The University of Oxford

Tom Tower, built by Christopher Wren it houses the bell 'Great Tom'
Originally uploaded by ecuk07.

Today, the 17th of May, we took a train ride to Oxford, the home of the University of Oxford. The University of Oxford is actually made up of around 30 different colleges and universities. Students have allegiance towards their individual colleges, not to the more general Oxford University. Today, our main focus at the University was Christ Church, the college Professor Parkhouse attended as an undergrad. He showed us aroudn his old stomping grounds and told us stories of when he was there. We learned about Great Tom, the bell housed in Christopher Wren's Tom Tower, that rings 101 times (once for each original scholar) at 9:05 pm to signal curfew. We also learned about Alice in Wonderland and how it's author, Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) was an undergraduate and then a maths don at Christ Church, his time there spanning 47 years. Finally, we ate lunch in the Christ Church Dining Hall, where the dining scenes in the Harry Potter movies were filmed!

After visiting the University of Oxford we were able to head about town and shop for a bit, after which we hopped a train and headed back to London and Regent's College to spend the night as we chose.