week 3

seriously. downton abbey was so off the hook good this season. since neither toni or i have actually had a proper tv in years and years, we've mastered the art of watching the best of tv online (i.e. parks and recreation, QI, outnumbered, and bien sur, downton abbey). the 6th and last episode of this glorious bbc series just aired this last sunday, and AH! AH! all i have to say is i am in all seriousness so grateful that toni or matthew or elliott or lincoln or dad or mike or neal aren't conscripted into war. what an amazing blessing and luxury that is. sigh.*


i also made this cake last week, it was so delish and i was renewed in my gratitude to mom for lugging a massive jar of grandma's molasses over the pond for me - i really don't think it exists outside north america, and how on earth do all those non-north-americans survive without it this time of year? it boggles the mind, truly.


my old-oxford-oddity of the week involved donning my graduate gown and popping by the master of my college's fancy lodgings to sign the college register and gawk at the former signatures of university college alums, like stephen hawking, shelley, and yup - bill clinton. at least i could sign my declaration of enrollment in the college in english - it was in latin up until the late 60s. also i had to mention i came from "villa park high school and brigham young university," as "daughter of david and lauren p*", hehe! so funny to think villa park high is now listed in this massive old registry book with 8 centuries of latin entries before it. i think mr. barrett would be proud :)


the main event of the week though is preparing for ethiopia !!! toni and i fly off next wednesday, and i admit i'm terribly nervous. this trip will be huge detective work to see who is around addis that knows anything about the first maternity wards and midwifery practices in the country from 60+ years ago, and if there are any archives or records on those hospitals/practices anywhere to be found... eep! i have to fill 100,000 words with research, and this topic is quite literally a field of freshly driven snow it is that untouched... which is a great thing when you think about the whole point of a PhD, but a really scary thing when considering the practicalities of research! anyway. it'll be lots of running around the city, with lots of yummy ethiopian food scattered between. mmm.....! can't wait to report back once home in oxford.


i'm also skyping sadie on sunday and can't really wait :)

love you guys.
jooj.

*post-edit! i erred! 2 more episodes to come - hurrah!

her novels are also really brilliant, fyi:

so so good. (perfect companion to all that reading i'm doing, too.) especially at about 30 minutes when she says how europeans often view africans with this faux-jealousy of how they can live such a "simple life" and be happy and dance through it all. no- let's not romanticize poverty, and imagine that poorer women in africa wouldn't gladly have a washing machine and fully-stocked supermarket if they could have one. (and that there aren't africans who don't actually have washing machines and access to fully-stocked supermarkets, either.) anyway, it's a long vid, but well worth it.

the daily life of a dphil, or week 2

i really do spend the majority of my days reading, as any graduate (especially history graduate) student well knows. note this little screen-shot of a bit of my self-imposed reading list i've organized in excel (multiply this by about 5, so far! and it's only week 2!). i say self-imposed because an oxford dphil (phd) has no official teaching involved. i see my supervisor around once or twice a term, but it's all my own direction - you are left to basically figure the research out yourself. and i do know the material and what i need to read (i mean, i should by this point, right?)... but the more you read the more you need to read and so you just keep getting deeper and deeper in a pile of books and libraries.



good thing i do actually love this stuff, right? i mean look at those titles, so interesting, no?

and in other news, toni and i cycled up to blenheim palace last sunday after church. it's only 9 miles and is such a quiet respite from the busy-ness and noise of oxford's streets. it also reminds me so much of being a kid again. all those visits with the fam! it's true england.

toni's in berlin this weekend, and i'm heading to a lieder fest with a friend, some scones and tea with another, sprinkle in some more lectures and conversations and libraries, and then full evensong + formal hall to which i'll be wearing my "scholar's robes" at my college. still. i'd rather have toni home for the weekend :)

beijos, fam!,
jooj.

and in week 1,

lots of wonderful things, like how i got to pretend i was in brazil again yesterday evening (brazilian studies seminar! logico em portugues), saw melancholia and can't get wagner out of my head, delving deeper into history and african maternal health issues and scarily realizing that things colonial officers said in 1920 kenya are the.exact.same.thing. public health people say today, getting more and more acquainted with the lovely oxford ward, starting a brilliant new project for a new fistula organisation, and, AND the fact that toni and i are about 95% sure we'll be spending the first week of november in ethiopia (!!!). as in, 2 1/2 weeks from now. will tell more soon. i love my husband. and the wellcome trust.

and lastly, i'm back to my old self again - long hair was a fun experiment of "i'm too cheap to get a haircut," but it does feel good to be back to the way i looked for the first 24 years of my life. (but should i have gone shorter? i kinda think so. i saw emma watson on the high street yesterday - yup, hermione officially goes to oxford - and DANG was her hair cute!)




and p.s. of course the photo i take is from my computer in the rhodes house library. membs all those similar photos i used to take first go round at oxford? oh the déjà vu...

0 week*

*oxford's terms are numbered weeks, and since it infuses your mind as a student and this becomes your new time-frame-reality, let's adopt it here, k?

i. tonight i had my first formal hall in college where i wore the same vintage dress i wore 10 years ago to my junior year homecoming with josh wilbur. (hehe!) my wardrobe has seriously changed so little since i was 16 it's crazy.

ii. our professors roped toni and i into speaking at the induction of the new MSc African Studies group (since it was our own course back 4 years ago and they wanted former students to reassure new students that it's actually really lovely and you'll have a wonderful year - which is 100% true). we also proved to them that the course is not only academically but also personally rewarding... wink wink :)

iii. but this week is really the first semi-official term week at oxford, and the events keep flowing, as do the insanely interesting conversations that i loved so much my first go round here. i talked a great deal about something that toni and i are both very conscious of, this fear of getting so removed in research and in oxford and in the luxuries of living a "first world" life that you forget you are writing about real people in real situations - actual lived experiences, often very very challenging ones for that matter. we talked with marco, an anthropology student who came back to oxford after 18 months field work in addis ababa's slums and had complete culture shock: how do you write about these subjects in a place as blissfully unaware of anything beyond cozy tea-time as oxford? literally. it's the coziest place on the planet. so where do these tough subjects come in, and how strange to write about them in such an environment? or i talked with isabella, a south african student concerned about the ethical dilemma of interviews - of taking these life stories from people only to pump yourself up and get a fancy degree. just this constant awareness that these are not abstractions, but practical day-to-day issues we are talking about, and to always remember to make the work relevant. i thought about that constantly before - say i gave my masters thesis to the women at the hospital in niger to read. what would they possibly say about it? would they think of it as entirely alien (probably), despite supposedly being a piece of "thorough" research into their very lives and surroundings?

anyway. i think about the women i've met and worked with for the last years - seidé and halimé in flatbush, brooklyn... ana paula in beira, mozambique... dear suellen in sorocaba. (sigh). how does any of this trail back to them and their realities.... the thing is, these women's lives - as powerful and complex and dynamic as they are, are simply not considered the apparent "norm." they are so far from the euro-american middle class lifestyle that is drummed again and again on blogs and media and our general consciousness. but that is not the norm! that is only one (seriously small) subset of the world, despite being the one always talked about and represented and re-represented. but there is so much more - so many more lives that are just as valid, just as rich in their depth and purpose.

so there you have it. lots and lots, wish i could share it all (but then again nothing is ever as interesting retold, no? ha. will spare you then. :) till next week!