Walking and Writing

I slept in something fierce today, and missed breakfast completely. I think I needed the sleep though; I might be up late getting started on my European Union paper tonight. After showering I did a little research on possible topics and then headed to the lecture of the day. It was called The Changing Nature of War, and was given by Professor Jeremy Black. 

He was a very good speaker, and he made some interesting points. One of the main ideas he tried to relay was that viewing military history by changes in the kinds of weapons people use is a faulty one. Even the ideas of the Iron, Bronze, Steam, etc. ages are driven by this view. He proposed that believing the wars your particular country is involved in as the most important is wrong too. An example for Americans is Vietnam, which was an insignificant war for most others. War should not be viewed just as contact between two armies or how many people died on both sides, but take into account changing technology and the kind of advanced warfare we are capable of now. It was a cheery start to the day.

I had a brief lunch and then did a little more research for my paper. Then I headed over at 2 o'clock to the Porters office to meet some other people for a walking tour of Oxford. The woman who gave the tour was very funny and insightful. She definitely knew her Oxford history, and made a lot of jabs at Oxford and Cambridge both during the walk in her thick German accent. That being said, we didn't get to see very much. We walked around Exeter for almost a whole hour. I loved getting more history on my school, but I have explored this area already. We really only made it about a block outside the college in the whole two hour trip.

Still, I got to see the inside of another college, Wadham College, and its chapel. Then we walked down by the Radcliffe Camera building (the circular part of the Bodleian) and the beautiful Mary the Virgin Cathedral. I split from the group with some friends and we climbed the tower of the church to get some views of the whole city. We climbed an intensely narrow and small stairwell up to the top and got some great pictures before heading back down. Unfortunately it was sort of a one way deal, so we had to push a family back to the bottom as we were coming down.

We walked back to Exeter and had tea in our friend Rachel's room. I wrote up a proposal paragraph for my EU paper, on the history and current issues dealing with Italy as a member state in the EU. I really need to get a good start on my paper though, think the time here is going to go a lot faster now that I have a couple assignments.

For dinner I had lasagna, and then Joanna and I went to meet our friends Bryan (from Florida), Olivia (Australia), Kevin (Texas), and Eric (Virginia) at a pub called ‘Three Goat’s Heads.’ We went from there to ‘The Royal Oak,’ and then headed back in to Exeter. We are all calling it an early night so we can skype with people back home and get some rest. I have a long day of classes and lecture tomorrow, and hopefully a productive weekend. I want to get some papers done and go punting (renting a boat to take down the river) on Friday with Blake, Joanna, and some of our new friends. On top of that we have Harry Potter on Saturday. I’ll keep you updated on how that goes, grazie per leggere.