Something I keep forgetting to mention:

A week or so ago while Jeff and I were reading on the lawn in Selwyn Garden, a photographer approached us and asked us to pose for a couple pictures he was taking for the newspaper he worked for. Being relatively open-minded people we obliged. A couple days later, this picture was in the Cambridge Independent, accompanying an article about Selwyn College and how it's up and rising amongst the colleges at the University of Cambridge. We, the American study abroad students from USC, are the representatives of Selwyn College. How funny is that! I never got a chance to see a hard copy (although apparently Lindsay's lecturer passed it around their class), but here's a link to the internet article: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/poorer-college-tops-cambridge-degree-table-878699.html

In other news, today Thea and I went for a cruise up and down the River Thames, which was our last go at sightseeing in London. Right now I'm hanging out in St. Pancras, the Eurorail station from London. In a couple hours time I will be peacing out to Paris, France, the newest and last leg of my journey! I'm really excited to implement my hopefully not too horrible French. I'm also going to have to get used to using Euros now...

Last day using GBP...

So Thea and I realized this morning that we in fact leave for Paris not on Tuesday, as we'd originally thought all weekend, but actually tomorrow, haha. So it was a good thing we figured that out today! Anyway, we kind of had to rush to finish seeing everything we wanted to. Thea woke me up again (she's so responsible like that, and also very patient, as many of you know I am a very difficult person to wake up).

By the way, I feel like I should chronicle the hostel experience, since it's entirely new to me and probably unfamiliar to a lot of you as well. There are 6 of us crammed in one room, co-ed, with a tiny sink and a decent amount of floor space. We're bunked together in these little cubible beds, I'm on one of the top bunks (woohoo) and everytime I climb down I'm afraid I'm going to kill myself. The bed itself is springy and not that comfortable, and continuing in the UK's adamant opposition to air conditioning, the room gets really stuffy and hot since air does not circulate. But you meet all sorts of interesting people from all over, and it's really a great experience so far... that is, I'm not miserable yet, haha. We'll wait and see how the Paris one is before I make a final determination.

We left our hostel again around 10 and went to the British Museum first. This is the largest museum I think I've ever been to before, not even kidding. We got an audio tour with some 50-odd highlights, and after an hour and a half we'd seen maybe 20 before deciding to head out. We got to see the Rosetta Stone, which was really neat, along with really well-preserved corpses from ancient Egypt, an entire samurai armor outfit, the Royal game of Ur and the Oxus Treasure, amongst many other interesting treasures. We got lunch at a cute little cafe in the park right outside the museum, and then headed to the British Library. They had an interesting exhibition on an old Indian story, the name of which I forget. We also got to see one of the remaining original copies of the Magna Carta, and also some of the fair play notes of Beatles songs. Also of note was Virigina Woolf's original handwritten copy of Mrs. Dalloway, which was really exciting!

Afterwards, we got back on the tube and went south a ways to get to Kensington Palace, where William and Mary lived, along with several other later British kings and queens. We got to tour the State apartments which were quite impressive, and also see a collection of Princess Diana's dresses, all of which were fabulous. Kensington Park was also a lovely walk-through. Finally, we stopped at Harrod's on the way back, a designer department store with absolutely exorbitant prices. We spent like 15 minutes there before I realized that it was far too ridiculous for me to expect to buy anything there. So, we went to H&M instead :) where I got a lovely grey cardigan (I've been wanting one the whole time I was in Cambridge, so it's been a long time coming).

So that about wraps up London, we have a little more time tomorrow before we leave, but the next time I update, je serais a Paris!!!! Or to translate for you anglophiles, I'll be in Paris :)

A demain!

Sightseeing and such

So Thea and I had our first authentically tourist day in London! We woke up fairly early and were out of our hostel in time to get to the National Gallery when it opened at 10am. Thea and I took the highlights audio tour, so we got to see all of the most famed works like da Vinci, etc. The tour was really impressive, very informative and detailed, and we were there for an hour and a half.

Next, we were going to make our way to the south end of London, so we hopped on the tube, but the lines that would take us there were closed so we were a little bit thrown off. But we were able to find the corresponding bus route, so the two of us legitimately had a Londonesque double decker experience. It surprisingly didn't take that long, and we grabbed lunch at a pizza place in St. Catherine's docks before heading over to the Tower of London. It is a MASSIVE castle where many of the British kings and queens have lived, and where a lot of notorious people have been executed (Anne Boleyn, Jane Gray, etc.) We also got to see the crown jewels and they are fabulous, particularly the Imperial Crown of India. Additionally, we got some sweet views of the Tower Bridge.

After that we walked over to St. Paul's Cathedral, where we walked up a total of some 800-odd stairs to get to one of the highest points in London, and certainly one of the best views. You could see practically the entire city, it was pretty overwhelming. I got a little bit dizzy going up just from all the stairs! Afterwards we went to the Tate Modern, which was also a really cool museum, with an especially incredible urban photography exhibit that i loved. We were sort of museumed out by that point, not to mention tired from walking around the south end all day and those stairs, so we hustled back to the station at St. Paul's (the closest one whose lines would take us to Leicester Square) and met up with Corbin, Katherine and Kristen, all USC kids from Cambridge. It's been really good to see them the last two nights, sort of extending my Cambridge experience and making it easier that it's ended, haha. Now Thea and I are back at the hostel and my internet time is about to run out again, but I'll try to update again tomorrow- we're going to the British Museum and Library!

Cambridge: fin

the last several days of Cambridge post-essays were so much fun! Wednesday after class, I went back to Grant Chester with Ning, Jeff and his friend Shawn who flew out to visit him. We went swimming in the Granta, which feeds into the river Cam. It was chilly, muddy and kinda gross, but so much fun just to splash around and be silly. Since it's been really humid/warm all this week, it felt doubly nice. That night, a group of us went to a club called the Fez, and after we got back stayed up in the garden watching daylight come out and being generally ridiculous.

Thursday night was the last dinner at Selwyn Dining Hall, so it was a formal one. We all got dressed up fancy, the boys looked especially dapper in their suits and ties, and enjoyed our last meal all together. They served us wine which was very enjoyable :) To celebrate our final night in Cambridge, we didn't even go out anywhere but stayed in my room and had a low-key, chill night enjoying each other's company. I am so sad that the program is over, I've met such amazing people who I've become so close to in the last 4 weeks. When I left for Europe ago, I never imagined that I would form such close bonds with everyone, but the friendships i've forged have far surpassed my expecations. At least the USC kids I will be able to have semi-regular reunions, and everyone else is required to visit me in LA!! Here's a USC group shot:

So this morning I checked out of the room, Rex and I took a cab to the train station and I was off to London for the second time! I found the hostel and Thea, and we spent the day wandering around. We went to Westminster Abbey and the Churchill War Room/Museum, both of which were really interesting and engaging, and also large and slightly overwhelming, haha. This evening we met up with Corbin, Katherine and Kristen who are all still in London, and we got Indian food (my third round since I've been here, mmmm) before seeing Spamalot, which was excellent and hysterical. I liked it even more than Avenue Q.

Well, I'm writing this on the computer at the hostel and my internet time is about to run off. Sorry I won't have any more pictures for a while, but I'll try to keep updating regularly! To all my Cambridge crew: keep it debonair.

Freedom!!!

So I finished my papers this weekend, which is super exciting because it gives me the rest of this week to fully enjoy the remaining time I have left here at Cambridge! I leave Friday morning and will be taking the train back to London, where I will be meeting up with Thea and resuming my adventures there :) But until then, I am content to live it up here. I will be really sad when it ends, I've met some amazing people and while a lot of them I'll be able to see again at USC, some of them I won't and I'll miss them a lot.

Corbin's birthday was Sunday, so that morning we went to Kings' College and met up with his friend Tomoko there for brunch. It was the same full English breakfast but at a later time than 9am, so I preferred it, haha. This pic is of me, Tomoko, Corbin, Meredith and Nick. That night, we had an ambitious night planned out of clubbing and pubbing but we only made it to the Anchor before realizing that we were all too exhausted to continue. All of my running around on little sleep finally caught up to me that night and it was the first time since I've been here that I've slept for more than 8 hours at night (except the first night when I was seriously jetlagged).

Last night I met up with Khushboo at Revolution and we got to party together for the first time!! It was seriously fun, I got her to drink the Absolut Chambulls (our crew's staple drink there) and we danced together of course, we were a little bit ridiculous. Hopefully I'll get to see her a little bit more this week before I leave!

normalcy

Sorry for the lack of updating!! So it hasn't been a very exciting last few days here, it's been kind of low-key since I've been doing research for my papers, finally. I've been doing a lot of reading in the Selwyn garden the last couple of days since it's been so nice outside! I just take out a blanket and my books and iPod, it's really relaxing. Although the lawns are so well-kept-up, the grass isn't that springy/comfortable, but it's still nice.


On Tuesday, Jeff and I went out to high tea for the first time which was yummy. We went to a place called Auntie's tea shop, and I got the standard cream tea which came with a cress and egg sandwich, two scones, and of course tea. It was a cute little experience, definitely an authentic British one. And the scones were delicious with the clotted cream and strawberry jam!



And yesterday I got my first ice cream cone from one of the many vendors that line the streets of Cambridge. This doesn't sound that exciting until you actually see the double scoops- it's a double cone!!! Super cute, right?? Although a bit melty.

Today we went to The Eagle, a really famous pub in Cambridge that I hadn't been to yet. I had my first British fish and chips which were simultaneously excellent and greasy. We also had pints of Carling, a really tasty lager, and glasses of water with ICE and LEMON!! (you probably don't understand how revolutionary this is, but in Britain all eating establishments are opposed to ice in drinks. The customer service in general is also markedly worse than in the states.)

My papers are going well, I'm almost finished with one and expect to get the other done before Sunday night, which is Corbin's birthday. That way, I'll have all of next week to explore the last of Cambridge, see anything else that I haven't. On the to-do list are punting (actually doing it ourselves this time), the Botanical Garden, Trinity and St. John's College, so I'll have more to document here. Plus, I'll have more time to blog once I actually get these papers done!! Next updates will be both better and more frequent, I swear. (And better-formatted... sorry about that, but I'm too lazy to fix it or make it look prettier right now.) Hope you're all doing well! :)

London: my first taste

In a nutshell… London was AMAZING! I’d flown into Heathrow, so it wasn’t exactly my first time there, but obviously I hadn’t really had time to see any of it while I was there, so I was really looking forward to exploring the big city. Thus follow my exploits, replete with many a picture (yay!):

We departed kinda later Friday than we’d intended because it took a while to rally the troops (there were 6 of us total and I was the only girl… haha), but we finally left Selwyn a little after noon, and walked over to the train station which took maybe 20 minutes. The train to London lasted about 40 minutes because it was the express one that didn’t stop until it got to London. We embarked at King’s Cross and from there immediately transferred to the Underground to tube over to our hotel, which wasn’t too far away from our stop at Great Portland Street. Our hotel room was pretty cozy what with 6 people! We arrived there probably around 4 and just chilled in the room for a while before hopping back on the tube to go get dinner at a pub and meet up with some other USC girls. We all then went to see Avenue Q, which was hilarious! I’d heard some of the songs before but never actually seen the musical, so that was really entertaining. Afterwards we went back on the tube to Soho and spent most of the night at a place called Bar Soho. The drinks were kind of expensive but it was a really fun time anyway. At the end of the night we all packed into our room (3 of us on the bed, 3 scattered throughout the floor space).

Saturday, we wanted to wake up around 10 so that we could meet with Kimberly (our program director) for lunch, but we’d been out late the night before and missed it. Four of us (me, Jeff, Corbin and Chase) were going to see King Lear at The Globe that afternoon, so we tubed it over there before the show started at 2. The performance was incredible- I’d read King Lear freshman year so I could follow the story, and the acting was really stellar. And watching a Shakespearean play acted out in a replica of the original Globe was seriously cool. I’m really glad we had seats though, there were a lot of standing seats and the performance was at least 3 hours; that would have been a long time to stand!

After that, we went back to the hotel and met back up with the other two (Rex and Nick) before going out to an AMAZING Indian restaurant. Seriously, talk to any one of us and we will keep gushing about it. The naan was incredible. British Indian food is renowned and I now know why… we are going to get some for sure back here at Cambridge. Later that night, most of the group went to an underground indie club close to our hotel, but Jeff and I wanted to go out to Soho, so the two of us met up with another USC student Ning and went to Heaven, an ENORMOUS club- it had three separate dance floors/DJs and like 5 bars throughout. We stayed there really late, by the time we left it was daylight again! But it was a fun trek home to our hotel (the tube was closed and we didn’t know the bus routes well enough, so Jeff and I walked all the way back to our hotel). Here is a triumphant picture of the three of us having survived to the morning:


This morning, we woke up around 11 because we had to check out of our hotel by noon. We did so successfully and split up again. Armed with our packed bags, Jeff, Corbin and I tubed to Westminster and saw Big Ben, and also walked around the House of Parliament which is a really neat building, although there's so much security and restricted civilian access you can't see that much of it. We then had a hilariously awful lunch at a local pub before walking over to Buckingham Palace. Unfortunately, there weren’t any of the guards around, but it was still neat to see. It's actually a pretty underwhelming building- grey and rectangular, but the front gates are gorgeous and they all have gold incorporated into it. Afterwards, we walked to the tube station at Victoria, which took us back to King’s Cross where we caught a train to Cambridge and got back around 5pm.

Overall, it was a fabulous whirlwind weekend and I absolutely fell in love with London. My favorite part of being there was just walking around and absorbing the city’s culture and sights, even if we didn’t really have enough time to do much of touristy sightseeing. I definitely got a bearing for London and am really looking forward to exploring it further in two weeks with Thea! But now I’m back to the grindstone, class starts again tomorrow and it’s nigh time to start considering work on my essays… hmm…