"Noughth Week"

That's right. You read it correctly. "Noughth week." Since English isn't already strange enough of a language, with our troughs, sleighs, and other differently pronounced t-h/g-h combinations, we made it more complicated by cramming both awkward consonant combos into one dashing word: noughth. Just like its brother word -'eighth'- the 'gh' doesn't really need to exist, but we like it there anyway. Noughth is pronounced roughly like 'noth', and it is as fun to talk about as it is to look at.

Noughth week is the 0th week of school, and you will see it printed in school schedules as '0th week'.  (By the way, why not 0rd? 0nd? I also wonder who decided way back when that we'd say first, second, third, and not firth, secord, thirst...oh, wait. Fair enough.) Truly the main reason I love this concept of 0th week is because I think zero gets ignored most of the time. It plays a vitally important role, as it marks the space between negative and positive, numbers and their opposites, but often gets ignored as meaningless per se. [insert mathematician objection here, promptly disregard and move on]. Zero is, all things considered, nothing.

The British response to this? Make zero matter! Keep Calm and LET'S START SCHOOL AT WEEK ZERO!  

So here we are in noughth week, my friends. It's a week at Oxford that sort of counts, sort of doesn't. It's not part of term, technically, but valuable events (registration included) occur in it. Some students have moved in, some haven't. But most have. Including us.

Michael (as his legal name will have it) and I are here. Our heads are swimming with events, registrations, orientations, etc. etc. but we have arrived! A kind old lady named Margaret Goodgame (I call her 'Lady Margaret' in my head due to her noble bearing) greeted us at the airport and when we asked where we could find the bus to Oxford, she not only told us where to go, but proceeded to walk us there herself, all the way to the farthest reach of London Heathrow territory while we struggled with our numerous bags and suitcases and topics of conversation. She went to Oxford back in the 1960s, so she has loyalties. Interesting lady.

We are situated at Wolfson College, Linton Road, Oxford. Here is our coat of arms.

It's the newest college, which was depressing at first (we wanted to be in the halls where Harry Potter was filmed, can you blame us???) But Wolfson has many, many, charms that make up for its lack of ancient-ness. Even though the buildings were built mainly in the 1960s to 80s, a period of architecture that usually makes me go BLEEHHH, the buildings look pretty good. Although it's a lot of concrete, they did NOT cheap out on construction, and every building feels solid and well made. Our kitchen/living room/bedroom/closets are big, and there is a balcony!

We have a beautiful harbor, with all these old wooden punting boats we can use at our leisure.

When the grad student gave us our tour the other day, he mentioned casually that we can grab a boat, punt up north in the river, dock at a cozy little pub and get out have a drink or dinner and get back in and row home I almost DIED. Fairy tale. Probably don't recommend drinking and rowing, though. That just sounds awful.


We live on the third (second?) floor of M block, directly across from the day nursery where the grad students' kids get to go all day while their mummies and daddies are working on dissertations and changing the world. Lucky kids! It works out well for us (me) because we (I) hear the sound of little English babies playing all day. And we have heard an ice cream truck go by 3 times already!

They say October is the rainiest month. But I don't buy it. We've had 4 out of 5 days with sunshine so far. Like I said, the ice cream man is out and about. I trust that this optimistic bubble will soon burst, and I will need the rain boots which I so painstakingly towed around at the airport. Eh, their time will come and the lugging around will be worth it.

The first few days we putzed around. Ran LOADS of errands, and got to know Oxford a little bit better. All of the buildings in Oxford are made from limestone, and it turns out limestone doesn't hold up well in the rain. Ha! So a lot of the buildings are undergoing re-cladding and the limestone looks brand new in some of the buildings. The Bodleian Library:

Where we saw an exhibit on Tolkien and C.S. Lewis' works:

So, Tolkien had amazing handwriting. Why don't we teach that anymore? Anyway, a trip to the pub where C.S. Lewis and Tolkien hung out, 'The Eagle and Child', is imminent.

I'll end here with a picture of a stile, on a country walk behind Wolfson College, where I went for a walk the other day. Toodle pip! Yeah, I just said that.