Fresher's Fair

Yesterday was the giant Fresher's Fair Oxford holds every Michaelmas (fall) term. It's basically a giant activities fair spanning three days, taking three floors of a large building, and it was far better than anything Stanford has. There were 12 huge rooms of tables, with everything from political to sports to musical to journalistic clubs. I probably signed up for too many things, but I'm hoping to meet a lot of people and try a lot of new things.

For starts, I signed up for Change Ringers, which is the society for bell-ringing. It's exactly what it sounds like--they do all the bell ringing on the various bell towers around campus, and we get to learn how to play the bells. I also signed up for archery and pistol and rifle shooting because those sound cool and don't require you getting up at ungodly hours in the morning, AS ROWING DOES. I know rowing is something everyone needs to try at Oxford, but just thinking about it makes my arms hurt, and I am miserable for a day if I get up that early, so, no go. I'm also in the Chinese Association because they accosted me in Chinese when I was passing their table, haha. They are really aggressive in recruiting here. If you so much as pause at their table, they immediately start talking to you, handing out flyers, etc. Even the Tae Kwon Do tried to recruit me. First of all, I don't look athletic at all. Secondly, it was really hard for me to say no without saying, "I don't want to join because I don't want to get punched in the face," which is what happened to Laura at the first practice. I think I half ran away, haha. My favorite table was that of the German club, where they had two clear plastic canisters, one with German flag inside. On top of that one, they had an octopus plushy, with a sign attached saying, "Paul the Octopus chooses the German Club!" Sweeeet.

If I'm really lucky, I'll also be designing for Exposition at Oxford. I thought the magazine looked so good I signed up straightaway. I didn't even know what it was about until I looked it up after. I'm also obviously in the photo club, which makes me really happy: they have classes every Thursday, and lots of field trips and competitions. So excited!!! The only drawback is that most Oxford clubs require membership fees, and if you don't pay, they charge you for classes, so we'll see how much it is.

Each college also has its own activities fair, though it's a much smaller one and it consists largely of sports. University teams are generally much more intense, but these collegiate teams are a lot more laid back. People just play when they want, so I actually signed up for badminton, and I'll be playing football later today with the soccer class, assuming people found a field and a ball. I can't believe I'm playing sports in England.

I'm also surprised at how few Stanford students seemingly want to meet Oxford students. Only Laura, Jane, and I have consistently been attending events--last night was so much fun! Corpus has quiz nights every Friday, where everyone gets into groups to compete for alcohol, and the topics range from "Pseudo-medicine" to "Guess the TV show from the theme song." I felt awful during geography because I couldn't remember that Ontario was a Great Lake (but hey, no Americans got all five, so I feel better). The quiz is interrupted intermittently with siren calls, at which point the moderators shout out questions, and the table that answers the loudest gets candy thrown at them. Not only was this event super fun, but it was a great way to meet people from your team. Some of the students were really good at coming up with team names, too. We were boring: there was a cup of sour starbursts on every table, so we named ourselves team Starburst. Others were "Quiz in your pants" and "Queuing Society," because Oxford LOVES lining up for things. There are lines at everything, haha.

Anyways, after that game (at which my team and I lost...sad :(. They actually have second to last prizes for consolation and effort. That's what we were aiming for, but we didn't get it ><), we had competitions in the same teams to see whose egg would survive being thrown from the roof of the college. Each team was given newspapers, cling-on (which is what they call saran wrap), straws, a balloon, a piece of cheese and turkey, and a mince pie to design something that would protect the egg.

We did miserably.

Some other team stole our cling-on, and we spent too much time arguing about how to protect our egg--we had two physicists in the group and we still lost!!! Bleh. Anyways, the night was concluded with us watching Dr. Strangelove with hot chocolate. Yes, there are weekly cinema nights. :)

And I realize I haven't post up pictures of Oxford, so I will get around to that eventually.