Week 8: Cambridge

Wednesday 

13 November 2013

A couple of weeks ago, when my brother was leaving home for 2 years, I was going on my last day trip to Cambridge. What a fun time! It was a pretty fall day, and everyone was in good spirits because we didn't have to be on the coach until 9am.

The first thing I did when I got to Cambridge was go Punting on the Cam. I didn't know what that meant until the second that it was happening, but I learned pretty quick. Cam is Old English for river, and a punt is a special type of boat that is steered by someone pushing a long stick-thing through the water. When I first saw the boats I did NOT want to go, because they literally are so flimsy looking and really level with the water. Our guide assured us that the boats can't ever flip over though because of the way they are made (I'm not sure if I believe that).

A boat with my name on it

A boat with my friend Cat's name on it

And me and Cat who just happened to be sitting next to each other

Our Punter Tim. He had a pretty hard job pushing us around but he did great 

A bridge built by some famous science person

Kings College Cathedral

Another college, for really rich kids

The boat ride was the best thing I did at Cambridge. I can't even believe how pretty it was. The river follows the trail of the colleges at Cambridge, so we got to see some pretty incredible architecture, and learn some cool facts about the school and the town. For example, there is one very old and famous bridge over the river which is how Cambridge got its name (River=Cam+Bridge=Cambridge). 

After our boat tour we got a walking tour around the school. My groups tour guide was a graduate of Cambridge and was a scientist, so his skills in humor were very lacking. He kept making fun of Americans, and then he got mad when he thought we weren't paying good enough attention to him. In the end he gave us free postcards though, so I guess that was nice of him. He took us to lots of the science buildings, which was cool because in one of them Watson and Crick discovered DNA, which had kind of been an important discovery.

Kings College Cathedral

Watson and Crick DNA

Cool clock in the center of time. There was a lot of symbolism behind it but I've forgotten now

Inside one of the colleges

Outside of the Cathedral

The stained glass of the Cathedral

Inside the Kings College Cathedral

Evensong by candlelight

The way Cambridge works is different than American Universities. There are separate colleges which people have to apply to get into the school. When they get accepted they live at that college for pretty much their whole school career. There are special apartments there, a dining hall, and all the classes in there at the college. Each college is gated with its own courtyard and everything. You aren't allowed to walk on the grass anywhere in the colleges unless you are a special graduate. We saw one lonely man walking on the grass and I was so tempted to run and join him. The colleges have rivalries with each other, almost as big as the rivalry they have with the Other School (which is Oxford, but we weren't allowed to say that when we were at Cambridge). It was cool to learn about the different colleges and their histories.

Our last activity of the day was going to Evensong at the Kings College Cathedral. It was so good. The guys in the choir are apart of Kings College and study music, so part of their schooling is participating in Evensong. There were candles in the Cathedral and the music was nice. It was the perfect way to end our last day trip!

Week 7: Beginning of Christmas

Sunday-Saturday

03-09 November 2013

On Sunday I was able to go to Stake Conference, which was really nice, and then my apartment had a roommate dinner. Cooking for 9 in our apartments kitchen isn't really easy, but we like to stay positive in Apartment #1. In fact, we were so upbeat and fun that we ended up having a sing off with another apartment across the way. And then our professor's family who live directly across from us challenged us to a dance off. We were so prepared, but they chickened out. A dance battle is in the immediate future though, which should be pretty funny.

Tuesday was Guy Fawkes Day which is a celebration over a failed conspiracy to blow up Parliament. There was a fireworks display happening but it was an hour away from my apartment so I didn't make it.

Wednesday we took another day trip. We ended up in Portsmouth which is kind of like Liverpool in that it's right by the water and they do a lot of shipping stuff there. We went to another Maritime Museum. This one was pretty neat because they had an actual ship that they got out of the ocean and partly restored. They also had lots of fun interactive games, which were for children, but I still enjoyed.

There's the ship

One can only handle so much of Maritime Museums before getting bored, so I left a little bit early and went to the Cadbury Outlet. It wasn't as incredible as I thought it would be, and I don't even like Cadbury chocolate that much (which is kind of sacrilegious when you're in England), but I found my favorite chocolate from Europe which made me really happy!

We had one more ship to look at before we left. Turns out, the bottom of the ship was where the opening scene to the Les Mis movie was filmed! I didn't get a picture because no one told me until after we left. I don't remember the names of any of these ships, but the one that was actual in that water that we got to walk around in was neat. It actually is still used by the Royal Navy, and they host dinners on it. It was massive from the outside, but everyone was so short back in the day that things felt very claustrophobic. And from what our tour guide said about the lifestyle of sailors, things were pretty gross on the ship. And painful. I'm glad I live in the 21st century.

Just down there a starved Hugh Jackman sang his heart out to Les Mis. 

The happy looking part of the ship.

The belly of the beast. Some pretty horrible stuff happened down here while gross rats watched.

I still don't know how I feel about these shirts... (A futtock is curved timber used to make the ship)

We left Portsmouth for Chawton which is actually where Jane Austen lived and wrote. We got to tour a house and I got to play an old time piano. It was nice, and they had cool displays up for us to look at.

Dress worn in the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice.

I was very concentrated.

Our last stop was Winchester Cathedral. Like most cathedrals it was beautiful and calm. I found Jane Austen's grave thing inside the cathedral, took some pictures, and then walked around some cute shops that already had Christmas lights up. We always seem to go to the cutest places for the shortest amount of time. Luckily London has some lights up now too!

Thursday I ended up being late to class so I tried to rush my way through the Underground. And I ended up falling flat on my face on the escalator. I've fallen going up stairs a lot, and it's never pleasant. Miraculously I was the only one around, which is pretty lucky because it was rush hour. My knee still hurts, but my ego is doing much better. I saw a Christmas ice rink on the way home from school which helped ease the pain too!

Friday I saw Gravity which was such a good movie! The theatre I saw it at was really weird though, and it felt like I was in a home theatre in someones basement.

Saturday I tried to go to a Christmas lighting ceremony at Oxford Circus. A lot of bands were performing, and then Ty Burrell from Modern Family was going to turn the lights on. I thought I would be able to get a good view but it was PACKED! Instead of giving up, I decided to do some shopping. I didn't get to see the performances, or the lights turn on, but I did get to see a little bit of fireworks which put me in a festive mood. Since Thanksgiving isn't celebrated here Christmas prep starts right after Halloween and I have been loving every minute of it!

I love fireworks, especially when they're Christmas themed! 

Week 6: North Trip pt. 2

Wednesday-Saturday

30 October- 02 November

Wednesday morning my group had a free day and I decided to go on a boat ride on the lake. Best decision! I don't have the group shots, but the scenery shots are a lot better. 

Then we went on our drive to Edinburgh. We got into our hotel and walked around the city. We passed by the café that JK Rowling wrote down the concept for Harry Potter, and then we happened upon a graveyard that is supposedly haunted. It was very dark by that point which made it hard to find what we were looking for, which was the gravestone of a person that has the same name as a Harry Potter character. I didn't know that we were looking for anything, so I was very confused as to why we were wandering around a graveyard at night. That was the first of many graveyard walks in Edinburgh.

This is the grave of someone called Tom Riddle. If you have read Harry Potter, the name will sound familiar. 

Graveyard. Part of the reason I haven't updated things on my blog more regularly is because other people don't upload their pictures often enough and I happen to be in quite a few of them. We got some pretty funny group shots in the graveyard which sounds like we were being disrespectful, but we weren't we were all just scared.

Just one of the castles in Edinburgh at night.

The city.

On Halloween we took a walk with the funniest Scottish woman ever up to a big castle. Edinburgh has so many castles I just couldn't believe it. After the walk we had some time to explore the city. I got somewhat purposefully lost on the way to another art gallery, and got to take some really good pictures. 

Yummy food in Scotland.

This is inside the bathroom of the Elephant Café, the place where JK Rowling wrote part of Harry Potter. Fans have converted the bathroom walls to write notes to her/about how much they love Harry Potter. In order to go to the bathroom you have to buy something. I was planning on eating there instead of going to the art museum, but I started to feel very guilty, so I snuck into the bathroom to look at the wall, took in the vibe of the place, and then left.

Since it was Halloween, I tried to take part in the Halloween spirit. I went to a fun pub called Frankenstein's which had some cool decorations up. Then I dressed up and went on a Haunted Ghost Tour. Normally I would've never done something like that because I hate getting scared, but I kind of got peer pressured. It turned out to not even be scary, and I was actually a little upset because it was so long and I was very tired. We heard a lot of scary stories about gross things people did in Scotland and then we passed a lot of rowdy drunk people on our way to the hotel. Scotland has such a pleasant feeling, everyone is so nice, but they definitely love to drink. Even when it wasn't Halloween, the pubs were packed. 

Walking back from the museum, trying to get in the Halloween spirit.

Decorations at dinner.

Starbucks pumpkin spice hot chocolate is delicious, and the drew a Halloween thing on it for me. This is in place of pictures of the group of us who went on ghost tours and dressed up.

Friday we left Scotland to return back to England. We stopped at the border and got to take in the beautiful Scottish countryside. I wish we had spent time in the Highlands. I really think we could've spent a whole week in Scotland alone. I straddled the dividing line so I could say I was in two places in once. Technically I think you can be in two places at once all the time, but I think that saying I've been in Scotland and England at the same time is a little more special.

We took a lunch break in Thirsk. I would not recommend visiting Thirsk ever. It smelled pretty bad. We stopped at Hadrian's Wall which is some remnant of the Romans. I don't really remember much about it. Once you've been in Rome and seen actually Roman ruins, the rest doesn't seem to matter that much. The cool thing was that we got to walk on the ruins. 

Ruins.

Then we ended up in York. We went to the All Saints Day mass at York Cathedral. Although there were things I didn't believe in, I enjoyed the singing and the overall experience. I went to dinner and then set off for the hostel with my friend. I thought I knew where we were going, but over an hour later we realized we were very, very lost. We had almost walked back to Thirsk! It was pitch black and my phone wasn't working, but luckily we found a place to ask for directions. That was not one of my better moments/memories. 

We weren't allowed to take picture in the cathedral, but I did anyway.

The last stop of the day was at Fountains Abbey, which kind of reminded me of Stourhead but in a darker way. My professor explained it like this, "Stourhead invokes Jane Austen, Fountains Abbey invokes the Bronte sisters." I think that's a very accurate description, even though I don't know too much about the Brontes. The main attraction is the gothic Abbey that is in ruins. It was huge, and I thought it was a city, not a church. I love walking around ancient things like that. We did some more walking around, saw some pretty lakes, and then got on the bus heading home.

Funny story: 4 of us were walking around the ruins together and we ended up in this tunnel-like place. It was really echoey and we were in a Christmas mood, so we sang the opening lines to the song "Snow" from the movie White Christmas. It was funny because we tried really hard to harmonize, but we just couldn't get it right.

The North Trip was our last overnight outing on this study abroad. I had so much fun, but I am grateful that we are done with hostels and bus rides and eating out (by force rather than choice. I'll probably still eat out, but it won't have to be at a gas station). Coming back I've realized that I don't have much time left in London, and I really need to make the most of things. My mission now is to figure out what I still want to do and make plans to get it all done!