A Tale of Airport Woe

I write to you from the tiny Stansted airport in London. I paid a pound for 10 minutes of internet access. Now, I wouldn't have needed to pay a pound for internet access had my flight not been delayed four and a half hours.
FOUR AND A HALF HOURS. Can you believe it? Honestly, can you believe it?

Anyway, I'm really quiet angry with RyanAir at the moment.
I have about another 1:45 in the airport here, and i've already been here for 4:30.

Well, time is running low.
See you all on the other side of Dublin, assuming I ever make it there.

Say Hello to the Coopers!

If there are any readers out there who aren't my family, then I want to treat them to my experience of Skyping with my family. Mostly, I'd like to share some of my father's jokes with you. "Joke" is a liberal term, used here to describe a "humourous" comment that elicits so-called "pity laughs" from the audience. 

My parents frequently joke about Marion's phone, the Droid. My dad likes to make that sound from the commercial. Anyway, so he says:

"If you go to Stonehenge, say hi to Marion's droid for me." 

and Marion goes: 

"That's 'druid,' honey." 

HA. They're funny. 

Later, my sister tried to show me a picture on her phone through the video camera, and I tell her it's not going to work. 

I said, "You guys already look dusty." (I was trying to describe their not-quite-pixelated but...well, dusty appearance.) 

and my dad goes, 

"Oh, Helena [the cleaning lady] didn't clean the webcam!" 

HA. Once again. What a riot. 

Then, they told me how they went to go see Salt. My dad goes, 

"It was good, but pepper wasn't in it." 

HA. That was funny in itself. 

But then, Marion accuses, "You've been holding that one in!" 

and he goes,

"I was waiting for a transatlantic audience." 

HA. 

There were tonnes (haha) of other jokes, but I didn't want to look too suspicious writing them all down. 

I had a nice (long, at 40 minutes) chat with all four of them (parental units, sister unit, and grandma unit!) and it was VERY enjoyable. 

However, the Coopers seem to be holding up well without me...so maybe I can stay in England forever? 

Rome, London, &c.

Well, after several frantic e-mails from my parents begging to know whether I'm actually alive, I figured it was time to get back to this.
I had a traumatic experience about a week ago where I wrote a whole blog post about my adventures in Rome and when I clicked "Publish Post," the whole thing disappeared. After that, I kind of gave up. So, in honor of the only three people who read my blog (my parents and my sister), I'm writing a special-edition, "what I've been up to" post, which will be de-necessitated (is that a word?) by the fact that I'm skyping with the group of them this evening.
So, to begin, Rome:
1. The gelato was amazing. I was talking to someone the other day and she found out I had been in Rome so I was telling her about it. I was like, "Yeah, the food's delicious. The pasta and the gelato..." and I sort of trailed off, and she goes, "Yeah, did you have ice cream? I hear the ice cream there is great," and I just sort of nodded my head and was like "Yeah, that too!" Anyway, it was a delicious trip. One of our YDN reporters, who's working at the AP in Rome this summer, took us to one of his favorite sandwich and gelato shops on the Sunday afternoon we were there, and then he gave us a mini-informal-tour of the Pantheon, which was nice.
2. The heat was brutal. Like, over 100 degrees each day. Try walking back and forth across a city in that heat. Impossible! If it weren't for the free water fountains scattered everywhere, and the potable water from actual fountains, like this:

we surely would have died from heat exhaustion.
3. The buildings were ruined! All of them! In ruins! But seriously, Rome is a mixture of: churches, ruins, piazzas, and fountains. Almost everything is wonderfully picturesque, which could explain the hundreds of pictures I took in the two days we were there. A selection of them can be found in my previous blog post.
4. The Gina was there! A big highlight of the trip was seeing my beloved high-school friend, Gina, who's studying abroad for a couple of weeks in Italy. It felt kind of absurd, but mostly just awesome to see her in a foreign country that wasn't Canada (which is the only other "foreign" country we've been to together). It was also lovely to see Harrison, although of course, it was the first of many times that I'll be seeing him this summer.
5. My favorite sights were St. Peter's Basilica (and square), the Coliseum, and the Trevi Fountain (at night!). St. Peter's was just of such stunning proportions and so elaborate that it was hard not to be amazed. The Coliseum had wonderful historical and cultural information all over the place, which was refreshing, since a lot of the other things we saw were sorely lacking in placards about history and such. The Coliseum was also a lot of fun to photograph. Seeing Rome by night was another good idea. We went out the first night we were there and saw the Trevi Fountain as well as the Pantheon (the outside, at least). The second night we walked and saw a lot of the ruins (Palatine Hill, the Roman Forum, and the Coliseum) from some good vantage points and then spent a lot of time loitering around the Coliseum while I attempted to do some photography with a makeshift tripod (in the form of some random street utility box or parking meter or something).

That was the bulk of our Rome trip. I'm sure I'm already forgetting tons of stuff, which is of course the disadvantage to writing such a delayed post. I was impressed with how much we saw in such a short time and with the challenge of such incredible heat.

That week I got back from Rome, I spent one night and day in London. On the Wednesday night, Harrison and I went to see Avenue Q (which was funny, although plot-wise it was a pretty standard boy-meets-girl tale). During the day on Thursday I did a bunch of sight-seeing by myself.
I started with the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens. Anyone familiar with Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen's "Winning London" will recognize it:

I also saw a lot of birds in the park, which were really cute:

Then I headed over to Harrod's, where, before it even opened, people (mostly tourists) were already waiting to go inside. I went in and it was amazing. It made me wish I were rich so that I could wander through feeling like I belonged rather than feeling like an alien. The coolest parts were the stationery section (which had Prometheus Bound books) and the food store, which was full of gourmet options. I bought myself some tea there, so that at least I could say I bought something from Harrod's:

After Harrod's I headed over to the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is an absolutely amazing museum. I spent most of my time looking at their silver and gold collections, as well as their jewelry. As you can see, I was feeling quite fashionable that day.
After I spent a good two hours (you could spend days, but of course, my time was limited) at the V&A, I took the Tube up to King's Cross, where I tried and failed to find Platform 9 3/4. The most depressing moment came a few days later, when I saw one of my friends had been there and found out I was just looking in the wrong place. At any rate, I was AT King's Cross. So that's pretty close. My real destination however, was the British library, which has a special "Treasures" room of all their coolest stuff. My personal favorites were manuscripts of Jane Eyre, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, the Beowulf manuscript, and Milton's Commonplace book. There was a ton of other cool stuff, like a Gutenberg Bible (although I'm of course spoiled by the one that's always on display at Beinecke) and one of the four copies in existence of the Magna Carta, which was actually pretty cool. There were other neat things too, like some original song writings by the Beatles and some cool Alice in Wonderland stuff.
After that, I wandered around for an hour trying to find the Charles Dickens Museum, which turned out to be a complete bust because the museum was really poorly done. Annoyed that I had wasted my time and also missed my chance to go into Westminster Abbey (last admission is at a very early 3:30), I headed over to the Tower of London, with the prospect of seeing more jewels in mind.
When I went to buy my ticket at about 4 PM, the (very very nice!) ticket lady advised me not to buy it, since it was pretty expensive (almost 20 dollars) and they recommended at least 3 hours to see the whole place. Of course, I didn't know if I would be able to make it back into London and there was no way I was leaving without seeing the Crown Jewels. I splurged and as soon as I got in, hurried over to the Jewel House as the ticket lady had advised me.
Personally, I would have paid 20 dollars just to see the Crown Jewels. They were stunning. I got to see another exhibit that's part of the castle/fortress which featured a lot of armor, so that was interesting too. I don't think it was a waste, although I do wish that I'd had more time.
After the Tower of London, I took my time getting to Parliament, where I was meeting Harrison and two of the other Yalies he's living with this summer, one of whom who works at Parliament, to go on a tour.
While I was waiting, I took pictures of Big Ben:

Then we went on the tour of Parliament and got to see the House of Lords (although not the House of Commons) and the Crypt Chapel, which most people don't get to see. We also saw the Queen's Robing Room, which is a giant room where basically she puts on her robe and crown and it's only used once a year.
After Parliament, the four of us went out to dinner in Chinatown (yum!). That basically ended my trip to London. I hope I have a chance to go back, although I'm not sure I will.

Since then, I've had more work to do. I'm in the midst of extensive revisions to my short story which has a long way to go before I'll deem it "polished." I also have a Shakespeare paper coming up, which I need to start thinking about. My third class, Avant-garde Literature, started this week, and so far I've mostly just been confused. Hopefully as the course goes on, things will start to make more sense. He played us this "piece" (I caution you to only listen to it for a few seconds) at the beginning of our first class, for EIGHT MINUTES at LOUD VOLUME. It was excruciating, anxiety-inducing, and almost made me cry by the end. When he asked about it after, I called it a form of psychological torture.

What more can I say? I went to my third Formal Hall last night, where the company was wonderful, but I found the food to be lacking (mostly because the main course was salmon and I dislike cooked salmon).
I'm off to Dublin tomorrow night, so hopefully I'll be less negligent when I get back about writing up a post.

Céad slán (that's apparently "farewell" in Irish)!

Roman Holiday

I don't have time to write an account of my weekend in Rome just now, but here's a slideshow until I do.
(I tried to embed it on the blog...but like all of my other pictures, it got cut off at the edges. Anybody have any advice?)

Traveling Light...to Rome!

I just finished up most of my packing for my trip to Rome this weekend, and since the carry-on restrictions are pretty tight (strictly ONE bag), I had to do some really light packing. I wanted to bring only my backpack and my camera, which is what I'm doing, but in order to get through security, I'll need my camera bag to be IN my backpack. And it takes up about half of the space. Which means I can't bring too much else. After packing in my clothes and stuff (I can't resist traveling without at least two books), I picked up my backpack and was pleasantly surprised at how light it is. This is going to have tremendous advantages--I can walk to the train station tomorrow without any pain, I can dart through the airport past those travelers who insist on lugging around two gigantic suitcases full of clothes they won't wear, and I won't have to ruminate for very long about what to wear each day.
This post has been an extreme excuse for me to procrastinate working on my Shakespeare midterm, which I want to finish before I leave for the weekend.
Look forward to plenty of pictures when I get back and the story of our adventures through the Eternal City.
Arrivederci, Cambridge, ciao, Roma!

Mmmmm...Formal Hall!

So, Pembroke kitchen has a blog, like all cool people, and they wrote about the dinner they made for formal hall last night, with pictures! So you can see what I ate. They must have gotten us confused with the other summer school program here, which is strictly Californians (although there are a ton of Californians in our program as well).

Dessert was particularly delicious.

Parents, now you know I'm not starving.

On the subject of food, there's a wonderful little open air market in the city and my favorite stall has unbeatably delicious peaches and nectarines. So although I'm missing out on the gardens of my apt-nicknamed home state, I still get my fresh summer fruits!

The Globe, Tate Modern, Ye Olde London, and Trafalgar Square / Dirty Dancing

I made my first trip into London today with a busload of fellow PKPers. They dropped most of us off at the Globe Theater for a special tour and lecture given by a geekily attractive, not-so-well spoken staff member for the Globe Education project. He was really informative though and I enjoyed the tour (in fact, I enjoyed the tour more than the actual play). After the tour and before the show, I got to spend about two hours at the Tate Modern, and although I'm not a huge fan of modern art in general, I did get to enjoy some Robert Frank, August Sander, and a couple of other cool things, like Monet's Water Lilies and some Warhol and other pop stuff that I liked. I also determined what I don't like. I headed back to the Globe for a production of Henry VIII, which I realized is not very exciting. The acting was overall decent and the costumes were awesome, and all of the pageantry/pomp/procession scenes were cool, but the play itself just was not enough to keep me going for three hours. Interestingly, when the original Globe burnt down, it was during the first (or one of the earliest) performances of Henry VIII, so that was kind of neat. The thing that was not neat was being a so-called "groundling" which meant that I was standing for about three hours watching the play in the area in front of the stage. Had I made the choice myself, I probably would have paid the extra 10 or 15 pounds to have a seat, so that instead of focusing on how much my feet hurt, I could focus on the Shakespeare itself. 

After the grueling three hours, I headed out with two friends to go grab some food at a pub (I had a lackluster Irish stew (beef + guinness likely, although I couldn't taste the guinness at all)) and then we walked toward Trafalgar Square with ice cream on our minds, pleased to find a stand right on the outskirts of the square. We got ice cream (at that point, it tasted like the best ice cream ever) and then headed into the square, which was full of activity, because T-Mobile was doing some sort of thing where they set up a giant screen and projected Dirty Dancing to hundreds of people. They gave out blankets and soda and popcorn and it was all a very bizarre marketing ploy, but it was free and we were tired, so we sat down and watched the movie. 

On the bus ride home, we saw a big cloud in the shape of the UK. We watched it dissolve and fade for a while, like the British Empire herself. But no, London is a vibrant city and I can't wait to go back and check out all the rest of its offerings (the Tate Britain, the Tower of London, etc...I am DYING to see the crown jewels). 

Less than one week until ROMA! 

Ciao! 

The Most Epic Love Story Ever Told...

Twilight!

Okay well I took some time out of my busy (read: uneventful) day today to go see the latest installment of the soggiest saga ever written. It just came out in the UK today, so I was expecting the theater to be kind of swamped. I guessed wrong. Maybe the British are smarter than the Americans, because at 6:15, when the show was supposed to start, there were only 25 people in the theater (called a "screen"). A few more trickled in during the previews and even into the first ten or so minutes of the movie, but by the end, there were still under 50 people there. I guess it was dinner time, but I was still surprised.
I'm not going to waste much of my or your time talking about the movie. They did the best they could with the material they had, which actually makes the fact that it was not a terrible movie more impressive. Kristen Stewart gave the performance of her lifetime up to this point. She managed to not bite her lip at all through the two hour movie. At the end, I wanted to clap for her. Taylor Lautner's abs also gave a great performance, although I can't say the same for the rest of him. Robert Pattinson remains, as ever, not terribly attractive. But the character that stole the show was Jacob's wolf form. He was cuddly and fuzzy and all sorts of adorable, with a fierce and, well, wolfish side for contrast. I nominate him for Best Supporting Actor. He really showed some depth of character and delivered all of his lines with the subtle grace and perfection of the world's best talents.
Anyway, there were two more things I wanted to say about the moviegoing experience. One being that the tweenage girls in that theater were extraordinarily obnoxious. They talked throughout the entire movie. I'm okay with some gasping and laughing and whatnot on occasion, but to talk pretty consistently throughout is just plain rude.
The other thing I wanted to mention, and this is mostly for Gina's benefit, is that before the movie started, there was a Twilight-inspired Volvo commercial, which was about the funniest thing ever. It wasn't this one exactly, but you get the picture.

Well, that's all I have to say about Twilight, until Breaking Dawn, of course. Happy Friday!

My Accommodation (vs. American English "accommodations")

Well, I've been here for almost two weeks now, and I have yet to post a picture of my room! I know you've all just been dying to see what it looks like.
BLANKIE!!! Okay that's the wool blanket I bought in Scotland to which I now have an age-inappropriate attachment.

My "bathroom," a.k.a. a sink and a mirror:

The whole room (or as much of it as would fit in the frame): 

It's quite fetching, innit?

Evensong at King's College Chapel

I know I've already raved about the beauty that is the Chapel, but let me rave once more. This evening I had the chance to see (hear?) Evensong in the Chapel, which occurs most nights of the term and is finishing up at the end of this week. According to the King's College website,

the Choir [the one that sang in the Evensong service] owes its existence to King Henry VI, who envisaged the daily singing of services in his magnificent chapel. This remains the Choir's raison d'être, and is an important part of the lives of its 16 choristers, who are educated on generous scholarships at King's College School, and the 14 choral scholars and two organ scholars, who study a variety of subjects in the College.

and these boys were AMAZING. Two in particular stood out, a little redheaded boy whose voice was SO high and an older boy, probably in his late teens, who had a high voice as well, all the more impressive for his age.
My cursory internet search turned up no results for a recording of the Evensong service itself (which the BBC seems to sometimes stream live online), but I did find a lovely recording of the choir singing something else here.
As "students" of the college, we also got special treatment, meaning we got to skip the line and go in early, as well as to be some of the first people to leave the chapel when the service was over. We even had preferred seating--I was directly behind one half of the choir and so could hear their voices clearly. Things got a bit uncomfortable during the very religious moments, but other than that, it was a lovely way to spend 5:30-6:30 PM and I'm sad that I probably won't ever witness it again.

It's finally the weekend (man, what a grueling three-day week this has been, with a walloping six classes) which means that tomorrow I'll be going to tea (how British am I!--incidentally I just ate a scone with some jam, yum!) in the afternoon, Saturday I'll be heading into London for my first time and seeing a show at the Globe (Henry VIII, I believe), and Sunday I'll be going for tea again, this time at The Orchard in Grantchester, which will be really fun.

The other day I was at the Gap and I walked out of the changing room and handed a pair of jeans back to the guy and took a pair with me, and I say thanks and he says "cheers" and then I didn't know what to say back. What do you say in response to "cheers"? "You too?" "Cheers too!" "Right back at ya!"

On Top of Olde King's College Chapel

I don't know what possessed me to take a tour of the Chapel roof earlier today, but before I really knew what was happening, I found myself climbing up the sloped roof of the chapel, with nothing but some light friction and some 500 year old stone preventing me from falling to my death.
Since that's not really what my parents need to hear, I'll go on by saying that it was all quite safe!

The chapel is really long, quite high, and amazingly beautiful. My favorite part of the roof is underneath the above part, where in the Victorian age, they decided the roof needed some extra support, so they put in these iron bracings, which are the white bands stretching across the chapel:

Recently, structuralists studied the church and these bracings only to determine that they do absolutely nothing to help support the church. Hahahahahaha. The stone at the bottom there is about 10 inches thick and underneath it is just solid...air. Gothic architecture is awesome like that.
The view from the top was pretty nice, although terribly frightening and somewhat obstructed by all the stone work on the edges of the roof.

Since I felt like I was about to die for most of the tour, I won't be going up there again anytime soon. I will go back to the inside part (for Evensong this Thursday actually), because it's really pretty in there:

In other, non-chapel news, I've added a trip to Amsterdam into my travel schedule, which means that by the end of the summer, I will have been to: Spain, England, Scotland, Italy, Ireland, and the Netherlands! Whether I go to Paris is yet to be determined (although with budget and time constraints, as my magic 8 ball would say, outlook not good).

There and Back Again...A Scottish Tale

After spending many hours driving through the Shire--

--we (that is, Coach 3), reached Richmond, our break point, where we had lunch and saw the Richmond Castle, which was more ruin than castle. (Just a sidenote, I think Blogger is cutting off my pictures on the sides, so you have to click to see the whole thing.) It was cool, but not terribly impressive (look at me, I've been in ye olde England for a week, and already castles are seeming unimpressive. Next thing you know, I'll be telling you that the Sistine Chapel is "okay").
We finished our drive into Scotland, dividing our time on the bus between napping, reading, and staring at the sheep. They were super cute and looked like this:

N.B. This picture was NOT taken while on the bus. I took it on a hike which I'll tell you about later.
We dropped our stuff in our rooms (which were really nice--we stayed at Pollock Halls at the University of Edinburgh, although I didn't see any University buildings...), ran to dinner, and then at about 9 o'clock we set off on a hike up to what's called Arthur's Seat (although according to Wikipedia, it doesn't seem too too likely that the place has any relation to King Arthur) in Holyrood Park. This was a WONDERFUL idea. The sun doesn't set until after 10 up there, and it doesn't really get dark until around 11, so we had plenty of time.
Anyway, it was a bit arduous at times, but it was a BEAUTIFUL view. Maddie took this picture of me:

My cardigan's all funky because it was really really windy. That's the lovely city of Edinburgh behind me. Note that this picture was taken at 9:45, which is kind of crazy.
Anyway, that was the main highlight of the first day.
The next morning, we woke up early (they served haggis and black pudding at breakfast...needless to say, I did not go near it) and headed over to Rosslyn Chapel, of The Da Vinci Code fame. The chapel was lamely undergoing conservation and they didn't allow pictures inside AND the Holy Grail might be hidden under its floors but they're not investigating so I am kind of angry with this Chapel and thus will spend no more time on it...although it was kind of pretty.
In the afternoon, we headed into Edinburgh to see the sights. We walked up the Royal Mile to the Edinburgh Castle, which holds the Scottish crown jewels, but decided the 14 pound admission rate was a bit steep and just admired the castle from the outside. We walked back down the Royal Mile to the new Scottish Parliament building, which is drastically different from the castle. It's a modern building that looks really wacky and is full of a lot of highly stylized old Scottish symbols. The tour was pretty interesting and free to boot, so I and my wallet appreciated that.
Saturday night, the eve of the 4th of July, saw all of us gathered into the conference center for TRADITIONAL SCOTTISH DANCING, called Ceilidh, which was a riot. It's kind of like square dancing but Scottish. It actually reminded me a lot of German Folk Club dancing, for those of you who remember that.

Yes, this dude is wearing a kilt. Yes, he is American.

So that was pretty cool. At midnight, we all sang the Star Spangled Banner loudly and obnoxiously, like true Americans. A few of us even had mini flags, which we waved around with wild abandon.
Sunday morning at first seemed like it would be a terrible disappointment. We were scheduled to go on a hike through the Trossachs, which are the "mini-Highlands." It was going to be tough and tiring, but entirely worth it for the view. However, our program leader, Greg, came up to us with some bad news, saying that there were "torrential downpours and 70mph winds" in the Trossachs and he thought it was "too dangerous to go out." He had planned a closer, alternative hike for later in the afternoon, which we were definitely going to go on. In the meantime, Maddie and I trekked into the city to do some shopping. I bought a scarf and a blanket made from Scottish wool, both of which are absurdly amazing. I snuggled up in the blanket for the whole bus ride home and couldn't be happier with that purchase.
We headed back to the dorms to leave for the hike. I, of course, in my perpetual irreverence for the weather, had nothing water-proof, and was forced to go buy a trash bag in a pathetic attempt to stay dry. It didn't really work.
We drove about a half hour away and began our hike up to a close peak. The weather got progressively worse as we neared the top, so that by the time we had reached it, we were being pelted with small hailstones. I kid you not. It was hail. And it was painful. But it was also invigorating, in the same way that I assume acupuncture is healing. My jeans were sopping wet and my shirt (underneath my trash bag) was damp. But the view was amazing (this isn't from the highest peak...I wasn't about to take out my camera in the hailstorm):

Basically, the most important thing I learned this weekend is that Scotland is beautiful.
Anyway, after the hike, I curled up under my covers, made myself some hot tea, and did some (pleasure) reading.
I went out for a glass of cider (hard) and then hung out with some people for a while before heading back to bed to get up early for today's departure.
The bus ride back started off boringly and we were stuck in traffic for a while. But when we got to Fountain's Abbey, all of that was forgotten. The Abbey was built in the 12th century and is pretty well preserved. I won't try describing it in words, since I would probably fail. Pictures will do the job better:

There are tons more...so if you're interested, I can send them along. The final one is the so-called "Surprise View" from "Anne Boleyn's Seat." The place was beautiful and secluded and made me wish I could have been there in its heyday.
I actually have to go do homework (you know...I'm here to "study abroad"), but I'll leave you with this for now: A Scotsman playing the bagpipes whilst wearing a kilt!

And one more sheep, for good measure:

And this quote I just found from Braveheart, which I have yet to see, but definitely will be watching soon:
[William has asked Murron to go riding with him in the rain] 
Mother MacClannough: In this? You're out of your mind! 
William Wallace: Oh, it's good Scottish weather, madam. The rain is falling straight down. Well, slightly to the side like. 


Bye now! 

"Please Do Not Walk on the Grass"

You see signs that say that everywhere around the university. So basically you can't walk on the grass anywhere on campus. But once you become a fellow of the university, then you have permission. There's one lawn in Pembroke College called "Bowling Green Lawn" I believe that has sloped edges and the main part of it is flat. Students are actually allowed to sit on the sloped edge, but only fellows can go into the main part, and it's on that lawn that they play this game called "bowls" which involves rolling a black ball across the lawn to try to get it as close as possible to a white ball on the other side. It's very much an old-people sport (sport sounds a little too active).
At any rate, it's weird not to cut across the grass or be able to go and have picnics. There are some (very specific) times however when you can go on the grass, like specified hours when you're allowed to go onto a specific lawn and play croquet.
Or, like two nights ago, when before the Formal Hall, we got to go onto the Back Lawn of King's College and have our drinks there:

So you can imagine how exciting it was to be able to go on the lawn...or maybe you can't quite imagine how exciting it was. But, boy, let me tell you, it was exciting!