Hello out there! I had been planning on posting more regularly than this but I’m afraid my wifi connection here is not the best so it can be a tad difficult to post. Due to this difficulty I have posted in depth posts on the first two days here and then followed that with a long silence until now. Let us therefore pick up on day three.
Day the Third: Tuesday July 8
This was the first day of classes. I have a 9 am class on Tuesdays and Thursdays and since school was closed for the Tour de France the day before, I had the very first class of the program. Breakfast begins at 8:15 and class starts at 9 so it is imperative to get to breakfast exactly when it opens and to eat quickly. I’m still learning how to do breakfast here. The man that serves the hot foods probably thinks I’m weird because I always come in looking for potatoes but don’t take any of the sausage, bacon, eggs, or tomatoes. Every day I have a strange carbolicious breakfast of potatoes, a hunk of cheese, and two pieces of toast.
Anyways, I went to class which is in a cute little room that looks plucked out of an Austen book turned movie except with a television and modern seating. We all sit in a circle and talk history. The biggest issue for me (and many of the students) is that our chairs don’t have a desk so we have to balance our notes on our laps. This first day was the usual predicating factors that caused WWI day going back to the 1870s with entangling alliances and growing tensions. We all listed events that we viewed as turning points in the war and discussed them.
After class I went to lunch at Greek restaurant in Rose Crescent called the Gardenia. I ordered a donar yiros and enjoyed it quite a bit. I took the afternoon to look for more essentials at the local TK Maxx (no, not TJ Maxx) and the grocery store, Marks & Spencers with relatively little success. We also had a mandatory tea meeting where the professors gave us reminders about upcoming events and such while we had tea and biscuits (by which I mean cookies), though in my case it was a glass of water since I don’t drink tea or coffee. It was a pretty quiet day.
Day the Fourth: Wednesday July 9
This was a fun day though not a particularly productive one. After breakfast I went straight to the dungeonous computer lab to print out my homework so I wouldn’t have to go back to the lab for a long time (though here I am in it now writing this – thanks a lot spotty internet). Of course, I had obstacles in the printing process. It was repeatedly told I was not permitted to print so my printing mission was an utter failure. Rather than sit in a dungeonous room being annoyed, I elected to spend the morning wandering around town which was quite lovely. My original goal was to find the second Marks & Spencers. When you walk into the grocery store they have a map to show you where the other Marks & Spencers with other merchandise is. I have been having difficulty finding items so I decided to try to find the second store. Well, I completely read the map wrong and went down the wrong road in the opposite direction (in my defence they drew a really awful map). But while I was going in the wrong direction I found quite a few interesting things. There is a local building called the Cambridge Corn Exchange. I’m sure the weird name has something to do with history but I don’t know what that is just yet so right now it just has a silly name. I think it is some sort of theatre now, though, because they had signs up for various shows there. One really caught my attention – a sign for a show by Rhys Darby! For those of you who do not know him, he plays Murray in the HBO series Flight of the Conchords and plays multiple characters in his show Short Poppies which can be viewed on Netflix. He is a New Zealand comedian and he is hilarious. I really want to see his show, though it is a tad expensive at £22.50. I also don’t think anyone wants to see it with me. He’s just obscure enough that I love him but no one else has heard of him.
While wandering around I also found the oldest church in Cambridge. At the tea we were given a scavenger hunt where we are supposed to look for various things about Cambridge. One of the things we were supposed to find was “What animal is carved in the wall on the inside of the tower of the oldest church in Cambridge.” Well…I found it, but that doesn’t mean I know what animal it is. I think it looks like a flying anteater. According to the pamphlets there they think it might be a lion or some sort of mythical beastie. I maintain the mythical beastie is a flying anteater.
I also found Jamie Oliver’s restaurant! He is the British tv cook who came to the fatest town in America and tried to help them with their nutrition. I think maybe if I just get a small plate or something I could maybe afford to eat there.
At 2pm my professor took those of us who wanted to go to a special WWI French art exhibit at the Fitzwilliam Museum just down the street. One of the best museums I have ever been to! But first lets start with the WWI art specifically. There were maybe 50 prints in a room. Actually reading the labels gave them images so much more meaning. For example, this print here is thanking the Hindus for their help in the war effort. Except that they were too racist to realize not everyone was a Hindu. Apparently a lot of the Indian troops were very upset because even they came from all over with different languages and religions, they were all being lumped together. Not just while living, but for burials which they found understandably upsetting. I spent about an hour looking at all of the prints and if you have any interest in looking at them those of you who have facebook friended me can see them all in my La Grande Guerre photo album (images and labels both included.) When I finished looking at the prints, I decided to look around the rest of the museum. American art museums tend to be big blank, white rooms with just the art. With the Fitzwilliam the building itself is art as well. The building and rooms are absolutely gorgeous. The quality of the art is also amazing. On the way to the prints we passed a huge painting of a man about to stab a woman. I was kind of interested so I went back to look. Titian. I had casually enjoyed Titian. There were so many famous artists’ work in there I was in shock! I think the impressionist room was my favourite though just because I recognized almost every artist’s name in the room. There I was casually walking along thinking “oh, these are kind of pretty”. There was a statue of a hand that particularly caught my interest so I glanced at the label. Rodin! After that I went back and looked at the labels of the art I had deemed passing pretty – Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Degas, Cezanne, Seurat! Also at the museum I found Picasso, Breughel, and I’m sure there were others. If I weren’t already in Cambridge a trip to Cambridge just for this museum would be totally worthwhile. Downstairs they also had an exhibit on medieval armor and weaponry that was amazing. Not only were they fascinating, they were actually gorgeous themselves! After thoroughly enjoying the museum I started walking home. Most of the colleges here can be visited, you just have to catch them at times when they have signs saying it is ok to come in. It is hard to time these so I ducked into Peterhouse and Pembroke College on the way back.
Day the Fifth: Thursday July 10
This was the second day of class. Again with predicating causes of the war. Some of my classmates annoyed me though. We were asked if you were to write a WWI history book what year would you start at. Some argued that you could just start at 1914 and completely ignore all the pre-1914 causes which is ludicrous. That’s all I have to say about that. It was kind of a dizzly day but I think my printing still wasn’t working. After class got out I decided to see which colleges I could get into then. I went to the King’s College Chapel which is right next to Gonville & Caius. You had to walk along this winding path to the back of the college and only there do you see signs that you have to pay to get in. Of course it is cheaper with a student id which I had left in my room. I told the ticket guy this and he just waved me in for free :). It is so gorgeous in there. It has 80 foot high ceilings with the largest fan vaulting in the world. The ceiling took three years to complete and then it took another 30 years to finish all the stained glass windows. The chapel is also filled with Tudor symbols because so much work was done under King Henry VIII. The dark oak screen going down the middle was built during the time period that he was married to Anne Boleyn (you can tell because it has Boleyn symbolism all over it).
I also popped into a few other colleges to look at them. I ate the first of the weird frozen/ preprepared meals I got at Marks & Spencers, chicken fajitas. It was pretty good despite weird British soured cream and a desire for slightly crunchier veggies.
I spent most of the afternoon in the dungeon (aka the computer lab) though I took a break for tea time (aka water time). Afterwards I went to the library with a few other girls from the program. I need to wander around that library and find stuff. We are allowed to read the books, but not to take them out of the library. We were very studious and sat quietly reading which was very nice. I just wish someone had come by so we could have had a group photo of us looking studious.
Day the 6th: Friday July 11
This day we had tickets for the hop on hop off bus that goes around Cambridge. Somehow I was declared the one who knew where she was going and was in charge of leading everyone to the bus stop I had never been too and keeping track of the stops. It seems to have worked for all the other girls but less so for me. They all wanted to go to the Botanic Gardens. I’m not that interested in flowers (and I live near enough to the Botanical Gardens in DC that it didn’t seem like a good use of my time) so I didn’t get off there. First I wanted to go to the Polar Museum but I accidentally missed the stop. Since I missed that stop I decided to go to the Cambridge Museum. At this point I was literally the only person on the bus. We approached the stop and I stood up to walk to the door of the bus, and we blew right passed that stop. At this point I was pretty upset with the bus driver. Didn’t he see me stand up? I’m the only one here! Well, I figured out there was a “stop” button I didn’t see you were supposed to push to get the bus to stop. Well, I ended up getting off at one of the closest stops to where we got on in the first place to see the Anthropological and Geological museums. All in all, that hop on hop off thing was pretty worthless for me. As we were pulling up to the stop we passed a building with a wooly mammoth carved into the side of it which was one of the other things to find in the scavenger hunt so that was exciting. Well, the geological museum closed for lunch right when I got there so instead I went to the anthropological museum. It was billed as also being an archaeological museum so I don’t know why but I had it in my head it would have mummies and Egyptian stuff. Nope. Mostly pacific islands stuff. There was also, however, an exhibit on archaeological findings from the Cambridge area (so like ancient Britain and Romans) and that was really cool.
Then I went in search of cheap lunch while waiting for the geological museum to open. I ended up getting a strange chicken wrap with kind of random ingredients in it. That seems to be a theme in England – random chicken sandwiches. Anyways, I went back to the geological museum (the Sedgwick Museum) and discovered it to be a really old school museum. I’m talking cases upon cases of more specimens than a brain can really take in. By that point my feet were really hurting so I couldn’t really appreciate it as much as I’d have liked. Also, later on someone told me that the audio tour on the bus said that Darwin’s original samples are there which I totally missed. I mean, I saw the statue of Darwin and the section for him, but I didn’t actually read anything there or really absorb anything, so I think I need to go back.
I still had a few hours before the banquet that night (yes we had a banquet to prettify ourselves for) and the stupid hop on hop off bus system was just awkward enough that I decided to walk to the Polar Museum. Maybe not my brightest idea because my feet were seriously hurting me. Also it was really difficult to cross the street to get to the museum through an unusually traffical road. Now most of you are thinking “Huh? Why is there a polar museum in Cambridge?” Well, do you remember the race to the poles and how there were various groups all trying to get there first? Do you remember Captain Scott who’s attempt was disastrously miss-planned and resulted in everyone dying? When they found their bodies one of them was carrying a Caius flag. They removed everything from their tents and brought them here. You can see it all at the museum. All the letters they never got to send home saying “I’m not going to make it back alive” sorts of things are all there. It’s a pretty small museum but interesting. There was like a school group going through with a really great tour guide so I was totally eavesdropping on their tour.
After going through these museums I made the long trek home (once again the bus was unhelpful to me) and got ready for the opening banquet. We all got dressed up and headed over to Gonville Court. Normally we are forbidden from stepping on the grass but at this we were allowed to all gather on the grass which we thought was the greatest thing. Nothing like being forbidden grass for a week to make it amazing. We all had sherry on the lawn (by which I mean everyone but me and a few others, we had a strange elder flower water thing). After drinks on the grass we went up to the Fellows’ Dining Room and had an especially fancy dinner. It reminded me greatly of Downton Abbey. You know how Carson always serves way more wine than a person could actually drink? First there was the sherry, then a white wine, then a red wine, then a dessert wine. We also had waiters suddenly appear from behind to put food on your plate for you. It was a lot of fun 🙂
Day the Seventh: Saturday July 12
We left early on Saturday morning for London. We were let loose for the majority of the day with the only time restriction being that we had to be at the Globe at 7 for a 7:30 showing of Titus Andronicus. One of my new friends and I first walked along Westminster Bridge past Parliament and Big Ben to Westminster Abbey. I unfortunately forgot my student id so I had to pay £18 to get in, but it was totally worth it. (I also forgot to take pain meds for my feet and to put on sunscreen 😦 ). There was a long line to get in but it moved pretty quickly. It took us several hours to go through the huge abbey. Photography wasn’t allowed but I took a few sneaky photos while pretending to check the time. Since I was being sneaky I could only get the occasional grave marker and none of the gorgeous building, but that’s ok. It is huge and gorgeous, but I actually think that King’s College Chapel is maybe prettier just in terms of architecture. The famous dead people were the real draw for me. We saw Darwin, Lloyd George, Queen Elizabeth I, Queen Mary I, Mary Queen of Scots, and more. Apparently Elizabeth and Mary are buried together which really surprised me considering their relationship. Mary Queen of Scots is directly across from them which is also funny, but since her son became King James I after Elizabeth died he got to do what he wanted and he wanted her to be as prominently buried as Elizabeth.
The abbey took longer than expected and we got out around 1:30ish. We then headed over to the Churchill War Rooms and stopped for lunch along the way. We got sandwiches from this tiny place called Pickles. I wanted a roast beef sandwich but they were out of roast beef so he ended up making me a strange chicken sandwich with random ingredients. We ate out lunch sitting under a tree in St. James’ Park which was quite pretty. My friend needed caffeine, though, so we went on a quest to find it. We ended up following a tour group of bird watchers till we were able to ask their tour guide where we might find coffee. Of course the answer was no where close. We kind of wandered in the direction he pointed and stopped at the Red Lion, a pub frequented by Charles Dickens and Winston Churchill. After waiting quite a while to be acknowledged they gave my friend what she claims is one of the worst espressos she has ever had, but at least it was caffeinated. We then went back to the Churchill War Rooms. It was quite interesting but involved being in a dark basement like place for hours. I’m quite jealous of his siren suits which look super comfy. Hideous, but comfy. We need to bring those into fashion. Turns out Winston was a pretty cool dude. He was a prisoner of war in Africa and ran away hiding in trains and the woods for days. This is the map that he brought with him to the Potsdam Conference. He was sketching out how they were planning to divide Germany up on this map. They really do have a very impressive collection of Churchill’s items. Like they have his letters to and from his wife, Clementine.
Afterwards we took the tube to the Globe. We had some difficulties getting there though because the Southwark bridge was closed because they were filming there. So we had to backtrack and then cross on the Wibbly Wobbly bridge (aka the Millennium Bridge). We also kind of ran out of time for dinner so we grabbed some stuff at the little kiosk in front of the Tate Modern (where I ate at last time I was in England) and went to the theatre. Of course they were selling better food there so I bought more food there and shoved the sandwich I just bought in my backpack. I spent the money on a cushion and backrest which is always money well spent. We had fabulous seats – facing the front of the stage with seats but on the ground level, not on the balcony. The play was just as active in the pit with the standing room only crowd as it was on the stage so we got to see the actors close up but without the issue of needing to move for them that the standing people had. Also it started raining as soon as the play started but we were covered unlike the standing people. Titus Andronicus is Shakespeare’s bloodiest play. Basically everyone dies a horrible bloody death. One of the main characters is raped and has her hands and tongue chopped off so she can’t name her attackers. There were definitely several points where the whole crowd gasps at how incredibly violent it was. Apparently something like 6 or 7 member of the audience fainted – I mean just at the showing I was at alone. One of the girls in my group had to leave after the first act. The show was extremely well done though. Also, Indira Varma played Tamara, the Queen of the Goths which we were all very excited about. She played Suzie in Torchwood, Niobe in Rome, and Elaria Sand in Game of Thrones. We headed home after the show. It was a great day but I would have sold my non-existent kingdom for a shower because I was a disgusting sweaty mess by the end of the day.
And that leads us to today. So far all I’ve done is eat breakfast and type up this post. I think I shall go find lunch and then study for the rest of the day. I have blisters from London so I just want to rest my feet. I hope you have enjoyed this post as much as I enjoyed living it 🙂