First Oxford Day after Yorkshire

So, I'm back in Oxford! (If you haven't seen the Bronte weekend rundown, scroll down.) Today was relatively uneventful, but I did either read for the first time, or review, the four poems my class discusses this week: Wordsworth's "Prelude" and "Upon Westminster Bridge" and Whitman's "Song of Myself" and "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry." That gives me the rest of the week to finish a paper due Friday and maybe even start my paper not due until the last day of class. I read poems at the legendary "G & D's" or "George & Danvers" ice cream + bagel shop above. Interestingly, one of my Seattle Academy advisees, Andy Kaplan '09, recommended it after spending a summer in Oxford himself. Good call, Andy!

Across the street from G & D's is Christ Church College, the most tourist-visited of all the colleges in the University of Oxford and known for its 1) cathedral, 2) connection to "Alice in Wonderland" (Charles Dodson, a.k.a. Lewis Carroll, was a mathematician at Christ Church, and the book is filled with allusions to Christ Church sites and personalities), 3) connection to "Harry Potter" (parts of which were filmed there), and 4) connection to Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited" (parts of which are based there). I walked over to see its meadow, below.

Christ Church is quite large, 150 acres. This meadow is adjacent to campus, right in the middle of Oxford. It's a peaceful place, with adjacent picnickers... and even a cow or two.

Below is what's known now as "Alice's Shop," a now-commercialized version of the sweet shop where Alice Liddell liked to go for candy (across the street from Christ Church).

I spent the rest of today reading and napping back at Lincoln. Not too shabby! Tomorrow, we have our third High Table Dinner, preceded by a talk on Jane Austen by Freya Johnston, a Fellow and Tutor in English at St. Anne's College, University of Oxford. More soon!