On Monday we had an awesome short lesson by Matt Moen and some yummy food via the senior missionaries that were there. Surprisingly enough, Haven showed up. None of us had seen him in ages. He and I sat together and discussed the lesson a bit. Afterwards, we all went to climb castle hill for a view of the city. Haven almost didn't come but I talked him into it. While on the hill, he and I started joking about objectifying people. I joked that as long as I can objectify others, I don't mind being objectified. He asked if I was a butt and legs or a pecs and arms type of girl and I asked him if he was a boobs or butt guy. It was just funny.
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| Alessandra and me on Castle Hill |
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| The crowd. Craig, Chelsea, a local member, Haven, Chris, Sydnie, Joe, Parker, Alessandra, Richard, Stephanie, Tyler, Maddie, Maria, Spencer, and Matt in front with me |
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| The sunset is getting more and more beautiful |
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| A view of King's College |
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| Spencer, Matt, and Haven being strange |
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| Girl picture with Maddie, Sydnie, Stephanie, me, Alessandra, Chelsey, Maria, and the local member |
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| Girl picture being photobombed by Spencer, Matt, and Haven |
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| Sometimes I see random punting poles stuck in the soft mud under the river. |
Art class was fun. We had a massive setup this time and we just went at it. I'm actually pretty proud of my finished product. I would love to continue painting when I get home. I know I'm not very good but it is just fun.
I decided to contact Anna (ala the Clark clan) because I thought it would be a shame to be in England and not at least contact her. Luckily enough, she was actually planning on coming to Cambridge that week! She wanted to see the missionaries to ask questions initially, but she ended up talking to the Thetford bishop instead anyways. Apparently she had left the church and had her name removed because her parents, who had just left, pressured her to. She said that she actually is considering being re baptized. She married an American Air Force guy and knows she's going to be moving around a lot and she thought that being a member of the church would be good for her and her son as they move around. I told her that the church was a great way to have an automatic community that you belong no matter where you go and it made moving around a little easier. She said that she loved growing up in the church and wanted that for her son. I hope she goes through with it!
Anyways, I haven't seen her in probably 17 years but we've been facebook friends for about 5 years. It was really fun to meet up with a local friend! We walked around Cambridge and then behind. Unfortunately I couldn't think of much that would be fun for little Leo. I'm glad I kept in contact with her! It's good to have friends and connections all around the world.
After Anna's visit, I went home to get ready for the formal hall dinner that night. But instead of getting ready, I came down with a massive migraine. I probably took every drug I could and tried to nap it off. A couple times I attempted to get up to grab cloths for the formal and would collapse on the ground shaking. I almost threw up a couple times, even. Finally in despair I laid down in bed shaking and queezy resigned to my horrible luck that night. After about 20 minutes I thought of how this was an opportunity I would never have again and after giving myself a little pep talk I forced myself out of bed and got dressed and headed out. The whole walk there I was shaking but already feeling like I could function. That time I had signed up for Pembroke so I had a bit of a walk to go. I missed cocktail hour and was a little late for dinner. The man at the front door said "you're late." I said "I know' and he let me in. Because I was late there was nowhere to sit down by my friends so I sat by some randoms. I guess the food was all I needed because my migraine finally started to dissipate.
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| Jonathan, my dinner mate. His girlfriend was on his other side. I caught them holding hands and he acted embarrassed and it was funny at the time... |
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| After the dinner I ran into Chelsey and a friend, Brianna. The first picture was taken with a flash and Chelsey and I were washed out. Next we tried without flash and we couldn't see Brianna. It was funny. We had to decide if we would rather see Brianna or Chelsey and me. |
After Formal, I ran into Chelsey and Haven who were planning a little trip to Stratford upon Avon to see the Royal Shakespeare company perform Hamlet. They invited me to come along and I was more than happy to! Chelsey and Haven figured out renting a car and I bought my ticket online.
So weeks ago I had discussed doing a belly dancing night with Salma, one of the Egyptian students. Kailey and Kylie are friends with more Egyptians than me and kind of took the plan over and I was a little bit forgotten. Thankfully Salma informed me that Thursday night was the night for belly dancing. We met for punting first which was really fun. The Egyptian girls brought some cookies and we had a little relaxing time on the river.
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| Darwin's Collage |
Kailey and Kylie were gifted with awesome hip wraps for belly dancing. Because only Salma really knew I was coming along for belly dancing, I didn't get one and I tried hard not to be extremely jealous. However, the experience was salvaged by the fact that I was the only one of us three white girls that was actually not too bad at belly dancing! They laughed at Kylie and Kailey had given up but they would complement my skills, so I felt much better about it, haha. They said with a little practice I would be as good as any Egyptian! It was fun. They tried to have us teach them how to American dance which... There isn't really a skill. You just dance. It was really fun. A couple of them took off their head scarves and I felt extremely touched to be allowed to see their hair. They are such beautiful girls, and man can they dance! It's a really sexy dance. Egyptian bros are quite lucky. After taking the scarf off my hips, I had them teach me how to wear it on my head. It was lovely! I had a great time with the cultural experience. Maybe I should write a travel essay on it!
On Friday, Haven, Spencer, Chelsey, and I made our way to Stratford-upon-Avon. Haven and Chelsey successfully navigated us there with a few hiccups due to some insane roundabouts. Haven only got us killed once by trying to turn into the right lane while looking the wrong direction. Thankfully for us Spencer was paying attention and warned us. While at the town we wondered up and down the streets a bit and Chelsey and I went into Shakespeare's birthplace. I bought a book of Shakespeare's sonnets there.
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| Glove and bag making station |
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| The boy's room |
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| girls room looking into boys room |
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| the apprentice's room |
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| where the great bard was born |
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| Spencer being the town fool |
We then made our way up to the Swan Theater for Hamlet. At first I looked through a display of various costumes for plays done in the past and it was fun to see various interpretations of different plays.
The play itself was soooo good! At first I was a little put off by Hamlet's overly dramatic performance. He was over the top pouty and would wail a little. As the play went on I was more ok with it, though. I even cried at the end! It was wonderful. The "to be or not to be" scene was great. Hamlet walked out and saw Ophelia and the speech was kind of sparked on him contemplating if he's really doing the right thing in the context of what he was about to do to her. When he finally confronts her it was really brutal. He tore off her cloths and smeared mud on her face.
The interpretation was interesting. They were all about modern jousting. The king's ghost was really freaky too! he was in a jousting outfit and walked really freaky and had a strange hand twitch. Every time he came out the lights would go out except for strobe lights at the base of the stage and he would disappear and reapear at times. they carried that throughout the play which was really cool. I enjoyed it. Below is the link to the trailer and some of the pictures that you can find online.
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| The best I could do at capturing the stage during intermission |
After the play, we decided not to eat (which I regretted later) to find Anne Hathaway's cottage. It was pretty easy to find which was a surprise because Haven said that when he went with Dr. Kerry they got lost and it took forever. Haven climbed the fence into he garden and I was about to say "Yolo!" but Josh says that's a poor man's carpe diem so I said carpe diem instead. Haven said "I will seize the carpe" and went over the fence.
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| Haven the Rogue |
After that we got lost for like 30 minutes and decided to head back into town to find internet. We found some in a pub and found a way back. I fell asleep eventually but apparently Haven was really tired and they had to stop a couple times. I didn't get back home until like 3am and I was so tired I didn't eat.
On Saturday I had to walk to Grantchester for my Travel Writing class. I asked online if anyone would want to come with me but no one replied in time so I set out on my own. Although I would have rather gone with someone, it was actually really nice to go on a walk by myself. It ended up being about 6 miles in all and took me four hours. I took zigzagging paths, ate in a pub at Grantchester, and stopped a few times to enjoy my surrounding. I was a little lost on my way there but thankfully figured it out. My walk back was great. I wasn't in a hurry and found little paths by the river that I followed.
I wrote an essay for Travel Writing on my little trip to Grantchester. Here it is:
The walk from Grantchester to
Cambridge is almost reminiscent of the walk Miss Elizabeth Bennet
took to the town of Meryton where she had the pleasure of meeting new
acquaintances. But Meryton is a fictional town made of by Jane Austin
for her book, Pride and Prejudice.
The walk between Grantchester and Cambridge is completely real full
of completely real women.
What women must
have walked this path two or three hundred years ago? Did high
society women take the path for a leisurely stroll? Those women with
expensive bonnets on their curls and parasols clutched in gloved
hands and layers of petticoats, undergarments, and even corsets.
Although I don't know, I quite doubt it. The women must have been
either been poor gentle-folk (like the Bennet sisters) or
working-class women who made their way into Cambridge to run various
errands.
These
days, women are primarily young mothers with small children
accompanied either by their husbands or by their own mothers. These
little children were having fun running around as their mothers
strolled comfortably behind with their prams more often than not
filled with purses rather than with a children.
One child ran
ahead of his mother to scope out for flowers. "Mommy, where are
there more flowers?" He called behind him.
"Here
are some, darling" she replied lovingly, "but don't pick
those! They will hurt you!" She pointed at extremely thorny
thistles. The boy picked some white delicate
flowers and ran to his mother to present her with his findings.
"Thank you darling" she said lovingly as he ran off for the
next find.
Another little
child went by on a tricycle with a pusher attached to the back.
"Mommy, can you push me?" he asked.
"No.
Keep peddling." she said. Her husband started to push and she
looked at him sideways. Her other child whizzed further
ahead of her on a scooter.
"Very good!" she called out.
Other
women were also present on the trail. One was sitting on a
bench weeping on an older
gentleman's
shoulder. He
held her close. "I just don't think I can hold it together
anymore,"
she
told him in despair. She
could have been talking about any number of scenarios. Was a
relationship falling apart? Was
she falling behind on work? The older gentleman must have been a
grandfather or a godfather.
There
were also groups of friends who rode by on bikes joking about their
love-lives. More women were strolling by the river with their cameras
observing swans and taking pictures of quaint gates. Couples also
walked the path hand-in-hand. It was usually these who would give me
a smile and a nod as we passed ways.
And then there is
me, an American student on a summer program walking the path all by
myself, notebook and camera in hand. I imagined away the modern
clothes and the sounds of distant cars, and I was easily transported
back a few hundred years when a different set of women walked this
way.
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| I could go swimming! But the water is gross. |
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It was so fun walking by myself! I sat down by the river to write down some thoughts for my essay in my journal and i looked down by my feet and there were tons of tadpoles swimming around. When I listened closely I heard a frog ribbiting in the distance. I tried to find him but he was nowhere to be found. It was fun. I felt like a kid again. I like being able to slow down and enjoy my surroundings like that.
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| There was no one there to document that I was in Grantchester so selfies it was. |
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| Wondering through a tiny wilderness reserve |
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| Geese! |
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| I had no idea what those animals were. At first I wondered if they were maybe boars. A couple wondering by couldn't tell either. They wondered if they were sheep. I think they were goats, but I'm still not sure. |
At a park I saw a guy trying to get his Rottweiler to jump up and catch a branch. The dog succeeded a couple times but he would often try so hard he would fall on his back and go reeling. It was funny.
I got back just in time to grab some dinner at King's. Because I hadn't eaten much the past couple of days I think my stomach had actually shrunk because I couldn't put much down. I sat by Heeje and it was the first extended human contact I'd had all day. I think that after that I just went into my room for an early night.
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