Photo Friday: Oxford, England

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I have a confession. You can’t tell anyone, promise? Ok, here is goes…
I’m a BIG dork, a HUGE dork. Not like a secret comic book lover or a fan of calculus, but a fully-fledged, unashamed, out of control nerd. I was a medieval studies major in college, at an all-women’s college, that I went to BY choice. I read 15th century monastic texts FOR FUN! I took Latin as an elective at university, and I can even read Old English written in runes. I have a quote from Lord of the Rings tattooed on my ribs for heaven’s sake! While other kids have posters of bands and movies around the house, I have posters outlining the family tree of the Spanish royal family. In short, I’m a huge dork. Moving on,

One of my nerdier quirks is that I reread some of my favorite book series every summer, like, cough, cough, LOTR, Narnia, His Dark Materials, and of course, Harry Potter. Did I mention I can read a book a day? Nerd, I know. Anyways, right now I am deep in book 5 with a very moody Harry and the Order of the Phoenix.

Harry P and I go way back. I was reading HP back when I had braces and before people used Nokia phones. I would go to the midnight premieres of all the movies and book releases, occasionally in costume (with friends!) When I was researching my senior thesis at the National Library in Madrid and at Oxford in the summer of 2009, I couldn’t resist visiting Christ Church College, where many of the scenes for the HP films were shot. Do you recognize this staircase? It’s one of the first shots you see of Hogwarts in the movies.

Have you ever been to Oxford? Are you a big Harry Potter fan like me?

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20 Comments on “Photo Friday: Oxford, England

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  1. I’m sorry I can’t help but say this because though I truly love your blog, posts akin to this really bother me. This whole self-fashioning oneself as a “nerd” as a guise for informing the reader of your believed intelligence is too much. It is as if because one has some skill they view as obscure and therefore meaningful (even though its common among any English or Lingustic Studies major or even liberal arts student to be exact) they are thus superior to the kids with the music posters because after all they only listen to the Dead Weather while I practice a dead language. It just feels pretentious to the reader, or speaking for myself, for me as the reader. You don’t have to tell us you’re smart; if we read enough of your blog we should be able to come up with our own conclusion. Just an observation on this post; not the whole of your blog.

  2. Ummmmm yes! Let’s just say I’ve read the whole HP series more than the number of books there are. I think I remember you tweeting that you have read them as much if not more, so I don’t feel like a loser saying that!

    I’m a linguistics “nerd,” if you will. I’m really into etymology and linguistic quirks and hang on to Geoffrey Nunberg’s every word when he’s on NPR. (http://www.npr.org/2012/05/30/153709651/the-word-hopefully-is-here-to-stay-hopefully for just one example.)

    Also, I’ve not been to Oxford, but Mario did the whole Conversation-and-Language-Assistant gig in Oxford, and he rode his bike everywhere, so yeah — I need to go.

    1. I will have to check out that npr link, sounds amazing! I love linguistics too but not as much as history 😛 You have to go to oxford, you’ll love it! It’s really amazing 🙂 so cool mario got to live there, that’s my dream!

  3. I’m a huge history/lit/royal families/sci-fi/fantasy dork too! I actually miss studying Old English in university….and I reread HP all the time, and also used to go to movie premieres dressed up like a dork. But moooving on….I, too, took a trip this past year to Oxford and made sure to check out where all the Harry Potter scenes were filmed. So awesome, and the rest of the campus was just beautiful as well!

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