened to the public as tourist attractions. The Basilica Cistern is the largest one, and had an incredibly ancient and magical and solemn air inside. I felt as though I was breathing in the same damp air as the ancient Romans, as the Doric and Corinthian columns receded away from me into the darkness. There is still water down in the cisterns, and pathways have been built so that tourists can traverse the length of the underground cavern, with small lights illuminating each column. This was probably one of my favorite places to photograph:

After considering the solemnity of the ages and the passage of time (I admit, something I like to do while traveling, come into contact with antiquity), we surfaced and went to dinner to complete our day. A word here about the Turkish food. A lot of dishes are meat-based, such as kebabs and doner, although there are some amazing sauces and hummus to try. We also ate several vegetable-based dishes with eggplant and zucchini and peppers, and a lot of bread. And a lot of dessert, as I mentioned. (Have I said how good baklava is? And have I emphasized enough how many Turkish sweets we ate?)

On to day four. We'd decided to venture across the river for this stint of our travels, to visit the Galata Tower, a medieval stone tower that is one of the city's most striking landmarks. Upon crossing the bridge and walking up the narrow streets to its base, we decided not to go up top, since it was overpriced and we'd had plenty of panoramic views of the city already, and instead walked down the Istiklal Caddesi from the tower toward Taksim Square, a section of the city famed for its shops and restaurants. Many American and British shopping chains made an appearance here, there was a trolley car traversing the length of the street, and we stopped for lunch once we reached Taksim Square itself. The place is famous for its role as a gathering place for Turkish political protests, including the demonstrations that happened in Istanbul last year. It now has a strong police presence, and the large Turkish flags billowing over the square, combined with the nearby museum dedicated to the Turkish national hero Ataturk, gave the place a distinctly edgy and nationalistic feel. Nothing happened while we were there, and we soon walked down the hill to a palace beside the water to spend the afternoon reading and writing. Then back across the bridge, past a multitude of Turkish fishermen who'd been there the entire day catching fish, and on to dinner!

Day five was our last day in Istanbul before heading to Albania -- dear reader, if you've made it this far in my travel chronicle, many kudos to you. Our very first day in Istanbul, we'd been so taken by the Hagia Sophia that we'd decided we had to come back before leaving, just to contemplate and take in the aura of the place. So we paid the entry fee again, went earlier before the major crowds arrived, and spent a good two hours wandering around and staring up at its grand arches and noticing many more details we hadn't seen the first time. (We also decided, this time, that we weren't going to take nearly as many pictures, and taking that time to breathe and really look at where we were helped that endeavor a ton. Just an interesting side note about the role of photography in modern-day tourism and engagement with global sites.) We also came across something amusing -- a Turkish cat in the Hagia Sophia itself! The city was run over with cats, and some dogs too, to such an extent that we laughed at what the cat-to-human ratio of Istanbul must be. A sampling of my week-long chronicle of Turkish cats, starting with the rather imperious Hagia Sophia cat:

After departing the Hagia Sophia, rather reluctantly, we considered going to a museum to fill up the afternoon, but felt tired out from all the sightseeing we'd been doing and the Turkish art and architecture we'd been doing already. So we spent the afternoon in the park by the Topkapi Palace, writing and reading and people-watching. (And cat-watching, too, if I'm going to be totally honest here.) I got the chance to write and reflect about the places I'd been and the things I'd seen in Istanbul, one of my favorite things to do while traveling. Having those few hours of peace was thoroughly worth it, and all too soon we headed back to the hostel to pack up, get a taxi, and head back to the airport for the next stage of our travels!

Part two of spring break travels upcoming...

Hilary Term Comes to an End

As of this past Friday, Hilary term is over, and the gray English winter months seem to have given way to spring! Oxford has been wonderfully glorious these last few days; the skies today are as clear and crisp and blue as they ever were in California, the sun is radiant (and has made me pull out my sunglasses!), and the temperatures are up in the sixties. The flowers are blooming in eye-popping hues, and the grass is emerald green just in time for St. Patrick's Day. On days like this, the place seems as fresh and wondrous as anything I've ever encountered, even when walking amidst such old stone walls. I've been reading Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own" as bedtime reading this week (I somehow had not gotten around to reading it yet), and the last few days resonate so well with one passage early in the essay:

"The spirit of peace descended like a cloud from heaven, for if the spirit of peace dwells anywhere, it is in the courts and quadrangles of Oxbridge [Woolf's not-so-fictionalized pseudonym for Oxford-slash-Cambridge] on a fine October morning. Strolling through those colleges past those ancient halls the roughness of the present seemed smoothed away; the body seemed contained in a miraculous glass cabinet through which no sound could penetrate, and the mind, freed from any contact with facts (unless one trespassed on the turf again), was at liberty to settle down upon whatever meditation was in harmony with the moment."

Substitute this fine March day for "October," and I'm feeling very rejuvenated and reflective indeed. I finished both of my 7,000-word essays this morning and will be handing them into the Oxford Examination Schools tomorrow; they made for quite a lot of writing this past week (probably at least 12,000 of those words and 40-some double-spaced pages came from the past seven to nine days alone), but I found the work very satisfying. Both essays were on fascinating topics that I found myself raising again and again during dinnertime conversations with Oxford friends, and I really could have written more -- even if, yes, I'm happy to be done. This has been a strange and in many ways very challenging term, but has also been a valuable time for reflecting on the things that are most important, not just in school but in the broader sphere of life. I've seen the very best in people here and deepened the friendships that matter. I've learned, once more, not to take anything for granted, to take this rapid whirlwind of life as an astonishing gift. And I've had many opportunities for immersion, contemplation, and engagement with a wide range of different conversations and ideas -- not only about literature, but about topics ranging from politics to science to human interactions. I'm happy to be moving on into Trinity term, but there are some things about this Hilary of 2014 that will stay with me for a while.

So, on to the break. After I turn in my papers tomorrow, a good friend and I are boarding a bus and then a plane to fly off to Istanbul. We're staying in the old part of the city, near the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia, and will roam around there for around five days before moving on to Albania for around a week. A very different part of the world awaits, and I couldn't be more excited to get out of Oxford with good company and go explore! I likely won't be blogging until I return at the end of March, so look forward to more updates from me then!

For Your Entertainment: British Professor-Speak

Greetings from the other side of a whole lot of writing about David Foster Wallace! I finished a full draft of my essay on Infinite Jest today and will be putting it aside until the weekend while I work on my second essay on e-book editions of "The Waste Land," plus some dissertation work if I can manage it. Although my essays aren't due until March 24 and 27, respectively, this is the last week of Oxford's Hilary (winter) term -- how did that happen? And, since I head off on travel next week, I've given myself the hard-and-fast deadline of next Monday to finish these two papers. Then a good friend and I are traipsing through Turkey and Albania for twelve days! Travel and adventure are the best motivation to wrap up schoolwork.

Since I've been spending a lot of time hunched in front of my computer in the library or in local cafes, and since doing so involves inevitable conversations/venting sessions with friends and classmates about the intricacies, oddities, and occasional frustrations of the British education system, I give you, my readers, this gem a friend sent me a few weeks back. Just as an example of how different (read: incomprehensible) things are here sometimes, versus in the U.S.

And, yes, I can confirm that "quite good" doesn't mean the same thing here as in the States, and that the British way of phrasing feedback is sometimes rather odd. Contemplate at your leisure, while I return to more paper-writing... jolly good!

Screeched In! And Other Oxford Adventures

Never heard of a "screeching in," have you? Well, neither had I until this past week. A few Canadian Rhodies here, including one of my friends and housemates for next year, are from Newfoundland, and like all Newfoundlanders (and Canadians) I've met, they're rather proud of it. So proud, in fact, that they cheerfully bestow the status of honorary Newfoundlander on anyone who undergoes the screeching-in ceremony. Which goes something like this:

"Screech," as it's known, is a rather cheap and nasty high-alcohol-content rum made and sold in Newfoundland, apparently similar to moonshine. A screeching-in ceremony involves taking a hearty shot of this rum, like a good Newfoundlander, and being asked by the ceremony leader, "Are you a screecher?" The proper response to this, apparently, is "'Deed I is, me ol' cock! And long may yer big jib draw!" Which means, translated from the Newfoundland dialect: "Yes I am, my old friend, and may your sails always catch wind!" (I only found this out when I looked it up this morning; last night I was scratching my head at what people were actually saying.) The ceremony leaders then take out a large cod and carry it around the room, at which point all the participants must bestow the fish with a kiss on the lips. Then that's it; you are a member of the Royal Order of Newfoundland Screechers!

For more information, see Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newfoundland_Screech

(And, yes, this is something that actually happens on a regular basis all over Newfoundland.)

So, last night these three Newfoundlander ladies held a screeching-in at one of their places, a bunch of Oxford people showed up, and we all chatted for a few hours before the screeching-in began. The rum was so nasty it made me cough, and kissing a very large and very dead fish on the lips was one of the strangest things I've ever done in my life, but it was all full of laughter and good fun. (Especially watching the bunch of 30+ people each kiss the cod, which freaked a couple of the ladies and some of the gents out -- there were many attempts at fish-evasion and many grimaces to accompany the puckered lips.) And, to boot, the Newfoundlanders take this whole screeching-in thing so seriously that we got honorary membership certificates:

So, way over in jolly old England, I've been named an honorary Newfoundlander! Now I just need to make it out and visit Newfoundland...

And, in other news, the weather in Oxford has been so unbelievably, unseasonably lovely the last few days that it warrants note (like any good Brit, I'm becoming preoccupied with the weather). Temps have been up in the 60s, the sun has been gorgeously clear and blue, and it all reminds me of being back in California. Friday was a day full of lunch and coffee dates outside with friends, followed by a formal guest dinner at St. John's, and I've taken long walks with friends each of the last two days. Oxford's flowers are in bloom, the temperatures are warm and glorious, and spring is vibrantly in the air. Affect my productivity it might, but I could get used to this for sure!