Ode to Wind, Rain, and Rugby

Friends and family, hello!

Another week gone by already, and so much more to talk about! My time has been full of rugby training camp and introductory events for my program.

The camp was intense, but incredibly satisfying. We worked for (often) 12 hours each day with at least 6 hours of rugby and a smattering of stretching, pilates, weights, food, and beer. By the end, I couldn't walk and had accrued some impressive bruises (namely this one, which I have already shown off to many of you). The team is really fun, open, and dedicated (but not to the point of distraction). Although we ran each other into the mud, we also had a great time doing freshers' initiation during which I got to experience my first British club and my first run-in with the British police. I claim innocence (mostly) but am actually writing this from a British prison where we have a lovely tea every afternoon but otherwise subsist on porridge and mushy peas.

Friday I left camp for my course's induction field trip. There are 36 grads in my program representing 13 countries, all of them (the students) very bright. We travelled down to the incredibly beautiful Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site in Dorset where we visited the picturesque Corfe Castle (above), the abandoned village of Tynham (below top), and oil-shale cliffs of Kimmeridge Bay (below bottom). We also, in a large-group discussion, managed to define nature, wilderness, environment, theory, policy, society, and landscape and come to a consensus on how they all interact. We also achieved world peace.

























The past two days we were back in Oxford going over the less-pleasant aspects of study here; namely exams, time-tables, and applying separately to the more than 100 individual libraries in the university. Oxford is different (and difficult) in the sense that every college, department, library, or other university entity is self-managed and independent, and thus has its own system and bureaucracy. Some of the other traditions, however, have been much more pleasant. The science library has cozy fourth-floor nooks that I shall claim as my own for my reading purposes (which will take up every minute from 9-5pm that I am not in lecture or at tea). And this evening I stepped up my Harry Potter experience at our first formal dinner. Four-course meal, Latin opening and closing "prayer," and all of it in our formal robes. Our robes have wings. Hee hee.



Unfortunately our unusual Indian summer has ended, and winter may be upon us in the way winter goes in England -- freezing rain and wind all weekend for our field trip (although it made for spectacular waves along the coast). Looking out across the hedgerowed fields and rolling downs, I felt I'd stepped out of Hogwarts and into the Shire, onto the Netherfield estate, into the landscape of the Romantics...





...O Wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being...




Aly