It was my good fortune to live and study at Oxford University on a one-year study abroad program with Gordon College. Oxford University, established in the 11th century is a massive institution made up of nearly 40 independent colleges that holds a strong grip on the operations of the city of Oxford. Though the grandness of Oxford University and its traditions has left a deep impression on me, it was merely the background for the memorable Oxford people who became my friends and acquaintances. And when I ignored the stereotypes that English people were reserved or dull, I discovered just the opposite was true, especially of the younger generation.

The most idiosyncratic people I met were the tutors. The Oxford system is structured around one-on-one tutorial sessions, daily lectures and six days of testing at the end of a college career. Dr. Sylvia Vance, my 20th century British literature tutor, was at times my most terrifying tutor, perhaps because as a Canadian, she took more seriously than my English tutors the Oxford way of writing papers. My American housemates never believed the sarcastic jabs I described to them nearly every week. She wrote one such jab on my final paper for the course. “I will miss you, but I will be using less red pens now.”

She rode her bicycle every day to St. Hilda’s College, and my housemates and I wondered if she ever combed her hair. It was a gray, matted, curly mess she always braided with a black scrunchie. They commented on more than one occasion she must be a witch because of her hair and the black outfits she wore and her bicycle. During my 8 a.m. Monday tutorial, I couldn’t stand her high-pitched, affected English voice, but she was also very kindhearted, despite her occasional biting comments.

Oxford is a great place for sighting some of the world’s most well-known in the literary, academic and political worlds. I have eaten many times in the pub the Eagle and Child, where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, authors of “The Narnia Chronicles” and “The Lord of the Ring,” held their Inklings Club in the Rabbit Room. I spotted Chelsea Clinton the first night I was in Oxford, and quite often I would see her and her Rhodes scholar boyfriend snogging (kissing) in Blackwell’s coffee shop.

The dearest friends I made were 20-year-olds involved with a college group at an Anglican church called St. Andrew’s. Every Tuesday we met for a meal and conversation in the church’s parish room. It was quite intimidating at first, and it took nearly the whole year for me to know them well. I was the only American in the group, and they quizzed me on American politics and were very concerned about Sept. 11th.

We had many adventures “punting” down the Thames and Cherwell Rivers, too. Punting requires a bargelike boat and a pole, and the pole is used to steer the punt down the river. I spent many Sunday nights with them hashing out issues in one of the pubs on North Parade, a life-throbbing side street near the church. We celebrated the Queen’s Jubilee and watched several matches of the World Cup together, which brought out more patriotic fervor than the jubilee.

As much as I loved these English friends, they could not fully understand my year as much as my five housemates did. We experienced the same periods of loneliness, the tutorial panic, the euphoria when we finished for the week and dealings with anti-Americanism from some Oxford students, that existed before Sept. 11th sympathy faded. We traveled together in the nearby Cotswolds, Stonehenge, Bath and London.

My housemates and I also enjoyed attending debates at the Student Union and graduate student lectures, eating at high table at St. Edmund’s College with the college president and professors, and watching two housemates row in the famous eights week and get bumped from the race. We had our own Thanksgiving and invited English friends to share a reminder of home with us and made pumpkin pie from scratch. We endured the week and a half of people setting off fireworks for Guy Fawkes Day, remembering the man who tried to blow up the parliament building in 1605 in London. And we complained about the rain and hail that drenched us frequently and the umbrellas that were ruined nearly every week.

Our favorite event of the year was the Christ Church College Ball. Balls at Oxford entail dressing in gowns or tuxedos to run through fun houses, play laser tag, eat all the food you want, including candy floss (cotton candy), have massages and dance till you can’t stand.

Our evening at the ball was cut short, however, when it started to rain and most of the attractions closed. My housemates and I walked to the bus stop around the corner. There were footie fans everywhere celebrating England’s World Cup victory against Denmark, and most were drunk. One short drunken Irishman and his tipsy English friend, who supposedly make race cars, talked to us for the 40 minutes we waited for the bus. The Irishman wanted to know “why in God’s name we were in Oxford with the boring and unfriendly English, save his friend here,” and the Englishman rambled on about his trip to New York. We told them repeatedly that we really did enjoy the city and its people. When the bus finally came, we were rudely shoved onto the bus by the drunken fans in the rush to get home and had to endure the two blokes for another 10 minutes until we squeezed off the packed bus at our stop and hurried home.

In a city of 100,000, my housemates and I encountered people like this often. They gave us a unique perspective on the split lives of Oxfordians and the striking contrast of the reign of academia by day and what bordered on the sinister by night. During the day, men in derby hats kept visitors from entering closed colleges, no one walked on the immaculate lawns and students pedaled furiously on their bicycles to lectures, work at the pub or tutorials. At night, bums made chalk drawings or played the saxophone for a few pence, drunken old men commented on women’s anatomy and students ran around with no coats and sandals between clubs and pubs.

I did not always find Oxford dodgy. There were clear nights when I could see the stars, and the clouds and rain had blown elsewhere. Or I went to South Park and gazed at the “dreaming spires” of the colleges dotting the city as gray haze sat on top of it all. I read for my tutorial on a park bench, joggers ran past me, little old ladies walked their terriers and photographers shot the cover photo for some magazine’s next issue. Hundreds of years of history are contained here in the Thames Valley, and I have a left a part of me with it.

Amanda Dumond is a former Bangor Daily News intern from Orrington.