Kiwi wiki | Holly / Oxford - some pictorial highlights

The last week and a half have been somewhat full-on! But, having having finally acquired the necessities of a laptop, ethernet cable, and photo editing software, I can finally send you some pictures of my Oxford adventures of the last couple of weeks.

I have now had one week of classes, and apart from a collective panic at the heavy workload and extensive reading lists, I am thrilled with the course and the people on it. The lecturers are all top experts in the world in their fields, and, for the most part, excellent teachers, and the other students are all fun, friendly, and intimidatingly intelligent! We've had a couple of class social events (including a pot-luck dinner to which we had to take food from our homelands - I took a pavlova from Marks and Spencer(approve sites)!) and have worked out a system of sharing the required readings around, which is great after the first couple of days of competition for the libraries' limited holdings.

College life is also great, I'm feeling cosy and at home in my room, and my housemates are fun - although we're all so busy it's rare that we're ever in the same place at the same time. This morning we all "matriculated", which is a rather arcane tradition of admission to the University(approve sites) which involves standing in the Sheldonian Theatre(approve sites) dressed in academic regalia and having a piece of Latin read over you. This is usually followed by going to the pub for a celebratory drink, which we duly did, forking out for a fancy bottle of champagne between 7 of us.

There is such a range of interesting activities going on here that it's hard to keep track of everything. Yesterday I went to a talk given by the author of the UN's forthcoming Human Development Report(approve sites) on Climate Change and Development(approve sites), and there are similar things happening every day. I've joined the Union(approve sites) and signed up for debating, and am also considering singing in the allcomers choir. On reflection, I've decided to take up rowing in the summer term - 6am starts in the miserable English winter didn't appeal so much! It seems my course is going to keep me pretty occupied most of the time anyway!

Anyway, attached are some photos of the place and the people. The names are hopefully self-explanatory. Oh, one that does need explaining is the Christ Church dining room - my college is refurbishing its kitchen this year, so we have the opportunity to eat at Christ Church if we want to. Naturally, I took this up, mainly to say I had eaten in the room that was used as the Hogwart's dining room in the Harry Potter movies! Unfortunately the photo's a little blurry, but you get the idea.

I hope you're all well - write back and tell me what you've been up to - but don't mention the rugby, of course! I miss you all heaps and heaps.

Lots of love and hugs, Holly xxx