HWAET!

For those of you who are not English dorks, this is how the epic Beowulf begins...so what better way to begin my epic adventure across the Pond? Today begins the official 4 week mark, and I find myself itching to begin the journaling. Anything to trick myself into believing the plane ride is just around the corner. I begin today because of a very exciting package I received yesterday: shipping address: Oxford, England. Now that's an address. Anyways, the package contained all manner of items to get excited over. Vaccination forms, contracts, the Worcester College handbook, directions for safe cycling in Oxford (which in my case might mean not cycling in Oxford), order forms for Commoner's gowns and Fresher's T's as well as the two most exciting items...the "Provisional Induction Schedule Michaelmas Term 2010" (for those of you not in the know, this is the Orientation Schedule for "Fresher's Week") and a letter from my Oxford "parents".

Apparently new students in Oxford are presented with college parents. Don't worry, I was assured that this is not "quite as creepy as it sounds". At Worcester students are part of a college family system that often includes (but is not limited to) parents, brothers and sisters, grandparents, estranged lover's, etc. Interesting. However, both of my "parents" sound really cool. My Woosta father is named James and he is the college hockey captain ("of the field variety, not ice") and hopes that I am in possession of some "stick skills". My college mother is named Catherine, claims James' geography major requires the "coloring in of pictures) and says she spent that past year rowing very, very badly. In short, I am already loving school.

The college handbook includes a glossary of specifically "Oxford" terms which I will now call Oxfordisms. Here are some of my favorite:

Bop: A college party usually held in the bar and organized by the JCR Entertainment Committee
Commoner: What undergraduates become after matriculation and stay until they graduate
Cuppers: Inter-collegiate competitions in just about anything
Fresher: New student
Pigeon Post: University postal network
Tute: Slang for tutorial

I'm sure there will be many more Oxfordisms to follow once I have been fully indoctrinated into the Worcester system. If you haven't already...be sure to check out the links on the left of the site. They include the Oxford University, Worcester College, and IFSA Butler sites and will give you a better idea of where I will be this coming fall!

"In a story you only had to wish, you only had to write it down and you could have the world...It seemed so obvious now that it was too late: a story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader's. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it. Reading a sentence and understanding it were the same thing; as with the crooking of a finger, nothing lay between them. There was no gap during which the symbols were unraveled."--Ian McEwan