their lightswitches are upside down. up = off, down = on.
they use military time and the metric system. confusion.
they put butter on ham sandwiches. what?
and they eat mushrooms for breakfast.
like i said: weird.
i guess it's a good thing i love mushrooms.
what i really never realized about england is that the culture of the nation is completely different than the united states'. i mean, we speak the same language, we can't be that dissimilar, right? ha! wrong.
it's been really interesting to pick up on the little things that make the english culture so unique. of course, i am a sociology major, so i'm kind of trained to notice that stuff. one huge thing i've noticed is the difference in the culture of work here, especially in restaurants (or dining halls): rather than following the philosophy that "the customer is always right," their ideals are more along the lines of "this is my job and i'm going to do it properly, so please don't hinder me from doing that." our group was late to our first dinner here because when we were told it was served at 7:15, we assumed that meant we could show up anytime between 7:15 and 7:30 and hop in the food line, like at any american university. not so much. when they said "served," they meant it literally, and our servers weren't too pleased with us straggling in long after they were supposed to have finished their jobs. we haven't made that mistake again.
oh, and if you ever do visit the UK, make sure you've signed the back of your credit card and that your signature looks exactly like it does on your driver's license, or the seemingly sweet lady at the grocery store checkout counter might give you a hard time and almost not let you buy your groceries. not that that happened to me or anything...
anywho, we started classes on monday! so far i'm loving mine. i'm taking a 19th century gothic novel class and a jane austen class. so far they're both great and i really like my professors. it is a heck of a lot of reading though. every night. but i'm not complaining, they're great books. right now we're studying "northanger abbey" in my gothic class and "persuasion" in my austen class - both written by jane austen. yeah. i'm kind of in heaven.
monday was an absolutely beautiful day, so after a quick grocery trip (where i may or may not have been lectured on identity theft by the cashier), a group of us went to read in the park. one really fantastic thing about england? there are no mosquitos! instead, there are spiders. everywhere. but they're tiny and harmless so i'll take it. after reading for a couple hours, i went for a run around the park with my friends tatum and emma. i can't even tell you how nice it was not to be sweating before we even started running. texas, i love you, but i'd love you so much more if you didn't have such an affinity for 100+ degrees temperatures. that night we went out to the king's arms, the pub right next door to wadham. everyone decided to try a pimm's (a very english cocktail) because apparently you just have to when you're in england. it had about half a cup of fruit floating in it, though, so i opted out of that particular "oxford experience." the pub was fun though, and it was nice to see what the town is like at night, when all the tourists have gone.
tuesday we took a trip to stratford-upon-avon, where shakespeare lived. we stopped at anne hathaway's cottage just outside of the town for a tour of the house and gardens.
the cottage was really cute and it was very cool to see how people lived back in the day (aka the 16th century). the doorways were tiny. as in, came up to about my eyebrows. but i managed not to bump my head once! i don't know if you're impressed, but i sure am. it was a big personal victory. aside from that, the house very much struck me as, "this is a bunch of stuff we've collected that very possibly belonged to people who very possibly knew/were related to someone famous." i was a tad underwhelmed. but the gardens were really beautiful. there were tons of flowers, a lot of which i'd never seen before.
after our tour, we went into the town of stratford and had a few hours to wander around before going to see the royal shakespeare company's production of "macbeth." it's a very cute little town, but it is packed with tourists. a group of us made our way toward holy trinity church, where shakespeare and his wife are buried, and along the way we stopped at what we originally thought was shakespeare's birthplace; turns out we just can't read signs - it was his son-in-law's house. another one of those "someone famous may have been here at some point hundreds of years ago" places. i wasn't too impressed. maybe i'm a historical landmark snob?
we got to the church and it was beautiful. stained glass, high arched ceilings, everything you imagine when you think of old european cathedrals. it turned out that not only was shakeapeare buried in that church, but he was baptized and married there too. and apparently he had the 16th century version of a shotgun wedding? scandalous. from the church we went in search of somewhere to eat, and we stopped at a pub called the windmill inn. this is where i got the ham and butter sandwich. and no, i was not aware that there was butter on it when i ordered it. it actually didn't taste half bad. but i don't think that's an eating habit i'm going to get into.
after dinner, we headed toward the theater to meet the rest of the program for the play. somehow, i ended up with a ticket on the very front row... all by myself. as prone to feeling awkward as i am, i was definitely not okay with that, so i traded seats with our grad assistant. good call on my part because y'all, this play was gruesome. there was so much fake blood on the stage by intermission that the crew had to come out and mop. and then there were all these creepy dolls hanging from the ceiling? i didn't really understand what that was about but it was disturbing. i'm really surprised that i didn't have nighmares.
so the first two days of class were great, but wait til i tell you what i did today...
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