A lunch party

We just got back from a nice lunch party at my supervisor's house here in Oxford. She and her husband are both professors - he teaches modern history in London - and the gathering consisted of about four students of each of them. It was a nice mix.

I had a fun time and David seemed to enjoy himself as well. I especially enjoyed talking to a Macedonian couple - she's originally Croatian - about their homeland, language, culture, food, religion, etc. They are part of only 10 percent who are Protestants in Macedonia (the rest are Orthodox), and it was interesting to hear what that's like. Most people distrust them for it and tend to regard them as traitors in a nationalistic sense (religion has little to do with it). I remember my Greek teacher in college saying similar things about his experiences as a Protestant in Greece. But it's even more tense in Macedonia since they are struggling to find their own identity and thus are very nationalistic.

The husband of the couple is studying a 7th-century person called Maximian the Confessor ("the Father of Byzantine Theology"), and when he's done they will go back to Macedonia to work further with their Christian bookstore and publishing company they had already founded in Skopia, the capital of Macedonia. He has a dream of founding sort of a "Christian cultural center" where maybe an indigenous Macedonian theology could develop.

On a lighter note, they also talked about beautiful (and cheap) places we should visit, such as Croatia and Turkey. Sounds good! They had previously lived in Boston for some time while he went to school there, and they have a 8-year-old daughter who speaks Croatian, Macedonian, and English! It was all very interesting to learn about the recent history in the Balkans firsthand and the similarities and differences in cultures of the countries in that region, which I know very little about.

We also talked with a guy from Japan who is studying modern European history (probably not very common) and briefly with a guy we thought was English but turns out he may have been an American who had picked up the accent (purposely or not). Others we didn't get to talk to much at all included a Finnish girl (married to the American/Englishman), a guy from Toronto, an English guy named Gareth who is going to teach history for a quarter at Santa Barbara soon, and an American girl named Liz. The last three were all of the London history group, and seemed very fun in the little talking we did. I did learn I have something in common with Liz - we have both used candy as bribes in teaching.

We also learned these two important facts: Hungarian and Finnish are related to no other language except maybe each other, and in French Scrabble, a 'Q' is worth only about 3 points instead of 10.

My supervisor's husband, Piers Ludlow, was really interesting and fun. He was as English as you can get, and in fact when he said "I love cheese," he sounded exactly like Wallace of Wallace and Gromit. He teaches post 1945 history, and he joked that if he and his wife taught as a pair they could cover "Plato to NATO." He has lived in an astounding variety of European countries throughout his life, including five years in Italy and some years in Belgium. A very interesting and funny guy. He is also related to "Bloody Ludlow," a very bad man who was a general under Oliver Cromwell. They had a book on their shelf with that title and I asked "any relation?" and was surprised to hear there was!

Lunch was venison stew with brown rice or a vegetarian alternative of cheese and tomatoes. David learned from Morwenna that the venison does not come from wild deer. Maybe they were from the Magdalen College Deer Park! (Not really.) There was a wonderful apple crumble for dessert, with double cream so thick I dropped the spoon on the floor while trying to dislodge it from the spoon. Delish. All in all, it was an enjoyable evening.

Nothing much else has happened recently worth reporting, except for one thing - last week David got to hold a trophy won by the Arsenal football (soccer) team! It was connected with O2, of course, which sponsors the team. He has a picture of himself with it, and I've been bugging him to post it with a brief explanation about it, but so far to no avail. The photo is on his computer so my hands are tied! So if you have his e-mail address, bug him.

Other than that, it has been business as usual. My paper on Julian the Apostate went over fairly well on Wednesday and we had a good discussion about him. (I ditched Theodosius as there wasn't room for both.) This Wednesday will be Greek study again, and then my next (and last!) paper will be on Christians and pagans in an ancient city like Athens, Milan, Ephesus or Antioch.

So far it's looking to be Antioch, a really fascinating city that once ranked among Rome, Constantinople, and Alexandria as the most important cities in the Empire. Anyone who was anyone in the ancient world seems to have lived in or stopped by Antioch, including Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, St. Paul, John Chrysostom, and the Emperors Hadrian, Trajan, Julian and others. It was also an important center of Greco-Roman religion (it had an important oracle and hosted the local Olympic games) as well as early Christianity (the Gospel of Matthew may have been written there and Peter and Paul hung out there for awhile). And it had a significant Jewish community, which is probably how Christianity became established there so soon.

Today, it's just a small Turkish town (called Antakya) near the border with Syria. Only a small part of the ancient city has been excavated since most of it is under people's houses, but they've found beautiful mosaics, coins, temples, churches, remains of Roman villas, and all kinds of great stuff already.