London Trip

Grew up in a big city, I have this weird feeling for big cities. I love them because they always have some fascinating features to discover, but hate them at the same time because they are often too crowded.

I knew very little about London before this trip. London is the capital of the UK, London is where the Big Ben at. So for the second weekend, I decided to go to London.

I was very excited, because London is technically the second capital I have ever been to.

We started to read the London tourists booklet on our way to London. First stop, St. James’ park. This royal park is such a perfect place for picnic. Lots of people came here as a group, just sat on the grass and having lunch under the sun. This idyllic lifestyle is hardly seen in China. People run around the big city, have fast food, and enjoy fast life. But here, you can feel that the breeze is slow.

Then we went to the famous Buckingham Palace, unfortunately, we cannot go inside.

My mother exhorted me repeatedly to see the Westminster Abbey, because that was where the royal wedding happened. The Westminster Abbey is truly a magnificent cathedral. It is surprisingly full of royal members’ gravestones, which I thought is hard to imagine why those people want to leave their bodies here to let people watch.

After the Abbey, we saw the Big Ben, which is really cool.

One day is certainly not enough for London.

Harry Potter is coming to town

First of all, I need to confess that I am not a truly crazy Harry Potter fan, (Maybe because I am a muggle, lol). But when my best friend knew that I am in Oxford, she told me I must go see the Harry Potty movie premier, because she is a huge fan of Emma Waston.

To be honest, I have never seen any movies’ premier before, I had no idea what this one would be. The premier starts at four, so many crazy fans has been waiting there for 24 hours. By the time we go there, there were a huge amount of people have already been inside. We also saw many people dress up like characters in the movie, and huge signs like “Keep Calm, and Marry Rom”. I thought it was really cool that I can witness all this great monument, this is the last Harry Potter movie after all.

At four thirty, the crowd starts to get more and more excited. Unfortunately, we cannot see a thing through thousands of people. After two hours waiting, :”Harry Potter” walked in, people went nearly crarzy for him. A few minutes late, the elegant lady Emma Waston walked in. I had to say that she was so pretty and elegant.

I cannot wait to see the last Harry Potter movie next week..

CASTLE and the QUEEN

The plan for my first weekend is going to Edinburgh. I have heard so much about it, and I was really looking forward to see the Edinburgh castle.

We took a six-hour train to get there, which is kind of far but the beautiful view along the way made this trip much more fun. I saw hundreds of sheep standing under the sun; some horses ran on the grass. All the mountains and grasslands are so green.

When we actually got to Edinburgh, we are even more amazed by the city. The whole city has even a little bit more cool and older buildings than Oxford has, and it’s also bigger than Oxford. The guest house that we stayed in was really nice. They served traditional English breakfast which includes bacon, egg, boiled tomato, beans, toasted bread and tea with fancy china.

On the first night, we went out try to search for some good Scottish food, we asked some random Scottish people and they led us to a small yet cozy Scottish restaurant. For the first time, I tried Scottish whisky, which is too strong to me. The Scottish food was okay.

The next day we went to the Edinburgh Castle. The castle itself is so beautiful! From the audio guide, I learned the background and importance of this great castle. The funny thing is, when we saw a Scottish soldier wearing traditional Scottish skirt, almost every tourist asked for taking a picture with him.

We didn’t spend much time visiting castle, because according to the news, the Queen of great Britain is in Edinburgh and will give a speech in the Palace. Excited we went there; so many people were already there ready to see the Queen. After two hours of waiting, the Queen finally arrived, but we can only see her from a very far distance, still, we saw her in her pretty pink suit. It is such a once in a life time opportunity, which made us so happy.

Hello Oxford

I have been in Oxford for about 12 days. The past 12 days were totally a blast. I am so thankful that I joined this program. Okay, here comes my first blog in Oxford.

Because of the rarely bad weather in Beijing, my flights delayed. So it took me almost 30 hours to get to Oxford. Stuck in the airport was not fun at all. Finally I got to Oxford, and had a lovely meeting with everyone.

Days in Oxford are really interesting. The old buildings totally blew my mind. I have seen lots of pictures of these famous buildings, but when I actually in one of them, everything seemed so unreal. The whole city is so unique, parks are neat.

Kevin, Han and I found a really lovely store in city centre, it’s called Oxfam. We found it really interesting because it sells some cool used stuff, like used stamps, used CDs and Videos, used accessories, it even has used post cards that you can see what people actually wrote on it in back days. Later I accidentally noticed that this store is actually a very big charity-store. People donate their used stuff here, and all the money goes to charity.

On Wednesday night, we went to pubs. The pubs here are very different than pubs in China, ( I don’t know about American pubs, never been to one.) Chinese pubs are usually very loud and crowded, here, people are pretty chill about drinking, seems like they just wanna have some fun, enjoy some wine, no need to be super wasted.

I don’t remember if I had any real British meal, ( don’t know if the dinners we had at the EF center count as British food.) but I really enjoyed KFC hot wings in Oxford. It’s totally odd that I don’t usually have that much KFC in Seattle or in my hometown. But the hot wings here are awesome! Cannot live without them. I also really like British tea, probably because the coffee here is not as good as in the US; tea is now my favorite drink.

After almost seven days in Oxford, everyday I feel like I live in history. I even forgot to call my family till my mom went super worried and kept calling Kevin’s parents to see if I am fine. I felt bad, but they really don’t need to worry. I like how every morning I wake up, I am excited to see what new cook things I am going to experience today.

A Little Research on University of Oxford

Since we are going to spend most of our time in university of oxford, which is awesome, I did a little bit research on this world’s greatest university. The history of oxford is long and amazing. It’s the second-oldest university in the whole world and the oldest in the English-speaking country. 

There are over 21,000 students at Oxford, including 11,723 undergraduates and 9,327 postgraduates. We all know that oxford is really good at humanity and literature majors. 53 per cent of undergraduates are studying for degrees in the humanities and social sciences, and 44 per cent in the medical, mathematical, physical and life sciences. From the university website, I got to know a little bit about oxford’s collegiate system. “The collegiate system is at the heart of the University’s success, giving students and academics the benefits of belonging to both a large, internationally renowned institution and to a small, interdisciplinary academic community.”

The main purpose of visiting oxford is to explore his museums and libraries. Oxford has the largest university library system in the UK, with over 100 libraries. The Bodleian Library is the University’s main research library, which I really cannot wait to see and want to compare it with our Suzzallo library. “Its priceless collections include the papers of six British Prime Ministers; a Gutenberg Bible; the earliest surviving book written wholly in English; a quarter of the world’s original copies of the Magna Carta; and almost 10,000 western medieval and renaissance manuscripts.”

I am really grateful for this opportunity to live and study in university of oxford, even though I am not officially an oxford student, I would really love to have a oxford student experience and explore this university as much as I can.

Officially got my UK visa!! can't wait to go to oxford

So, today, I finally received my UK visa from New York. Quite a bit exciting! I started packing my stuff since Tuesday, not for going to Oxford, but going home. One week from now, I will be on a plane to my sweet home, three weeks from now, I will be on the plane to Oxford!

In class, we learned a lot about British history, British literature and British culture. Now I am started to think about what my life will be in oxford. Will I be really busy everyday, or travel a lot? Am I going to make some British friends? How am I going to adjust my life from American style, to Chinese style, then to British style?

I looked up the normal weather during June and July in Oxford, it seems the weather is a lot like Seattle summer. You can wear shorts and T-shirts, add a jacket when it gets chilly, be sure to pack your rain jacket! 

I am a big fan of food!! I cannot wait to explore the pubs and restaurants and places we can have tea near Oxford. Speaking of having tea, do I need to dress formally to do that?

Amazing British Royal Wedding.( mean to post it a long time ago, but forgot)

It was three in the morning, I just finished studying for the midterm, tried to go on Youtube and listen to some music before I go to bed, surprisingly, the royal wedding is on! Live! The awesome thing about Youtube is that it has two screens, one camera was shooting the inside place, the other one was shooting the outdoor public. I was amazed so many people came for witness this wedding and all these different kinds of hats, never seen that many people wearing hats( they are beautiful) in my life. This wedding turned this day to a national holiday, everyone got a day off, they even shut down the stock market. I got on Chinese news website, even people in China were vividly talking about this wedding. Well, I guess the whole worldwide it's watching this wedding. That's a lot of pressure on the bride and groom. lol.

I also did a little bit background research on the lucky girl, the future princess, Kate. Kate the prince are in love for about eight years, they met in the University. Most of people may think this is a modern fairy tale and Kate is the lucky girl. Personally, I think Kate is gonna make a great wife.

I didn't watch it till the very end, because I was too tired. But I truly feel grateful for this new married couple, hope their marriage life won't like their parents, hope them can still have fun like a normal couple while being the public face of the royal family of British.