Scotland!

After spending all of Thursday miserable on a bus, we were finally in Edinburgh.  I absolutely loved the dorms we were staying in.  I had a room to myself and it was so nice.  I had a view of Arthur’s Seat, a bathroom attached to my room, and the shower was 10,000 x nicer than the shower in Cambridge.

Anyways, I woke up and went to breakfast.  Sigh.  Lots and lots of Scottish Breakfast.  I have fortunately had enough experience with this that I did a pretty good job of judging which foods would be edible, which included toast, hashbrowns, and slices of cheese.  There were many breakfast stations, all with the exact same foods.  It was also chaotic.  Breakfast was not my favorite.

After eating breakfast, we all got back on the bus which took us to Edinburgh Castle.  By which I mean, it dropped us off at the bottom of a cliff and the castle was on top of that cliff.  It was quite the hike to get up that cliff (there were stairs but it was steep and long).  We finally got to the castle and the day got better.  There are statues of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce right outside the gate of the castle which excited me greatly.  I paid the three pounds for the audio guide, but I honestly didn’t listen that often so it was a bit of a waste.  We started off looking out over the city by the cannons, then went down to the National War Museum of Scotland which is inside the castle.  That was fun, and I found a bunch of propaganda posters I liked.  In undergrad I did a project where I had to do research on a specific dead British guy based on his dead man’s penny.  In WWI, Great Britain did not ship their dead home but rather buried them where they died and instead sent plaques to the next of kin instead.  The museum had a bunch of these plaques, known as Dead Men’s Pennies which made me very happy/ sad to see that in only 100 years people have been willing to give up their dead relatives’ pennies.  My dead guy, James Clough, was from the King’s Own Scottish Borderers and I was happy to see one of their recruiting posters there.

We continued through the Castle and saw various things including the William Wallace stained glass window, the Scottish Crown Jewels, the Royal Apartments, things like that.  There was more to see, but a bunch of people in my group were hungry and tired so we left in search of lunch.  Our original plan was to go to the Elephant House for lunch.  This is where JK Rowling would go while writing Harry Potter.  Sadly, the line was really long and it was overly hot inside, so we went elsewhere.  Just up the road from the elephant house was an Italian restaurant called Vittoria.  The people who work at the front desk of the dorms we were staying in had suggested it the night before, so we went in there.  What a disaster.  It took over an hour for us to get food.  Everyone but Emily and I had ordered starters so they at least got a little bit of food, but she and I had to sit there, starving, watching everyone else eat, for an hour.  It felt like an eternity.  While I was not one of those in the group who was hungry when we left the castle, by this point I was getting most hungry and grumpy.  It must be a theme in Scotland, these meals that take absolutely forever to come.

After our painfully long lunch, we headed out.  There were 9 of us by this time, however, and we quickly realized we were too cumbersome as a large group.  Emily and I broke off on our own and headed all the way down the Royal Mile to Holyrood Palace.  Surprisingly, the others were more interested in shopping along the Royal Mile than in seeing the palace.  It only cost 10.30 pounds to get in with a student discount which included an audio tour and the gardens.  We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside, but I took one sneaky picture.  The audio tour told this insane story of how Mary Queen of Scots’ husband got jealous of this dude Rizzio, so he burst in on them having dinner, pointed a gun at pregnant Mary Queen of Scots, and then he and a group of thugs grabbed Rizzio, took him to the next room, and stabbed him to death.  So I got a sneaky picture of the spot where they killed Rizzio.  The tour let out into the ruin of Holyrood Abbey.  I actually still don’t know how it was that the Abbey got destroyed, but it is a gorgeous ruin.  The ruin lets out to the gardens which are at the base of Arthur’s Seat so you can see the mountain, the gardens, the palace, and the ruins all at once.  It was pretty cool.  After the tour, we had ice cream at the palace and felt awfully fancy 🙂

We then just leisurely went back up the Royal Mile stopping in various stores.  We had a nice dinner (which was fortunately much faster) and then went to check out the Edinburgh Dungeon. We thought it looked a bit scary, so we walked over to the Sir Walter Scot monument instead.  It was pretty tall and scary looking but was asked the guy and he said it wasn’t bad.  He said it would be 10 minutes to the top and that there were various landings so it wasn’t bad.  He was a liar.  The first stop was about halfway up the monument.  From then on, the stairs (which were already the awful twisty kind) narrowed considerably.  In light of this, I remained on the first level while Emily went up to a few more levels.  We were going to the Royal Edinburgh Military Tatoo that night, but it was still a little early.  So, we made our way back to the Royal Mile.  While we were waiting for the Tatoo, I purchased for myself a child’s toy bagpipe, but you can actually play it and I have been practicing with it.

The Tattoo itself was absolutely amazing.  The theme seemed to be Scots around the world so it was a mixture of cultures.  There were some amazing bagpipers, but also other military bands from Malta, Trinidad and Tobago, Zulus, Maoris, and more.  It was a mind boggling show.  I can’t recommend it enough.  The act from Malta was really the only disappointing act though they had their cool moments.  Part of the problem was they were the first act on after a tremendous opening with the bagpipes so it seemed particularly bad.  The show ended with fireworks over Edinburgh Castle and a dance party with all the acts together at once which was a lot of fun.

The next day was a bit odder.  We went to the National Museum of Scotland in the morning which was nice, but we did not have enough time and we ended up splitting up.  I wanted to see the exhibits on Scotland, WWI, and Vikings.  Well, the Scotland stuff (as far as I could find) was mostly about weaving.  There was a little about Bonnie Prince Charlie and Culloden, but I didn’t find anything on Robert the Bruce or William Wallace which is what I really wanted to see.  I’m guessing I just missed that part because the museum had kind of a strange layout and it was easy to get lost.  The WWI exhibit was only one room and we weren’t allowed to take pictures.  It was about Scottish regiments around the world and how they maintained their Scottish identity.  The best part for me at least) was they had Nancy the Springbok who was a mascot in a South African regiment.  She was injured in a blast which made her horn grow back oddly.  They had her stuffed and on display.  Then I went down to the Vikings/ Roman section, but I had so little time, I could barely take the time to figure out which bits were Viking vs. Roman.  I would have liked a lot more time there.  They had the weirdest displays in this section.  Some artist made these weird statues with display boxes inset into them so you could see various pieces of jewelry on display on a human shaped form.  To me, though, it looked like Rockem’ Sockem’ Robots viking style.  it was pretty odd.  I just had time to got to the gift shop and get a viking board game and then I had to leave.

The reason I was in such a rush was that Kristina, Kari, and I had tickets to see Austentatious, an improv show based on Jane Austen.  It was a part of the Fringe Festival and it was really funny.  The problem was getting there.  We got so lost and it was miserable getting there.  Kristina had tried to go to a show in the same location the other day and had gotten lost.  She got there 5 minutes late and was denied access, so it was particularly distressing.  We found it eventually, but by the time we got there I was drenched in sweat and rain and was not having a fun time.  We were able to get our tickets and lunch however, so that made up for it.  We were still worrying about Kari, though, as she was coming separately and said she was stuck in traffic.  She got there just as the show was about to start so everything was fine.  The way Austentatious works is the audience writes down suggested Jane Austen novel titles and they are put in a basket.  The actors then claim that one of them is a Jane Austen scholar and tells the audience how a bunch of lost Austen novels have been discovered, including…and then they read the titles of two of the suggestions, and then perform the third title pulled.  We thus had the supreme pleasure of watching Breaking Cad: Meth Comes to Pemberley.  It was glorious and supremely funny.  Walter White was making “buns” and turning everyone in the village into bun fiends.  His daughter helped him sell the buns, and his old friend, Mr. Wensleydale shows up and tries to dissuade him from this life.  Walter White’s wife was increasingly pregnant throughout the show which was hilarious.  She had some awkward looking bundle she was just holding under her dress and it would grow in size and lumpiness throughout.  They kept saying, “Oh, you’ve been pregnant for 12 months now, are you sure it’s a baby?” and she had to do all sorts of physical labor, since she was pregnant.  It was highly enjoyable and I highly recommend them.  I found an audio recording of one of their shows on youtube.  It is not as good without the visual, but it is still very good.  I am sure the show would have been funnier for me had I seen Breaking Bad, but it was still hilarious even without having seen it.

After that, however, my day became kind of odd.  I basically ended up waiting with various groups to do something and not actually doing those things.  After Austentatious Kari invited me to go with her and a group of her friends for sushi.  I forgot how long eating takes in Scotland so I said ok, expecting it to be short, but it took forever.  Then they wanted to go back to the rooms to build a fort and eat junk food, but I still wanted to see the city.  So I started walking and immediately found a group of my friends waiting for another friend to get a coffee at the Elephant House.  Once again the line was very long, however, so it took forever.  I went in and got pictures of the bathroom, however, which was actually surprisingly moving.  Fans of Harry Potter graffiti the bathroom with notes to JK Rowling and such.  It is completely covered, including the toilet seat!  I was really sad to find I had taken my pen out of my purse and was thus unable to leave a message of my own.  Seeing the love poured out on the walls, however, was quite the experience.  Then we moved on, but once again there were members of the group who were hungry and grumpy, so we stopped off for food again.  Before this, I had run into other girls from our group who had mentioned the Mary King Close tour.  I was interested, but they said the next tour wasn’t till 6:45, so I figured I had time.  Well, I got there and what they had neglected to explain was that tours left every 15 minutes so you had to book a tour in advance.  So by the time I got there the next tour wasn’t until after 8.  That was too late for me.  The weather was really gross and I was feeling defeated and it is a really long unpleasant walk back to the hotel, so my afternoon was kind of a drag.  I think I was just exhausted because by the time I got to my room, absolutely everything was setting me off and I ended up bawling over an article about a giraffe (DO NOT LOOK IT UP IT IS TOO TRAGIC AND WILL MAKE YOU WEEP!)

The next morning we were leaving and heading back to Cambridge.  A bunch of people thus figured it was the day to wake up at the crack dawn, climb Arthur’s Seat and watch the sunrise.  I wanted to climb the mountain, but waking up at 3:30 to climb a mountain in the dark was not my bag, baby, so instead I woke up at 6 to climb the mountain.  It was absolutely gorgeous even without the sunrise.  I think I was wearing the wrong shoes, however, as trying to balance on the uneven stone steps made my feet hurt like crazy.  It was also steep and slippery, so I decided the safer idea was to turn around at approximately the halfway point.  I went up a couple other paths till they too became treacherous, but I got lots of gorgeous pictures.

 

The bus stopped off at the border between Scotland and England for pictures and then again at a rest stop.  It claimed to have a Burger King and I was trying to grab food so I could explore our next stop at York more.  It said over the bridge and looked like you were supposed to go upstairs.  Ok.  Well, it turned out you went up the stairs, and then there was a bridge across the highway to the Burger King on the other side of the road!  Anna and I speedwalked/ did Ministry of Silly Walks across as it was glass and the cars passing by could see you walking across the bridge.

York was interesting.  We parked and then found a map that was painted on a wall but if you wanted to have a paper copy to have, you had to pay 2 pounds.  So I took a picture and used that.  I saw York Minster (which was over priced and you could see most of if before paying but I had to use the bathroom so I payed the 9 pounds to use the bathroom and look around.  Then I found a statue of Emperor Constantine the Great behind the Cathedral because he was apparently named Emperor around that spot!  On the map there was a Roman Bath Museum marked.  I used my picture of a map to get there, but the battery was dying so I rarely dared to look at the map.  When I got there, it turned out to mostly be a pub called The Roman Baths, but the ruins of the Roman baths were in the basement.  The one guy working there was very nice and actually talked to me a long time about medieval art, but I was a bit worried about time because we only had about an hour and 40 minutes total in York.  It turns out I needn’t have worried because the museum was very small.  It was basically one room and was very obviously a low budget affair.  I had already watched the Nova documentary on building a Roman bath twice in recent memory for Professory McMahon’s classes so I already knew a lot of the things that were there. The pillai, the tubuli, the furnaces, Caldarium, Tepidarium, and Frigidarium, etc. were all there.  For me, cheesy as it is,my favorite part was putting on Roman helmets.  They were actual nice helmets so you got a real sense of wearing one would be like.  They were heavy, face squishing, and in some cases claustrophobic.  My favorite was the cheek flap variety in terms of comfort.  Then I left, ran into the other girls, got some ice cream, and got back on the bus.  We got back to Cambridge around dinner time, at pizza at The Cow, and went to bed.  And that’s all I’ve got to say about that 🙂

Bus Ride, Abbotsford, and Dudes from Liverpool

Yesterday was a painfully long day but now here I am in Edinburgh, Scotland!   I woke up yesterday at 6 and started getting ready.  We had been told to eat breakfast at 8, grab our bag lunches at 8:15, be assembled at the Porter’s Lodge at 8:20, so we could get to the bus by 8:30.  I had no problem getting up in time to do so, but I was worried I wouldn’t be able to do all those things quickly enough for that time table, so I went ahead and made myself a bagel before heading out.  I packed way too much considering I had to lug it all over creation.  First I had to go from my bedroom, across the street over to the JCR.  There are always construction workers at the end of my street in the morning and one of them was highly amused by my bringing my fan.  It’s been too hot in Cambridge and there has been zero air circulation in our rooms, so I decided it was a necessary precaution to bring it.  Now that I am here, after carrying it all over creation and being crammed next to it all day on a bus, it isn’t necessary, but by gum I had it on all night anyways.  We inhaled breakfast as fast as possible (or in my case second breakfast), grabbed lunches and tried to get to the bus as fast as possible.  I was literally carrying so much weight I could feel it trying to crush me to death.  Like, my heart was clearly not operating as it should have been.  Anyways, after all that, we got there and the bus was quite late.  I of course had fallen all the way to the back (though I had been the very first person to the JCR in the morning and started off around the third person in line walking to the bus).  So I finally got on the bus, with so much stuff that I required my own seat, and there were none left. Fortunately one of the girls moved to sit with someone else so I got a seat to myself and my junk, but the seat she gave me was sadly the worst seat in the bus.  The window was defective so it was completely fogged up on the top (aka I couldn’t see any of the beautiful countryside we drove through or get any pics) and the bottom of the window was filled with water that would slosh back and forth with the movement of the bus.  There was also a sink next to me that was in my space and pointy, so I was repeatedly thrown against it while driving over bumpy or twisty roads.  And for some strange reason that sink was exuding massive amounts of heat.  There was no air flow as well, so all of us in the back were miserable.  Kari, who was in front of me, felt really sick for a long section of the drive.  We were told there would be two stops on the bus ride.  One at Abbotsford to see Sir Walter Scott’s home, and one somewhere along the way.

After only a few hours driving we stopped off for lunch at some sort of rest stop, but the kind that has a food court.  I had already started trying to eat the bag lunch they packed as I did not realize we were stopping for lunch.  I had already found most of the lunch to be inedible, sadly.  The sandwich bread was good, but everything on the sandwich was tasteless while also leaving a bad taste in your mouth afterwards.  Also, a lot of the food required refrigeration which we did not have.  So when we got off I got myself some Burger King food.  The next stop at Abbotsford was absurdly far away.  The first stop was too soon and the second too far.  I asked how much longer to Abbotsford at one point and was told an hour and a half.  I think it was actually closer to three hours away.   Needless to say, it was a miserable bus ride.

Finally, just as they were closing, we got to Sir Walter Scott’s house in Abbotsford.  The house was gorgeous, but we only got to see a few rooms so it was a bit disappointing.  The gardens were far superior.  The house was also on the bank of the River Tweed so we had a lot of fun down by the water.  The river was roped off by an electric fence, but they put up a strange wooden contraption to help you climb over the fence.  I touched the water just so I could say I did.  We had a lot of fun taking pictures here.  It was mostly just great to be off the bus.  The next leg of our ride was really short as we were only 30 miles from Edinburgh, but we did not want to get back on that bus.  Oh, also, I was really sad we didn’t get to stop off at the Scottish border.  There is a rock there that says Scotland on it you can take your picture with.  Also, by that point I was desperate to get off the bus.  Edinburgh is much further into Scotland than I realized.  The Scottish countryside (or what I could see of it) was much prettier than the English countryside around Cambridge.  Around Cambridge all you see are big yellow fields for as far as the eye can see.  It Scotland there are rolling hills and mountains, sheep, and heather.  Edinburgh itself isn’t what I was picturing.  I’m hoping it is just because we are on the outskirts.  We are right at the foot of Arthur’s Seat.  In Cambridge we are right in the city centre and we have gotten used to that.

We are staying at Pollock Halls which are dorms for the university here.  I really like the dorms which are hotel style.  I also have a room to myself whereas everyone else has to share (yay for uneven number of people!).  We asked at the reception desk where to eat dinner and they suggested a place called Southern.  We got lost several times going and it was completely full when we got there, so we went elsewhere.  We went to another place called Clerk’s Bar.  We were about to leave as it was full too, but there were two guys sitting at a large empty table and they invited us to sit with them.  It was definitely outside of my comfort zone, but they were a lot of fun.  They were here for work from Liverpool.  They were on a pub crawl with their mates.  Really nice guys and super funny.  Apparently they had never heard of root beer before so we were trying to describe it and looked it up.  Apparently it is made of sassafras root.  They were unimpressed (which I totally agree with).  They had also thought that New York was the capital of America and that New Hampshire must be a hoity toity place which we thought was very funny.  The service was incredibly slow and we would have left if they weren’t so entertaining.  The burger I got was really good, but I still don’t think I would go again since dinner turned into an all night affair and we were starving.  Well, I have to get ready for today now, so I will end now.

Climbing Great Saint Mary’s Tower

I am one of the only graduate students in the study abroad group, so unlike the others I don’t have work due along the way, but I do have a large paper to work on.  I have not been the best student in that I  am both terrified by the ticking clock that draws my due date ever nearer, and completely unmotivated to work.  Everyone else has tons of work due now so they are all freaking out.  I need to work more.  I have been gathering sources, but I have yet to write a word of my 25 page paper.  This is problematic.

Yesterday Emily, Amelia, Kristina and I all climbed Great Saint Mary’s Church Tower.  We were told the view is amazing up there.  You know how I feel about towers and windy steps, but I forced myself to do it.  In a way the steps were worse than at Warwick because there was one staircase in which to go up and down.  But, the steps weren’t crumbling and there were places to step off to the side and take a break so that was nice.

Dinner last night was a really disgusting venison burger.  I had never had venison before so I was trying to keep an open mind, but that was one of the worst bites of food I have had in a very long time.  I had to go home and make myself a bagel.

This morning was more exciting than I generally like my mornings to be.  I was eating next to the Dorseys when things went very wrong.  Suddenly Molly was saying something about veins and holding her head, then she slumped over and collapsed.  When her husband picked her up she was like rigid and her eyes were staring but not looking at anything.  There was quite a while (which may have actually only been a few seconds) in which she was unresponsive.  It was really scary.  I thought she had an aneurism or a stroke or something.  For a few seconds I was afraid she might just die at the breakfast table.  Her youngest was too young to understand, I think he thought she was playing because he was giggling the whole time and was completely fine with everything.  The older boy was a bit worried but he held himself together better than I would have in that situation.  There was talk of getting an ambulance but she seemed to come around and they took her down to the JCR to rest.  The two kids stayed up at breakfast though, so a bunch of us tried to look after them and act as normal as possible but I was really freaked out.  Hanging out with the kids was pretty calming after a while, though, because we just talked about Lord of the Rings with the youngest kid who was just very happy and silly.  At least she doesn’t have a class to teach today.  I don’t know if she will be coming along on the Scotland trip after all, though.  At least if she doesn’t go she will have some quiet days without teaching.

I am very excited about Edinburgh.  I haven’t been able to focus on my work and have instead been planning what to do in Edinburgh.  We will be staying in Pollack Halls which are dorms for the university there.  I think that supposedly I will get my own room to myself which is very exciting.  Sadly the only meals included there are breakfast and we are on our own for lunch and dinner.  The first full day there we are going to Edinburgh Castle as a group and then have the rest of the day off except that we are going to the Tattoo that night.  My plan (and lots of people seem to want to jump in on my plan) is to go to the Elephant House where  JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter for lunch.  Then we walk down the Royal Mile to Holyrood Palace and do the tour.  Then walk back up the Royal Mile to the Edinburgh Dungeon.  That is right near the Tattoo so we can do dinner around there and be ready for the Tattoo.  The next day I will go to the National Museum of Scotland in the morning.  They have an exhibit on Scots in the Commonwealth fighting in WWI.  They also have stuff about Vikings which has me terribly excited 🙂  Then I will grab lunch in the area.  Kari, Kristina, and I all have tickets to see Austentatious, an improve show based on Jane Austen novels.  I’m terribly excited.  But that leaves a few hours afterwards that I haven’t planned out yet.  Well, I’d best get back to work.

Warwick Castle, Stratford upon Avon, and more.

Thursday was a terribly busy day.  First I had class from 9-11, and then it was time for adventuring!  That was the day we went to Warwick Castle and Stratford upon Avon.  We were to gather at the Porter’s Lodge at 11:45, which left just enough time to run down King’s Parade to the sandwich shop/ gift shop I like with the cheap sandwiches, then run back to the apartment to switch my bookbag for my purse.

We walked through Clare College again to get to the buses. I’m a little peeved that we have walked over Clare Bridge twice now and I have yet to find the broken sphere.  I shall find it eventually!!  I was very much a fool in the choice of my bus seat. I took the one behind the bathroom that has a table and no one in front of it.  I thought the table would be lovely.  No, it just meant there was less leg room and I was terribly uncomfortable for our very long bus ride.  I think it took around 2 hours for us to get to Warwick Castle.

 We had all agreed to dress up for this outing so that we could take a group photo in front of the castle (this will be somewhat relevant in a bit).  Warwick Castle is currently celebrating its 1100th Anniversary which is super cool.  Sadly, it has basically become a giant tourist trap.  It felt like a cheesy Renn Fest but at an actual historical location rather than a fake medieval town in the middle of nowhere.  For many it was their first castle, though, so they were very excited and their excitement was contagious so I was ok with the hokeyness.  We only had a short time at Warwick Castle, so we had to do everything as fast as we could.  First we went through this section of castle called “Kingmaker”.  We didn’t have time to read any of the labels, so we basically ran around admiring wax figures in various medieval garbs.  Then we climbed the Mound which was quick lovely and afforded a view over the castle on one side and beyond on the other.  I really wanted a picture at the top of the mound on the front end, but everyone was rushing and communication was not at its best, so we got a ton of pics from the back of the mound and none of us at the top on the front end.  Then we climbed down the mound on the other side of the castle.  There was a gorgeous river (maybe the River Avon?) with lily pads all over the place and a mill, along with a trebuchet, which I loved since Dad and I used to make medieval siege weaponry, including a trebuchet.  While trying to make our way back to the front of the castle we also saw a peacock, a haunted tower, and the mill, which had some sort of scary Victorian school mistress or something so we ran away.  We split up then as half of us wanted to see the Rose garden and the rest of us did not.  I had intended to reclimb the Mound to get the aforementioned photo I wanted, but other things came up.

Before leaving for Warwick, Briggs, the director of the study abroad program, had mentioned they paid for the historical stuff, and not the hokey stuff like the torture dungeons or Merlin’s Tower.  Well, it turned out by Merlin they actually meant as in my husband, Colin Morgan, who played Merlin in a recent television show that I loved, not old beardy Merlin.  I didn’t have a ticket though, so I just got a picture of myself with the (sadly very faded) banner with his face on it.  I’m not sure if I would have been able to get in as they were timed tickets, but I found out after I got back that they have a wax figure out my husband, which I would have loved to have gotten a picture with.

I turned away from the Merlin area to walk to the mound when I noticed people walking on the ramparts, which Briggs had mentioned was included in our ticket.  So I decided it would be nice to walk along the castle walls and get pictures.  I ran into Anna and we both went.  Well, I was a fool.  There was a sign saying once you start you can’t turn back, it’s physically demanding, etc.  I ignored it.  I am a fool.  There was a tiny stretch that was indeed leisurely walking along the wall and looking at the sights, but then came a tower.  The kind filled with the evil, crumbling, twisting, tiny stepped stairs.  I despise these stairs.  Often times I am prevented from seeing history because of stairs (due to scariness, not a physical inability to handle them).  These are my least favorite kind of stairs.  It was a hot day so I was already sweaty, but I was now dripping in terror sweat with no choice but to climb on.  And remember, I was wearing a skirt whilst trying to climb these awful stairs.  It was pretty miserable and by the time I reached the top I was shaking kind of a lot.  The view from the top was of course fabulous, but you had to wait to get your turn at a gap in the crenelation to get that view.  This is also where my camera started malfunctioning a bit.  I am hoping it was an issue of having too many pictures in my camera, but it just had a similar problem about an hour ago so I am starting to worry.  We asked a couple to take a picture of us at the top and it started not taking the picture when you told it to and instead just getting pics of feet when you moved the camera as you gave up trying to take the pic.  It may be because I was clutching my phone while trying to climb the stairs and it may have gotten a bit bumped in the climb.  Here’s hoping it’s just full and not bumped.  Then, surprise surprise, we had to climb down another set of evil twisty stairs.  At least it was a separate staircase so they were one way stairs and the downward ones were less crumbly so it was much easier.  By then it was time to meet up with the group and hop back on the bus to go to Stratford upon Avon.

We got off the bus and the Shakespeare professor gave us directions to the general effect of “Go down this street for food.”  We wrongly trusted him and went that way in search of food.  He sent us to the hinterlands where there was no food anywhere.  There was a big group of us, starving, needing bathrooms, etc., and there was absolutely nothing.  We did get to see Shakespeare’s birthplace, but I think from the back so it just looked like a creepy old abandoned house.  We eventually found food, but we had very slow service.  So basically we just had time to find food, eat, and go to the theater.  Of course there was tons of food around the theater which made me upset.

We saw Henry IV Part I.  Our seats were kind of ludicrously bad.  We were up a level, which was fine, but we were in the backmost row of seats on our level.  The seats were raised like high chairs so your legs dangled uncomfortably and you had to climb on railings to get into your seat.  Also, the roof was slanted downwards, so the combination meant it was difficult to see the upper area of the stage.  This combination made the first half of the play very uncomfortable.  For the second half I moved to a closer seat that had gone unoccupied during the first half and was far more comfortable.  The play was very well done and I enjoyed it.  Having just watched Titus Andronicus, however, I felt like it didn’t have enough death.  I was expecting gore and there was very little.

The next day I was a terrible student and just read for fun all day.  I bought Death Comes to Pemberley, one of these modern sequels to Pride and Prejudice.  I’ve never read one of these sequel things before, but this one has been made into a mini-series by BBC and has Matthew Rhys playing Mr. Darcy so I decided to get it.  It’s a murder mystery so I want to know who dunnit!  I can’t tell if it is one of those situations where the author is trying to make me think it is Person X but it isn’t really, or if it is a case of it’s obviously Person X and the characters are too stupid to figure it out till the end.  Because at this point I’m ready to accuse Colonel Fitzwilliam.  After dinner at Strada (a nice Italian restaurant around the corner) we went to a rooftop bar to watch the sun set over the Cambridge skyline which was fabulous but I forgot my camera which made me terribly sad.  Today I feel was a terribly unproductive day as well.  I went out in the early afternoon and visited the weeked craft market and got a few gifts.  I also went to the Round Church but since it cost money to go in I just took pictures from the outside.  Then a group of us went to Byron’s Proper Hamburgers again and then to Chill for froyo.  My grandparents are visiting back home so I just skyped the whole family a little bit ago.   A lot of the people in the program had their parents visit them here in Cambridge today so it has been very quiet here.  I’m actually quite surprised at how many people have family visit them while they are here.  Anyways, that’s about it for this post 🙂

Rhys Darby Mr. Adventure, and other Adventures

Life has been fairly uneventful here in Cambridge.  I have mostly been working on my spy fever paper.  I’ve read through a bunch of articles but I still need to go through and find more primary sources.  I’ve found some pretty interesting stuff, though.  For a previous class I had looked through Jock Haskell’s book on espionage and there was a paragraph in there that inspired me to write this paper.  He said that the British thought it ungentlemanly to spy on your neighbors during peacetime so they didn’t really set up spy organizations till the First World War.  So I wanted to look into the creation of those spy organizations.  What I found was this was a severe over simplification.  They actually started spy organizations about ten years before the First World War.  Now that I think about it this of course makes much more sense.  In the sources I’m looking through it talks about how ridiculously pitiful British attempts at spying were so now that I’ve thought about it, of course if you haven’t had a spy organization you will have a learning curve.  It doesn’t make sense that they would suddenly have a decent spy organization when the First World War pops up with no precedent.  It turns out there was a spy fever before the war in which the British were absolutely convinced that there were like 90,000 German spies throughout England all waiting to rise up and take over the country.  Their spy organizations grew out of this fear.  So anyways, that’s what I’m working on over here.

While I was writing this there was actually a fire drill.  It was pretty scary.  They have them periodically but they never warn you and it isn’t always clear if it is a drill or a real fire.  The other day we were at tea and the fire alarm went off.  We were really confused about whether it was real or not and whether we should evacuated or not.  Anyways, with the one that just happened, the doors at the end of the hall which are normally open were automatically shut, I guess to help stop fire from spreading.  Now, this did not lock the doors, but I have to admit it’s kind of scary to hear the fire alarms go off and see the doors through which you would run suddenly swing shut.

Last night I went to see Rhys Darby, a comedian from New Zealand, perform at the Corn Exchange.  I had been walking around town and found signs saying he was coming to town for one night to do a stand up comedy show.  I know him from playing Murray in Flight of the Conchords and basically everyone in Short Poppies, a mockumentary series in which he plays basically everyone in a small village in New Zealand which you can see on Netflix.  I had posted on the study abroad facebook page inviting people to come with me, but no one had heard of him, so I went alone.  It started off pretty weird.  He came out in character as Bill Napier, the local park ranger in Short Poppies and that was quite fun, but then it got a bit odd.  I guess in real life Rhys Darby discovered a pair of Cornish rappers at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and decided to take them on tour with him, so then they came out and did 3-4 songs.  One of them came out in his underwear and by the end of the set he was wearing even less underwear.  Here is a link to see the music video of one of the better songs they did. The part I liked best about them though, was that apparently they did the theme song to Short Poppies so they played that and had the whole audience dance along with them.  Anyways, after that, there was a brief intermission, after which the real show started.  So that first bit was weird, but once the real show started it got really good.  I’m always amazed at how stand ups can do a series of seemingly unrelated jokes that somehow tie together.  One of my favorite bits was a story he was telling about his 8th birthday when he got lost in a maze at a fun park.  He was wandering along lost when he saw a telephone on the wall.  He picks it up and speaks with Jeffrey, the maze helpline guy.  He becomes known as the cursing little boy because he is freaking out and lost.  Later on in the bit he is told he needs to vacate the maze as the park is closing but he is lost and can’t find the exit.  Eventually they put his mum on the phone and she tells him the other little boys just found a hole under the maze and got out that way.  Something I found interesting was he tells a story about a strange hippie couple he met at Loch Ness who believed we were being watched by lizards and were going to be rescued by cats from outer space, which he clearly incorporated into a couple of characters from Short Poppies.  After the show he was giving autographs and I was actually the first person in line.  Which I think may have been a bad idea because I was very nervous, had verbal diarrhea, possibly insulted him by mistake, and then ran away.  I tried to say that I like his work so much I came alone, but what came out was that I am a weirdo with no friends and that no one knows who he is.  Yep.

My other adventures this week were fairly small.  Some of the other girls said they were going to the Haunted Bookshop, and as I had not heard of it, I tagged along.  Apparently at some point there was a little girl who lived there who had elephantitis.  Her mom kept her locked up in her room and she died there.  The shop is really tiny and filled with tons of old books.  I found a bunch of old Doctor Who books in there but one of the other girls hit the jackpot.  She found a first edition Tolkien book, The Treason of Isengard, which is one of the histories of Middle Earth. We were also informed this week that there would be a talent show towards the end of the program.  I searched around town but did not find the equipment necessary for my talent.  What I did find, however, was that the British don’t spend their time pondering Where’s Waldo?  They instead opine as the location of Wally.  Weird.

Tomorrow we are going on a trip to Warwick Castle and then on to Stratford upon Avon to see (I believe) Henry IV.  We are going to dress up and get group pics in front of the castle.  I’m pretty excited 🙂

Heat Wave

Every time I go to the UK there is a heat wave.  The problem with this is of course the lack of air conditioning.  We are all broiling in our rooms.  We can’t even open our windows very much because the pigeons desperately want to come into our rooms to roost.  One girl has had three separate incidences where pigeons got in her room.  She said she could hear them breathing or something and she thought there was someone in her room.  I have been on a hunt for a fan for the past two weeks but the hunt became far more serious now.  I wandered all over the mall to no avail.  Then I thought to check the boots.  I’ve totally seen fans for sale at CVS so I figured it would be the same deal here.  Well, what did I find there?  I found a three pronged charger that I searched high and low for before and ended up having mom ship to me.  I also found a whole Doctor Who section.  I bought TARDIS soap (which actually smells pretty good if a bit floral) and one of those mini-figurine things where you get a random character.  I was very happy because I got David Tenant J  But what I did not find was any sign of a fan.  I next tried the super drug, figuring the same theory applied to a different pharmacy, but that was a no go as well.  At this point it looked like rain so I almost went back to the apartment, but I decided to try one more store though it was a long shot.  I walked into Rymans, which is a stationary store and voila!  Right inside the door there was a pile of fans!  I was so happy I gladly paid the £15-16.  I got it home and it turned out to be super hard to assemble and came with the world’s tiniest screw and nut.  Of course as soon as you figured out the trick it wasn’t that bad but it was very difficult to figure out the trick!  My original plan was to have the fan I’m borrowing from the program in one room and the new fan in the other room, but it’s so ridiculously hot I have both in one room at a time.  It’s so glorious – last night was the first time I didn’t wake up drenched in sweat since I got here.  The heat is oppressive right outside the range of the fans, though.  Basically you have to sit still with both fans pointed at you.

My friend Emily looked at the weather report and it is supposed to be hot all week, so she asked me where I got my fan.  She went to Rymans and they were completely sold out!  So we found out where a department store was (apparently it was in the mall but since the makeup department is all you see through the door and it is a department store we don’t have in America I never tried that store) so we headed out in search of a fan.  There was like a rush on the fans right when we got there – everyone was buying fans.  We got back and I helped her assemble it, and the stupid thing was broken.  The head wobbled the crazy, but more importantly, it wouldn’t turn on.  So she had to go back out and exchange the fan.  Well, it would seem that the city of Cambridge is simply completely out of fans.  She managed to talk them into giving her a floor model of a different (and actually nicer model) fan than she had as an exchange for her broken fan.  Of course, this is a fancy dan fan with tons of buttons but she didn’t get instructions with the floor model.  So she went to look up what the buttons are but of course our internet is down.  We have been having increasing issues with internet connectivity.  It’s seriously obnoxious.

A group of us went to Byron’s proper burgers for dinner tonight and it was glorious.  It was air conditioned, though it could have been more so.  But the food was amazing and our server was really nice.  We will definitely be going back.  Last night we had tried to go to the Eagle for dinner, but they don’t have any air conditioning.  We still want to go though, because the Eagle has lots of history.  It is where Watson and Crick would go to discuss DNA and there is a room where RAF men would use their lighters to burn their names and squadron info and such into the ceiling that is super cool and unique.  But it was too ridiculously hot yesterday so we went to Zizzi’s instead because they have air conditioning and it was fabulous.  For lunch today I went to Nanna Mexico, home of the “big-ass burrito”.  It was ok, not my favorite, decent but a tad expensive at £7.25 for a big ass steak burrito with sour cream.  But it was the funniest thing.  It would seem that the British don’t know what burritos are.  Person after person ahead of me in line was so confused.  Almost all of them had no idea what black or pinto beans were, let alone which one they wanted.  Many ended up getting one half with black and one half with pinto so they could experiment and find out which they liked.  One woman didn’t even know the difference between tacos and burritos!  She ordered tacos and then got confused when asked what she wanted in it.  She then said she wanted what everyone ahead of her had gotten, which was a burrito.  It was the weirdest thing.  I asked the guy (who I think was the owner of the restaurant) if it was common for people to have no idea what a burrito was and stuff, and he said it is very common, but they were worse when he came to town 10 years ago.  He had a food truck back then and people did not know about soft tacos – they kept thinking tacos had to be crispy.  Last night all the girls went to the bar/ nightclub thing that is directly below our apartment, La Raza to celebrate the birthday of one of the girls in our program.  I got an orange Fanta because it looks like a fun drink with the theory that it is non-caffeinated, tasty, and would make people more comfortable than if I had just ordered water.  I like my orange Fanta, but paying £2.50 for a can that is only worth £.90 is ridiculous.

I have been spending time at the public library in the mall because it is air conditioned, relatively comfy, and I can get work done there.  Some of the girls like to meet at Pret but I prefer the library, personally.  They even have a reasonably priced café at the library, though I haven’t tried it yet.  Anyways, we are having a movie night tonight so I need to do a bit more reading before I go.

Settling in at Cambridge

The first week here I was desperate every day to see something new.  Now I feel like I’m settling in a bit.  I still go on adventures and have grand plans, but I’m having a slightly easier time focusing on work.  The first week I was resentful of every minute spent in the dungeon that is the computer lab.  There was so much to see and there I was in a dungeon!  I think the clock counting down made me realize a) we’ll be here a long time – I have time to see the sights and b) there isn’t much time left and I have to get on that 25 page paper.  Yesterday was largely spent in scholarly pursuits.  On Tuesday we went on the Library tour to learn how to find the books we need.  Though I learned the librarian is super cute, the main lesson I took away from that experience was that although the library is gorgeous it isn’t going to be particularly helpful to me.  All the college libraries are separate here so although Cambridge collectively has plenty of books on my subject, I do not have access to those books.  The Gonville and Caius library literally only has one book that would be helpful to me.  So yesterday I found the public library (it’s in the middle of the mall…this place is weird) and looked for books there.  Also not that helpful, though they at least have 2 books that look helpful and I can take them home.  The G0nville and Caius library wont let us check out any of the books :(.  The public library does let us check out books, but only 2 at a time.  I was feeling discouraged but then I spent the afternoon in the dungeon printing out helpful looking articles from Jstor.  I got quite the stack, so I am feeling better about my topic.  I want to write about spying in WWI.  My original intention was to write about how Britain’s official spy organization was created (they didn’t have one before 1914 because spying was seen as ungentlemanly).  Based on the articles I’ve found that might still be my topic, but I also found stuff on German spies within England that sounded interesting so I might tweak my subject a bit. I was afraid I would have to switch my topic entirely to the Easter Rising but I think I found enough I won’t need to.

Now just because I’m rambling about academic stuff that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped having fun.  The other day I found the crepe truck the other girls have been raving about and it was indeed very good and reasonably priced with very friendly staff.  The only issue I have with the crepe truck is they only take cash and I don’t really want to spend all my cash there.  I do appreciate their loyalty cards, however.  get 5 stamps and the 6th crepe is free. 🙂  After getting crepes with friends we all went to Jesus Green and studied on a park bench.  That was quite lovely, though I was a bit unprepared.  I was in class and my friends swooped me up to go on this study adventure but I didn’t have future readings on me, so I just used the time as a photo shoot.

Last night was my high table night so I got all dressed up.  I have had to hold my dress for high table in reserve so it would seem nice and not like any other of my clothes I wear to keep it special. After dinner my friends and I went in search of a hill Amelia had heard of that gives you a great view of Cambridge from above.  It was once the site of Cambridge Castle which was built by William the Conqueror in 1068.  The castle is gone now but the hill it was on remains.  the view is indeed spectacular.  You can see quite a ways from up there.

I think that having already gone to grad school is making this transition easier for me.  I am already used to going to school miles and miles away from my family and not being able to see them.  A lot of the others in the program grew up in New Hampshire so while they have gone to college they were still pretty close to home and family.  Amelia (the other grad student) and I have both already gone to school in far away states and have gone through the separation anxiety and have gotten used to it.  We’ve been trying to make it homier.  We were complaining about how we wanted to vacuum so Amelia found one that the cleaning staff (who don’t seem to do as much as I would like them to) had left out somewhere in the building and we were all very excited to be able to vacuum our rooms.  I finally found a laundry basket yesterday which I’m very excited about.  Sorry to leave you on a boring note like vacuuming and laundry but I have to get ready for class now 🙂

First Week in Cambridge

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 🙂

Tour de France Stage 3 and day 2 of Cambridge

Today was a very eventful and fun day. I woke up around 5 this morning so I got to lounge about for a while till breakfast was ready. I usually have issues with breakfast foods but I did alright this morning. We were taught a strange back entrance to go in just for this morning because the Tour de France was going right by school so the road we would normally take was blocked off. In the actual dining hall there was a long table covered in cereals and pastries and such but I also saw people with other foods like sausages that I did not know the location of. I eventually found the back room where the hot foods were, but the end result was a strange combination of too many plates so tomorrow I will know better. I was actually the first person from our group to go to breakfast with the end result that I actually sat there for hours talking with people as they cycled through for breakfast so I got to meet a bunch of new people. I met the only other grad student in our group and she is extremely nice and her flat is just down the hall from mine.

After breakfast a group of us went out and got some necessities. There are still a few things on my list but we made good progress. We got laundry detergent, notebooks, and hand towels for the bathroom, for example. I also got my cheap phone for while I’m here. I walked in and said “I’m here for 6 weeks, I need your cheapest phone.” And the fellow said then this is the phone you want. Most pleasant and fastest phone buying experience of my life. In and out in 10-15 minutes without spending too much money. While we were out shopping there was a parade before the Tour went through where the cars threw small free things to the crowd. I didn’t catch anything and didn’t recognize any of the brands represented in the parade, but it was still fun.

The Tour started at 12:15 do we went out to find a spot along the route at 11:30. It was literally one street over from our apartment building going past Gonville and Caius (the Cambridge Campus I’m studying at) so it was really convenient. I think I may be the only one here who actually watches the tour so I was the source of knowledge for the group of us that went together. I thought it was really funny that I knew fancy biking words like “peloton” and was able to tell them that while we were waiting 45 minutes, the bikers would only be visible for a few seconds and was thus a font of knowledge. I think the starting point must have been really close to where we were because we saw them very soon after 12:15 and there were no breakaways yet. I was so annoyed though about my spot. I chose a spot where the person in front of me was sitting thinking “yay, better view!” Then a cop asked him to take his feet out of the road, he stood up, and it became apparent that he was a giant. I could still see over his should though, so I figured I was still ok as long as I got my camera up. Well, of course as soon as the peloton comes by he raises his arm and my window was completely blocked. I had to shove my camera between peoples’ bodies and under their arms to get pics with the result that you can see torsos and hairy arms just as much as bikers. But I magically happened to get a picture of the guy wearing the polka dot jersey and if the internet is correct, it was David Moncoutie today.

It was pretty funny because after the peloton goes through, then come the support cars and once an ambulance went by, everyone seemed to know that was the universal symbol of the tour having past and the whole crowd started to disperse. A group of is all went to lunch then. We wanted somewhere to sit down after standing and waiting so long, so we went to a pasty restaurant down the street. I got a cheese and onion pasty, but I wish I had ordered the chicken and bacon pasty, I just didn’t see it before ordering. It was a cute little restaurant. Our group was big enough with 5 people that we went upstairs and had a nice view of the square where the farmer’s market is. After lunch we walked about town a bit. We saw St. Mary’s church which is quite lovely and right across from Gonville and Caius. You can hear the bells from campus quite well. As soon as we stepped out of the church a large muscled Cambridge student name George stopped us and tried to get us to go punting which is like going on a gondola ride up and down the River Cam. I really wanted to go but the other girls wanted to gather a larger group of us so it would be cheaper, but of course that didn’t happen so no punting for me today :(. Fortunately we have 6 weeks so I WILL go punting! A good chunk of our group was tired so we went back to our apartments. A group of us gathered in one of the girls’ room and we talked for a good bit and decided to go out again.

We wandered about town in a direction I hadn’t been in yet and ended up going to Jesus Green which is a very pretty public park. We were excited to see grass we were allowed to walk on since only fellows are allowed to walk on the grass at Gonville and Caius. We walked along the board walk and such and had a great time.

After enjoying the afternoon it was dinner time which was much better than yesterday’s dinner. Once again there was a mystery soup, but this time I got spring rolls instead. No more mystery soup for me, thanks. These cooks are overly find of squash. The main course was chicken Marsala. Well, I’ve never had that dish before so all I knew was I really did not like the sauce, so I was a very uncouth American and made a sauce out of ketchup and mayo that made my chicken delicious. The dessert was creme brûlée with raspberries at the bottom, but I’m not a fan so I skipped it. After dinner I went to the computer lab to print the readings I have to do for tomorrow’s class, but I couldn’t figure out how to print so I was stuck in the computer lab for a long time. And that brings is about to me typing up this blog and it is now bed time, so good night or enjoy your afternoon depending on where you are 🙂

Traveling/ first day at Cambridge

Here I am in Cambridge sitting on my not so comfy bed and I thought i should share my adventures with you while waiting for it to be time to go to breakfast.
My flight left from Dulles at 9:50 pm on July 5. I’m not exactly sure where one day ends and another begins at this point because I haven’t had much sleep. The night before traveling I only got maybe an hour or so of sleep and on the plane I only dozed fitfully for maybe an hour or so more. I was in the emergency exit seat across from the bathrooms so while I had lots of lovely leg room, I had no window and whenever anyone went to the bathroom the lights from the bathroom hit me in the face. Worse really was how uncomfy the seat itself was though so that was what made it hardest to sleep. But I just realized I’m getting ahead of myself.
When I went to check in my luggage they wanted $100 to check my duffle bag so I said nope! Unfortunately, that was the bag with all my liquids in it so I had to transfer then all to my other suitcase. That left me carrying two 50 pound bags as my carryon and it turned out my gate was the furthest point in the entire airport. Did you know they have a subway inside the airport? I had I take a train to get to terminal C, and then I had to get to C1. Sounds like it should be the first one, but they went in reverse order from C14.

At first the seat next to me was empty but then an English gentleman from Denver asked to sit there because his tv was broken. Neither of us could really sleep so we ended up talking for the last three hours of the flight.
When we finally got to England and after the long ordeal of going through customs, I made the long and confusing trip to the central bus station to catch the bus as my directions to Cambridge told me to do. Unfortunately, I was told that every single bus was full so I had to take the underground. Well, I was kind of thrown by this. I had no idea what station I was actually starting from, but I was told to go to King’s Cross. Well, that was the slowest train ever. I kept falling asleep but I had to hold my luggage up and I didn’t want to get lost so that actually didn’t work out well. I finally got to King’s Cross and then had no idea where to go. I apparently had to switch from an underground train to a commuter train up to Cambridge leaving from platform 7. Sadly it was through a different gate than 9 3/4 but there was a display with a trolley with Hedwig halfway through the wall that I could take a picture of. The line to get your picture taken pushing it into the wall had like 50 people, though, and I had to catch my train so I didn’t push it myself.

Once the train got me to Cambridge I caught a taxi over to Gonville and Caius (pronounced Keys) which is the campus I attend. It was really nice to see familiar faces from New Hampshire after struggling for hours to get there. I was taken to my flat (and a professor carried my luggage for me which was lovely because there were many stairs involved) which is in Rose Crescent. Basically you go down a little side road across from campus and there is a little red door in the midst of a bustling street with little shops and that is the front door to the apartment building. I was told I have an especially cool room because I am one of two to have a loft- like apartment. When you open the door you see my desk and drawers and such, and then my bed is up a couple steps. The bathroom is just next door (and nicer than the other side of the hallway’s bathroom). There is also a little kitchenette down the hall with laundry machines in it.

We were given a little tour around campus and Stephen Hawkings’ office was pointed out to us, though we are told sightings of him are rare. There are little DNA strands all over because Crick either went here or taught here or something. We also got a chance to borrow some items like a fan and hangers that were abandoned by previous students which I sorely needed. The dining hall is indeed fabulous and Hogwartsy, though un-air conditioned. I kept falling asleep through dinner (which was quite embarrassing) but I found most of it not to my liking. They asked if I would like soup or salad (without mention of what each kind was) so I foolishly chose soup. It was yellow mystery vegetable soup while the salad was actually some sort of fried wonton thing. I forgot the food lesson I learned last time I was in England – everything is a lie! The next course was salmon slathered in sour marinara sauce which I didn’t eat but the potatoes on the side were delicious. Then desert was some sort of mystery cake I didn’t care for that seemed to be part banana bread, part tiramisu, covered in butterscotch.

After dinner I went to the McDonald’s near my apartment to get food I could eat but British McDonalds isn’t the same. They have strange menu items like fish sticks, McFlurries with twix or
Mars bars, and pineapple sticks. I got a Big Mac but it had almost no special sauce and wasn’t very good. Today I’ll try the little Greek restaurant instead.
Today the Tour de France is going through town so I’m very excited. It also means the street to get to campus is closed so we had to learn a complicated back route to get to the dining hall for breakfast this morning. I will watch the tour and continue to collect necessities today. Class starts tomorrow and I’m looking forward to that quite a bit. 🙂