Yesterday was not just the first class, with orientation and short walking tour, but also the bumped-up punting expedition (because the weather reports were right, and it really has started raining, as it will all week, rendering my original schedule inadvisable). The students as usual seemed to enjoy it a lot, and we had a pleasant beverage at the Victoria Arms; almost everyone actually tried their hand at punting, although I didn't push that too hard. It's so nice to be out in what feels like real countryside so close to town, which is one of the wonders of this place. [The rain didn't stop me from a nice long run out to my old haunts up the river, to the ruins of the medieval priory at Godstow, eerily beautiful under gray skies at 8:30 in the long evening.]
Yesterday we also had the start of term dinner "in hall," nothing super spectacular, but enjoyable nonetheless. I am resigning myself to not having as many organized activities lined up, and actually turning that to strength, given the different nature of this program as compared to the GT of the last two years: students will get to know the town themselves, if they know what's good for them (and I will be creating some incentives for this), and I have to be comfortable with that. We elected not to have program costs cover dinners here--or even lunches--because the charges that Oxford colleges are extracting from foreign programs are pretty larcenous; we did go for breakfast, however, and that has been a success so far.So I have my monastic little life here--I eat cheaply and simply, I do a lot of paper-marking (I have my students write in each class, keeping a set of blue books for the purpose so I don't have to deal with their idiotic scraps of paper), and I try to avoid obsessing over things I can't control. Always a tough task.
Now for a few more blue books and then bed.
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