July 19 2006

Today it was a scorcher, and I began to feel crappy again so I drank a pint of water and felt a lot better. I forgot to mention that yesterday, there was a formal dinner, and at this dinner I made the acquaintance of Mrs. Arudta Ash. She is a very nice lady, originally from Poland, who is married to a Stanford Professor and has two sons. I and two other girls were talking to her during the formal dinner, and we made such an impression on her that she invited us over to her house for tea the following day. As we had been complaining about the fact we hadn’t met any British people she wanted to introduce us to her son, who was studying here at Oxford and had grown up in the city as well.

It was a very good tea. We walked to her house, and then sat in her shady garden and drank lemonade made with barley water. Her son, Alexander, was very polite and exquisitely British. Although he had been to California to visit his father in Stanford, he had always wanted to live in America, perhaps New York, and experience the life there. Sarah and myself tried to give him a good picture of what life was like over in the States, and I suggested he go over for himself to see if he was really curious. I was impressed with his conversational skills. He’s a twenty year old male and was quite in possession of himself. There must be something in the water here that we don’t have in America. Or perhaps it’s the barley Lemonade. Mrs. Ash had us try something made from yeast called ‘Marmite’ that the British adored. She spread this dark looking stuff on crackers and then handed me and Sarah one. Sarah took a careful bite and made a face. I took a chomp and smiled. This Marmite stuff was really good. She told me I must have English ancestry. I told her 100 percent Scottish, and she nodded, saying that the Scottish were crazy about Marmite. I can see why. It’s bloody good.

After tea Sarah and I walked back to Trinity, Sarah smiling and saying she was so relieved that Alec had been cute. I smiled in return, thinking that it was nice to meet someone my age who could talk the talk. I had felt rusty at first, I haven’t used my formal conversational skills in a while, but then the flow got going really well and it was a lovely time between us all. Sitting there I spotted another European Robin, listing to Mrs. Ash’s soft Polish accent and her son’s distinctly British one. She has a good life, thought I. A house in America and the UK, husband American, children raised in Britain, herself Polish. There is a lot of interesting material there. She told us how, before she got married, she had worked for the radio that had smuggled information out of Communist Russia to broadcast to the world. Now she had just completed her Art History degree and wasn’t sure what was next. She told us that a group of students from Corpus Christi College would be staying in her house in a few weeks, preparing to put on one of Shakespeare’s plays in Edinburgh, intimating that we would be welcome to come if we would like to see it, and meet more students from the area. Alec said he’d be happy to bring us to one of his favorite pubs, ‘The Bear’ sometime, and to point out a few spots of interest.

Making friends is cool.

After that, I ate dinner and caught up with two women in the program. It’s awful because I can’t remember their names. One of them has gray hair and glasses and the other red hair, and the redhead is the one I went to Blenheim Palace with. They are both very funny and down to earth. We decided, it being so bloody hot, that we would go find the ice cream parlor. Our poking fun at the Duke of Marlborough was revived, and we three were soon all in stitches. After a few wrong turns we eventually found “G & D’s� ice cream. They make their own, and it is really good.

As we walked back, we noticed a peculiar setup outside of Trinity. A large group, I think they were Indians, were filming. Bollywood! A beautiful Indian actor and actress said their lines before the camera and a throng of curious onlookers. It must be interesting to be an actor…so much personal scrutiny from strangers.