One of the things I've desperately wanted to do while I'm here is have dinner at Christ Church. Of all the colleges in Oxford, Christ Church is the most prestigious. It is also where many scenes from Harry Potter were filmed, namely, the Great Hall.
Now, this is debatable, a lot of people say that Christ Church's dining hall was only the inspiration for the great hall, and that it was not actually filmed there. This is usually backed by the fact that there are only 3 long tables in the dining hall, not 4 as in Harry Potter. But I was in there today and there is room for 4! Not to mention the staircases and corridors surrounding the Great Hall are 100% in the movie (pictured below!)
Anyway, my friends Jessica and James both go there and they took a bunch of us for formal dinner tonight. I say formal because at Oxford there are two types of dinners you can go to: formal and informal.
Informal is as normal as Oxford gets, but formal requires that you wear robes. Yep, traditional, strange-looking robes. I got my pair today. I know I will never have an excuse to wear them again, but it's one of those "part of the Oxford experience" things. Kind of like getting an ugly as hell college scarf.
And when they say formal, they mean formal. The dinner consists of a few courses, which are brought to you by dining hall staff. Plus, they pray in latin beforehand. Because it's Oxford.
Tonight they served spring rolls, dinner rolls, baby corn and pea pods, rice, and some sort of chinese pork vegetable thing. All very good. I can't believe this is normal for some people here.
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