The Journey Begins...

Greetings from Oxford! I've started this blog to chronicle my experience traveling abroad. I'm here in Oxford studying political science for about six months. Oxford is on a trimester system, so I'm here for two terms with about a month off in between to travel. I plan on posting about once a week, usually on a different topic relating to Oxford or some other trip. Today, Jesus College!

I landed in London on Thursday after a sleepless flight. Of course, it was raining. I took the bus from London to Oxford, which is about a one-hour ride. After an hour or so, I arrived at Jesus College, where I'll be living for this term. The University of Oxford is composed of about 40 individual colleges, each of which has their own campus, dorms, faculty, and dining hall. They are separate entities and are under the umbrella of Oxford. Think states and the federal government. The first few days have been really exciting. I've just been exploring the city, which is amazing.

Jesus is an old college, founded in the 16th century. Lawrence of Arabia attended Jesus! And we're all very proud of that. It's in a pretty central location, which is great. Ok, I won't bore you with too many details, so here are the pictures:

From outside the college, on the street. Jesus is the door on the right. All the colleges are closed areas with one opening, and they aren't open to the public, except for certain hours during the day. Exeter is another college that seems similar and is on the left. I've gotten them confused about a dozen times.

The doorway of Jesus college. For whatever reason, none of the buildings in Oxford have names on them. This makes everything about a billion times more difficult.

From inside the doorway. There's a gate in front of the quad, so you have to go through a room on the left with a porter.  A couple of the porters are really nice and helpful. Others are snooty

View of the first quad. Jesus has three quads. The dining hall and the entrance to the second quad is through that door. My room is on the left of the first quad. For WashU people, I feel like the architect of Brookings Quad must have based it off of here. 

Some ivy on the wall. A lot of Oxford is covered with it since, ya know, the place is really old. 

A view looking back on the entrance. You can see a tower in the background that I use as a reference for where Jesus is. The city is confusing as hell at first since all the colleges and buildings look really similar, so I'm pretty thankful that there's a tall tower that I can use to guide me.

Our dining hall. Queen Elizabeth I founded it, so that's why there's a huge portrait of her in the middle. 

More portraits of famous people, I guess.

This is a picture of the high table. It's kind of hard to see, but the table is on a platform raised six inches. The faculty and other important people eat here. I think you have to get invited to eat here. Very privileged. 

The second quad, with a tunnel leading to the third quad on the right.

Second quad again

More crazy ivy in the second quad 

Tunnel leading to the third quad, which I don't have pictures of for some reason....

There are some sixteen or seventeen stairways in the college. They're open stairways that lead up to the rooms.  I don't know why they don't have doors. 

This is my room. It's pretty spacious. I'm living in a single and there are four other singles on my floor with other American kids in my program. They're all very cool. I really like the room, except that I can feel just about every spring in my mattress

View from my window 1. That's Exeter

View from my window 2

Alright, that wraps it up. I'll talk more about Oxford itself and academics and whatnot in later posts. Feel free to comment with questions, praises, statements of how jealous you are, or whatever.

Cheers!