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Tuesday, May 17, 2011

10-Travels: until the end!

Since the beginning, I decided to call my blog “Oxford et caetera” because, of course I wanted to speak about all the things I saw here, and also because I wanted to finish on the “etc.” Studying here allowed me to travel here and there around Oxford: London (I mean, how we can miss that…), Blenheim (the big local palace which belonged to Churchill family)…

Diderot’s future, ebook and PDF

Finally, my ebook is finished! Good experience but kind of difficult. I hope I do it well and that nothing is missing. So if some French or people who learn French (Connyyy!) come here, just have a look and discover the marvellous humour of Diderot, and of course which kind of art we had in 1763 (yey exciting! ^^”)

Posted by Marie Valente on 05/17 at 01:30 PM
Art • Author • Books • E-books • (5) Comments • Permalink

9-Contrast: is international!

Oxford is full of contrasts: old colleges and very new one, different social classes, but the biggest one remains the international side here. I spent three months and a half in a flat with girls from Holland, Australia, China and France (yep!) and what a real joy to learn all about other countries! All my neighbours are (or were, unfortunatly) German, Slovenian, Japonese, Estonian, Swedish, Finnish, American, Swiss, Spanish, etc. Last Saturday, it was Eurovision Contest and so much fun with everyone supporting his/her country… Okay Azerbaidjan won, but what a battle for the second place between Italy and Sweden! I’ll miss all this international contrast very much…

Posted by Marie Valente on 05/17 at 12:29 AM
Culture and tradition • Talks • (2) Comments • Permalink

Monday, May 16, 2011

8-Inspiration: is a game

Obviously I can’t do a complete inventory of all the books or movies that Oxford inspires. It’s, in the same time, a real maze and quite easy to follow on Lewis Carroll and his Alice’s footsteps, or follow Inspector Morse’s way, or even Harry Potter. We just find sometimes a familiar view and then discover that it was a setting in a movie.

7-Monarchy: along History

King Algar was here, at least according Frideswide’s legend. But he wasn’t the only one. I saw prooves of kings and queens’ presence here, the first one is the famous Alfred Jewel in the Ashmolean Museum. We don’t really know what its usefulness was or what it could represent (instead of the king’s portrait inside). An inscription runs around the jewel: “AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN”.