Oxford and Obama

So it's 6 AM here, and I don't know if I'm going to be able to fall asleep I'm so pumped from Obama's victory.

This week is QM's reading week, so I don't have any classes, and took a day trip to Oxford with three fellow Americans today. We got back to QM at 9 PM, and I took a nap until 12:45 AM (coincidentally, my alarm went off just as my flatmates gathered outside my door wondering where I was) and at 1 AM our election night party began. Nothing big, just Sushi, Claire, Abdullah (a fellow American, he goes to UCSD and lives in the flat down the hall from us), and me, sitting around the kitchen talking and refreshing CNN and the New York Times website, and The Indianapolis Star's website, too, in my case, every once in awhile, following the results.

At about 3:30 Abdullah came back in from his room, and said that we'd won. I ran down the hall and checked all the websites: Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, the Times, and indeed, the headline of them all was "Obama Projected Winner". We all ran outside to the courtyard, shouting and yelling and cheering (Abdullah kept yelling, "Wake up you wankers!") and attempted to sing "Imagine" by John Lennon (Abdullah's idea) and "God Bless America" (my idea) but couldn't remember all the lines of either song. A few more people joined us, upon hearing our screams of joy and delight, and someone said that there was a TV in Maynard House that people were watching, so we wandered over there and arrived just in time to catch McCain's concession speech and then stuck around for Obama's acceptance speech, which began at 5:00 our time (that would be GMT). So many of us Americans kept saying that we wish we could have been in the US tonight, to just feel the excitement and energy around us, but Sushi was a wonderful election night companion, and if I weren't here I wouldn't have been able to watch with her. Oh, and after Obama's acceptance speech she kept saying, "I want to be American!"; I assured her that that was what America was all about and that she can be American and so she's going to come to America (actually, in all seriousness, she's hoping to come to America next fall for her semester abroad).

YAAAAAY OBAMA!!! Aggh I really need to go to bed, but I won't be able to sleep.

So, yes, Oxford. We got there via coach (bus in American), and the trip took only an hour this morning when we left at 10:15, but with traffic coming back this evening it was more than two hours, with just getting into London taking up half that time - it took us 45 minutes to travel the same distance that it had taken us 15 minutes in the morning).

Oxford is more or less exactly what Americans think of when they think of Britain: cute and quaint with stone buildings everywhere (no thatched roofs though). And everyone dresses in a very stereotypically British way, by which I mean preppy. If I had a nickle for every guy I saw in a collared shirt under a sweater under a sports jacket I wouldn't have to marry one of them for money. Be still the hearts of all the girls who just read that sentence! To be honest, I did have several moments when I was like, why didn't I come here for my semester abroad (usually these moments coincided with me overhearing one of the guys in jackets saying something that was actually 78.6% intelligent)?! At first I had to remind myself that I needed to do my semester abroad in the fall, and I could have only gone to Oxford for the spring semester. And then by the end of the day, I was relieved that I'm in London for my semester abroad, and not Oxford. Because as cute as Oxford is, it's small. We walked all over it in the six hours that we were there.

The best part of the day was most definitely our visit to Christ Church College. It's the biggest Oxford college, and was founded by Cardinal Wolsey/Henry VIII, and scenes from Harry Potter were filmed there!!! In the first Harry Potter movie, when they arrive at Hogwarts and Prof. McGonnagall takes the first years up the stairs to the Great Hall for the sorting, and they pause on the stone steps? Draco Malfoy offers his hand to Harry, dissing Ron, and Harry shoots him down? Yeah, filmed on the steps up to the dining hall of Christ Church College, which was also the model for Hogwarts' Great Hall in the movies.

In real life, students still eat in the dining hall, like for reals, as the portraits of famous Christ Church alums (including 13 prime minsteres), which literally cover like all the wall space, look down upon them. The stained glass windows have scenes from Alice in Wonderland in them, and the brass something or others in the fireplaces are carved like the faces of characters from the books.

And omg, Christ Church Cathedral. Kinda made me want to drop to my knees, crossing myself, in respect of God it was so pretty. There's a spectacular stained glass window over the gorgeous altar. Really words can't begin to describe it, so I'll post pictures very, very soon, I promise. But now I need to go to bed.

God bless America.