Anyway, classes. My classes are very... chill. I'm very excited and relieved about that, because I was kind of nervous about what these classes might require. My Shakespeare class (which is actually Monday and Wednesday, not Tuesday and Thursday) is taught by Dr. John O'Conner, who lives about an hour south of me in Montgomery County, Maryland! He is British, but lives in the States now and teaches primarily at Cornell, though he travel-lectures all over the world. He's very nice, insists that we call him John, and refuses to teach from notes. Thus, his "lectures" are the group of us (11 plus him) talking about Shakespeare movies and performances we've seen. Yesterday's syllabus planned for us to be introduced to Shakespearean performance and discuss Henry V in detail. We were more or less introduced to Shakespearean performance. We might learn about Henry V at some point... Still, we have learned quite a lot, even on the first day. I am anxiously anticipating the excursion to Stratford-upon-Avon, because John is giving a guided walking tour of the major sites (Shakespeare's house, the Holy Trinity Church where he was baptised...) and then we are seeing The Winter's Tale by the Royal Shakespeare Company. I am psyched.
So, that's Shakespeare class. Critical Reading is also cool. Our tutor, Dr. Roger Dalrymple, is a fairly young guy (late thirties) who obviously knows his stuff. We learned quite a bit about the history of English Monday, as well as how words change semantically. For example, "ho" has undergone both lexical obsolescence in its Elizabethan sense, and deterioration in its modern usage. The fellow students in my class all seem very cool/interesting. I have the same classmates for Shakespeare and Critical Reading, because the classes are one right after the other. Five of my peers are Yeagers (Shelby, Sam, Kyle, Rachel, and Patty). The other five I met Monday. One guy, Leon, is from Northern Virginia, and goes to George Mason University. There's a huge group from there. The others are girls. Three of them are born in the US, one lives in Texas but was born in the Philippines, and one, Louisa, is from Rio, Brazil. She speaks incredible English and has a Portuguese/British accent, because her English teachers in Brazil were British. Interesting person.
So, those are the classes and classmates. Our assignments are a paper each for our classes. For the Shakespeare class, we have to write something about something dealing with Shakespeare and performance. Anything. For Critical Reading, we have to write something about some sort of text. And read that text closely. So, it's safe to say the assignments are very broad.
Monday after class I ate dinner and then watched the movie Titus with Shelby and Rachel. John has a huuuuge collection of Shakespeare movies (like, an entire suitcase and a half) and invited us to watch any of them in the evenings. Titus is Julie Taymor's adaptation of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, and it's crazy. Even the play is crazy, let alone Taymor's interpretation of it. The end involves killing two sons and feeding them in a pie to their mother. Shakespeare meets Sweeney Todd. Oh, and Anthony Hopkins plays Titus. Go figure.
Yesterday was a fun day of exploration. Since I didn't have classes besides the daily lecture in the morning, I decided to explore a little. We students are very privileged to be able to read in the Bodelian library. This is Oxford University's main library, and visitors have to pay quite the price for a tour, and are still not allowed in many of the rooms to which we have access. It was very cool passing the tourists and gaining admittance to such a classy place. The architecture is beautiful, and the works they have include many books where only one copy exists in the world. Obviously, I don't get to see those, but to be there is still excellent.
In the evening, Emily and I did some walking around Oxford. The city is absolutely gorgeous at sunset. We roamed around some of the residential areas and looked at the pretty houses. I had been craving a milkshake all day, so we found a little ice cream place (rated best ice cream in the UK) and I got a milkshake made of Bailey's and Sweet Cream ice cream. Delicious.
We've had good times here, and the people are all very friendly. More updates later.
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