Primary Accordians

Dear Americans,

Today I walked through Cornmarket street, which is Oxford's City Centre, and there was a man, admist the bustling crowds moving by, playing an accordion.

Tomorrow is the last day of Oxford's Hilary term. There are three Oxford terms in a year: Nicholas, Hilary and Trinity, they are only eight weeks long, with a long break in between them. Because I have horribly failed to send you any word until now, I want to offer you a few reflections on my Great British Adventure thus far, admist the business. These are my primary accordians:

Doors. There is a royal blue door with a big golden knob sticking out of a stone wall at our bus stop. There are a rainbow of vibrant doors here. Red, green, purple, canary yellow. Sometimes the knobs are exactly in the middle. There are tiny pointed doors in the huge college gate's that one has to yank open with the ring like handle and hunch down (and crawl over because the door is cut out about a foot above the ground) to get through because they are so small.

Tutorials. My tutors always made me tea before tutorials began. A tutorial is a one hour meeting with our teaching to go over our essay or assignment. It's the oxford version of a class.

For my first Aesthetics tutorial I was assigned the question, "What is Beauty?" I was sent to various places around town... a statue called "Flora", an old willow tree, to a modern art exhibit, to buy a can of coca cola, to help me make my critical decision about the nature of beauty.

After my last tutorial Aesthetics tutorial with him and showed me his ancient coin collection.

For my creative writing tutorial I wrote poetry. We met at his flat outside of town, often my tutor would have me to work on meter and leave me in the room alone to think about it. "Where is he stress in AQUINAS?" He would ask. "Well...I think.." I would be begin. "NO!" He cut me off. "Don't think! Know. You know. I am going to leave the room for a minute, when I come back if you can give me the correct answer I will give a reward.." Usually I would stare at his cat scurrying around the room during this time. I was never rewarded.

Church. I met a lot of International and British students at St. Aldates and St. Ebbes. Once I talked to a Brazilian for a long time about politics and chrisitanity in the U.S. and in South America. We sat near each other during a sermon about honest words being like a kiss on the lips from a verse in Proverbs. After the service he asked us in his Brazilian accent, "What is righteouness?" And the two or three of us, hand motions and all, could not explain it to him.

Poem life. For a while, almost everyday, our friend Thomas came into our room to read us his poem of the day, and then we would talk about it. He writes a poem everday.

Flowers. Little white flowers grow here all year long. The vines and some leaves on bushes and trees never brown or die. The first sign of spring are the crocuses, white, purple, orange and the dafodils, which are now growing.

Lent. Ash Wednesday at Magdalen College, where C.S. Lewis taught, was one of the most trancesdent experience of my life. The boy's choir sang a song as we received our ashes and kneeled to take commune that in the past was only aloud to be song in the Sistine Chapel.....until Mozart wrote it down.

English food. Digestives (a cookie), turkish delight, fish and chips, bagettes (chicken and curry), and tea are all really good.

Never trust mushroom soup.

Earth. The grass is really spongy here in some spots, because of this special bright green moss, and the granite grave stone's sink deeply into it.

Fashion. People are quite fashionable here.

Books. I forget how many hundreds of miles of library we have here, but my favorite libraries are the Radcliffe Camera and the Sackler -- both are circular.

Tomorrow I leave for Germany, but first I'd like to share with you some English words and phrases I have learned:

Rubbish. Bollocks. Bins. Bits. Loads. Higgldy Piggildy. Fifty P. Gobsmacked. Biscuit. Pancake Day. Giant Weasel. Bloody Hell. The Lu. The Queue. To Let. Nappy....

Cheers......