Oxfordshire (8 July)

This has been one of the best days of my study abroad! Sara and I left at 8 to go to Oxford. We took the underground and then a bus to get to Oxford. At first it was raining really hard for our walk to the tube stop and the bus stop. But the rain was letting up at the end of our two-hour bus ride to Oxford. We had both prayed for a beautiful day and it worked!

We arrived at 11, got our bearings, and went to St. Mary’s Church. There we went up into the bell tower and got a great view of the city. So let me tell you a bit about Oxford. There isn’t a university campus—the university is unique in that it is comprised of about 35 different colleges of various prestige and size. One of the bigger colleges, Christ Church, has about 450 students. The students in a particular college to not all study the same things—the college more identifies the people they’re with, the sports they place, the social activities they are involved in, etc. Each college has a green (grassy area) surrounded by a square of buildings that include offices, student housing, a church for each college, and more. Then there are separate buildings for different areas of study (like the physics building, for example). Students from all different colleges can study physics and would spend time in that building. Anyway, it is a little different from any other university. From the bell tower we could see many of these colleges and they all are made out of beautiful golden-colored stone constructed in the Gothic style.

From the bell tower you can see the All Souls College and a reading room building (left)

At 12:00 we met up with Kayleigh Terry, one of the sisters I served with at Temple Square. We went to lunch at the Eagle and Child pub, where Tolkein and CS Lewis would meet and talk about their ideas with eachother. Then we went out in the city. It was so fun to have Kayleigh as our guide—she was born and raised in Oxford and she knows a lot. She could take us to all the cool places, through alleyways, and we didn’t have to worry about a thing! It was so relaxing. We didn’t even realize how much we had been walking because we were enjoying it so much.

We went to parks and saw quite a few of the incredible Oxford colleges. They’re not open for visitors to go inside, except for Christ Church College. You see, that’s where part of Harry Potter was filmed—the Hogwarts staircase and the Great Hall. So, it’s a big tourist attraction here. We got in for free because Kayleigh pulled some strings. We also got to go and talk to someone from her ward who works in an office there. I asked some of my burning questions about being a student there. It sounds like a different way of learning, but it’s very effective. 

Keble College with Kayleigh. I loved this brickwork!

With Sara inside the All Souls College courtyard

The courtyard of Church Christ College

Inside the Christ Church College Great Hall (from Harry Potter).

We saw the outside of the Bodleian Library, which apparently has copies of every book published since a certain year (the storage vaults extend beneath the city streets). Because this is the 400-year anniversary of the translation of the King James Version of the Bible, they had a special display with many old books. It was right up my alley! I got to see a 1611 KJV Bible as well as other documents that have been influenced by the KJV, like the original manuscript of George Handel’s Messiah, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, hymns by Charles Wesley, Jonathan Swift’s writings, and John Donne’s sermons. I was in old-book heaven.

We walked around more, saw Oxford Castle and then Kayleigh took us back to the bus stop. (By the way, it was a double-decker coach bus we rode the whole way!) It was so lovely. When we got back to the coach station it started to rain again. It really was incredible that they whole time we were in Oxford the sun was shining and the temperature was perfect.

I learned so much from Kayleigh and it was a refreshing trip. It was fun to be off with just one other person and to get to know Sara better. Success!