6th Week

As I mentioned in my last post, my host Rotary club, Banbury-Cherwell, invited me to participate in Banbury's local Remembrance Sunday service (similar to Veteran's Day in the U.S.). Each year, my host Rotary club helps direct traffic so that the parade runs smoothly.

The day began with a parade from the village hall to a local church, St. Mary's (apparently the 800 church attendees nearly set a record!). Nearly 500 people ranging from veterans and active duty soldiers to the fire brigade and young Beaver Scouts represented their various organizations in the parade. The British soldiers and community warmly included me and two other Americans, an Air Force LTC and his wife, in this special event.

The British commemorate Remembrance Day by wearing poppies on their clothes (the money raised from selling the poppies funds the British Royal Legion to support soldiers and veterans) . In local ceremonies around the UK, they gather to place wreaths of these poppies on war memorials. These pictures are at the People's Park where we met to present the wreaths after the church service. While I think Americans have a great respect for the many soldiers we have lost in war, I felt an even stronger sentiment here. The reason is that many more families were directly affected by the two World Wars. Unlike the U.S., which has been fortunate to have few wars fought on its soil or in close proximity, Britain was in the thick of both World Wars. In World War I alone, seventeen times more British soldiers and civilians died per capita than Americans.

After the ceremony, the parade followed the original route back to the town hall where everyone was invited to a lunch buffet. There was a strong sense of community throughout the whole morning, so it was fitting one of the prominent beverages was a locally brewed beer. Though Banbury is quite a bit larger than Schoolcraft (45000 to 1500), the small-town feel reminded me of home.

Yes, in case you were wondering, this particular Banbury has a cross and a fine lady upon a white horse.  However, I visited via automobile and left my cock horse back in Oxford. According to the gentleman I walked next to in the parade, Banbury was a major printing town and one of the printers took advantage of his occupation to insert 'Banbury' into the poem before it was printed. Perhaps its just a local myth, but it's entertaining all the same.

One of my most loyal readers (from LA!) has asked more British lingo, so here are a few more that I get a laugh out of: parts of a car, such as bonnet instead of hood (both types of headwear, I guess) or windscreen instead of windshield (kind of makes sense, but then what do you make of a screen door?); bullock instead of bulls (ok, this one makes sense too, but you have to admit the 'Chicago Bullocks' doesn't have the same ring.

When I did my exchange at the Naval Academy, one of the officers giving the welcome had a good nugget of wisdom that is helpful whenever you are thinking about another culture. He told us that we will realize the Navy does many things differently than the Army and uses a different vocabulary for the same ideas. Instead of trying to decide which approach is better, we should just look at these differences as two acceptable ways of accomplishing the same goal. I try to keep this in mind as I experience the UK and I hope that you are able to while reading my blog.

In other news, I visited two local Rotary clubs to talk about life in Michigan, my experiences at West Point, how I am finding Oxford, and my goals for the future. The enthusiasm the Rotarians show for learning about me and the community I come from makes the presentations a lot fun. It's impossible to predict which aspects of the presentation they will be most interested in, but I had a lot of questions about the military as well as what I found to be most different from the U.S.

On Saturday, I went to see Airborne Toxic Event in concert. It was the last performance of a two-year world tour that started and ended in Oxford. No, I hadn't heard of the group either, but they're from California and put on a terrific show. We also had our first crew race on Sunday to help us prepare for the Christ Church Regatta next week. We still need to clean up our technique quite a bit, but at least we didn't crash like one of the other novice boats that managed to put their boat halfway up the bank:)

Alright, take care! Off to our rugby match...