First Week In

The city of Oxford is amazing. Surrounded by old buildings, it's hard not to be caught up in the majesty of the place. And it's easy to imagine only slightly altered crowds of people milling about two hundred years in the past. It's pointless to describe the architecture, instead, I'll be posting some pictures later. Until then you can google "Gothic buildings" and "Norman Construction."

Some things are quite a bit different. People don't move aside on the sidewalk, everyone just keeps to their path, splitting up spouses, groups of friends, even occasionally children from parents. But no matter what everyone stays on their straight path, and it hardly seems to bother anyone. People here also don't look you in the eye. There's no smile, no nod, not even a glance of acknowledgement when you pass. Those two things alone let me know that I've definitely left small-town America. Well, that and the British accents.

But more than these city-life details, Oxford is different in that it has a strong pub culture (actually, I get the sense that this extends to the whole of England). Pubs, unlike bars, are not merely places where people go to get drunk, watch sports, or pick up members of the opposite sex. They're more like restaurants with a larger liquor selection. The food at pubs is rich, and the characters are engaging. The people tending the bar tend to be conversational, jesting, and will even tease you over your order. I remember ordering coffee at the bar in one pub, only to have the bartender exclaim "Coffee! You want coffee!" and walk away tisking. It was amusing to say the least (he had chided a friend ahead of me in line for ordering water).

There is a very elitist attitude here about British ale. Firstly, it's not beer. Let an Englishman think you're comparing ale to American beer and he'll be thoroughly insulted. One of my professors here gave a short speech over the bus intercom about the superiority of British ale to American beer. "Beer is a cold, wet, substance which numbs the mouth so that one cannot realize how tasteless it is," he said. "What one needs is good English ale. Ale is food and drink...though you may need the occasional sausage to supplement it." The Professor who delivered this speech is named Alan. He is an expert in architecture and archeology, and was guiding us on a tour of several castles and cathedrals. In its entirety, Alan's speech had nearly half the bus in tears.

Oxford is quite a bit more multicultural than Wally World. There's a substantial Muslim population--recognizable from their wardrobe which, for women, ranges from  a simple headscarf, to a full on burqa depending on how conservative they are. There are Indians, East Asians, Blacks, and Middle Easterners, but something I learned from some blacks I met at church is that while they may all be British (Britain, at least in concept if not in reality, is an empire), only the whites who have ancestral ties will ever be English. It's a strange concept. If one is born in America, they are American. Their family may come from anywhere, but the nationality of that family (depending on the root culture) speaks more to race than national identity. For example, a Mexican-American or African-American is defined racially by the prefix, and nationally by "America." But the Rwandan girls I met in church were born in England, and yet still claimed to be Rwandan--not because of their race, but because in their words, "We'll never be English." The same may hold for Eastern Europeans as well.

"You talk about race all the time in America," said one girl. "We never talk about it here. It's hush-hush. Under the surface." Talking to these girls I got the sense they would gladly trade the more overt racial tension of the United States for the calm of England, if only to gain some of the openness we have on the topic. I suspect the hushed attitude is how England has chosen to cope with so many cultures in a nation not founded on immigration...

Well, that's all for now. I love and miss you all,
Jaclyn

PS--If you want to google the places I've been you can look up: Gloucester Cathedral (pronounced "Gloss-ter"), Christ Church (Oxford), Winchester Cathedral, and Winchester Great Hall.