Think of England

In which Francie finally updates

2007-04-21T14:53:00.000Z

There is not a stick of premade cookie dough to be found in the entirety of Oxford.

I know this because yesterday I really wanted to make cookies. Being on a strict student budget, I didn't want to have to buy every ingredient (flour, sugar, baking soda, salt) and then only use a little of it, leaving the rest to grow stale in the cupboards of the kitchen. So of course, what would any red-blooded American do? Turn to the genius of Pillsbury in the form of our saviour, Poppin Fresh. I soon realized the errors of my ways, howerver, when I went to Tesco, Sainsbury's, Marks & Spencer... and came up empty-handed. I was finally directed to a specialty delicatessen in the Covered Market called Palms, which the lady at M&S promised had "imported American delicacies." When I asked the lady for premade cookie dough or something like it, she pointed me to a single shelf, which held... cake mix. Betty Crocker cake mix. (Which, apparently, you also cannot find easily in England.) It occured to me at that moment that when I said "premade cookie dough," they thought I was talking about a dry mix. (What a dark, cruel country this is, not to have Pillsbury cookie dough to offer to its children to eat straight out of the packet.) Realizing my search had ended in futility, I instead bought another American food group that has been missing from my life--Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. Nothing has contributed more to the waistline of the American child from coast to coast than this mix of neon-orange preservatives and simple carbohydrates.

Spring has hit Oxford like a sledgehammer. It's as if while I was away on my four-week spring break, England suddenly realized, "Right-o--better get along with spring" and burst into blossom. Everywhere I go, trees are flowering, warm breezes blowing, lambs prancing around pastures. This, of course, has led to a widespread sense of joy in the English people. The day I came into Oxford, when it was mid-60's and partly cloudy, I counted no fewer than five men walking down the street with their shirts off. For the British female, warm weather means sundresses and skirts. Holy crap, are there a lot of skirts. Whenever I look out the window onto High Street, I feel as if the whole women's movement never happened because almost none of the girls I see are in pants or shorts. Considering the fact that I live in jeans, this makes me stick out like a sore thumb.

I have never seen a society as in love with the sunshine as that in Oxford. In Northern California, we are all giddy for about the first week that it turns warm, and then settle in for the long, harsh, climbing-upward-to-low-110's summer, when the grass turns brown and dry with the heat and a simple lemonade stand by the road will turn the profit of a small NGO on a hot August day. But here, people seem never to get tired of it. Instead, they stream out of their houses and litter themselves like potato-chip bags across Christ Church Meadows. They even seem to forget the emphasis they all put on privacy here and lie on blankets to make out voraciously with their significant other, even in the presence of strangers. As one book I read said, you can only be truly British if you agree with the phrase "I am a different person when the sun comes out." My answer to this before my winter in Oxford would have been, "When the sun comes out? As opposed to... what? Nighttime?" But now I finally understand the sense of being cooped up over a long, hard winter, praying every day as you check the 10-day forecast on weather.com for the temps to climb. "Please," you seem to bargain with the screen. "Make the high at least 60-something! I'll give blood if you do!" Still, I feel as if deep in my core, I am at heart a Californian--the people around me seem to act like children, frolicking around as if they cannot believe their good fortune. I want to go up to them and say, "Dude, it's only the sun!"

Suffice it to say, though, that when I returned to Oxford, I almost didn't recognize it. What's this--greenery on the trees? People actually walking on the path next to the river? No puddles to dodge when I'm wearing my jeans that have a tendency to drag on the ground? During our first-weekend field trip to the Lake District, I came onto the bus wearing my heavy tweed jacket, and my British professor laughed at me. "Francie!" he said. "You're still dressed as if it was winter!" I guess now I just connect Britain with coldness and can't get out of that mindset. I brought almost nothing with me that is suited to anything below freezing--about three t-shirts, one light sweater, and that's about it. I was forced to buy flip-flops and capris in Spain just because I looked ridiculous, all wrapped up in my scarves and coat. (Look at me---claiming that I am still American in my nonchalence about warm weather, and yet devoting a good portion of my entry to discussing it. I think I am becoming more British than I may realize.)

And now that we're talking about spring break, I guess I should go into that, shouldn't I? In order for you all to not have to spend half a day reading my blog, I am going to do it in short, reader-friendly format, with a quick rehash of each place we went and a grade for the experience. (Look at me--I'm already prepared for a teaching position.)

PARIS: This was my first stop, but not Genevieve's and Kelly's. They had spent the week before in London, but I had to finish up my finals and, since I live about an hour away from London and had been there many times during the term, I didn't feel the need to "do" London, as they did. My British Airways flight to Paris was 2.5 hours late--keep in mind that the entire flight there takes about 40 minutes. I hate travelling alone, because whenever I do, something always seems to go wrong. I thought the lateness would be it, but I also almost didn't get off the RER train in time at Gare du Nord, and then my bag wouldn't fit through the Metro ticket wicket, driving me close to tears. I hate being in a country in which I don't really speak the language--I feel like an illiterate five-year-old, completely dependant on others.

Our hostel in Paris was this cramped, tiny little room at the very basement of this crappy hostel, and although the receptionist claimed it had "a shower," it was the tiniest shower I have ever seen and in no way disconnected from the room. There was a line of about three tiles and then--boom!--the shower. It was also absolutely FREEZING in Paris, so most nights, we were miserably cold. ("I love Paris in the springtime," my ass.) Genevieve got sick in the middle of our stay there, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was because of our room. I was reading "Angela's Ashes" during this time and kept thinking, "This is my life right now." Never mind that our bed wasn't infested with fleas or that our father wasn't drinking away his wages on Guinness--I felt as if we were living in similar squalor, and no one really cared. Add this to the fact that the hall outside our room was being redone and we breathed in the fumes of drywall every time we had to climb the four separate staircases to reach the ground level, and you'll see what I mean.

Still, Paris was gorgeous. We were able to visit Sacre Couer (this beautiful white church on a hill in Montmarte overlooking the city) and the Jardin du Luxembourg (where my dad proposed to my mom), as well as many eat many pate sandwiches, coo over cute little dogs being pulled along on jewelled leashes, and be seranded with accordions playing "La Vie en Rose." I don't think you can have a bad time in Paris, even when your roommate is coughing up phlegm and you're doubled over with cold, even while wearing a winter coat, scarf, and mittens. GRADE: B.

MADRID: Madrid was the biggest surprise to all of us. All of the guidebooks kind of gloss over it, claiming that Seville is more charming and Barcelona funkier and cooler. We were going there because it was the easiest Spanish city to fly into from Spain, and booked only two nights there. But I think in the end, it was my favorite city. The people were friendly and helpful and would speak Spanish with Kelly and me, even though it was apparent that we were tourists. The city held a wealth of cool places to go to and a bumping nightlife, and yet it felt small and welcoming, what with the efficient subway system that was absolutely spotless and easy-to-use. It was also the first time since about October that I had been in a relatively warm and sunny climate, and we shed our heavier layers like a butterfly shaking off its chrysalis. The hostel we had the first night was right smack dab in the middle of the town and nightlife, and had amazing bathroom facilities. The one we stayed at the other night was a little weird, but still better than our Paris digs. I would really like to go back to see Guernica and tour the Royal Palace there. Overall, it was wonderful. Grade: A.

SEVILLE: I couldn't hate Seville if I tried because of the most important reason--Liz was there! My childhood friend Elizabeth Gray, whose dad has been friends with my dad since they were in preschool together, is studying at Seville until the summer and was able to meet up with us quite a number of times. Seville was also, as the guidebooks all say, so pretty--it was like the Disneyland version of Spain! Horse-drawn carriages clip-clopping up cobblestone streets, bright flamenco dresses in shop windows, even the smell of orange blossoms permeating the air (which actually seemed strange, because I associate that smell so strongly with my grandparents' house in Phoenix, where I usually spend my spring breaks, because their house was built in the middle of this huge orange grove, and each April you can't escape the heady smell of orange blossoms as the trees turn a starry white.) It had so many quaint, picturesque neighborhoods and also a great nightlife. We were in a hostel that was in the Triana neighborhood, across the river from the center of town, but it was a very walkable city.

The only real drawback to it was that they were doing road construction on the pedestrian walkways while we were there--more road construction than I have ever seen in my life in one place. Liz said it was because Semana Santa (the Holy Week before Easter) was coming up, when masses of tourists descend on the town like locusts, and they wanted to finish it for that. But the road construction did bring something good with it--catcalling construction workers! Kelly and I kept laughing about it, because we both agreed that we had never actually experienced the stereotype before. It was a bit jarring after England, where boys are polite to the point of ignoring you on the street and you wonder why you are even bothering to put makeup on in the morning. (Of course, this is not true with everyone--I warned my roommate this term to not expect any action in the Land of Sexually Frigid Boys, as Kelly calls it, and she came in the second night from a bar with a guy's number scribbled on a napkin.) But it would always take me about 10 seconds to realize they were shouting "bella" or "hola, chica" at ME, at which I would simply blush and smile shyly at them. It's not like any of them were Brad Pitt (or Jake Gyllenhaal, for that matter,) but catcalling is the one area of feminism I can't agree with. I like it when boys do it. I don't feel offended or like "a piece of meat." They are just trying to be nice. We especially have to soak it up while we're young. Liz always rolled her eyes, but she has just gotten used to the adoration. ;)

The best part of Seville was the Royal Palace there, especially the gardens. I can't even describe them, they were so beautiful and peaceful--"almost like the zoo," my sister said, "except without the animals." But that same feeling of immensely tall shade trees and pleasant, sun-dappled nooks. Grade: B+.

BARCELONA: I don't really want to go into Barcelona. It was not funky, cool, hip, or any of the other outdated terms the guidebooks used for it. It was just a chaotic, nasty mess. The area we were staying was right in tourist land, so there were rows upon rows of stores that I could visit in England (H&M, Puma, McDonald's even), and I felt as if we weren't even in a foreign country. (Of course, that didn't keep us from frequenting Starbucks twice a day. Starbucks is one of the few international chains that I like--no matter where you go in the world, it is always comforting to see that circular green sign and settle down into a faux-purple-velvet chair while blowing on your latte to cool it.)

There was an incredibly nasty maid in the hostel. We had been told when we checked in that we would have to be out of our rooms from 12 to 2 for cleaning, which we agreed to. However, at around 11, this maid would come in and throw open the shutters, then proceed to shake us awake, chattering away in Spanish that did not sound like, "Get up and greet the dawn, my sweets." They also had those kind of showers that turn off every 15 seconds if you don't continue to push in the water control. I hate these showers. The only time I ever encountered them before was once in a pool changing room. In this case, they are perfectly fine, since all you really want in that case is to wash the chlorine off you before going home. But for your daily shower? A constant stream of warm water is one of the most basic human rights, in my mind. We are not cows being washed off before being led to the slaughterhouse--we are human beings, goddamn it, paying good money for the facilities. When will hostels realize this? I don't know.

But aside from the hostel, other things were horrible. The city was waaayyy too big. It seemed about the size of Paris or London, but without any reason to be. The buses and metro were overcrowded beyond belief, and Barcelonians apparently believe they can push, shove, and line-jump as much as they want. There wasn't much to see beyond the Gaudi stuff, and considering that he's an architect, most of his stuff was houses that you look at, say "oooh, ahhh," and leave. OK, OK, Sagrada Familia (the giant church that looks like it's melting) was pretty cool, but the rest of it wasn't that impressive. Even Parque Guell didn't meet my expectations--the tiled iguana is the only cool part of it. And it started raining while we were there.

The people were also the rudest, meanest people I have ever met. People claim that the French and New Yorkers are brusque and unhelpful, but compared to Barcelonians, the French and New Yorkers look like the Depression-era farmers from "The Grapes of Wrath," sharing their last potato with their neighbors. One citizen that stuck out to me as the example of all of Barcelona was this bitchy bus driver that picked us up from Parque Guell, screeching the second the bus doors opened to get in NOW, then driving up to a stoplight about 5 feet in front of us while we were still paying and slamming on the brakes so hard all of us fell over as we were standing there, even though there was not a car in sight. It continued to the moment we were leaving the Barcelona airport, when the security staff was yelling at me to take off my jacket. It's like, "Hello! The main reason Barcelona exists is because of tourism. You have meat on your tables because of us. Treat us with a little respect, jerkwads!" I also met three different people that got their purses stolen while they were there. I have sworn to myself I will never go back again in my life. Grade: D.

VENICE: Venice was my other favorite city. Although our hotel was on the mainland and not actually in Venice itself, it was a short bus ride into town, and the bus stop was quite nearby. Venice is... beautiful. Pictures cannot possibly do it justice. I was also surprised by it, as I was with Madrid, because my dad told us that there wasn't much to do and that it is best seen with a boyfriend. But I am so glad we did end up going. I think part of the reason I liked it so much was just because of that former fact--there weren't a lot of tourist sites to see outside of Palazzo San Marco, so we spent most of our time eating gelato and pizza and wandering through the labyrinth of streets and alleyways. (Hey, I didn't say I lost weight here--I just said I liked it.) :) The town is 90% tourists, too, so you don't have to worry as much about your valuables. Still, this didn't mean it was like Barcelona in terms of tourism choking all of the individuality out of it--there was nary an H&M, Burger King, or Starbucks in sight. I don't know how they've managed to steer clear of these big chains, but they have, and I was grateful for it. The best part was when we took the waterbus up the Grand Canal--I had to pinch myself, it was so beautiful. All I could think was, "My friends are all in school right now, and I'm HERE." Grade: A-.

ROME: Rome is like this kid I taught last year at Summerbridge. At times he would drive me up the wall and I would have to keep him after class to have "special talks," but then suddenly he would get into a class discussion and I would just stand there, in awe of the maturity of his ideas and his ability to notice things the other kids never would in a million years. Yes, Rome was overcrowded and crazy, large, kind of smelly, and way overtouristed. But at the same time, you never lost the sense of its character. It was truly Italian to me, much more so than Florence. At times I would have to restrain myself from socking a street vendor from showing me ONE MORE squishy animal meant to entertain five-year-olds, but then you would take a bite of orgasmically good caramel gelato, or have a guy ten times more attractive than any you could ever hope to catch the attention of in the States proclaim you "beautiful, beautiful," or you turn a corner and--WHAM!--the Trevi Fountain in all of its glory. It is such a multi-faceted city, so full of contradictions. I even enjoyed the morning we got up at 5:30 AM to stand in line for the Sistene Chapel, regardless of the fact that it was incredibly overhyped. (Come on, people, it's paintings on a ceiling. Very pretty, famous paintings, but paintings just the same.)

My two favorite parts were: 1) the Keats Museum, housed in his house near the Spanish Steps where he died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. (Of course, this sent me into introspection--by the time he was 25, he had become so famous that all of us still quote him and he remains a staple of the study of English poetry. I only have four more years to gain this status?) 2) I also loved, loved, LOVED the Palatine Hill/Roman Forum, with all of its ruins and pretty gardens and orange groves. My sister remarked to me, "It's funny--most of my favorite sites we saw on our trip were outside," and I have to agree with her. The gardens of the Royal Palace of Seville, walking down the streets of Madrid, sitting at the very front of the waterbus in Venice as it snaked down the Grand Canal, wandering along the Seine in Paris, getting lost in the Santa Cruz neighborhood of Seville--all of them were in the fresh air, taking in the beauty of nature and buildings. Museums are nice, but they can't beat Mother Nature.

Our hotel was about half an hour outside Rome, since it was Holy Week and everyone wanted to be in Rome for Easter, but it only cost a euro for the bus, train, and metro ride into the city, which was a friggin' STEAL. I also liked that we were a little outside of the masses of people in Rome--I felt like a businessman making the afternoon commute home, separating my tourist life with my nighttime activities. We were right near the beach, where we went on Easter Sunday instead of getting crushed among the other tourists to hear the Pope say something in Latin as original as, "We welcome and bless this Easter morning." Grade: B+.

Well, that's my spring break. You want to know the best part, though? Because we were travelling around so much, we often found ourselves waiting--for taxis, for buses, for trains, for planes to take off. And because of all this downtime, I was able to finish no less than SEVEN books. They were:

1. "Nineteen Eighty-Four" by George Orwell
2. "Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt
3. "The Remains of the Day" by Kazuo Ishiguro
4. "The Girls" by Lori Lansens
5. "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck
6. "The Age of Innocence" by Edith Wharton
7. "Memoirs of a Geisha" by Arthur Golden

My favorite, hands down, was "The Remains of the Day." It was one of those books that you start reading and realize it is going to be your new favorite book if the writer doesn't screw it up. And he didn't, fortunately. It was also the first book in a long while that I've read that's provoked new thoughts in me on so many different subjects--politics, expressing one's emotions, England being better than America, etc. I feel as if it made me understand England and its people more than any other book I've read. AND the main setting of the action, Darlington Hall, was described as being "near Oxford." Woot. I just rented the movie and am hoping to watch it tonight. (Read it.)

I got back to Oxford and, along with the landscape being unrecognizable, the people around me had change almost entirely, also. Because Stanford (and Oxford, for that matter) operates on the quarter system, our year is split up into three segments (the fourth quarter being summer term, which most people don't attend.) Thus, most Stanford kids study abroad only one quarter. I think this is a crying shame--you cannot get to know a place in 10 weeks or less any more than you can gain a true understanding of a subject (note the academic bitterness.) I feel as if you are just starting to get over the dip after the honeymoon phase when you leave. This is why I elected to stay two terms, January through June, most colleges' semester. And I don't even feel like THAT is enough. But new people had moved into the Stanford House, and I have to go through the whole I-suck-at-making-new-friends dance yet again. I really feel as if I'm one of those people others have to know for a long time before they actually start to like. I was just beginning to feel comfortable around last term's kids when they left. And now there's more people I have to have awkward chit-chat sessions with. Groan.

But my British friends are back. OK, OK--British friend. I really have only made one good British friend in my time here. Well, I mean, outside of the newspaper--I am very close to all of them, but we don't hang out much outside of newspaper, since we're all from different colleges and socialize within different circles. This can be nice, since they're my "Wednesday friends" I get to see once a week for a break from the Stanford kids, but I wish we could do slightly more than that, since they're all such nice, interesting people.

But anyway, my one British friend--the boy from Brasenose I mentioned earlier in my blog. We both very much wanted to see each other, but since he was busy with exams (yes, they have exams at the end of spring break--talk about a way to ruin your six weeks of freedom) and I was busy with Stanford House programs and outings, the first time we could do it was last night, Friday night. I couldn't come to Formal Hall, but he asked that I come meet up with some of his friends afterward, since they were all going out pub-hopping. I have to admit that I was nervous as a cat walking there. I usually feel quite comfortable around him, but him and his friends? There are so many of them, and only one of me, and I was afraid I would say something like "I spilled beer all over my pants" and have them laugh because, remember, pants=underwear in England. It was the exact opposite, though. We all hung out at the college bar and then tried to get into The Kings Arms (a popular student pub here), realized it was too full, and retired to one of the boy's rooms with a bottle of vodka, some mixers, and the music of Bob Dylan and Blondie to keep us company. Now, I don't really like what all of the Brit kids think of as a "fun night out"--clubbing. It is too expensive, too noisy, and you have to wait simply forever to get in. But vodka and talking? This was much more my scene. It is the typical Friday night preparty at Stanford before going to frat parties. I think they all thought of it as something out of the ordinary, but I was thrilled. We also got into the whole "Britain-versus-America" talk, which I never get tired of. They all must think I am a terrible bore, because that and poetry is all I ever want to talk about, but it is a subject that endlessly fascinates me. I also got a long lecture on the TV show "Doctor Who" and the difference between the multitude of British accents. It was pretty much what every visiting student dreams of--a get-together where you are the only foreigner and they ask you 1,000 questions about your home country and how it compares to their country and laugh in a nice way at your slang and the way you pronounce your vowels. And I finally had it.

I know you all don't believe me, but I really am going to try to update more this quarter. I mean, if Jillian and Caitlin could do it, so can I! Chin up, kids. It's finally spring!

In which Francie... cries

2007-02-15T14:32:00.000Z

*** This isn't a proper travel blog update, but I felt the need to write about it because it interests me so. ***

So this isn't a "I'm really homesick" post, although I am getting a little homesick. A month is about the longest I've ever been away from America (aside from the year I lived in England when I was a baby and unconscious of the fact that I couldn't buy root beer), and I'm starting to exit the honeymoon phase with living abroad. It seems so strange that I'm going to be here until June.

BUT I subscribe to this online community and the issue came up of the saddest things you've heard/read/seen in your life--you know, those things you subject yourself to when you want to bawl like a little girl, particularly movies. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Billy Elliott, and Life is Beautiful got a lot of mentions, but those never really did it for me. I was trying to think of a list, and came up with these:

1.

"Casablanca." No, this isn't the "here's looking at you, kid," the punch of which was somewhat spoiled for me before I'd even seen it because it seems like they show it in a film-clip montage at every single Academy Awards ceremony. This is the part in the bar where the German soldiers are singing a German song just to remind everyone that the Nazis are winning and everyone else stands up and starts singing the national anthem of occupied France. GOD, that gets to me. Maybe it's also because I connect that song with my father in my mind, the only song he can ever remember the words to (in French--go figure.)

2.

"It's a Wonderful Life." The ending. I know it's cliched, and even my best Stanford friend doesn't understand this movie, but oh, my freaking God. From the first to last moment of this clip, I am complete puddle. "My mouth's bleeding, Burt!" "Isn't it wonderful? I'm going to jail!" "I busted the jukebox, too!" "To my big brother George--the richest man in town!" "Remember, no man is a failure who has friends." "Atta boy, Clarence!" The tear-provoking quotes are endless. Even though it may not be true, and I don't think it is, this movie makes me believe that if you're a good person, things will work out in the end. Sigh. I hope that's true.

3.

"Shadowlands." This was a made-for-TV movie I saw in a class when we were studying CS Lewis. It's a scene where the woman Lewis loves has just died, and he goes to console her little boy and his stepson. When I saw this in class, I literally started to cry right there, with all those people around. I love when Anthony Hopkins just breaks down and starts crying and hugging the little boy. Something so chilling about seeing a grown-up actor dissolve into tears like that... it reminds me of when teachers or parents cry. As a kid, nothing scared me more or filled me with such a sense of the hopelessness of the world.

4.

"Braveheart." This was the first R-rated movie my parents allowed me to watch, and I think rightfully so. It remains my dad's favorite movie of all time. We watched this in seventh grade in history class and I started bawling and some of the boys even laughed at me. Yeah, that pretty much right there cemented my status as "nerd" until I graduated from high school, but seriously, how could you not cry? The fact that they're torturing him and expect him to say "mercy" for a quick death but instead he uses his last dying breath to cry "Freedom!"? Forget supporters of the Iraq war--THAT'S patriotism. And then when he sees his wife coming through the crowd--and the final "And like Scots, they won" monologue--holy crap.

5.

"West Side Story." I hate the Internet--nowhere online can I find the final scene of this movie! In my opinion, this is hands-down the best musical of all time--better than My Fair Lady, Oklahoma, Webber, or even Les Mis. The music, the lyrics, the lines--it's like perfection personified. The last scene always gets me. When they start singing "Somewhere" together as he bleeds to death on the blacktop, she realizes he's dead, and her voice cracks? And the whole "how many bullets, Chino" monologue? And "te adoro, Anton"? Seriously, people!

6.

"American Beauty." This is my favorite movie and will never been dethroned. It seems almost like the 90's, cynical version of "It's A Wonderful Life"--the idea that every tiny little insignificant detail in life is overrun by beauty. The montage at the end is the best--when even though he's been murdered, he talks about how he isn't mad about it. And that he still loves his estranged wife. I love the idea, "I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die. First of all, that one second isn't a second at all, it stretches on forever, like an ocean of time." And then when the wife realizes he's dead and goes into his closet and starts hugging his coats? Most wrenching scene ever. And the last few lines? "I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life... You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry... you will someday." I have so many people in my life that have "no idea," but will some day. It kills me that they can't realize it now. Reminds me of "Our Town," never translatable into film because it's such a play--"Goodbye, clocks ticking, and new dresses. Oh earth, you're too wonderful for anyone to realize you."

7.

No clip, but "Born on the Fourth of July." So few people I know have seen this movie. I think a lot of girls think of it as a "boring war movie," but God, it is so much more. This idealistic young kid goes off to Vietnam, gets paralyzed from the waist down, and basically forgotten by everyone (including his family) as he spirals into shellshock and veteran depression. The part when he storms the Republican Party meeting where they're all chanting "four more years" for Nixon and they all drag him out--I just weep. I have many friends who are Republicans, but after watching this scene, I can't even begin to understand why anyone would support the right wingers for a few days. It is that emotionally heartwrenching for me.

8.

"Dead Poets Society." Another cliche, but this film is so important to me. Every time I start to hate academics and school and essays (of which I've written so many here that I could scream,) I think of DPS, and it makes me realize why I keep going to classes and listening to teachers and studying. It is to become a well rounded human being, like Mr. Keating would want you to be. To truly fall in love with life and literature. This scene is the final one, where Mr. Keating returns to pick up his stuff after he's fired by the administration because they thought he drove a student to suicide. Earlier on in the movie, he tells them they may call him "o captain my captain", as Walt Whitman does to Lincoln in his poem "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." He also tells them that they should stand on their desks to be unique and see life from a different perspective. I love the sense of rebellion of this scene, of sticking it to the man. Even though they are stuck in this hellhole of a prep school, they will not let it keep them down. The ones who stand on their desks will become real people in the end.

9.

Again, no clip, but "The Adventures of Milo and Otis." Sad tears at the part where Milo is carried away on the river, happy tears when they reunite with their respective families and head home to the farm. I'd like to think that, no matter how long you stayed away from your best friend, you could always experience the amount of joy and happiness Milo and Otis do when they find each other finally. Just because someone's life diverges from yours doesn't mean it has to split from yours.

10.

"The Miracle Worker." I haven't even seen this movie, yet I saw a clip in a recent TV show and it made me cry. Because Helen Keller just plain rocks. Wawa!

So, that's my list. And that's just movies--don't even get me started on books, poems, TV, or songs!

I'm curious. What's your favorite tearjerking movie moments?

In which Francie begins to establish herself

2007-02-11T22:52:00.000Z

Hello, hello! I know I have been crap at updating lately, the reason being that my computer has crashed... again. For those of you who know me, I was already without a computer for about three months earlier this academic year at Stanford because it crashed twice and the computer people at the Stanford Bookstore who were helping me were the definition of "incompetent." That this has happened here, where I am NOT within walking distance of any kind of computer place, let alone a Mac store, makes me want to scream as loud as I possibly can, rip clumps of hair out, and throw my laptop out of my second-story window to smash into pieces on the High Street. Basically, I will have to go all the way to London to get it fixed--but from here on out my weekends are pretty booked until at least March. God, I just DON'T have the time or energy for this. I wouldn't even CARE if I could just have my music and Internet in my room. I would gladly type my essays in the downstairs cluster, but I miss my iTunes and being able to check my e-mail before I have showered and dressed. This lack of a computer has been driving me into hysterics.

BUT I am trying to think of good things, such as...

I have made a friend here. He is the boy I mentioned in my last post. His name is Harry. (And he goes to a school with ghosts. And has glasses. And--I kid you not--had a childhood friend named Hermione. I think JK Rowling owes him some of her royalties.) Two weekends ago we met up on Saturday afternoon and spent a number of hours on an "Alice in Wonderland" tour of Oxford. He told me that he was obsessed with Alice as a kid and learned everything there was to know about Lewis Carroll and the only way his parents could get him to shut up was to take him to this museum in Oxford, the Natural History Museum, where Lewis Carroll used to take the real Alice to see the dodo bird skeleton.

Behind the museum is another one--the Pitt Rivers Museum, which I thought was ten times better than the NHM. It is this museum made out of an old guy's collection of anthropological stuff he had acquired throughout his life. It goes against every rule of every American museum I have ever been to--cramped, dark, no particular order of the artifacts, hard-to-read labels. (It was so dark that Harry had to ask for flashlights--or "torches," as they so cutely call them here.) But it is FASCINATING. Most of the items are still attached to the handwritten labels and tags the old guy made for them, and they range from a cape made out of tropical bird feathers (the Indians who made it caught birds, plucked one feather from them, and let them go again), ballerina ornaments with heads made out of bluebottle flies, and a bottle donated to the museum by a woman who claimed there was a witch inside of it (no one's ever been brave enough to open it and find out.) It was so interesting. The best part was that Harry was the ideal guide--he would scamper about like a two-year-old, telling me, "You have to see this! You have to see this!" It was only after about the third artifact that I hung back and read the label (it was for the feather cape.) Not finding the whole pluck-one-feather thing in the description, I asked him how he knew that. "Oh, I come here a lot and talk to the curators," he said, shrugging it off. Needless to say, I was quite impressed. If only I was that interested in Cantor.

This past Thursday he took me to a poetry reading by a woman named Lavinia Greenwood. (Could you get more British?) Though neither of us liked her much, it was fun just being in the presence of other people that appreciated poetry and had walked all the way to St. Anne's (very out-of-the-way college on the outskirts of Oxford proper) just to hear this woman. After that finished, he then proposed that we go to a pub he liked and "listen to some jazz." Now, jazz is one of the few music genres I really just don't like. I think your taste in everything originates very much in what your parents like, and to my father, jazz was the devil. His older brothers used to literally tie him up and make him listen to their jazz records when he was a little kid. So Kelly and I didn't hear much jazz as children. Nowadays I find jazz kind of dull and pointless--it seems to drone on and on with no set melody, and unlike songs in most genres, if you don't like a jazz song, it isn't over in 3 minutes. BUT I went and we ended up talking for about three hours, even as the jazz was playing in the background. By the end of the night I was hoarse from all the yelling I had done over the LOUD saxophones and drums. I am so happy that I am staying into next quarter so I can get to know him better. He is such a sweet, kind, gentle, interesting person. AND he has an accent, which makes everything ten times better. :)

I am continuing to hang out with the newspaper kids a lot, too. Last week we went to a bar near Brasenose called Baby Love after we put the paper to bed and I ordered a chocolate martini. (Way too much money, but I can't get over the fact that I can order cutesy drinks like this now--they don't even ASK for ID!) It wasn't the best of nights, because by the time we got down to the dancefloor, there was almost no one there. Also, this friend of one of the editor-in-chiefs got in a fight with another girl and they started shoving each other down. I completely panicked and quick as lightning jumped on the girl, pinned her arms back, and told her, "We're going," and led her to the stairs. But then the girl she had been fighting came up to her and apologized and they started making out. (One of the weirdest experiences of my life. Whenever I have wanted to make out with someone, I have never gotten into a fight with them.)

I thought all the kids would hate me for this the next week and think I was way too maternal, but when I came into the office, all they could talk about was, "Here comes the hero!" and "Francie, you saved the day!" I thought it a little silly, because I did what any person with any animal instinct would do, but apparently they didn't see it that way. We went out again last Wednesday to the Purple Turtle, the student bar here. It was fun, and I got to talk to my favorite of the newspaper kids, this really nice boy named Sam. The sad thing is that they change leadership every quarter, so after spring break, pretty much all of the kids I know will be gone, which I hate--I SUCK at making new friends. Oh well. They are very sweet with their compliments, though, and they can't believe that I am willing to come in from seven to midnight once a week. I don't think they could handle Octagon paste-up.

Last weekend I also visited my mom and dad's friends, Keith and Tina Barnes, with whom we exchanged houses the summer I was seven. They made lunch for me and took me out to Henley-on-Thames, where they used to live, because there was a special exhibit on EH Shepard, the guy who illustrated "Winnie the Pooh" and "The Wind in the Willows." It was really cool seeing all of his original illustrations, but sadly, most of the beautiful watercolors he did for the Pooh books are held in private collections and they had only high-resolution digital photographs of them. (It seemed mean to me that these rich people couldn't give up their drawings for a two-month exhibit, but whatever.) Then I went home, we had tea and they made me a sandwich "for the train." Cuteness!

This past Thursday another big thing happened: It SNOWED again! Except that this time, it was the entire night, and it actually STUCK. Even the Oxford kids were excited. I slept through most of it (it was only 3 AM-10 AM about), but then I woke up to a winter wonderland. You seriously could not walk a block without seeing a snowman in some college courtyard. Everyone was rushing around taking pictures and slipping on the icy sidewalks. There was many a snowball fight between my friends and me.

That was also the day that I had to give a presentation in my architecture class about St. Paul's Cathedral in London. This was kind of last-minute because I wasn't supposed to do my in-class presentation until early March, but one of the boys had two tutorial papers and pleaded for someone to take his place. Because I have waaaay too much sympathy for humankind, I agreed. I sort of cobbled together a presentation and tried to make it fun, with little facts like the St. Paul's steps are where the old bird lady sits in "Mary Poppins" and that the architect of the cathedral burst into tears when his first design was rejected by the king and little things like that. The class ended and everyone seemed to have enjoyed it. But later that day almost EVERY SINGLE PERSON in the class found me and told me it was the best presentation so far and that I was so enthusiastic and interesting and really made it fun and blah blah... I was so flattered. (I think because I taught 12-year-olds for eight weeks last summer, I have realized that everyone appreciates a little fun in their lessons.) Yay! I'm finally good at something!

This weekend was pretty good, too.

Friday: Our architecture class went on a field trip to London to see St. Paul's and Greenwich/the Queen's House. Very fun and beautiful, although the wind in London was, as my professor put it, "almost Siberian." I remembered my gloves but forgot my scarf and HATED myself for it. I also love my professor soooooo much. He has this delightful accent and this adorable laugh. We were talking about musicals on the train, and his fave musical is also "West Side Story"--his favorite song also "Maria"! We have gotten onto a teasing basis with each other, and I am one of the only kids that can walk as fast as he when we have to follow him. (After walking tours with my dad, nothing seems fast.)

That night about half of us decided we were going to stay for dinner and catch a play on the West End, but it turned out that none of the other kids stayed! We were all standing there deciding which we wanted to go to when my heart stopped--"The Glass Menagerie" was being put on somewhere! (As some of you know, I am completely in love with Tennessee Williams and almost everything he wrote. He is really one of those authors that knows what it's like to be me and can actually put it down on paper.) So I decided I would go to that and went to buy my ticket. After about another half-hour of the others hemming and hawing over which they'd go to, they decided they wouldn't "waste the money" and instead just went to dinner. I found that sort of stupid, because there is not much to do at Oxford on Friday nights. (As I've said before, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the big party nights.) We're in one of the greatest cities in the world with some of the greatest theatre in the world, and yet they can't cough up £20 for a half-price ticket? But I went and loved the play and got to see Jessica Lange in person. I was also really scared that I wouldn't find my way back to Paddington and have to stay in London for the night, but the Underground was easy as pie and I got there with plenty of time to spare. Hoorah!

Saturday: In the afternoon, I went shopping and to a booksigning event with Terry Deary! TD is this children's book author that writes this series called "Horrible Histories" about all the gross parts of history kids love to hear about. Each book has a specific time period: "The Vicious Vikings," "The Slimey Stuarts," "The Terrible Tudors," etc. He had just written a book about Oxford and was there in person! I was a bit disappointed that he didn't give a talk or anything, like every other booksigning I've ever been to, but he was still a very sweet old guy and dedicated the book "To Fabulous Francie and Kool Kelly." I also bumped into Harry, who was showing his high-school sister around Oxford with his mom. Yay!

Last night I went on a pub crawl with some of the Stanford kids and it was SO FUN! We went to three different pubs, one of which was The Eagle and Child, where CS Lewis and JRR Tolkein used to hang out. I also just discovered Strongbow, an alcoholic cider that Kelly recommended to me. It was basically bitch beer, but I loved it! I also had mulled wine, which makes me think of "It's a Wonderful Life," since Clarence ordered it at the bar. And what is better than IAWL? On the two-mile walk back it started raining cats and dogs, but fortunately I wasn't sober enough to care much, and we went to the kebab van and I got a cheeseburger and fell asleep at 1 AM. Then I slept until noon today.

The only noticeable thing I did today was read WAY too much of "Gone with the Wind" (I swear that thing has heroin in its pages) and went to see my friend sing Evensong with her college choir. Evensong is a thing they do here where you go into a special little part of the church and the choir sings a few hymns, there are a few prayers, a sermon, a blessing, and then you're done. The one I went to before, though, only took a half-hour--imagine my surprise when this stretched into an hour and fifteen minutes! Yikes! Oh well, it was still beautiful. I only knew one hymn, though, because for some reason it had the tune of the German national anthem, which I have heard many a time, since my dad loves to watch Formula 1 racing and this German guy named Michael Schumacher would always win and, like the Olympics, they play the national anthem of the first, second, and third place winner. Then my dad screams at the television if the drivers don't drink some of the celebratory bottles of champagne and instead use it all to spray on their team. Thankfully, this last part didn't happen in the chapel. There was a part in the prayers where they said, "O Lord, save the Queen," and I was so surprised by it that I laughed out loud. Whoops.

Well, that's my story for now. Pray for more snow here or, alternately, an early spring. The groundhog didn't see his shadow, right? We might have a chance. :)

In which Francie has a Roman... Florentian Holiday

2007-02-04T20:01:00.000Z

Do you ever have a moment where you're like, "There must be a rip in the time-space continuum because this is not my life at all and who the heck's life am I living?" Yeah, well, I had one of those in Florence.

Let me explain... after some other details. (Ha ha--cliffhanger to suck you in!) :)

So as some of you know, I am taking a class on British architecture with other Stanford kids here at the Stanford House. Because Britain's architecture has its roots in classical Italian buildings, our professor decided that we should take a weekend field trip to Florence, Italy. This is especially good because there is another Stanford Overseas Study Program in Florence. (They have a villa right by the River Arno and the Ponte Vecchio.) Hence, he was able to work jointly with the Florence administrators and we could see some of the city (and go out clubbing at night) with other Stanford kids! Also, Stanford paid for everything except our meals--not too shabby!

We had to leave at 5 in the morning because we needed to get to Gatwick and then make sure we got there two hours before, like they always advise. It started to snow just as we were taxiing onto the runway, so we were delayed because they had to spray warm water on the wings to make sure they didn't freeze. (Being a California child, this was quite exciting for me.) We also had to fly into Pisa (no real airport in Florence) and take another two-hour bus ride. But we FINALLY got there.

After we dropped off our luggage, we climbed up to the San Miniato al Monte, basically a tourist's dream--a terraced patio at the top of a steep, long flight of steps that overlooks the entire city. Talk about a photo opportunity! The walk up was so taxing that I could feel my airways closing up toward the end (yes, that's how out of shape I am. And I thought I'd gotten so much fitter with all the walking I'm forced to do here!) But it was worth it, because it was a beautiful (albeit cold), clear day and you could see for miles. You could even see the snow on the mountaintops in the distance!

Then we walked down to looked at the architecture of the Santa Croce Church, the Piazza della Signoria, the Ospegdale della Innocenti, the Uffizi Gallery--i.e., "A Room With a View" redux. It was absolutely FREEZING the entire way and, to add insult to injury, Vivoli (supposedly the best gelato place in all of Florence, where I went with my family the last time I was here) was closed for repairs until mid-February! Boo hoo. Perhaps I wouldn't have even wanted ice cream, though, because it was SO DAMN COLD. It was seriously the coldest I've been my entire time here. It's funny, because when I think of Italy, I think of baking warmth and humidity and all of Ms. Baterseh's (high-school Latin teacher's) tales of being too hot to even fall asleep on top of the covers. This is exactly why it was so cold. Most of Italy is built with this sizzling summer heat in mind, so all of the buildings are cavernous things of cold stone and shadows. A relief when you're dying of heatstroke, quite the opposite when your fingers are turning blue. I would keep going into these cathedrals and galleries thinking, "Once I get inside, I'll be warm," but no. It was only a few degrees warmer... at best.

That night we met up with the Stanford-in-Florence kids and got a tour of their villa before going out to dinner at this place that was a 20-minute walk away. (My fingers were now purple.) Then when we got there, the appetizers were grilled cheese sandwiches and salty fried pizza dough. That's all they were. The Italian teacer kept talking about how this was "typical Neopolitan food," but I had my doubts. Us Oxford kids were pretty disappointed, because we were hoping for good Italian food after the land of fish pies and mushy (look it up), but no. The sad thing was that we all ate it... piles of it, actually, because most of us had only had a coffee the entire day. Still, the main course made up for it somewhat--an entire margherita pizza for each of us! I think the Florence kids were hoping to go out that night with us, but we were all so tired that we were nodding off to sleep at the table. It was almost like jet lag again, even though Italy is only one hour ahead of England! So we all crashed that night. I was so tired I didn't even stay awake until my roommate turned her bedside lamp off... me, Ms. I-Can't-Sleep-Unless-I-Am-Parallel-To-The-Floor, On-A-Softish-Mattress, In-A-Completely-Dark-And-Quiet-Room.

The next day we went off to the Pitti Palace, which I didn't have high hopes for. From the street, it looked like another big stone palazzo the color of mud. But inside... oh, inside! Not even inside, even--the GARDENS. In the back of the palace, there are gardens that are so special they even have their own name--the Boboli Gardens. (It made me laugh the first time I heard it, because "Boboli" is the brand name of a precooked pizza crust my mom uses for dinner sometimes.) But soon my laughing was replaced with jaw-dropping awe. There were so many fountains, lawns, and grottos! I can't even describe how beautiful it was--hands down my favorite place we visited! It was worth the entire trip. I only wish my parents had brought us here two summers ago when we travelled to Italy as a family, but how could they have known what a jewel lay hidden behind this nondescript building on the other side of the Arno?

That afternoon we had a bit of free time, so I went and bought a pretty green scarf with roses on it for 6 euros at the streetmarket. Then we all met back up again at the Duomo, the huge, beautiful cathedral right in the middle of town with Brunelleschi's famous dome at one end. Get this--one of the art history teachers at the Stanford villa is a Roman-Catholic priest at the Duomo, so he led our tour and let us go behind the scenes! For a priest, he had one twisted sense of humor. He was showing us a picture of St. Peter with the souls of little children in his arms and he said, "No, he wasn't a pedophile--it's trying to show his kindness toward children." Then we got to go to the very front of the church (other people had to stay behind a gate) and look up into the painted dome. Then (coolest of all) we got to go through a LOCKED door into one of the hidden, secret rooms where the priests put on their special robes and stuff for Sunday Mass. (It was Saturday afternoon, so they were already laid out.) He even showed us the sink where the priests wash their hands, with the interesting detail that the faucets came out of the genital area of two smiling cherubs. "So," he said, "we're all washing our hands in angel piss. I just love that image!"

After getting some gelato and going to see the Statue of David with a small group, I came back to nap a bit and then find someone to go to dinner with. The only people that hadn't gone out again were four girls that I really didn't know well before that time, but we went to a cool Italian restaurant right near our hotel that had no English menus--we were basically the only Americans there, which was refreshing.

Then we met up with the larger group and the Florence kids took us to--get this--a faux English pub! We all protested, but they claimed that it was the "cheapest bar in town" and noted the beer they served on tap that was 10 percent alcohol. (We're such silly American college kids.) Then we went to a club right next to the Duomo.

That was when the weirdness started. The club, fortunately, did not charge a cover charge, which, after a month of 4-pound charges everywhere you go in Oxford, made me want to cry and kiss the ground. It was a bar upstairs, where you ordered a drink, and a dance floor downstairs. I had a glass of wine, which was enough for me--I'd already had two glasses of wine at dinner and a drink at the pub, and I didn't want to get drunk or anything. So I went downstairs and started dancing with my friends. Sure enough, as my life usually goes, almost every girl got asked to dance by Italian guys, and I was left dancing with one girl who was actively refusing the guys and a few boys. I danced for a few songs and then had to pee, so I went to the bathroom.

When I got back, I started to make a beeline for my friends when somebody caught my hand. I turned around, and who should it be but a gorgeous Italian guy with the most melting brown eyes I have ever seen. (I'm a sucker for brown eyes, even though 75 percent of the world has them.) He started to speak in Italian, and I half-smiled and said, "Non parlo Italiano." I started to leave and he stopped me again and said (in very heavily accented English), "You are very beautiful. Would you like to dance?"

Now, with any other girl that had had remotely good success with men in the past, she'd laugh in his face and go back to her friends. But this is me we're talking about, people. ME. As in, the girl who got turned down for Prom. As in, the girl who's never had much action outside of Full Moon on the Quad. As in, the girl who has spent way too many nights watching chick-flick movies but never had anything cute like that happen to her. I also have a very low opinion for myself, so it was cream for the cat to hear someone pronounce me "beautiful." Especially with an Italian accent. I was so surprised that anyone would actually call me that (even if they were from Italy, where anything with a double-X chromosome is called that) that I agreed.

I am not a very good dancer, as any of you know who have watched me dance at frat parties, and especially not good when it's with someone specific, not a circle of friends. So I kind of moved around, embarrassed, keeping my eyes on the floor and looking up every once in a while into his eyes and smiling to try and show him that I was having fun, I just suck at things like this. Again, this is Italy, so as Pollyanna-ish as I acted, he still... kissed me. On the lips. Then on my neck. Then on my lips again. Then on my neck again.

This went on for about half an hour, and the entire time I just sort of stood there, stunned, thinking that soon my alarm would go off and I would realize that this had all been some lovely dream. But it didn't stop. We tried to talk a little bit in between, but because he had limited English and I speak no Italian, it was hard. Sometimes he could understand me when I spoke Spanish, but rarely.

Soon my friends were leaving and I told him I had to go back to my hotel. "Hotel?" he said, his ears perking up, a smile across his face. "NO," I told him, laughing at his eagerness. "How about you call me sometime?" he asked. "I give you my number." "No... tomorrow... I go back to... Tierra de Inglese," I tried to say, in my Spanitalian, made-up dialect. He kissed me one last time, and it was over.

It makes me a little sad that I couldn't have stayed longer and seen him again. Yes, he was totally doing it all to try and get into my pants (it's not exactly like this was founded on some soul-baring conversation or anything), but it would have been nice for once to be the embarrassing couple kissing in front of the church or holding hands on the bus. It was also nice to see what a popular girl experiences most weekends--I kept thinking that, in order to balance out this weirdness in my life, God made some sorority girl stay home to watch "American Beauty" and go to bed early. However, my brain (which I barely ever listen to) tells me it's good I'm not studying abroad in Florence. While I had fun there for the weekend, Florence is like... well, the best analogy I can think of is that Florence is like Disneyland. It is an absolute paradise for the senses, but everything is just too... perfect. The food is too good, the men too handsome, the buildings too beautiful, the entire city too picturesque. If I was there for any more than a few days, my life would slowly spiral out of control into one of debauchery and hedonism, because I am a very undisciplined, romantic person that believes in taking chances when you can.

In the end, I think it is because Italian people are too much like me. They are too obsessed with pleasure and food and loving life. They will pay any cost to enjoy themselves. They are thoroughly obsessed with the idea of romance and idealize it like crazy in their heads. They are a little too loving and affectionate toward everyone. They look at the entire world through rose-colored glasses. They trust people.

Whereas the British... don't. They are a private, polite people who are extremely self-disciplined and are extremely careful in personal relationships, only opening up to you after a very long time. They care more for knowledge than love, more for usefulness than beauty, more for sense than whimsy. But being here (I hope) will make me a more hardworking, serious student, the kind who doesn't walk around barefoot in the classroom and doesn't put off her tutorial paper to imbibe in red wine. I also hope their loyalty will rub off on me--sometimes I feel like I need to be more particular in the people I stay close to and develop deeper relationships with those that make the cut.

So yes, Italy may (overall) be loved by more people worldwide. But, I ask you, what is the nature of that love? Italy is so easy to like--comparative to saying you like The Beatles or pizza. No one is going to challenge you, but it is a shallow love--the Beatles were excellent songwriters and pizza is all of the flavors evolution's been telling us to eat for eons. Loving England is different--it is like saying you like Avril Lavigne or atomic fireball candy. Most people will laugh at you and say, "Why? It is America with pastier people, worse food, and ten times the amount of rain." But it is so much more than that. Love for Italy is a middle-school crush on the quarterback--love for England is a our-socks-get-mixed-up-in-the-dryer wedded bliss.

And the Italian accent, while adorable, can just not compete with some British guy saying, "Oh, that's lovely," with that little lilt in their voice that makes my heart swell like the Grinch's.

Lastly, another photo of the Boboli Gardens, because I loved them so much:

In which Francie immerses herself in the British experience

2007-01-25T23:40:00.000Z

I thought I would start off this entry with a bit of information about the college I am affiliated with, Brasenose. Basically, the Stanford kids can be affiliated with three colleges: Magdalen, Corpus Christi, or Brasenose. You get to put a preference on your application, but do not find out with one you got until the first day of orientation in England, at which point it is a permanent assignment that cannot be changed. After much thought, I put Magdalen on my preference sheet, because it is where CS Lewis went and had a deer park. It was also right by the River Thames. But sadly Magdalen is the most popular choice, and Corpus Christi won't let in anyone that didn't put it as their first choice, so Brasenose it was. At first I was deeply disappointed about this, but now I actually think I like Brasenose the best out of all of them. Magdalen thinks a little too much of itself and supposedly has the worst food, and Corpus Christi is just too... small. (While I loved going to a small high school and probably want to teach at a small school once I graduate, Stanford has exposed me to all the great opportunities that come with having a slightly larger student body.) It reminds me of Goldilocks--Magdalen is too big, Corpus is too small, Brasenose is JUST RIGHT!

The picture at the beginning of this entry is the namesake of Brasenose, originally "Brazen Nose." A long, long time ago (i.e., before 1330) there was a bronze (brazen) door knocker at the college that showed a little squinched-up face that was, for some reason, dearly adored by all. However, some students left Brasenose for Stamford (STAMFORD! Oh, the irony) in the 1330's and took the doorknocker with them. (I'm not quite sure why some kids were able to take away the college's namesake. Can you imagine nowadays if someone tried to pull that stunt? "Oh, yes, I'm taking the corpse of Leland Stanford Jr. when I move off-campus next quarter..." Of course, it isn't Leland that's buried at Stanny--its his parents that are.) The door knocker story eventually faded into the mists of time and was regarded as a legend until 1890, when the college found the door knocker on the front of a house in Stamford that was up for sale. The college asked for it back. The houseowners said no. So, in a very "we're-Oxford-and-we-can-do-whatever-the-fuck-we-want" move, the college simply bought the whole house and cut off the knocker, leaving the rest to be put up for sale again. Brasenose students still make a pilgrimage to Stamford every once in a while for old time's sake.

Other cool points of interest about Brasenose (with pictures!):

THE DARK UNDERBELLY OF MANKIND... No, there is not a tribe of cannibals on campus. About the only alum from Brasenose I have ever heard of is William Golding. That's right, the guy who wrote the creepiest book in the English language ("Lord of the Flies") went here. Doesn't it just give you the warm fuzzies to imagine me eating dinner in the same dining hall where William Golding imagined Piggy's smashed head on the rocky cliff face? And we're done with the beef stroganoff... :) One of the former college principals, Alexander Nowell, was also the guy who invented bottled beer, since he wanted to take some with him on fishing trips in a convenient package. Worshipping alcoholic inventions? This is my kind of school!

THE FAB FOUR! Yes, it's true--Brasenose was the only college in all of Oxford to ever host the Beatles in their dining hall and have them play in their Senior Common Room. It was organized by some guy named Jeffrey Archer to help raise money for OXFAM, a major British charity. This was on March 5, 1964--before they became "cool" in the eyes of today's indie kids, but it's still pretty damn impressive. (And I need to type a little more text here so the page doesn't get all wonky. Who's your fave Beatle? Mine is Paul, but I really like George's voice. My mom's is George. My sister's is--I think--Paul, though I wouldn't bet my life on it. Hopefully, this has been enough text to fill out the space. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.)

CASPER AND NEARLY HEADLESS NICK! OK, OK, so maybe these two aren't there, but there are a number of ghosts that haunt Brasenose. Brasenose was supposedly built on top of a graveyard where plague victims were buried, so naturally it has its share of little white visitors. There is one that haunts the bell tower, and two children that come into the Porter's Lodge at night and "talk" to the woman who pulls the late-night (graveyard--ha) shift. (Her IQ score is being looked into at the moment.) Last but not least, my favorite ghost doesn't haunt Brasenose, but instead Brasenose Lane, the tiny little Medieval street next to it. In the past a Brasenose boy picked up a prostitute on the seedy side of Oxford and took her back to his room. As he was, ahem, having his way with her, the college officials pounded on the door, suspecting something. In a panic, the boy pushed the "lady of the night" out his window, and she fell to her death on the cobblestone street below. While this sounds like the start of an Edgar Allan Poe poem, they all swear that you can hear her late at night, walking up and down the street, moaning. I feel her pain. Isn't that just like a man--one "wham, bam, thank you, ma'am," and then it's over. This is the random hook-up every college guy dreams about, and you don't even have to call the girl in the morning! (Although I guess you never call a prostitute for a morning-after chat... but still... oh yes, and I'm being entirely facetious here, in case you didn't notice.)

And last, but not least...

UNICORNS... AND THEIR MANHOODS Behind the knocker in the dining hall, high up on the wall, is the typical lion and the unicorn fighting for the crown image you see all over Britain, this time because it appears in Brasenose's official coat of arms. I bought a book called "The Cheeky Guide to Oxford," which I love to death, and about the unicorn, it says (and I quote): "The unicorn was, for many years, stripped of its manhood (or should that be unicornhood?) until about 20 years ago when the offending member was replaced for anatomical correctness. This of course prompts the question--Where does one 'store' a unicorn's penis?" What do you think? Write me a comment suggesting the best place you can think of in which to store it! The phallus in question is quite surprisingly... generous when you look closely at it, but you'd probably never notice it until someone pointed it out to you.

So, what does it mean that I am affiliated with Brasenose? Basically it means that I eat in the Brasenose dining hall and can use their library... which isn't much. However, I really do like the dining hall. It reminds me so much of Harry Potter, though not as cavernous and with a regular old ceiling. :)

This leads me into my first bit of news: Last Tuesday, I went to my first Formal Hall at Brasenose! Formal Hall happens every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday night. It is a slightly more frou-frou dinner than usual, and you have to reserve tickets in advance. All of the kids wear their academic robes, and us Yanks just dress nicely. It is also the only time professors ever eat in the same time slot as us, since they usually come in around the time our dinner is finishing. Also, it doesn't mean much, because (like in Harry Potter) they sit at a table at the head of the room and don't talk to us at all. And they have more servants. And a completely different meal that is supposed to be much better. I think the seeds are being sown for a revolution...

I got there late with two of my friends, so we were forced to split up, since there weren't any three seats together that we were still free. However, I think this was good for me--for the first time, I actually talked to British kids outside of a dance club. The kids at my table were all discussing next Monday's "bop" (dance) at a local bar. The theme is "P"--i.e., you dress up as anything that starts with a P. They all seemed to be having the greatest time thinking up possible costumes--parks, pimps, Postman Pat. (I feel sorry for the dears--they never got a Halloween to dress up for.) One of the boys said that he was going to draw a penis on his head and "go as the Prime Minister," which caused great laughter. Nice to know other countries hate their leaders as much as we hate ours.

Then one of the boys was being really nice to me and asking me what I was studying and what my favorite books were and where I was from... you know, the basic Facebook questions you ask when you're just getting to know someone. I had to leave, but he e-mailed me later and asked if I was coming to the next Formal Hall. Yay! I have a friend!

The reason I had to leave was because of the next exciting thing--the Florio Poetry Society. This is a club at Magdalen that welcomes members from all over to submit poetry, which is then read aloud anonymously and discussed. This is pretty much all I knew about the club before going in. I finally found the room and... oh my lord. It was this huge, ornate, wood-panelled thing with embroidered carpets on the floors and a table that looked as if it was used by Louis XIV to dine on. Bottles of wine stood all around the table, as well as a copious amount of glasses. The most surprising thing, though, was that other than one other girl from Stanford, every person there was a guy. And there was only 5 of them, one who was (I think) a grad student, one a professor. We then passed around our poems, and suddenly I felt embarrassed, because mine was a very spoken word-y poem, long and rambling, while theirs were all short, simple poems that evoked feeling by saying little. Ah, well--it was still fun. Now I know what is expected, and you know what? It might help my writing to not be allowed to verbally masturbate onto a page and never revise. I will learn how to make my poetry more terse, every word more meaning-laden. The boys were also really funny and welcoming, and they kept trying to pour me glass after glass of red wine, my true Achilles heel. (I stopped them at two, considering that I'd already had one at Formal Hall and had class the next morning.) It's so strange, having a college experience so closely linked to free-flowing alcohol--not that you have to sneak around at Stanford, but its a precious commodity, horded until Friday or Saturday nights just before the major parties. I keep feeling as if I am squandering it--and then I realize that I could go out and buy more. It seems too good to be true!

The big piece of news happened even later that night--IT SNOWED! And not just pithy little ice crystals, either. For about an hour, it was really coming down. I heard a girl in the next room tell her friend "it's snowing" (that's how thin the walls are here) and looked out, and--I couldn't stop gaping. My mouth was seriously cemented into a perpetual O. I then ran outside and hung out with various groups of people that would come out to look at the snow. At the very end, I had a snowball fight with one of my friends, Leah, and two random people on the street. The snow was not thick enough on the ground to scoop up, since it melted pretty quickly, but there were some road blocks for the construction they're doing right in front of the house, and those gathered the flakes nicely.

Leah is also a new discovery this week. I didn't really know her before, and then we had a long, long talk on Sunday night about her boyfriend and Stanford and whatnot. She is the only sophomore here, so I feel a bit sorry for her. It takes a lot of courage to go abroad your sophomore year, I think. She even offered me some cookie dough she had made earlier that day, and then we trooped back to her room, where she sleeps on a bed with (get this) RED SATIN SHEETS. She brought them all the way from the US! I love this little character detail about her. I always keep a running list in my head of character details I want to include if I ever write a book. OK, so there are only two others so far. They are:
1) One of my friends programmed his cell phone to make the ringtone a police siren whenever his parents call. I think this is too funny.
2) My best friend's older sister lived in a room that had one of those old-fashioned door keyholes that you could actually see through, and once in a fit of adolescent rage, she put a Band-Aid over it to block the view. It was still there when I went to visit him in December--and she's in her late 20's by now! :)

Earlier on Sunday, I had another cool experience--I went to an Imogen Heap concert. Imogen Heap is the lead singer of Frou Frou who has set out on her own career. I really didn't know any of her songs, except for "Let Go" by Frou Frou and "Hide and Seek" by just her, but I figured it might be fun, and it was only $30. (Actually, I don't know more than two songs by any of the groups I've seen in concert, the others being Fall Out Boy and Jose Gonzalez. Oh wait, Tom Petty! He was the exception.) It was a beatiful stage set-up, with sort of a see-through white piano entwined with fairy lights and fake roses. There were also these LCD "bubbles" that hung over the stage, onto which they projected images of people dancing or streams of colored light. She was much more human than I thought she would be--she explained every song before she sang it and also introduced us to all the instruments she used, which were mostly things like synthesizers and electric keyboards, but still--I feel like those are the instruments artists play these days, not guitars and drums. She seemed to know a lot about the technology of mixing a song.

And I've reached the end of my stories. I really must go to sleep now, for I have gotten about 6 hours of sleep over the past 2 nights (not sure why--too nervous about things?) and my architecture class is leaving tomorrow for a weekend field trip to Florence. The downside? The bus leaves for the airport at 5 AM--basically, 4 hours from now, and I still have to pack. Auughhh.

Take care of yourselves.

In which Francie arrives

2007-01-20T21:36:00.000Z

Yes, it's true--I have finally gotten my act together and started the travel blog of my time in Oxford that I have promised so many of you. I know blogs seem a little self-absorbed, but two of my friends kept theirs while studying overseas, and not a day went by when I wasn't overjoyed to read one of their updates. Hopefully my blog will do the same.

Because I have started this so late in the game (Francie? Procrastinating? Nawwww), I thought I would just give the highlights of my first two and a half weeks here. (If I described each day in Francie detail, this post would be slightly longer than "The Brothers Karamazov.") So, without further ado:

First, a bit of background on where I am specifically. I am living in the Stanford House in Oxford, which is located on High Street, one of the busiest streets in Oxford's town center. Basically, Stanford bought up 6 townhouses next to each other a number of years ago, knocked down the walls between them, and made them into one big house where up to 50 students could live at one time. The good news about this is that it provides all of us with a place to live that is right in the center of this bustling town. The bad news is that it means there are about 40 staircases in the house and everyone is constantly losing their way amidst the maze of hallways. One of my friends once commented that they must have based the blueprint of the house on one of those M.C. Escher paintings with the people walking up upside-down and backwards staircases. That or the chase scene in "Labyrinth."

I am sharing a room with another junior, Elaine Wu. It is quite a big double and the two windows overlook High Street. At first I thought all the noise and activity going on outside would make it hard to sleep, but instead it provides wonderful white noise that lulls me to bed every night. One of the few drawbacks of the room is that, because it is in a dilapidated old house in England, the floor slants like mad. However, I remember that at Louisa May Alcott's house in Concord, Massachusetts, her room's floor was sloped, so whenever I get annoyed that I trip while crossing to the towel rack, I just tell myself that Louisa went through the same thing. Also, the duvets on the beds suck. They are not stitched together all the way at the end--rather, there are only one or two stiches, so the pillow bulges almost lose of the fabric and every time I try to make my bed, it looks like a Great Dane just rolled around on top of it. (My mom always claimed, though, that whenever I made my bed, it looked like a retarded person had made it, so maybe it doesn't look much different to the untrained eye.)

The house is situated right across from Magdalen College (one of the most famous, with its own deer park--Oscar Wilde and C.S. Lewis both went there) as well as a lovely sandwich shop, a newsstand with a full display of Cadbury chocolate, and a darling little bookstore (which, fortunately, I have been able to resist so far.)

Oxford itself is one of the most active cities I have ever been to, almost as crazy as San Francisco and New York. At all hours of the day, tourist buses and cars scrape by with a loud belch of exhaust. You have to dodge people on the sidewalks, and most of the time Cornmarket Street is so busy that you can barely squeeze yourself in. A few years ago I would have hated this urban-ness. Now I love it. I think I have realized that I am never going to live in the heart of a big city when I grow up--there is just too much overstimulation everywhere you look--and will probably find myself a house in some leafy suburb and have a typical, middle-class American life. So it is nice to be in an urban place like Oxford, if only for six months.

On to the highlights, in convenient bullet-point form!

-- Shrewsbury: We went on a weekend trip to Shrewsbury. I was a little sad because we spent the whole day doing weird things like visiting aqueducts and looking at the ruins of some abbey, yet we got to this darling little village too late to go into the shops or really immerse ourself in the non-touristy culture. The town was also pretty dead--literally the only restaurant we could find open that night was a KFC. Happily, there were quite a lot of bars/pubs open, so we went to one, had a drink, and then asked the bartender what the next-best bar was. (The novelty of being able to legally purchase alcohol in public has still not worn off for me. I kept ordering all these drinks I had always heard about, like mai tais and sex on the beaches, and kind of staring at the frosty glass in my hand in awe, as if it was the holy grail.) We did this about 4 times and then went to a really fun under-25 club called Liquid that had a bar at one end and a dance floor at the other, but the dance floor had a temporary wall in front of it, which opened at 10 to much fanfare. The reason I am telling you all of this is because a cute blonde British boy came up and asked me to dance with him. Thrilled, I agreed. This is the first time in my life that someone has hit on me that wasn't either homeless, over the age of 60 or under the age of 14. Yes, he was pretty drunk, but I didn't care. I don't think he understood how much that made my night.

-- Pantomime: A few weeks ago I saw an ad for a play called "Dick Whittington: The Pantomime." My parents, when they lived for a year in England when Kelly and I were babies, talked about how pantos were very British things and that, if I ever got the chance, I should go to one. Unlike in America, where the word "pantomime" conjures up images of mime shows, British people ardently love their pantos. Basically, they are short, musical versions of popular children's fairy tales, except with at least one guy that cross-dresses in outrageous clothing and many, many double entendre lines that children wouldn't necessarily pick up on. (Think a cross between Gaieties and Genderfuk, in a way.) In this version, a 6'5" guy in crazy makeup played Dame Sarah, the cook, and would make lots of jokes about "enjoying this cucumber when I get home" and "limp sausages that remind me of my second husband" and some such. The songs are also not exactly run-of-the-mill, ranging from Queen to "Wicked" to James Blunt and back. There is also much audience participation, and many lines that Brits have heard so often that they are burnt into their memory. For instance, the main character yells to the audience, "Oh, no you didn't!" and everyone in the audience replies, "Oh, yes we did!" This continues for at least a minute. Another was when the main character asked the audience to yell if they saw the villain onstage, the villain comes onstage and the audience yells, but the main character (of course) does not see them. When they finally realize, the villain has gone, and:
Main character: "So he was over there?"
Audience: "YES!"
Main character: "So he wasn't over there?"
Audience: "NO!"
Main character: (looks) "Well, he's not there now!"
Again, this happened several times.
I e-mailed out to the dorm list, inviting others to come with me, expecting no one to want to. Imagine my surprise when six other girls e-mailed back, eager to attend. I think I was a little afraid they'd think it was too weird or babyish, but they all LOVED it and could not stop talking about it afterwards when we went to get ice cream. All in all, a strange but fun window into the British mind.

-- Becca Lasky and Lee Norton: As some of you Stanfordites might know, one of my friends from sophomore college (Arielle Lasky) is a twin, and her twin is studying abroad at Oxford this semester. Arielle suggested that we meet up in Oxford, and so we did and had lunch together. I mentioned how much I enjoyed poetry, and Becca said I should meet another American friend she had here, a guy from Wesleyan who was studying poetry at Hertford College (one of the colleges of Oxford.) About a day later, one of my friends in the Stanford house heard I liked poetry and told me that he had a cousin here who was at Hertford studying poetry. It turned out to be the same boy--Lee! Lee could not believe this because, although he had four random people he knew in Oxford, none of them had ever known each other before. I was, as he put it, "the next level." Very six-degrees-of-separation. So Becca and Lee and I decided to go to a poetry slam together here in town and then go out to a pub. The poetry slam was middling, but it was very nice to hang out with people who weren't from the Stanford house for a change.

-- My birthday: It was my birthday on January 15th. While I like most holidays, I don't like my birthday. I used to like it when I was little (my parents threw the best parties,) but it seems like an extreme letdown when you're an adult. Usually people forget my birthday outside of Facebook, and it is in the darkest, coldest month of the entire year. It is also right after Christmas, which means I get all my presents within the space of a month and then never again until next December. I also never feel like getting a year older is that much of an accomplishment. It is such a false thing, anyway--just because the earth has rotated once around the sun since the day you were born, you're supposed to rejoice? All in all, I like to ignore it and not have high hopes for it. This year, however, my roommate was super nice and organized a surprise gathering of all of the kids in the Stanford house and bought champagne. She also gifted me with three Ben's Cookies, which are cookies from this wonderful place in the Covered Market downtown. I was really touched that she would do all of this having only known me a week. As far as my birthdays have gone since I turned 16 or so, it was one of the better ones.

-- My tutorial: A big part of the "Oxford Experience" you're supposed to have here is the tutorial class system, where you meet once a week for an hour with a professor one-on-one, discuss an 8-10 page paper you've written that week, and then get assigned a topic for the next week. I was a little scared of my tutor, because he was this very established guy that had worked at Oxford for many years and seemed a bit brusque when we were trying to set up a time to meet, but he turned out to be a dream come true. I had to walk a half hour each way to his house (which was hard, because this is the day the big European storm hit Oxford and I was battling to walk against raging, howling winds that were literally blowing me from side to side--and I am not a small person,) but the first thing he said when I got there was, "Would you like some tea?" He proceeded to make me tea with milk and sugar and then we sat down in his cozy, warm little study. Bookcases filled every wall of the room, and while he was making the tea, I noticed he had a lot of Roald Dahl, "Wind in the Willows," and even H.D.F. Kitto's "The Greeks," which is the book my father uses as a textbook in the high-school ancient history class he teaches. We then proceeded to discuss my paper, which was a close reading of 20 lines of T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," which I had (unfortunately) had to bang out in 3 hours hungover, after I had accidentally imbibed in too much vino at the wine and cheese night in our house. He was so encouraging, though, and instead of challenging my ideas, he enhanced them with quotes from "The Wasteland" and little tidbits about Eliot's life. He had written his thesis on Eliot and told me of how he'd gotten to interview Eliot's second wife--but not in a bragging way. He just seemed so genuinely excited to talk about poetry, which always makes me happy. Whenever someone else wants to talk about poetry, I feel as if we're two foreigners in a strange country that have found each other and can converse in our mother tongue. He also didn't get mad when I asked him auxiliary questions, like who his favorite poet was and whether he had a cat. He didn't take himself as seriously and academically as some other Oxford people I've met. I can't wait for our next meeting and wish I could go to my tutorial every day.

-- The Oxford Student: Many of the administrators here kept recommending that, if we want to meet "real British kids," we should join the clubs/societies at Oxford. Infuriatingly enough, because this is England and everything sensible is harder to do than it should be, nowhere could I find a full list of all the clubs offered at Oxford. Thus, I turned to the Oxford Student Handbook, which STILL didn't have it, but did have info on how to join different publications around campus. I e-mailed out to three student publications (two newspapers and one news magazine) and, literally within 5 minutes, got an e-mail from one of the newspapers, "The Oxford Student," asking if I could come in as soon as possible to copy edit. I went in and, after copy editing for a few hours, they told me to come every week on Wednesday evenings and asked me how I wanted my name to appear in the staff box. Yes, I was in the staff box and a regular after one night. This was all a little surreal to me--The Daily has so many kids that usually you have to e-mail at least 3 times to get a response and it takes many months before you are on the regular staff in any kind of way. I was a little taken aback by how easy it all was. I think it is probably because it is a small paper--although there are more kids at Oxford than at Stanny, the entire operation was wedged into a tiny, glassed-in room of the student union, and only about 5 people were there while I was. My sister works at the paper at Occidental, which also has a tiny staff, and has most of her friends in that group of people. As much as I love the anonymity of Stanford at times, I think a small paper staff is the way to go. I went back this week and stayed for even longer and had so much fun.

There is much more to tell, but you have been a patient audience, and if you've gotten this far, I tip my hat to you. I am not sure what I am going to do for the rest of the night for, although it is a Saturday night, no one is going out. Frustratingly, the big party nights here are Tuesday and Wednesday, which annoys me to no end because those are the only nights I have real work--yet everyone wants to go clubbing and drink pints upon pints of beer those nights. I don't really get this system. Why don't they club on Friday and Saturday nights, when they do not have classes the next day? Why do they feel driven to party at the worst possible time? Who knows?

Still, I love England. And I love this program. I am so glad I am going to be here for two quarters--I almost wish I had signed up for the whole year! Lastly, a question on human nature: At my birthday party, one of the boys asked me if I had any special wishes. "Oh, nothing much," I said. "Just, you know, to kiss a British boy." Everyone thought this was SO FUNNY and now everyone teases me and toasts to "Francie's British boys" and whatnot. My question: Isn't every woman supposed to want to make out British man at one time in their life, much like every guy wants to have a threesome and every 13-year-old to dance with their crush to Savage Garden? Aren't these just things that are written deep in our genetic codes? At least, I used to think so.

Anyway, I am sure I will discuss all this more thoroughly in the future. I plan to update at least once every few days from now on and in shorter entries, so look for them!