Today we started our day by taking a 1.5 hour bus ride to Blenheim palace. It was a beautiful place to walk around, explore, and learn about. It was built in the 1700s and took around 17 years to build, but later had some finishing touches in the 1730s due to issues with funding and a death of one of the dukes. It was originally given to John Churchill from Queen Ann as a gift for the military winning the battle of blenheim. We first did a walkthrough of the palace itself, and it is incredible! I loved seeing all the old paintings, architecture, and artifacts. After exploring the inside, we went outside to explore the gardens. They were huge, spanning over 150 acres of just garden, and then an additional 2000 acres of landscape separate from them. We took a path that walked us along the water and then into one of the many areas of the garden. I loved all of the flowers and plants, and seeing how they planned it out and decorated it. We then took a path to something called the Secret Garden. It was separate from the rest by a gate, but was still pretty easy to find. I asked Tim, our tour guide what the point of this was, and he said it was just something large palaces and places like this had just to have. But overall the palace was very pretty and fun to explore.
We then took a bus to oxford. Here we explored the University of Oxford. One thing I did not know about this school was that although it is a univerity, it has 43 colleges within it. They do this to divide it into smaller, self governing communities making it easier to navigate for students. At oxford, lectures were not mandatory because their main form of teaching is tutorial. This means you are in smaller groups and meet with a tutor to learn. I found this interesting because I am used to everything being lecture based, but I think having smaller groups allows you to connect with your tutor more and could really help you to learn.
We were able to walk around and go into a few different buildings, and it is a beautiful campus. All of the buildings have that old look and are made of stone, making it really interesting to see them all. One thing I notices that was different was that they have a set dinner at 7:30, and all eat in a big dining room together. Along with this, they have a lot of other traditions that have continued for many years. One that we learned about was that after final exams friends would dump alcohol and other stuff on people as they finished their exams. For their exams, they have to dress in their uniforms, which for men is a whole suit, so then it gets ruined right after. They also have a set building for their exams, called the examination hall. They seem to follow a lot of the traditional ways the school functioned, making it different than most other universities.
We also had the chance to just explore the town, and go into many of the cute shops they had to get some souviners. I got a cute tote bag, a hoodie, and some gifts for my family. Although it was a ton of walking, it ended up being really nice out finally, so it was fun to get to walk around and enjoy the nice whether without any cold or rain!!
