I’m here! I arrived in London on the 12th of January at 8:00am GMT, having travelled since 4:00am PST (that’s about 20 hours). After the plane landed, I met up with the rest of the IFSA-Butler group from my flight and got on a bus to London. I managed to stay up all day, and even went out to a couple pubs that evening before crashing around 10pm (34 hours awake, woohoo!).

We all spent the next couple days in London, getting oriented by IFSA-Butler and exploring on our own. I got to go to an amazing Turner art exhibit at the Tate, ride down the Thames in a ferry, see some original Picasso and Dalí paintings at the Tate Modern, and wander through several of the different London boroughs.

(view from the Thames)

London was wonderful, and while for the most part I felt pretty at home, there were several moments that reminded me I was finally in London— standing outside the gates of Buckingham Palace, seeing the taxis and the double decker buses and the old telephone booths, walking past the ridiculously fancy McDonalds and Starbucks and Pizza Hut (apparently everything is fancier here? Pizza Hut looks like a nice hotel lobby. There are red leather couches. I kid you not). It was a little hard to fully enjoy London, however, knowing our stay there was so temporary and as we all felt anxious about being able to actually settle in at Oxford. The St. Catherine’s group was the last of the IFSA study abroad groups to head to our college, but we finally made it on Thursday midmorning. I was surprised when I got here to have very little orientation– a welcome packet, some tea, and an introduction to the staff of the libraries, student welfare center, and gym/IT, and we were set free. That first evening, I had to figure out how to take the bus, in the dark, during pouring rain, to have a preliminary meeting with my tutor for American Literature 1920-present. Still jetlagged, barely making my way through the winding streets of Oxford, and eager to adjust and meet the local students, I discovered that I had to read an entire Hemingway novel and write an 8 page paper by the following Tuesday, in addition to writing a paper on Husserl (after, of course, actually reading Husserl) by Thursday– short notice, my tutor said, so it was alright if I didn’t quite reach the norm of at least 6 external research sources (um.).

So, I have spent a majority of my time since then reading, researching, and writing. I’ve realized that Oxford students seem to have a pretty good system– when they study, they really study. The libraries are silent places of total concentration, not the most social building on campus like at Whitman. And when the British students go out to have fun, that’s just what they do; no one talks about work when they’re out or complains about how stressed they are, how much studying they have. So, my goal is to try and adopt that lifestyle somewhat while I’m here, to get used to focusing when I need to focus and allowing myself to let the worries and stress go when I decide to have fun.

I’m getting better at it already, and despite all the work I have been able to explore and enjoy myself a bit. Just walking around town is fantastic– all of the spirals, the beautiful skies (both cloudy and clear), the crowd of people with all different accents and languages. And with a lot of work, I couldn’t ask for better study spaces.

(Study room in the Bodleian)

(The Radcliffe Camera, connected by tunnel to the Bodleian library)

(The view from my study spot in the Camera)

I have much more to tell, but that’s quite a lot for a first post, so I’ll hold off for now! The last thing I’ll mention is that at the pub last night, another American mistook me for being British! Whether they had been drinking a bit much or whether I’ve actually picked up something of a British accent I’m not sure, but it was good to know I have begun to look like a local– well, at least to the non-locals. 😉