People I Live With, Episode 3

[The Beatles -- White Album]

So I kind of forgot about this little miniseries on Life at Crick. Seems that I got all the way to Episode 2 - describing a whopping six of people that I live with - and then characteristically totally forgot to mention the other twenty. And we only have three weeks left. (OK, talk about that is freaking me out.)

HOWEVER, the boys in the Tower (aka, the Biola Boys, aka Shane, Nick, and Daniel) really seemed to want to be featured, so they kindly reminded me. And, in gratitude for their gentle reminders, I chose to skip over two floors of Crick and go straight from the basement to the Tower!!

So: Crick House, Tower, Room #2: Daniel Menjivar, Shane Martin, and Nick Dalbey. All three of them go to Biola in Southern California. Shane is actually from Houston (yay for Southerners!) but Daniel and Nick are die-hard SoCal snobs. (I love that I get total control over what is said in this space. I hope you're reading this, Nick Dalbey.)

Daniel: Just look at that picture. That picture. Says it all. He's sitting across from me in the living room right now playing "La Vie En Rose" out loud and just said, "If I had a song I would always walk in the room to, this would be it." Basic facts about Daniel: He's into history, classy things, and board games. If he ever asks you to play Ticket to Ride with him, don't be fooled -- he will crush you. He is almost a part of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and when asked what he wants to be when he grows up, he says, "A good man." Also, I have never met anyone who can make up a more outrageously hilarious story on the spot than Daniel. The other day, he came into the living room, sat on the couch next to me and - with no other introduction - said "So once I was fighting this wildebeest." The thing about these stories is that they always come at exactly the time you need something to cheer you up. Daniel's good at that.

Today, tragically, Daniel is sick. In his honour, we shall remember only the strong and strapping healthy Daniel Menjivar. As he said when he found out I was blogging about him: "LET POSTERITY KNOW WHO I WAS!!!! Remember me in my GLORY DAYS!!!" Daniel, we will never forget.

Lastly, Daniel has a wonderful girlfriend back at Biola, Karrie, who sometimes sends him cookies which he will from time to time share.

Shane: Interesting fact about Shane: He is old chums with Sam Townes (one of the most awesome guys at Covenant :))!! OK, so, first of all, I think at least my dad should know that Shane was, in fact, named after Shane from the old Western flick of the same name. "Shane! Come back!" That Shane. Dad, the name continues to haunt my footsteps. :)

How does one describe Shane? He is an almost-Catholic, overly-analytical Romantic who loves poetry, writing couplets of rap songs, and all things that are Beautiful. He gets that pensive look on his face and you know the next question he asks is going to pin you to a wall and you're gonna have to mentally engage. Yesterday he was writing a paper (by hand) and trying to craft the first sentence with the utmost love and care. He was debating over the placing of one of the words -- "Well, if it goes before the clause, it's harder to read but the other way is just not as beautiful. I'm going with the beautiful option." And I thought, That's Shane.

Also, he will do almost anything for a Coke. Unbelievable.

I give him advice about girls. ;-)

Nick: Well, Nick goes by a lot of nicknames around here (nicknames -- HA! -- get it, NICKnames??!! BAHAHAHAA.), some of which should probably not be repeated because they are just too awesome. But, let me just say, he stars in many knightly tales, usually told by Laura Hutton, of kicking the butts of evil goblins and saving princesses (once I got to be the princess in the story -- very exciting). He has been known to randomly say, "I want to slay a dragon" and is fondly referred to as "the 70's god" by the girls, due to the way his hair falls fabulously across his forehead. We also like to refer to him as our North Star because he is 6'4" so anytime we get lost in London, we just look for his "70's god" head. It has never failed. (Though he did get lost in Paris at 2:00 in the morning a few weeks ago. I did NOT just publish that on the Internet. No worries, his mom already knows.) Nick is just one of those guys who makes you feel like bad things won't happen to you.

If you say the word "Dante" in Nick's presence, he might fall into a lovelorn swoon. If you say the words "Dante isn't all that great" in Nick's presence, he will probably cry. Or kill you with his dragon-killing skills. "Beatrice" would also be an interesting conversation-starter. He is another connoisseur of beauty and can be stopped in his tracks by a beautiful line of poetry.

The Biola Boys are the kind of guys your parents want you to be friends with. Sincere, witty, fun, easy to talk to, gentlemanly, and - most importantly! - a little outrageous. Sometimes, when Emily and I need a change of scenery, we'll climb up the narrow stairs to the third story (or "the Tower" as we have fondly named it) and read in their room for a couple hours. Good conversation, good laughs, good fun. The stuff of good memories.

I should be writing a Case Study....

...which is why I'm blessing the Internet with my presence!!

Actually, I've been working on this case study solid for the past three hours so I figured I'd take a break from my writing and do some more writing on here! Our "Case Studies" are basically just 2500- to 2750-word papers on a topic from something in British history. I picked William Wallace as my topic and here's the question I selected to answer:

"Are most representations of Wallace 'sheer fantasy, where history breaks almost entirely loose from its moorings' (Summerson)? If so, does this matter?"

So, in my case study, I'm going to argue that, yes, most representations of Wallace are sheer fantasy and, no, it doesn't really matter at all. The point being that there is a historical Wallace (the real guy whom we don't know terribly a lot about) and a literary Wallace around whom myths and folktales have been created -- folktales that inspire Scottish national identity in a way that is almost unmatched in history. Yay for inspiration. Don't take our heroes from us, man.

France: So, I've been gearing myself up to blog about my escapades in France during Spring Break, but I haven't been able to get up the energy to do it. First of all, I put up two photo albums on Facebook which tell the story pretty well. Second of all, I just want to blog about what's in my head right now which is Oxford. BUT, here's a little summary, because it was fabulous and deserves mention.

Hunt and I flew into Marseilles and met up with Lara Berger and Will Lutz (friends from Covenant). While there, we went to the harbour, got on a boat, and motored out to the Chateau D'If which, if you are a fan of The Count of Monte Cristo, you will recognize as the prison where Edmond Dantes meets Faria and from which he later escapes. Though I'm sure Edmond wasn't a huge fan of it, the place is beautiful. We watched the sun set behind it.

After Marseilles, we took the thirty-minute bus ride to Aix-en-Provence where Lara, Will, Elea Geerlings, and Matt Pillsbury (also Covenant friends) are living and studying this semester. I stayed with Elea who is renting a room from Monsieur Ganet, who is this wonderful elderly Frenchman who speaks very little English. The first day I was there, he told us in rapid French about how he had gotten hit by a car earlier that day. To our SHOCKED responses, he merely waved his hand dismissively.

It was SO wonderful to stay with Elea and just be able to hang out with dear friends for a few days. We drank in every minute we all had together.

We spent the next couple of days climbing Mont Sainte-Victoire, hiking around the village streets and coastal cliffs of Ciotat, and exploring the cafes, boulangeries, and shops of Aix. I practised my French a little and had my first real French crepe and ate through a bajillion baguettes. We also made legit American chili for the French family that Lara and Pills live with and spent the evening with them -- the kids performed magic tricks and played their instruments for us, and then we all played a game together around the table. Which Hunt lost mostly because he was the only one who couldn't understand a word of French.

Everything was so utterly French. Exotic and Mediterranean and luscious and tasty. The architecture was tall and tilted, the narrow windows reached from floor to ceiling and had real shutters and wrought-iron balconies on the top floors.

Flowers and poodles and fountains and food and crazy alleys.

Also, the women in southern France all look like my extended Gautreau family. Gran, Mom, and Aunt Jill especially would look right at home there. We ARE French, after all!!

So, that's France. Now I need to get back into Scottish mode and talk about my personal hero William Wallace. ;-)

Je vais en France!!!

#1 - I am done with Oxford tutorials FOREVER. Right now, all I feel is relief. Soon it will feel much more bittersweet that such a challenging, fascinating, miserable, exciting, unique, difficult, INCREDIBLE period of my life is over. But right now -- oh, right now I just want to sleep for four days and NEVER write another paper ever again ever.

I survived Hilary Term in Oxford.

I feel like I should get a T-shirt.

#2 - I AM GOING TO FRANCE!!! (In case you didn't get the translation of the title.) Tomorrow morning at 6:30 I'll begin my trek to the coach station to meet Hunt and then we'll be off to the airport and then to MARSEILLES!! Lara Berger is meeting us there and she's going to show us around and then it's off to Aix (or Aix-en-Provence) to chill with Lara, Pillsbury, Elea, and Will for a coupla days. I feel like I'm going to want to sleep a lot. But something ELSE I'm going to do is put my foot in the Mediterranean. Awwwwwyeah!!

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"'God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.' Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you." (1 Peter 5:6-7)

In our small group at church this week, we talked about Philippians 4 and anxiety. It was so ridiculously appropriate for 8th week frenzy. Imagine exams week pressure only with papers instead of tests and in Oxford with Oxford professors and you will maybe have some conception of how overwrought we've all been this week. I can't even believe it's over, but God has been utterly faithful, as usual.

That verse up there is beauty. "Humble yourselves." Boy, that's a tough word in a place like this. But forget it: be humble, don't worry, He loves you. Wow.

"Watching the River Run" - Loggins & Messina -- Just listen to it. Your soul will thank you.

Only three more days to go . . . .

[Music - The Dodos]

Since the morning is still new here, I figured I can update my blog without feeling too convicted that I should be doing something else. It's the last week of full term. That means that the regular Oxford students are going on holiday soon and we have Spring Break and then our British Landscapes course. Ultimately, the whole structure is going to be different now. No more tutorials (bye, Josh and Emma.....sad day). This second half is more like what Americans are used to -- lectures every morning Monday through Friday. Fewer papers. Etc.

We're just all ready for our brief Spring Break -- it's like the end of an academic marathon. I just have to finish my last C. S. Lewis paper and write my last Shakespeare paper (on King Lear). Then I will be done with Oxford tutorials forever. Weird.

So last night I made jambalaya!!!! Mom sent me some REAL jambalaya mix in the mail and I cooked that stuff UP. It was like a little taste of heavenly home. My food group was delighted by the taste of real Cajun food and everyone was happy, New Orleans style.

The other day I accidentally left my driver's license on the kitchen table and Sam Brewitt-Taylor (our Junior Dean) found it the next morning. He made sure to tell me about it and said, "Yes, well, I found a little identity card that said 'U.S. Department of State' and had your face on it. All I could think was 'What has she done now?'" HAH.

Thom Yorke lives in our neighborhood. For those of you who don't know him, he's the lead singer of the band Radiohead that in the '90s pretty much changed rock music forever. It's basically like living next door to Bono or something. (Only better.) We haven't sighted him yet, but hope never dies. Also in our neighborhood: Richard Dawkins. We have sighted him. And the neighborhood next door to ours is where Tolkien lived when he wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

So this house we live in, being full of people who are crazy enough to want to study at a place like Oxford, is, as you may imagine, interesting. I keep a Word document open most of the time to write down things people say that make me smile. Here's a sampling. Hopefully you'll get some idea of what it's like here.

Me: "Everyone in this house is eccentric in some way."

Kate: "Yeah. Sometimes I'm just like . . . this place is so weird."

Nick: "Listen to what I'm studying this semester -- how B.A. is this??! *reads a piece from Beowulf* I can read that to you in the Old English, too."

Katie Powell: "Boys are people, too!"

Hutton: "No. They're different."

"Calm down, it's not like it's Oxford or anything." -Everyone

"I'm gonna do Sporkle while you finish editing my paper." -Hunt (and only if you know what Sporkle is can you fully appreciate the utter nerdness of that comment)

"That's what makes this country so great!! And when I say this country, I mean America." -Daniel

"I swear I'm more articulate than I seem." -Daniel

"Jen, I need your help pronouncing this Latin. I have to read it in my tutorial tomorrow and I don't want to sound like a dingo." -Jay

"I almost just told Dr. Kreuze that I love him." -Hutton

"Except the more I look at him the more I don't think he's attractive. Because I think I hate him." -Alison about her tutor, Tom (it was a bad day -- don't worry, she got over that outburst)

"I'm watching a video on how to make meatballs." -Nick (oh, the adventures of college students trying to cook meals for each other)

"Has anyone seen Augustine's Confessions lying around?" -Jay

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Tim Keller (a personal hero of mine) was in Oxford last week and we went to hear him speak in Town Hall. Two things:

#1 - His American accent and Americanisms were music to our ears. It was so great to finally be on the "I get this" end of things. The Brits said when he read quotes sometimes they couldn't understand him at all. WE COULD. Wow. It's amazing how the same language (i.e. English) can be in so many ways a foreign 0ne. At one point he was like, "Oh, am I being too American? I'm showing my feelings, I'm sorry." I laughed so hard.

#2 - His message was glorious. He talked about faith and reason (so appropriate in this bastion of reason), arguing that it takes just as big (or bigger) a leap of faith not to be a Christian as it does to be one. He talked about the faith it takes to doubt God and the rational problems of explaining life without God. But then he was like, "All this is great, but reason will never ultimately move us. Only beauty and love will ultimately draw people in." And then he goes on talking about the beauty of the Christian story and the exquisite and intoxicating love of the Creator who wrote himself into our story. He quoted C. S. Lewis saying that it would be like Shakespeare wrote himself into Hamlet and then died to save them all. I was like, "He's speaking my language." C. S. Lewis + Shakespeare = My Life the past two months.

Ultimately, I am a Christian not because the prophets have shown me the way to find God but because Jesus says instead "I'm God come to find you." Hallelujah.

A break from "Hamlet in Purgatory"

So I needed a break from homework and decided to be a minor creeper and google my Shakespeare tutor, Josh. Since he was the one imposing homework on me, I thought I would impose my break on him. Little did I know, I would spend my five-minute break being imposed-upon by his accomplishments. What I discovered did NOT surprise me, but it definitely blew my mind a little bit. I should title the rest of this post "Amazing Fantastic Things I Have Learned About Josh, My Shakespeare Tutor."

#1 - He graduated from Harvard. (Yeah, the old "I'm from Boston" -- I knew it had to mean something.)

#2 - He is a Rhodes Scholar. (Which is how he ended up in Oxford.)

#3 - The man who taught him Shakespeare is Stephen Greenblatt. As in, Stephen Greenblatt, arguably the greatest Shakespeare scholar alive. Also the guy who happened to have written the book I'm currently taking a break from reading and that I'm writing a book review of, the guy who is quoted in almost every undergraduate Shakespeare paper ever written since 19-something.

Here's Josh: http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/11.30/99-rhodes.html

And here's something he wrote that I found interesting: http://www.oxonianreview.org/issues/7-2/billings.shtml

All this to say:

#1 - I knew he was a genius but I didn't quite realize exactly how genius he is.

#2 - All I want to do in our last tutorial this Monday is ask him to talk to me about himself. That would be sooooo interesting.

#3 - I am now only one degree of separation away from the greatest living Shakespeare scholar. WHOOHOO!!!

#4 - I'm intimidated. AGAIN.

[Note added later: I just wikipedia-ed Stephen Greenblatt and he apparently jammed with Art Garfunkel at summer camp and was invited to join him with "his friend Paul Simon" making music. But Greenblatt decided to go to college instead. He also used to do casual performances with the group that later became Monty Python. CRAZY.]

Wildness and Wet....

This morning four intrepid souls from Crick Road House adventured their way to Port Meadow to see the sunrise. Kate, Nick, Jay, and I woke up at 5:30, stumbled our way to the kitchen for coffee, and set out in the dark to see the sun rise over the fields, leaving the others blissfully asleep and blissfully unaware of the mad adventures they were missing. It was gloriously dripping, muddy, marshy, wild, and - when the sun came out - all glittering. We came home three hours later with soaking feet, covered in mud, flushed, and exuberant.

This poem, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, could not more perfectly describe this morning (especially the last stanza):

Inversnaid

THIS darksome burn, horseback brown,

His rollrock highroad roaring down,

In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam

Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth

Turns and twindles over the broth

Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,

It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew,

Are the groins of the braes that the brook tread through,

Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,

And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Ireland: Bringing the magic.

Can I just say: WOW.

We - Emily, Alison, and I - got there at 9:00 Friday morning, hit up an ATM and some coffee and breakfast, and an hour later as we walked down the middle of O'Connell Street, I said, "Guys, it may be too soon to say this, but I think Ireland is my favorite place in the world."

And Alison said, "I think an hour is way too soon to know that."

And I said, "No, because sometimes you just know. Like when you meet the right man and he just brings the magic. Dublin brings the magic."

She laughed at me then. But I was right. We had one of the best four-day weekends of the decade. I of course cannot do it justice in a blog post. But I'll do my best to paint a picture of it.

We stayed in The Shining hostel. Scary, right? Who would want to stay in a place called The Shining? I guess we're on a different continent from Colorado, so it's okay. Our room had five bunk beds, hot pink walls and flowery curtains. Roommates came and went but they were all nice and most of them went to bed early. I should mention: We never went to bed later than 10:00. BAM. It was awesome.

Bucket List: Stay in a hostel. Check.

When we got there Friday we found out we couldn't check into the hostel for four hours, so we pulled out Matt Brown's email/Marauder's Map and consulted it for something to do. We also asked the hostel lady. She said do Wicklow. He said do Glendalough. They were similar only his idea was better. So we did Glendalough.

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Day 1: Glendalough. The ruins of an old old old monastery up around two lakes nestled in the highlands south of Dublin. One of the most breath-takingly, indescribably beautiful places I have ever seen. *cue Sigur Ros song: maybe "Glosoli"* It was freezing, too, which just added to the lack of breath. I could hardly even talk, it was so gorgeous. I'll post pictures soon (probably mostly on Facebook). Dad, I couldn't stop thinking of you and wishing with every particle of my being that I could share those moments with you. You and the mountains are meant to be together. And I wanna be in the middle of that somewhere, too. Maybe....just maybe.....we'll go back some day. Who knows. :)

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Day 2: We did Dublin.

-Art Museum

-Trinity College

-Book of Kells: elaborately decorated gospels copied around 800 AD by Celtic monks

-Writers' District

-Some award-winning Yeats exhibit we stumbled upon. Fantastic - got me all into Yeats all over again.

-Dublin Castle

-Christ Church Cathedral

-St. Patrick's Cathedral

-The Temple Bar (didn't stay very long -- it was already NUTS at 5:30 pm - those Irish KNOW how to party)

-Grafton Street: muuuusaaaak! It's in a scene in Once and Damien Rice got his start there, apparently. It's a commercial street -- shops everywhere, musicians and street performers on the corners. Like Cornmarket here in Oxford only way better.

I [heart] Dublin.

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Day 3: This day we wanted to see some other random place in Ireland that would be different from Dublin. I kind of wanted to see Belfast because C.S. Lewis grew up there. But the lady at the Tourist Info place -- well, first let me just tell you about them.

[Aside about people] We stumbled upon this place within the first ten minutes of being dropped in city center on Friday morning. It was right next to the ATM we were directed to. Can anyone say: Divine guidance? :) A note about Irish people (at least the ones we met): They are incredibly friendly. It was a big change from Oxford. I'm sorry but the British don't like confronting or being confronted by strangers. Irish people, they seem to love it. We couldn't stand on a street corner for more than three minutes before someone came up and said, "Where are you trying to get yourselves to?" So the people at the Tourist Info Center loved us ("Bless me, three Oxford scholars??!?") and helped us so much. And gave Alison way more pamphlets than she knew what to do with. (I think she ended up with at least three pamphlets in French for the Book of Kells.)

Back to Day 3. The Tourist Info Lady told us if it were her, she would go to Kilkenny: quaint, quiet, snug, with castles. We thought it sounded perfect. So we took the bus for two hours to Kilkenny which is south-west of Dublin. The night before it had snowed so the bus drive was past fields and villages under a sleepy blanket of snow (also, it was Sunday morning, so everything was hushed). Beautiful. Kilkenny was just small enough to explore all day and be done with a cup of hot chocolate by 5:00 to head back to Dublin. Lovely.

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Day 4: Coastal villages around Dublin. Namely, Howth, Dalkey, Killiney, and Bray.

Howth was probably my favorite but that might be because we spent the most time there and had the most energy because that's where we started. I mean, think "Ireland" and Howth was it. Those movies you see where they're walking on a grassy path along a cliff overlooking the sea? Yeah, that's Howth. We climbed straight through the middle of town to the Summit (two or three miles? -- it felt like a freaking marathon). I think I took a million pictures. It was incredible. We also saw seals. You can ask Alison about that. It was probably the highlight of her LIFE.

Dalkey. We basically got off the train, walked through town, decided not to pay to see the castle, perused a few bookshops (because Emily was trying to find a copy of some William Blake book) and got back on the train. I feel like I should go back and do it justice one day.

Killiney. Two words: Bono's house. ;-) Yes, it was there. And I can see why. One of the most beautiful views in the entire universe, I'm pretty sure. Killiney is basically one really steep hill. Honestly, by the end of the day, between Howth, Killiney, and Bray, we had basically climbed three mountains. So in Killiney, we ran out onto the beach and skipped pebbles into the waves and then finally got up the guts to wind our way through the EXTREMELY RITZY neighbourhoods to the park on top of the hill. (And when I say "hill" think, like . . . Mount Everest.) That's where we saw Bono's house. We weren't sure which one was his at the time, so we just took pictures of all of them. His was under a tarp. I guess he's renovating.

Top of the Hill: Killiney Hill park. The park in Once where she tells him she loves him. Oh yeah.

Bray: We were so exhausted by this point (our food consisted mostly of carbs and chocolate so you can imagine how my blood sugar was not sustaining itself) that we didn't do much more than walk through town to a coffee shop. But Bray is beautiful. It has another giant hill.

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Then we headed back to Dublin and to the airport and arrived back at home-sweet-Oxford at 4:00 am this morning. Today I finished three analysis paragraphs, went to a tutorial with Josh, and cooked dinner for my food group. And it was all totally okay because Ireland is still a refreshing breeze in the back of my mind. Also, it's just good to be home again.

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Random other things we saw/did/experienced:

-Most of our meals were baguettes, cheese, and Nutella. So cheap. So NOT nutritious.

-There was almost no point in this whole trip that I wasn't cold. I seriously could not get warm. It was kind of dreadful. It's much windier on the east coast of Ireland than it is in the south/middle of England. Just sayin'.

-Let's just say we didn't shower much. I shouldn't even include that fact in this blog. Hunt won't let it go.

-I bought Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief in Dublin for four euros. Yes, I did. And I read it out loud to Alison and Emily when we waited for buses. And then they got hooked and we all three finished it before the trip was out. Now I have to locate the sequel. It's funny, I read the American version of Harry Potter and the British version of Percy Jackson. It's like I'm confused or something. (And, yes, there are differences in the two versions. Minor, but funny. Like when Percy was wearing a knitted tank-top. Wha--?)

-I thought about Sarah more constantly than I thought it was possible to think of one human being.

Wow, that was a novel. James Joyce would be proud. (Only probably not.)

Go to Ireland some day. :)

[Music - Lisa Hannigan; 'cause she got her start in Dublin, too!]