The student experience at Oxford University

How many of us would have loved the opportunity to study in Oxford University? I know I would...unfortunately never had the chance to. However, we managed to get a glimpse of how life in Oxford is like with this weekend trip to the university town to visit a friend, HS

The train trip there with National Express train is only about an hour. However....it's one of those Saturday mornings that we just slept right through the alarm bells... causing us to miss the train by a mere 5 minutes and costing us quite a bit more money as we had to buy new tickets. :(.  But, a whole new experience awaits us!!







Oxford town is truly a student town....It was matriculation day...and hence there were many students walking around the town in their robes...short robes for undergrad, and long robes for the postgrad. Although they have the square hats, apparently they are only allowed to carry them around but not allowed to wear them???!!!??!. Matriculation is sort of like 'Orientation Day', where new students are officially accepted as an Oxford University student.

Our accommodation is at one of the university's colleges - Hertford College (which is HS' college) thanks to having friends in 'high places' ...Lucky Us!! I guess that's as close as we could get to living like a student at Oxford university. We stayed in a 'guest room', a cute little room with an ensuite, right next to 2 Professor's room. They really did treat us like guests - even providing each of us a toiletries bag and toiletries with the Hertford College logo on it. However, the interesting thing to note is that although the bathroom has a bath, it does not actually have a shower!! I guess the English are used to taking baths and not showers, especially in the olden days...but I must say that for the us, showering/bathing is quite a long ordeal.. .hehe. True to the university student spirit, we are kept awake till the wee hours of the morning to the noise / chatter of students who are returning from late night parties. The college itself, although not one of the biggest, is comfortable and beautiful with common rooms, a dining hall, chapel and courtyard for the students to laze about.

There are approximately some 39 colleges around that makes up the Oxford university. Its at the colleges that the students have their meals, sleep, have their tutorials and probably make some of their closest friends during their university years. Some colleges are open to public, some for free and some for a fee. We visited a few colleges, 2 which sticks to my mind - Christ Church college is one of the biggest college, and its most famous student - John Wesley.  

Magdalen College which charges a fee, but get this...have their own Deer Park - yes stags, does, fawns..I wonder if the college's kitchen just get their venison meat from its own gardens :).

There are many beautiful old buildings around the town (which are uniformly brown in color), are mostly museums and libraries. 

On Sunday, we went with HS to the church service that he usually attends. Its amazing and very encouraging to see many young, intellectual people attending church and praising the Lord. :) Then, for lunch, we were taken to a little hidden restaurant that only the locals / uni students would know of, for Sunday roast...YUM! 

Ah,  to experience the uni-life again...who knows, maybe one day...I'll go back to university again:)