Week Two - in pictures...

Christ Church College (est 1546)

Magdalen College (est. 1458)

The Dining Hall at Magdalen.

More Magdalen.

All Souls College (est. 1438)

New College (est. 1379 - apparently, it was "new" at the time)

Me at New College.

They filmed a scene from Harry Potter here.

We saw these people punting during our visit to the Botanical Gardens.

Let's see - during week two (Oct 19-25)... I attended more classes, ate lunch at Lady Margaret Hall, met some Rhodes Scholars, toured the city a bit (hence the pics), and learned what "nackered" (i.e. tired, used a LOT to describe how you feel your first two weeks of classes) and "duffers" (i.e. slackers, used nicely in the following sentence by flatmate Matt: "They [Oxford] work you hard in the beginning to get rid of the 'duffers.'" ...and that's why I'm nackered) mean. I played numerous battles of (what I have come to call) Stair Wars, where I, wanting to walk on the right side while going anywhere (up or down stairs or a street, making biking a bit dodgy), play an accidental a game of chicken with the person coming towards me on the stairs, who is following the proper British way of walking on the left. Finally, I took a swim test for crew which involved me jumping and swimming in the (freezing) pool, fully clothed, along with 700 other "freshers," all at the same time. Awesome. (And I missed the memo about wearing a more-practical-for-English-weather one-piece suit -- I had the only bikini in the complex. I thought I had gotten away with my faux pas, since I skillfully hid it under numerous layers of clothing, but when I got out of the pool, sopping wet, my brown bikini practically glowed under my white t-shirts. So busted.) Next week, I plan to find a way to soften my pillow (even if it involves running over it with Henry a few dozen times) and I plan to learn how to use the washing machine/dryer so that it doesn't do this to my clothes anymore (see below clothes shrinkage). Big plans, big plans...