Knackered!

The American phrases that invade British English are referred to as Americanisms (and I get the impression often in a negative light). Knackered--meaning tired--is definitely a Britishism though. So are bloke (a guy), cheeky (?), trolley (shopping cart), lorry (bus), and a whole bunch of other words...I'll get back to that point in a little bit.

The the beginning of this week was a whirlwind, but I had a lot of fun and I've been able to recover the last few days. On Monday, I had one of my lectures, then a tutorial in the afternoon. My tutorial has an Australian, another American, and a Brazilian, making for a good diversity of perspectives. The speeches were on regional organizations and were supposed to address their origins and current roles. I presented on the Gulf Cooperation Council (most of the states in the Arabian peninsula) and it went really well. Monday evening, I went to Kids Enjoy Exercise Now (KEEN) with a good friend of mine, James. The organization provides social and physical activities for mentally handicapped members of the community and Monday was a ghost walk around Oxford. I was paired up with one of the people I had met last week, another James, who is an extremely fun, caring, and smart guy. While James was only somewhat interested in the tour guide's storytelling, the highlight of the night was definitely him sneaking up on my buddy and kissing him. I think it's going to be a while before he forgives me...

Over the next few days, I had a few more lectures (fuzzy sets, instrumentalism, ways to build categories, etc.), attended an afternoon piano and cello recital, sat in on an American history lecture (on the long women's suffrage movement in the U.S.), went to a play, had a rugby game (20-15, or something close to that), had a few rowing practices, and went to a debate!

The history was great. Teachers encourage students to take advantage of the academic community at Oxford by attending lectures in courses not directly related to your own subject. The author presenting at this one had found a lot of interesting connections between the suffrage movement and other movements (race rights, antislavery, the Civil War, and others). The play that I went to was Days of Significance and was about a group of British soldiers and their deployment to Iraq. Basically, there is a lot of tension about the war before they leave and even more when they come back (a few of them abused prisoners during the deployment); so much so that it drives a close group of friends apart. The performance was pretty vulgar, but the acting was terrific and one of the themes--that no one wins in war-- were powerful. Now back to the Britishisms real quick. One of the best parts about the play was that while I could tell the actors were anger by their tone, many of their swear words were different from American ones and at times, it sounded more akin to a playground fight than a serious argument between adults. Ok, I have a ton more to write, but I'll leave it for my next post. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!