Ely

Yesterday, Tanya, Alex, and I went to Ely, a small small town just 15 minutes north of Cambridge by train. We're in English Architectural History together, and will be studying the Gothic style this week, so Ely was the perfect place to see it up close and personal. The train trip further proved that everything in this part of England is flat, and most of it is green. And look, blue sky again!
Ely Cathedral is over 900 years old (100 years older than Cambridge University!) and was built when the town of Ely was originally an island in the marsh. Folklore says that the town got its names from the large number of eels that were swimming around the island. The Cathedral, also known as "The Ship of the Fens" is huge. HUGE. This tower is 215 feet high.

It was built and rebuilt over hundreds of years, though, so it isn't all Gothic per se. There are rounded arches and other Romanesque features, but the whole thing is just simply beautiful, and remarkably coherent (at least to my untrained eye). This is a look down the center of the Cathedral, or the nave:

In one of the little side chapels, they had embroidered pillows hanging off the backs of the chairs, for people to rest their knees on when praying:

This is the octagonal "lantern tower" that rests over the cross of the Cathedral. It was constructed in the 1300s and is definitely my favorite part of the church:

Posing in front of the church:

Flying buttresses!
I really liked this little crest that was on the city's trash bins:
Goodbye, Ely! Just in time for the weather to turn back to that typical English sky...

A beautiful day

Today is Laundry Day for me. At Emma, you have to sign up for a time to use the machines, then get a key from the Porter's lodge, and then do your laundry in your time slot. Interesting.

It was very cold here yesterday, colder than it has been in a while. You can see your breath again, which hasn't been possible since we first got here, really. I can withstand the cold way better than I expected to. This is a very good thing, too, given my intention of grad school on the east coast and all. So, yay for that! It might snow again in a day or two, so that would be quite fun.
Yesterday and the day before I had my second round of classes. My individual class, Philosophy of Art, went well. I turned in an essay and got it back with no grade (are we not getting graded assignments here? that's strange...) but plenty of positive comments. Yesterday I my large-group class, Space and Time in Contemporary Art, which was fine but nothing to write home about (literally...). After that was a walking tour of Cambridge with my small-group English Architectural History class. We started at the round church:and then walked down Trinity Street/King's Parade (because no major street here is satisfied with having only one name) and around Kings, Gonville and Caius, Queens, Trinity, and maybe another college that I'm forgetting. They were beautiful! Our teacher is a young Scottish PhD student, very earnest and happy to be teaching, but a little bit nervous at first. I think he warmed up to us yesterday, though. Here are some pictures from our walk:

Trinity College, from inside the first courtyard:

Behind Queens, I think. The sun was out, and the Cam was beautiful!

The river Cam, at the Backs. Gorgeous.

One amazing part was King's College Chapel, which was just this gigantic Gothic church (it really shouldn't be called a Chapel anymore) that was built by Henry's VII and VIII. At the part where Henry VII stopped building and Henry VIII took over, there is an obvious and delibertate change in the style of the church. Suddenly, it goes from simple Gothic style (well, simple for a huge amazing church) with little ornamentation, to carvings and statues and initials and "look at me! I'm the king!" everywhere. Pretty funny, and also very cool how visible history can be.

Took my breath away when we first walked in.
Look at that height! And those windows!

From the altar-end of the church, looking back down the nave.

Ornamentation added by Henry VIII. Lots of gates and roses and crowns.

Sorry for the slight blurry-ness, but hopefully it won't
distract you from that beautiful fan ceiling.

Before our walking tour, I got coffee and a pasty and sat in a window and looked out on the passersby. I actually hadn't had a pasty until getting here, but they are SO GOOD. Basically a flaky dough pastery stuffed with whatever you want...sausage (if that's your thing), cheese, potatoes, onion, chicken, etc. Perfect to eat on the go and SO damn tasty, and fill you up forever, too. My friends say that in the US we pronounce them "pay-stees" and here, all the Brits say its "pah-stees." Not even just because of the accent, either...I'm supposed to say "pah-stees," too, and I always have to pause before ordering to make sure I'm getting it right. So, before class I got a delicious pah-stee and a nice cup of coffee on the go. Lovely. Anyway, I'm off to laundry!

And in this episode of language confusion...

Band-aids are called plasters. Ok, England, you go ahead and do your thing...

The Library

I mentioned in a previous post that I absolutely love the Jesus College library, and here's why:
It is spacious and airy and beautiful, but still a small and manageable 3-story building.
You can find your books with relative ease, and there are great little nooks and rooms to sit and study in.
Also, the architecture is really cool. This is a view from the second story, looking out over the circular central lobby.
This is definitely my favorite place to study, too bad its not just right outside my door, or I'd be ahead on all of my assignments right now!

This and that

Bikes with baskets: adorable, practical, and everywhere.

There are no laws against J-walking. Fabulous.

Lights switch up when they are off and down when they are on. ??? We're in England, not Australia!

Standard ballroom dance is called Modern here.

Cobblestones are loose on the streets. I feel like Indiana Jones navigating the name "Jehovah" written on the floor.

Another day, another walk...

Today, I decided to keep wandering around Cambridge in an attempt to connect the dots of the city, and by dots I mean streets/where the heck I am. They don't have street signs! I mean it, like at intersections, nothing hanging over the streets by the stoplights, nothing on poles in the sidewalks...every once in a while, if you look really hard, you'll see a sign sort of buried in some bushes or embedded in the side of the building, but there seems to be absolutely no rhyme or reason to it. I have no idea how these people know where they are, short of sheer memory.

So, I walked all around a very commercial part of town, and got my bearings, and poked into many a cute shop. I bought notebooks, which I needed, and stopped myself from buying numerous other cute things...

I saw two adorable pugs, which was absolutely great. I spotted them in the open-air market and actually changed my path to follow them for a little bit, simply because they made me so damn happy. They were a little big smaller than my two pugs, but just as lively and adorable. Those little wrinkly faces just brightened my day.

Everyone here smokes! Well, not everyone, but way more people than at home, it seems, and enough to make it feel like it's everyone. And they just smoke while they're walking down the street...very strange.

The sky is blue today! Sweet, glorious blue! I will never under-appreciate the sun every again. :) And, it is the warmest it's been yet, 46 degrees, which means I wore a jacket that wasn't my coat for the first time since getting here. Yay!

A word on groceries, bikes, and other things.

Apparently, I don't go to the grocery store to buy my eggs, milk, pasta, etc. I go to the supermarket. Which is normal enough, because we say that in the US too, but we also say grocery store which, apparently here means exclusively fruits and vegetables.... As far as these supermarkets go, there is a very cheap one on the walk between Jesus and Emmanuel colleges called Sainsbury's, which is proving to be very useful. Sainsbury's is quite affordable but also always very crowded. They have your basic things, and then a ton of meal-in-a-microwave stuff, too...they seem to be really big on those here. And they love small, individual things, which is great for me! Small jugs of milk, little bits of cheese, 6 eggs at a time, etc. Perfect. A major difference, though, is that they don't have people who bag your groceries, at either of the markets I've been to in town. It's smart, in a way, but also makes for incredibly long and slow lines as you have to wait for the person to bag their own stuff before the next one can really start checking out. Oh well, it gives me time for some good people watching.
The streets are very crowded on weekends here, and generally well-populated otherwise, because everyone walks everywhere. It's not quite New York City status, of course, but it sure isn't the San Fernando Valley either. Also, the city is incredibly bicycle friendly. There are SO many bikes, and they are everywhere. For the most part, the people don't really lock them up to anything, either...they just lock a wheel to the body and stick it on a sidewalk somewhere. Weird. They'd be stolen in a second back home.
I'm still getting a kick out of all the old architecture. One of my classes is called English Architectural History, so hopefully I'll be learning a lot about the buildings around me! One of my favorite things is that the churches and some of the other incredibly old buildings (and I'm talking OLD) are actually set about a foot or so below ground level. I had an inkling that this might be because the ground level has actually risen up over the centuries of people building on this exact spot, while the churches haven't moved for hundreds of years, but would anyone like to confirm that? I'll get a picture of what I'm talking about up soon!

Mmmmm

I've been spending far too much of my food allotment money on coffee so far, so today I went out and bought myself a small french press and a small bag of ground coffee, in hopes of saving some cash. With that bag of ground coffee in my room, it now smells like heaven whenever I open the door. Mmmmm. Nothing quite like it. :)

Library

I went to the library for the third time (I really like it there!) and I checked out "Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art: The Analytic Tradition" and "The Philosophy of Art: Readings Ancient and Modern" for my...can you guess?...Philosophy of Art class. I'm still really not sure about this class. Looks like a really deep dive into aesthetics, which I'm not so interested in. Oh well, I hope to get something out of it, and, it's only for half the semester anyways. I also checked out, for my own pleasure reading, because I am a huge Dork Extraordinaire, "In Whose Image? God and Gender," which, after 3 pages, I already have problems with (which of course I love, because, well, see the previous discussion about challenging one's beliefs and pursuing knowledge!), and "An Introduction to New Testament Christology" because I don't know enough about Jesus or the New Testament yet. In case you were like "wtf is Christology?" my handy-dandy book tells me that it "discusses any evaluation of Jesus in respect to who he was and the role he played in the divine plan." I'm stoked. :-) The library doesn't have return dates, unless your book is called back by another student, so I can just chill with them for a while, which is cool. There's a 10-book limit, though, and I will probably need to swap some out as the term progresses.

That's it for today's random update! Hope all is well back in the states!

My room smells weird...I think it's my radiator. :-/ In other news, I am eating toast with jam and drinking milk, so I am very pleased with things right now.

Glorious Blue

The sun is out and the sky is blue!! Amazing. I'm going to go walk around the town to celebrate this fact, and maybe get some more coffee, because I am definitely getting sleepy again. This can't still be jet lag, can it?

Out and About

A few days ago we walked all around Cambridge with our adviser/professor, Rod, and got a bit of a feel for the city. To be honest, I still have no idea how to get around much beyond the immediate area, but I'm getting more of a hang of it as we go. They don't really have street signs like we do, so you're lucky if the road name is on the side of a building, other than that, you just have to know, or guess! Rod seems very nice, and very knowledgeable in art, history, and English lit. He's teaching our Space and Time in Contemporary Art class. I got my other class assignments, Philosophy of Art for my individual and English Architectural History for my group, which means I am taking three Art History classes!! Crazy. I hope I don't get too sick of it.... We have to e-mail our professors to set up appointment times to meet this week, and then we figure out class time from there. Only 3.5 hours of class a week, which is weird, but apparently loads of reading. I found a few good coffee shops nearby (a necessity for me): one that's good for breakfast, with cheap coffee and good pastries (I had the butteriest scone EVER there. So good. But apparently I should be pronouncing it "scohn"...so...), and another one that is literally almost outside my door, with great pastries and a great Americano.

Two days ago we had a champagne get-together (I'd call it brunch but there was hardly any food) with us and some student leaders on campus, and our "parents," two students, male and female, designated to help individual "freshers" get accustomed to the college. We all just stood around and mingled and it was really good to meet some people who seemed happy to help us get acclimated, etc. My "parents" are Dave and Helen, he's a third-year Chem major and she's a fourth-year (super senior, because they graduate in three) Theology major. (Yay!) She said she'd help me find Religious Studies lectures to go to and things, so that's great. They both seem very nice and interested in helping me get settled and happy. I'm Dave and Helen's only "kid" this semester, but they've had other people from my school in the past. I met a handful of other people, but another that stood out was a girl named Alma, who was a member of the Jewish society and is my friend Andy's "mother." She invited me to services and Friday night dinner this coming week, and says the group is actually quite cool. Ironically enough, Jesus college apparently has the biggest Jewish population of all the Cambridge schools, apparently because they offer Kosher housing, which most of the other schools don't. And by large Jewish population, I mean, of course, like 15 or so Jews.... She and Helen are planning a dinner for our respective families soon, so that will be very nice, as well.

We also got inducted to the Library and IT facilities, got our Jesus College cards, went to the Jesus and Emmanuel bars (yes, each college has its own bar for the students), and met some more people there. Mostly, everyone seems quite friendly, and I'm enjoying getting to meet so many new people.

Now I'm off to go explore the town and get some food with Andy. I'm excited because it's reaching a whopping high of 40 degrees today! :-)

My room is unseasonably hot, thanks to its small size and voracious heater. It's absolutely fabulous, except that it does mean I have to shed many many layers when I walk in. It's still a mess now from being half-unpacked, so I won't take pictures just yet, but they'll come soon enough.

I'm living at Emmanuel College, even though we're all enrolled at Jesus College, because they didn't have room for all of us at Jesus. The three other girls are also at Emmanuel, in my dorm, whose name I can't remember, and in my staircase, or section of the dorm, which is T Staircase. Emmanuel is beautiful, though I have yet to fully explore it, but from what I can tell, it's old, church-y, and very British! Emma, as they call it, is a short walk (10 minutes, perhaps?) from Jesus, and is right near a good shopping district with bars, restaurants, stores, etc. The college is really old and therefore really, really weird. It seems like most floors have a couple of "suites" on each one, though they're not like the suites at home where you draw in with friends, rather, I believe they just get placed randomly. Seems like there are mostly first-years around here, too. They pay a different rate depending on what size room they have, which is interesting, and they can essentially choose what level of room they'd like. Each suite in my staircase is 2-person, and a bit different from the others. They each have a little entryway (I guess its a small common room, but without furniture or anything), and then the two doors to the two singles off of that, and then something random that the other suites don't have...one suite has the bathtub, for example, while another has the showers, for the whole floor. Weird. The toilets are independent and at the end of the hall, which is, again, strange. My suite has a "gyp room" which is cabinets, a sink, a hot water heater, and a microwave, I think think it's supposed to be a kitchen of sorts...but it's definitely not close to a full kitchen.

That was a bit of a let-down because I really wanted to cook while I was here, but my friend (and fellow abroad student) Tanya and I figured out a remedy. This afternoon, we went out and bought a double hot plate and a toaster, along with various pots, pans, and utensils, and decided that we'd make the best kitchen we could, given the circumstances. We were fully planning on cooking in it today, but it turns out the grocery stores (along with almost everything else except the pubs and bars, it seems) close at 5:00 on Sundays. boo! So, it'll be out to dinner for us again, and then hopefully grocery shopping and cooking tomorrow! I want to stop burning through money for food by eating out all the time and also want to get to be a good cook, so luckily, that can be two birds with one stone.

More about meeting people, my college "parents," classes, and the town soon to come!

It's snowing outside. The novelty has definitely not yet worn off. :)

Jet-lag? What jet-lag?

Sooooo, I used to kind of think jet-lag was a myth.....yeah, not so much anymore. It is 8:43 in the morning here, and I've been awake for 2 hours. I went to bed around 1:30 local time, and I'm not tired enough to get back to bed, so looks like I'll be working off of 5 hours of sleep. Fun times. I'm feeling ok, though, and I'll just force myself to stay awake until a reasonable time tonight and then crash and hopefully reset by tomorrow! Also, my bed sucks. My back is killing me after 5 hours of sleeping on it. I'm going to try to find a Tempurpedic mattress topper (or something like that) today and maybe even a better pillow to take the edge off of it. I'm sure it'll be fine, though!

In a couple of hours, we meet with our liaison/professor/coordinator for an info session and a tour of Cambridge. I still feel like I have no idea what I'm doing here and am looking forward to feeling more clued-in. Hopefully I'll also get my phone set up today as well. I think I might get back in bed and try to fall asleep for a little bit...then it's wake up, shower, and start my day. Starting will, of course, immediately involve coffee. :) Lots and lots of coffee.

I made it!

I'm here, I have internet (which I totally didn't expect to have yet, and I am overjoyed that I do), I met up with my friends, I had dinner and my first (and second) real, legal beers at real English pubs, I found my room (but don't really feel like unpacking yet), I Skyped with my mother (yay! Thank god for the people who invented Skype, really!), and I'm going to try to get to bed soon. I'm most likely going to be jet-lagged, but I'll try my best to fight it. My room is cute--small, approximately the size of my room at school this past semester, but with a nice half-sized bay of windows overlooking a bus station and a park, and a boarded-up fireplace (which, despite being boarded-up, looks pretty cool and has a nice mantel on which I can put pictures and things).

Pictures of the room (and dorm, and town, and everything else!) will soon follow. It's been snowing here for a while (and snowed on us as we were walking to dinner--this LA girl was freaking out! hehe), so everything is covered in white. Beautiful, but I do miss my California sun. I've already had a small bout of homesickness, but I guess that is to be expected. Having internet helps so much, because I immediately feel more connected to everyone.

So, I should be off to bed. Goodnight, all, and I'll write again tomorrow!

Day 0 (?)

Well, today's the day and it's...weird. I've been coming to terms with the idea of "being abroad" for 5 months, but for some reason, thinking of it in the negative, i.e., "not being in the country" for 5 months is something I'm still not entirely ok with. It reminds me that everything here is going to continue on without me. My friends at school, the semester, people graduating.... I'm going to miss it here--I'll miss my family, my friends, familiar places, my dogs, driving on the right side of the road, knowing where I am (most of the time), and not having an accent wherever I go, among other things. I'm pretty sure I'm going to miss Fahrenheit and miles and pounds, too. :) But, nonetheless, the day is here. I'm spending the morning with some last minute packing and rounding out my to-do list. Most of it's the normal stuff, "move your car," "check in online," "don't forget your passport" and the like, but it also, unfortunately, includes the ever-lovely "pay Inyo county $211." Damn speeding ticket. So, I'm off to do all of this and get myself ready to go. Wish me luck!

OH GOOD LORD I LOVE COFFEE

All that must be done

I'm getting ready for my trip now, back in the real world after an amazing vacation to San Francisco for the past week with R. Honestly, it was the best vacation I could have asked for, and the perfect send-off for England. Now that he's heading back home, and I'm here, it's off to work (read: time to prepare and pack) for me.

I've spent the better part of the last three hours combing through my mother's recipe boxes, looking for anything I (a person with very little, if any, cooking experience) could make in a small kitchen in Cambridge. I've come up with some good ones, and dutifully copied down the recipes, asking questions all the way. I've got, among others,: homemade mac and cheese, turkey chili, lentil soup, enchiladas, oven-baked talapia, four-cheese baked casserole, cauliflower rotini, Moroccan vegetable stew, roasted balsamic green beans, gingerbread, and chocolate cake. Note the emphasis on one-pot meals. :-) Right up my alley. Who knows?, maybe along with a turning into a travel blog, this may become a cooking blog as well!

Now to make lists, sooo many lists, of all that is left to be done.