A Day at Oxford (the Prof)

Friday was our first day trip.  We spent the whole day in the home of the oldest English speaking university in the world (though I think Cambridge disputes that).  Oxford is a different kind of university from American universities.  It is really a series of colleges combined under one large umbrella.  Students are admitted to a college and live there, but they may take their courses from faculty in a number of different colleges (faculty in colleges are not organized by specialty--you might find chemistry professors in a number of different colleges).

Anyway, Oxford is a step back into history.  Christ Church (the college we toured) was founded in the time of Henry VIII.  The great dining hall was the inspiration for the Hogwarts hall in the Harry Potter movies.  Lewis Carroll created his Alice in Wonderland characters there to entertain the dean's daughters--one of whom was Alice.  One of the professors there was the inspiration for Ian Fleming's "M" character in the James Bond novels.  John Locke, John and Charles Wesley and William Gladstone all studied there.  Quite a place.

We had lunch in the Eagle and Child; a very nice little pub where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien met and talked about the books they were writing.  We also made it to the Natural History Museum and got our picture taken with the TRex and Triceratops.  

Eventually, it just gets overwhelming how old things are.  Many of the buildings in Oxford date from the 1500s, but they aren't even the oldest places in town.  Some buildings (or at least parts of buildings) date back hundreds of years before that.  Standing next to a tower built a millennia ago is a rather awesome experience.

Side note: we're going to start signing our posts in the header so it's easy to tell one from the others