Oxford in July

So what about our adventures in London then? Well, we haven't even told you about our first visit yet. We went sightseeing by bus first and then by foot. We saw Harry Potter's train station as well as Richard Lionheart's old castle. We visited the bathrooms close to Big Ben and from the queue we had a great view over the Thames and London Eye. Other important stops were of course Trafalgar Square with the Lord Nelson statue, Picadilly Circus, St James Park, where some of us played football or relaxed, and Buckingham Palace, where the queen was auctually at home (the flag was up).

The second visit, the shopping day, started on Oxford Street for some and in Camden for others. In Camden we tried chocolate fountain dipped fruit and marshmallow sticks before buying really cool clothes, hats and jewellery. At lunch we met under the giant Freddie Mercury statue you can see above. After that we went to Covent Garden, Harrod's or Oxford Street depending on personal preference. A nice day overall, a few drops of rain but no showers.

It's only seven hours til the Arlanda group leaves Oxford and now everybody but Emma is sleeping. That our trip ends doesn't mean the blog must, though. Students, who want to add blog posts, just email Emma.

Yesterday we went to London. We will tell you more about that later today, but since Swedish newspapers have reported about a chaotic situation in London I just want you not to worry. This happened far away from where we were and after we had left. We just had a great day and most of the students are probably unaware of what's happening in Tottenham.

So finally we went punting, which means we pushed a long metal pole against the river bottom, while standing on a long flat-bottomed boat. Actually, only one person stood up in each boat, while the other four just enjoyed the slow cruise along the beautyful river. Punting might seem easy, but when your pole gets stuck in the low hanging branches on the sides of the river it's a challenge. One student even fell into the water, but he's not Swedish of course, since all Swedes except leader Emma are excellent punters. From the river we saw St Hildas College and Christchurch - an enchanting scenery. This is the very same river, where Alice in Wonderland used to go rowing with her author Lewis Carroll. Alright, I mean the little girl Alice, whom he wrote the novels for and about, but still quite thrilling, right?

Last night we were partying hard. Starting at Jamie Oliver's Italian restaurant we got a chance to celebrate one girl having a birthday, and another leaving Oxford earlier. Don't misunderstand us. Her leaving us earlier was of course something sad to us, but her still being there at the time was worth celebrating, for sure. After that it was time for our last disco. The theme was "Black & White", but if you associate that to good and evil I guess our red devils below were quite properly dressed.

Students helping each other out in the Blenheim Palace maze.

On Sunday we went to Blenheim Palace. It was very nice - a sunny day in the end of July. What we saw was of course the palace, built in the early 18th century. We also visited a "secret garden", perhaps not so secret, since it was on the map. Other interesting things were an organ in the wonderful "long library", a maze in the garden where some of us lost our way (picture above), a butterfly house and a waterfall in the far end of the garden (picture below). Actually there are several gardens. One is a rose garden where WW2 Prime Minister, who's actually born in this palace, proposed to his wife to be, Clementine.

The waterfall

Through some of our students we've heard that you parents are hungry for more blog posts, so here is another one. Today's been quite warm and mostly sunny. First we visited the medieval town of Salisbury. Since it's Saturday they had an outdoor market where some of us made great bargains. We also visited the one millennium old cathedral where one of the four copys of Magna Carta can be viewed. It's a 800-year-old document signed by King John on a piece of calf skin allowing the church and the nobles more power. This was an early and important step towards dividing political power between many people instead of everybody obeying one ruler. Unfortunately it's in Latin so we didn't understand much.

After a few hours in this beautiful town we went further back in time, in fact back to 3000 BC. That is when archeologists believe the first parts of Stonehenge were built. After a slow cruise (or traffic jam) northwards these giant stones finally appeared in front of us. An impressive mystery, which we now know a bit more about. Tired, and perhaps a bit sunburned we then went home to Oxford to get a rest before future adventures.

Tonight fifteen students laughed a lot at an extremely entertaining play by the wellknown Oscar Wilde. The Importance of Being Earnest, which is the one we saw, was performed by the Oxford Shakespeare Company and turned out to be great fun. Tomorrow we're off to Stonehenge and Salisbury, and on Sunday the trip goes to Blenheim Palace. Bye!

Yesterday most of us went to Stratford-upon-Avon. None of us had heard about it before. Shakespeare we'd heard of, though, and that's one of the reasons we went. In Stratford we saw the Creaky Cauldron, where we bought butter beer. It's a non-alcoholic drink and the same kind as the Harry Potter actors drank when making the films. By the way, we met one of the actors in Oxford the other day. The guy who plays Dean Thomas. He's not as young any more, but in fact more handsome. ;)
We also saw Shakespeares house in Stratford. Actually, only the floor is from his days and the rest is reconstructed. The area was full of tourists, so not all of us got the magic feeling from walking in the footsteps of a 16th century playwright. Some of us did, though.
(written in St James' Park close to Buckingham Palace)

The day after arrival we all had a placement test. The new classmates we got after that were Spanish, Chinese, Polish, Finnish, Italian, Danish, French and Latvian. It's usually just a few Swedes in each class, but we meet each other every lunch and in the afternoons and at the evening acitivites.

Mostly we talk to people from other nationalities in class, which "forces" us to use our English. The four of us writing this blog post like our teachers and classes (the others are in Stratford-upon-Avon now and can't be asked right now :) ). Students from different nationalities have different strengths. Swedes are good at talking and understanding, the Chinese are good at writing and reading and some of the Spanish students are really good at grammar. As you can see we can help each other out. The afternoon project in school right now is creating a newspaper or a magazine. Most of the magazines are about food, sports, entertainment and fashion. In the picture above one of our Swedish students work together with her magazine group. A funny detail in one of the food articles is that Chinese people have a traditional day called "Moon Cake Day", which is about the theory that rabbits are making cakes on the moon. :)

We've recently been at our first disco, called "Super Power Party". The disco was in a very nice local. It looks like a night club with two floors, good music, so much people (but not too much) and the temperature on the dance floor was very hot. About 40 degrees or someting. If you didn't want to dance, there were chairs and couches. You could also go outside for a while to cool down. Some of us thought there were very nice boys on the dance floor. In the end of the disco they played the Swedish "sommarplaga": "Vill du ligga med mig da?" and some of the Chinese students even sang along. :)

So long!

På avresedagen reser alla svenskar från antingen Göteborg, Köpenhamn eller Arlanda. Ni som reser från Köpenhamn och Göteborg har fått info från era ledare/STS-personal om vart ni ska gå och ni som reser med mig från Arlanda terminal 5 ska liksom alla andra hålla utkik efter en gul STS-jacka. I just mitt fall sitter den på en 161 cm lång tjej som ska vara synlig när man står mitt i avgångshallen, dvs någonstans mellan rulltrapporna upp från hallen och den stora entrén. Hittar ni mig inte har ni fått mitt telefonnummer i ett mail och hittar ni inte mailet ska ni genast maila sts.emma(snabel-a)gmail.com.

Jag har ringt runt till alla elever/föräldrar och fått svar hos de flesta. En hel del av er är osäkra på hur ni ska registrera ert barn på flygbolagets hemsida (kallat APIS). Detta görs alltså i förväg när man flyger till vissa länder, däribland England. Se till att ha passet till hands och gör sedan så här:

1. Gå till http://www.britishairways.com/travel/apisgroups/public/en_se

2. Nu får du frågan om du ska till USA. Klicka "Nej"

3. Under fliken "Select your form" väljer du sedan det högra alternativet "Complete API data) och klickar på "Enter your information"

4. Kryssa i "I am a passenger of the group"

5. Fyll i din bokningskod (du hittar den på mypage under booking code eller eventuellt PNR)

6. Kryssa i "I have the consent of the passengers to supply their personal information"

7. Fyll i dina uppgifter under "Passenger 1" och klicka sedan på "Submit" längst ner på sidan.

/Emma

Har fått en del frågor om packningen. Eftersom vi åker med British Airways får varje elev checka in en större resväska med maxvikt 23 kg och utöver detta även bära med sig två mindre bagage in i flygplanet. Den incheckade väskans storlek får maximalt vara 90cm x 75cm x 43cm, medan de två väskor man tar med in i flygkabinen får vara 56cm x 45cm x 25cm respektive 45cm x 36cm x 20cm. I praktiken innebär detta en mindre resväska/bag samt en handväska/laptopväska. Det fina med att åka med British Airways är att de inte väger handbagaget. Den enda begränsningen är att du ska kunna lyfta upp väskan på hyllan ovanför sätena.

Om någon av er händelsevis spelar gitarr och vill ta med en sådan, så kan man ta med den som det större av sina handbagage. Använd då helst hardcase.

Det viktigaste i handbagaget är att alla vätskor (tandkräm, schampoo, linsvätska) finns i behållare som är maximalt 100 ml. Samtliga dessa behållare ska kunna rymmas i en förslutningsbar enliterspåse. Har ni inte en sådan, så finns de på flygplatsen. Det är även bra att ha med alla viktiga papper (pass, försäkring, sjukförsäkringskort) i handbagaget samt ett klädombyte ifall oturen skulle vara framme och det incheckade bagaget skulle hamna på avvägar. Mer tips kommer och har ni frågor om packning får ni hemskt gärna kommentera.

/Emma

Nu börjar resan till Oxford närma sig med stora steg och snart är det bara en vecka kvar tills vi åker! Om ni är lite sugna på att se mer av Oxford innan vi åker dit så finns där en massa videor på Youtube.
Jag hittade denna http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiCf_qRbL2I , som jag tyckte var intressant och även denna http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4ozpM5JFP0&feature=related.
Förutom Harry Potter-filmerna så är det även ett antal andra filmer som antingen helt eller delvis har spelats in i Oxford. 102 Dalmatiner och Guldkompassen för att nämna några, men på denna sidan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_shot_in_Oxford finns en full lista över filmer ni kan kolla in om ni är nyfikna på hur det ser ut i Oxford!

Ser fram emot att träffa er SNART :) ! / Emelie

Sitter just nu på ett café på Jersey och konstaterar att det är mindre än tre veckor kvar tills vi åker. Har ni börjat förbereda er på något sätt? Om ni inte redan gjort det, så är det hög tid att beställa sjukförsäkringskortet från Försäkringskassan. Hoppas att ni njuter riktigt av sommaren och tagga till nu, för snart kör vi!

Det hoppas jag att ni vill, för som en del av lektionerna kommer ni att få skriva resedagboksinlägg på engelska när vi är i Oxford. Det är inte bara för att era nära och kära hemma i Sverige ska träna upp sin läsförmåga utan även för att de ska kunna få lite glimtar av vad vi har för oss. Inläggen kan handla om hur det är att bo i värdfamilj, era favoritaffärer i shoppingcentret, hur vi haft det på våra utflykter, hur det är i skolan eller varför inte en mer poetisk redogörelse för någon reseupplevelse t.ex skriven i sonettform a la Shakespeare. Ni kommer att få skriva i smågrupper och det kommer fler förslag på lektionerna . Vi kommer förstås att smycka ut med lite bilder också, ni är med och bestämmer.