A Love Story

Friends and family, I have some exciting news to report. After years of waiting, I have fallen in love. I didn’t previously believe in love at first sight, but after only one week of knowing mon amour, there is no doubt that I am head over heels. My love can be a bit of a wild, rugged individual, but is also distinguished and (dare I say it?!) beautiful. We share a passion for whisky, wool, and long walks down rocky coasts. I know it’s premature, but I may be moving in next fall. We do have some problems to work out. It would be hard for me to leave Oxford now, and I’m not sure if I am ready for this commitment. And the trifling matter that we have an age gap of some 350-700 years (depending on how you look at it). Of course, I speak of Scotland.

Last we spoke I was sizzling away in Portugal, and so much has happened since then! I know these events are all a month old, so bear with me! I left Portugal for Scotland on the evening of January 8 and spent a sleepless night in the London Gatwick airport. I had found out on the 7th that my Grandma Carol passed away that morning, and I’d been racing around since then to find a way to Skype home. The airport at 2am wasn’t ideal, but it was the best I found. It made me feel particularly alone and far from home. I will miss her so much, and I am eternally grateful for my weekend in New Mexico last fall and her words for me on Christmas day. All my love to my family – I wish I could be there with you.

Luckily, I had good friends to help through hard times. Brady and I met up in Edinburgh and had a great time exploring a bit of Scotland. I decided from the moment I arrived that I was in love with Edinburgh, and my regard has spread to all I’ve seen of the country so far. Its sights and history are stunning. Brady and I climbed “Arthur’s Seat,” a very tall hill/small mountain in the middle of the city when I arrived on Friday and took a seven or eight mile jogging “tour” of the city the next day. That night, we took a tour of Edinburgh’s “haunted underground,” a series of vault-like rooms that were formed as the city built up around the arches of an old bridge. There are tons of ghost stories associated with the underground from satanic worship to hundreds of fatalities from plague, fire, murder, etc. Didn’t get to see any ghosts, but I was thoroughly creeped out for the rest of the night. I highly recommend taking the tour if you’re ever in Edinburgh... it’s one of the few tourist attractions I’ve felt deserved my £10!












We travelled to Aberdeen Sunday for Brady’s geology conference, and then I popped back down to Edinburgh for a meeting with the director of the Environment and Development masters program at the university. Turns out she’s from Boulder, CO! (But I won’t hold that against her...) On my way back to Aberdeen, I did a six-mile coastal walk across the bay from Edinburgh. Along the way I explored some caves with Pictish rock carvings and the ruins of MacDuff castle (from the family of Shakespeare’s MacDuffs!) Brady and I met up again and continued on to the little town of Elgin, launching point of the famous Whiskey Trail of Speyside. We only toured one distillery, Glen Moray, but it was amazing and included an excellent tasting at the end. Since we were the only tourists silly enough to brave Elgin in January, we got the extended tasting experience.













Now I’m back in Oxford – finished my essay (barely,) and am working too much for my own good. It’s going to be a busy term! A very nice diversion last week with a visit from a Laramie-turned-Oregonite – Elijah was here and I had a good time showing him around Oxford on a lovely sunny day and then he got to see me pummelled in a rugby match against UWIC (that really, really good team we played last term). I’m afraid I couldn’t be a great hostess, what with classes and rugby practice, but it was still grand to catch up! Now I’m off to more rugby practice in the freezing cold followed by a sickening amount of reading... wait, this sounds familiar... reading reading reading rugby! reading reading rugby!
All my love,
Alyssa

Festas Felizes!

Hello and happy holidays from Portugal!

All right folks, brace yourselves, ‘cause this is a long one!

The actual holidays are over, but the fun is just beginning! I arrived in Faro, Portugal yesterday with my rugby team for a week of intensive training. It is absolutely beautiful here – we are living in villa-style apartments at a world-class rugby training centre (that happens to be a 10 minute drive from the beach!) The weather is perfect for rugby, mostly sunny and probably 65 degrees. Oh, and the icing on the cake is the professional men’s rugby league team sharing the facilities!

Portugal follows hard on the heels of a great holiday run. My course mates put on a music and food-filled solstice bonfire that lasted into the wee hours of the morning. Oxford emptied around the 21^st, but I stayed on, continuing to work 6-9 hours a day on my environmental economics essay that is due the first day back in class. I’m enjoying the topic – the importance of economic assessment of the London 2012 Olympic Games’ sustainability initiative – but it’s taken a lot of work and research. Our professors said these essays should be of publishing quality, plus they make up about a quarter of our grade for the entire year.

I felt I was being too productive (I’m so used to procrastinating!) so I took an essay break for Christmas. Christmas eve, I went out to dinner with Sarah Nichols (from the varsity ski trip) and her parents. We ended up going to a midnight mass at Christ Church College. I was glad my first midnight mass was conducted by an Oxford theology professor – despite the late hour it was a very intellectual and engaging service. Christmas morning, Sarah and I rode bikes 5 miles out to her cousin’s house (pictures of Christmas with the Nichols family above). We had a lovely time with her family and then mid-afternoon I rode back to Linacre College where a few of us teamed up to cook a goose and countless side dishes. (We got the goose from the covered market, left, where the butcher shops all had full deer, wild boar, and fowl carcasses on display. It all felt very Dickens.) We ate in Linacre’s fancy dining room and had more food, champagne, wine, and port than I care to relate. We ended the night with homemade ice cream and a $75+ bottle of Scotch whiskey. Amazing. (More Linacre Christmas pics below.)

New Year’s turned out to be a lovely surprise. I got an email from my old high school friends Ashley Roberts and Stephanie Stalker saying they were to be in London on New Year’s. I made the trip down to London on the 31^st. Ashley and Steph were staying with their friend Lav, and, joined by Lav’s friend Pricilla, we made some amazing brie and cauliflower risotto for dinner. Upon discovering a bar with an 80’s theme night and enough jazzercise spandex in Steph’s suitcase to clothe the lot of us, we hit the town. Turns out we were the only ones gutsy enough to dress up, so we were quickly the life of the party (I say modestly). We were even invited to do our jazzercise routine on stage! The next day, Steph and Ashley came back to Oxford with me for a night of catching up, movies, and slumber partying followed by a day of discovering Oxford’s eating and drinking establishments.

And that brings us back to January 3^rd when I left for Portugal! A fun-filled (but also work-filled) break so far. And more yet to come! On the 8^th I fly directly from Portugal to Scotland to meet my Laramie friend Brady for some whiskey and Guinness drinking... I mean sight-seeing. Hopefully I will have time to write again from Scotland before I dive head-first back into classes. By then, I might need a vacation from my vacation! Happy holidays to all – I miss you! Good as the holidays have been, they’ve also spurred my first bits of home sickness. So to all, be well, do good work, and keep in touch. For everything, extra big hugs and kisses to my family this week. I wish I could be there with you.

Love,

Alyssa

Mixin It Up

Good day y'all!

Again, yes, yes, it's been much too long, especially considering I ended my last entry by saying something like "I'll have a new post up early next week." That was just about a month ago. So much has happened since then! Namely, I've finished my first term (called the Michaelmas Term) and the holiday has begun! I'm staying on this side of the pond for the holidays and plan to write a few essays, do a lot of reading, and get my notes from the term in order. That, of course, in addition to some travel with friends (both from back home and my course) and a mid-season rugby tour to Portugal! But I'll talk more on those as they come. For now, I'll try to keep it to the highlights of the past month: 1) climbing in the Lake District, 2) Thanksgiving, and 3) the Varsity Ski Trip. All were a welcome diversion from the usual reading and rugby!

Last time I wrote I was just heading off to go on a climbing trip with the Oxford University Mountaineering Club. The Lake District is in northern England and is BEAUTIFUL! The climbing was... exciting. For those of you familiar with the Diamond in the Snowy Range, picture that with more route finding, less protection, and more water (although less height and fewer pitches, to be fair.) I was in a slightly awkward position because I had enough lead-climbing experience to be put in charge of leading a group, but no familiarity with the area or type of climbing. So I'm afraid my routes were rather boring for those following me. We all had a great time, though, climbing all day and walking off the slopes in the dark to dine on classic pub fare at the picture-perfect pub in the valley.

Thanksgiving in the UK turned out to be great fun. Each year, the first-year Marshall Scholars at Oxford are expected to host all the other Marshalls for a big T-Day feast. The day starts with an American touch football game against the Rhodes Scholars (to show 'em their "athletics requirement" part of their scholarship is rubbish), move on to a cooking extravaganza proceeded by an eating extravaganza, and end with a night on the town. Everything went splendidly. We beat the Rhodies at football (I couldn't play because I was getting over a nasty stomach flu, but just wait till next year!) We also hired out the University Club and used their industrial kitchen to cook 6 turkeys and all sorts of sides. After feeding the 75-100 guests, we rallied the troops and stormed the pubs and clubs of Oxford. It was great to see my Marshall family again, and it felt really good to spend Thanksgiving among friends, even so far from home.


Yesterday, I returned from a week on the slopes of the French Alps with my friends on the Varsity Ski Trip! Students from Oxford and Cambridge (Ox-bridge) go on a ski trip together to learn to ski, rip up the slopes, and compete in several ski events. I went with Olly (the punting master) and a bunch of his friends from his course. We left the Friday evening of the last day of term -- 2000 Ox-bridge students on a gaggle of coaches for a 20-hour bus trip to Val Thorens, France. (Val Thorens is the highest resort in the French Alps, so it is all above the tree line. Rather than having runs cut into the slopes, pistes are marked out and groomed. Everything else is "off-piste" and not fully controled for avalanches. It's quite strange to be in a resort under a cable car assessing the avalanche potential of a slope.)

We arrived Saturday afternoon to three feet of snow that had been falling over the previous week. It snowed all night, but we woke up to a clear blue-sky day. Sick freshies all day, dudes! The lack of tele gear cramped my free-heelin' style, but I had a great time relearning my alpine technique. After 2.5 days of perfect weather, the slopes were feeling a bit icey, but Tuesday afternoon the clouds rolled in and the snow started falling again! We had a few days of zero-visibility weather which made the off-piste very... exciting. But it meant that when Thursday afternoon rolled around, I didn't mind taking a few hours out of the white-out ski day to watch the Oxford rugby lads crush Cambridge in the annual varsity match! The Varsity committee had set up three giant screens in a Val Thorens bowling alley, and tons of people (from both universities) crammed in to cheer for their boys. There was plenty of Oxford gloating at the apres ski that day (like us mocking the Cambridge "cat" below. A little, ahem, healthy competition never hurts!) Cambridge won the grand slolom ski event this year, but Oxford won the cuppers tournament and the rugby match, so I'd say we won the war! Then, we awoke Friday to one final blue-sky day with even more fresh snow! Even better, I finally managed to find some tele gear for the last days and showed those Brits and Frenchies how to free their minds! Absolutely awesome trip. I'm planning on doing a little movie of more of our pics and video clips -- I'll post it somewhere and let you know when it's done!



Well, I guess that should be all for now. I know I got a little carried away on the ski chat, but those freshies are still fresh in my mind! :-D Until next time, my friends, live long and prosper. Oh man, I am such a nerd...

Love,
Alyssa

Alyss from the Abyss!

My dearest friends,

It’s true, three weeks have passed with no news, but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been news to give! Quite the contrary – I’ve been too busy to post. So starting from… the start.
I spent Halloween in London at a Google-sponsored party for Rhodes and Marshall Scholars. Dinner was nice and rather posh, set in the London Banquet Hall (once the banquet hall of a palace that subsequently burned down). Everything was Googled out – theme colored lights (blue, yellow, red), light-up “ice cubes” in smoking glasses, and specialized Google logos. (You know how their search engine logo changes with the holiday? We had some specialty Halloween ones, NOT seen on your average Halloween Google page. Although I thought it would have been much more creative to have ones about African colonialism and post-war economic rebuilding… not to be biased har har). I made a few good connections, namely with the guy in charge of Google’s new “green initiative.”

Then (for contrast, I suppose) we went to a club down the street where we got to watch a live show of queens doing “the time warp agaaain…” Brought be back to the summer of ought-five, chasing the phantom Horror Show through the streets of Cheyenne with a couple of remarkably hairy, remarkably good-looking gals (you know who you are… ) Stayed the night with a few Londoner Marshalls and spent the next day lounging around watching movies because the weather was atrocious.

However, this is when the trouble began. First, I realized I’d lost my phone at the club the night before. Then, due to driver shortages, no trains went back to Oxford that evening, so after some adventures we chased down a bus (at midnight) and returned to a rainy freezing Oxford with no taxis running. The next morning I had rugby practice, during which my bike got nicked (another one to add to your dictionary). Next day my favorite jacket got nicked. And this on top of a whole range of other events I won’t go into now.


My friend Rose, also having run into hard times, luckily saved my sanity. She said, “You know, maybe we’re donating our good-luck energy to Obama!” And she must have been right! Election night was thrilling. WAY TO GO USA!!!!! Every television in Oxford was tuned into the election, and most colleges had set up big-screens connected into CNN or MSNBC. A big crew of us at Linacre made it through to Obama’s speech at 5am. We had eyes representing every curve of the globe in that room, and by the end not one was dry.


Since then, life has more or less returned to normal: reading, reading, reading, rugby, reading, reading, lecture, reading, rugby, lecture, reading, reading, and reading. This weekend will be a nice mix-up… I’m going on a climbing trip to the Lake District of England with some folks from the Oxford University Mountaineering Club! Should be smashing, even if weather prevents any serious climbing. I will do my best to report back early next week… hopefully with some more stimulating pictures and even stimulating-er conversation about European visions of “wilderness.”


Until then, tally-ho!
Alyssa



(and for your viewing pleasure, some pics from our last match. On the left, I am the leftish fleshy blur with taped legs... and check out this link! Some promo for the upcoming men's varsity match. Any Monty Python fans out there?! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJWV8RIlyEk)

Week One Down!

Ahoy!

Sorry I missed a post last week... first week of classes and I was just so busy! But week one of eight in the first term is over, and I think I will really enjoy my classes. There is a TON of reading, but I guess that's what being a grad student is all about. It's a new sensation here, being in a class of Hermione Grangers. Everyone always has something to say (usually too much of something). You know when a professor asks a question and there is that silence... and usually one person feels obligated to say something? That just doesn't happen with this group. Always an answer, even for the most rhetorical questions.

However, I adore my colleagues. Everyone works incredibly hard, but we have a great time, too. We all matriculated (were formally accepted into Oxford's stately ranks) yesterday. To do this, we all threw on our sub fusc (which I found out means sombre colours) and marched down to the exam halls for a lot of queuing and a little speech. We took some class pics (these are with our whole college, i.e. Linacre), then we got a formal lunch with bottomless wine glasses.

As per tradition, we went to "The Turf" pub (the same where Bill Clinton may or may not have inhaled). Then we experienced the first of Linacre's famous "bops." Theme -- sexy sub fusc. I may have gone a little overboard, but I wasn't the only one! (Most of the folks in the pics are in my course or are Marshall folk).

On another note, I have now played three rugby matches in 7 days in three different positions -- 8 man, flanker, and hooker. I played flanker for the Oxford Blues team and feel I did well enough to stay with the Blues at least for the time being! I never thought my Oxford experience would include playing for the university's top women's rugby team. Oh, and (I know you'd be proud, Grandpa) my nickname is "Wex." I didn't even tell them, it just developed on its own.

*Cultural note of the week: England-ish dictionary. "Pants" are underwear -- don't talk to openly about your pants. If one is "pissed" he or she is drunk. If you are "takin' a piss" you are teasing someone. Urinating is "takin' a wee." If you make out with someone, you are "pulling" or "snogging" them. "Cheers" means "thanks." This last one never fails to confound me. If I say, "thanks," I stand out, but there is nothing that makes one sound more American than saying "cheerrrs." So what should I say? Thanks, cheerrrs, or che-ahs? There is no good answer...

For more fun cultural notes (this time on Basketball), check out this link to an article that one of my fellow Marshalls, (Big) Steve Danley, just wrote for the New York Times.

Be well, and write me soon -- I love to hear what everyone is up to over there!

Che-ahs,

Wex

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