I can’t believe that I am already writing my final blog post and that we leave in a few days. I didn’t think it was possible for five weeks to fly by so fast, but this trip proved me wrong. It feels like yesterday I walked into 43 Trinity where suspiciously no one was home, but the back door was unlocked and all the windows open. This would later become a common occurrence for our flat so we didn’t have to carry our keys with us. If anyone is actually reading this blog post, other than our lovely teacher Aparna (hi!), I am unsure what to write about here. Whilst in Oxford, we have had many adventures together as an amazing group, but also individually as we trudged through our difficult yet rewarding tutorials. There are too many emotions and memories to create one truly cohesive blog post, so I recommend reading the other ones, as my fellow Rams are much more eloquent with their words than I. But, I also need to write a little bit more so to chunk up my blog post I’ll run through a highlight reel of my favorite moments with Oxfam.
Week One: Oxfam arrives in Oxford and we hit the ground running with our Shakespeare class. We all are rushing through our first three plays as they were due the next week in a rapid succession. We also go out for a fun adventure to “‘da club”, where we moved around like a big herd while dancing our cares away. This same weekend we went off to Windsor Castle, where the Queen lives sometimes, and if you read my other blogs we ate delicious ice cream here as well.
Week Two: Our Shakespeare class kicks into hyper speed, we complete 3 of the 4 plays and go off the Stratford-upon-Avon to see Shakespeare’s birthplace, grave, and King Lear performed. During this week as well, most of us met with our tutors for the first time for a preliminary meeting or had their first official Oxford assignment due! Anddd that weekend we went to London for our double header at the Globe to see Hamlet and As You Like It.
Week Three: Our Shakespeare class is almost wrapped up as we study our final play, The Tempest. We are all busy at work with our tutorials and spending time in libraries reading book upon book. We also went out that weekend to get a proper English breakfast and then went out dancing that night to celebrate our beautiful Kira turning 19!
Week Four: We have a little bit of a slow down in our Shakespeare classes work, so all focus shifts to our tutorials. Personally, I spent a lot of time in the Radcliffe Camera with large books reading up for my paper. We also went to the Roman Baths, which had gross green water, and ate really good hot sausages from a sausage cart.
Week Five: This week we worked on wrapping up our tutorials, writing our speeches for our Shakespeare course, and hanging out with one another as the program comes to a close. We traveled to London again to see our final play performed at Saint Paul’s Church, it was an interactive production that required the audience to move set to set in the garden–it was interesting. In London we also had adventures, Alec was in a street show, Anna, Kira, Han, and Sydney recreated the Beatles photo, and Alec made a “hilarious” joke about The Tempest and Cole. Some of us also went to Westminster Abbey, which is breathtaking. 10/10 recommend London as a bucket list must visit place.
SOOOoooo that brings to a close my longer than expected highlight reel of this program. While this isn’t everything that happened this is a quick and easy summary. Thank you so much to CSU for allowing this program to exist and OSAP for, while unorganized and scatter-brained, facilitating our excursions and housing us. This program was a dream come true for a Shakespeare nerd like me and was only made better by the amazing people that accompanied me. I will cherish the memories we made and look forward to the memories we are hopefully yet to make together.
Also to my Trinity squad, y’all are the best chicken nugs out there…thanks for all the adventures and large amount of vine references.
Shakespeare in Oxford! 