After spending three days in London, my parents traveled to Oxford to visit me in my natural environment. Tuesday, always being a late night for me due to a paper, I only got to spend about an hour with them. We went to a pub nearby that I had recently heard of called Checkers. This historic pub had the most delicious fish and chips I’ve had since arriving here. On top of the amazing food, the place was decorated for Christmas making it feel cozy and comfortable.
It was a similar situation for Wednesday. After having seminar from 10-12, I went straight to the Bod to complete my paper that I had stayed up till 3 in the morning the night before attempting to finish. After waking up for my 10 o’clock seminar I walked over to the local Costa (imagine British Starbucks) and stocked up on food and caffeine. As luck would have it, as I was walking back to St. Michael’s Hall for class, I ran into Mom and Dad who had just picked up a power converter. After seeing my exhaustion, they told me to sleep after I turned in my paper and we could meet up later. I agreed to meet with them at 6 for dinner, after a few hours of sleeping. It was a giant relief after turning in my paper and finally being able to sleep. After catching up on some sleep I decided to take my parents to one of the more popular pubs in Oxford, the Eagle and Child. This is the pub that the Inklings would meet in while they were writing their novels. Here we all tried different meat pies. Mom and I tried the beef and pale ale pie and Dad tried the Lamb Skew pie. All of it look and was delicious.
Marking the end of my paper, I now had the rest of the week to spend with my parents. Following my morning lecture On Thursday we met up and went to a teashop called the Nosebag. This little teashop is a wonderful place to munch on pastries, drink tea (or coffee), and enjoy the company; and we did just that. After filling ourselves up with scones and English tea, we set off to Keble College. While the front of Keble was under construction, it is still a wonderful sight to see. I walked my parents around the grounds and took them into Keble Church. Even to someone who loves old Cathedrals, the Keble Church is a sight to remember. The walls are filled with mosaics depicting various bible scenes with gold trimming everywhere.
After leaving Keble we walked around near my tutorial site for the day at Oriel College. We planned on meeting at the Botanic Gardens afterwards.
After arriving at the Gardens, I was dismayed to find that most of the plants had been cut down in preparation for winter. Despite the lack of vegetation, we took a stroll around the garden and talked.
Since this was Thanksgiving day we decided to go to a nice restaurant for dinner. We found a local pub called The Red Lion. After putting on some nicer clothes (a plaque above the pub said only ‘smart casual’ was allowed entrance) we walked in and grabbed a seat. Since we arrived at 5:30 we were given the lunch menu. We all decided to get the two course meal. For myself I ordered the cauliflower curry soup appetizer, same as Mom, and the Yorkshire ham plate, which my Dad also got. Dad decided to skip the appetizer and get an apple dessert in its place. All in all, the food was delicious and while not the traditional Thanksgiving dinner, the dinner was amazing.
And lastly on Friday, I decided to take my parents around a bit of Oxford. We started the day with a Bod tour. While the tour didn’t take us into any of the areas that I study in, we got to visit the Duke Humphrey’s Room and some other smaller rooms used for various events and not academic work. After a wonderful tour we took off to Port Meadow. Port Meadow is a humungous park in Oxford that is basically untouched by civilization. The grounds here are what people believed England looked like before being settled. Besides a few footpaths, the place is untouched. They have a cow herd as well as a herd of ponies within the grounds.
After walking around for a very long time, our feet were ready to fall off. We walked back to the center of Oxford and grabbed a few pasties to tie us over to dinner. Since it was starting to get dark out, we decided to go indoors and do a bit of shopping. Luckily Oxford wasn’t too bad on Black Friday. Apparently Black Friday has begun to occur even here in the UK and was quite disastrous this year. It looked like chaos at many of the stores on the tv. I was glad not to be around any of those stores! We finally finished off the night by eating at our last pub of the week called the Pen and Wig.
In all, having my parents visit me was the best gift I could have ever asked for. After being here for three months it was nice to see them again. While technology keeps us connected through facetime and emails, being with the people you love is the greatest feeling in the world. Now that both of them are back safe and sound, it is back to work for me! This is my last week of tutorials so I have one philosophy and one Byzantine paper left to do and then I’m done! With tutorials of course…. Then I have a final seminar paper due next week. This 4,000 word essay is on a topic of my choosing within the realm of the class that I’m taking. So I will be writing a paper answering how intrinsically English the United States really is down to the core of our governmental structures.
jenniguenther 