bonjour!

updates finally, i've gotta be quick though i've only got 6 minutes left!

dublin was surprisingly warm. we ate a lot, visited a lot of pubs and stayed in a sketch hostel with a broken shower. nice. we saw dublin and malahide castle, took a bus tour of the northern coast, saw the book of kells, met up with my belgian friend mat that i met at woodleaf through young life 4 years ago!

now we're in Paris! flew in EARLY this morning. i absolutely adore it here! our hotel is in montmartre and it has a real shower (yay!). already we've been to the sacre' cour, the arc de triomphe, walked down the champs de elysee and saw the obelisk at place de concorde. we took a nap and we're going to the eiffel tower tonight. it's hot and humid here. hopefully we'll be able to see everything we want to! tomorrow is versailles and the louvre. then thursday we're going to the notre dame and cemeterie pere lachaise where oscar wilde and jim morrison are buried.

i'll put up pictures at a time where i don't have to pay 10 cents a minute.

au revoir!

everything good must come to an end

this week went by SOOO fast
so did the past five
i can't believe cambridge is over
this place has become like a home to me
and i've become so incredibly close to some of these people
we're all from california so we will see each other again
but it's not the same.
not in this context, in this place
:(

finished my finals, turned in the final draft of my creative writing story
last night was the last formal dinner
then we went dancing
today was...an adventure
we went punting:
there's a little river that runs through cambridge
they have these boats, they're long and pretty flat
you stand at the back end and steer with a long pole
they're similar to gondolas
well it was a mass punting trip and basically everyone on the program went
we were going to gloucester to have a picnic
this was my first time and we didn't have guides
so we had to punt ourselves and it's HARD
it took us THREE hours to get there
and today was the only hot day this whole time we've been here
we didn't realize how involved it was going to be
(we had some issues with the trees and shrubbery
and we got attacked by swans
i was on the phone with sydney at the time too
she can testify)
we managed to find people to take the punts back for us
and we walked back, took like 45 minutes
ridiculous

tonight we went to a delicious portugese chicken place for dinner
we're celebrating Chanel's birthday today too
so we'll have some cake later

i have to catch a 5:21 AM train tomorrow, yikes!
i'm meeting up with stacy and sydney and we're flying to ireland!

i won't have my computer with me so i don't know when i'll be on again
but i'll update when i can!

sorryyyyy

i'm a little slow on the photo posting and i apologize
but cambridge's network is very strict
we only are allocated 1 GB of usage per day
and they have this system that calculates your usage per hour
if you go over 100 MB in an hour, they send you a warning email
if you go over 500 MB in 12 hours then they cut your usage to 500 MB per day
until you drop your usage over the following 12 hour period

so basically uploading pictures uses a lot of MB
and i don't want to be kicked off when i'm in the middle of working on legit schoolwork
so unfortunately school comes before play out of necessity
lame :(

boo on CBP

so i started doing a little research on customs declarations just to see what is and isn't allowed. I didn't realize i have to declare EVERYTHING i have bought that i'm planning to bring back. I have a $800 personal exemption, so if i go over then i have to pay duties. Even gifts are included in the exemption. it's not just food but clothes and like lotion and stuff. it's a bit confusing. so i guess i need to start keeping track of how much everything has cost. I'm not worried about going over my exemption amount but they're really strict about making you declare every single thing and it's value in US dollars or else you have to forfeit it. I can't believe they're that picky.

p.s. UCI tuition went up by almost $500 per quarter. and parking permits increased. lame. the budget hurts a little.

one more week of cambridge...

i'll be in Dublin in a week
weird!
I can't believe this part of my journey is almost over
i've become so close to all the girls here
lately all we've been talking about is how much we're going to miss each other
not all of them go to UCI
but we're going to try to get together like once a month

i've been sooooo tired
we realized we're all just really burnt out
I went straight from finals to london to starting school in cambridge in a week
and we've been on the go all the time exploring england
there just really hasn't been time to rest
so this weekend is supposed to be for studying for next week's finals
but it's really hard to get motivated because i just want to sleep
i've been really sore lately too, i don't know what that's all about

we had another formal on thursday

afterward the TA's organized a "P Bop"
basically a costume party with the letter "P" as the theme
so I was Parisian (as in from Paris)

(don't worry the cigarette is made of a rolled up piece of paper and makeup :) )
it was really fun
they had good music and everyone dressed up
Jenny was plaid (she wore a bunch of plaid articles of clothing)
Laurie was a paparazzi
Kira and Sam were pen pals
Breesa was a player (as in european football aka soccer)
Corey and Chanel were a pair of peculiar people (they just wore random ridiculous things)

Friday we went to Stratford-upon-Avon. It's where Shakespeare was born and lived. We didn't really have any time though, or it was a weird timing. We got there at 4:30. I would have preferred to either spend a whole day there and actually see all the tourist-y locations or just arrive in time for dinner and the play. Instead we got there, had tea. About half of the group who are taking shakespeare classes at cambridge had a Q&A with the director of the royal shakespeare company from 5-5:30, so we waited for our friends who were in that, then we went to dinner. The place we went to dinner was a bad experience. The food wasn't very good and it took FOREVER to get it. like 45 minutes for a baked potato. Breesa had to get a refund because her food still wasn't ready when we had to leave for the play, so she didn't even get dinner. On top of that the service was HORRIBLE, every single person on staff including the manager was rude and clueless. lame. then we went to see the royal shakespeare company perform "The Taming of the Shrew". Honestly I didn't like it. They took some contemporary liberties with the telling of it, and for the most part it was really confusing as to who was who and what was going on. They also had a wide array of costumes that confused me, ranging from historic shakespearean costumes to 40s-era, to modern, which confused me even more. even after going online and reading the synopsis of the play, i was still confused. the play itself has this message of male dominance over women which angered a few of us girls. This version was also extremely sexualized and very crude, not for me. The only thing i can say is that the actors were very very good. The city itself wasn't too appealing, the river Avon is beautiful but a lot of the city is extremely contemporary with just a couple historic buildings thrown in, at least from what i saw of it. overall my trip to stratford was a bit disappointing though unfortunately.

yikes!

for some reason i assumed my final draft for my creative story was due next week with finals. i was reminded this morning that it is actually due tomorrow, so we can do one more peer review session before turning in a final final draft next week. ahhhh! i've spent my day shut in my room typing away. I've got 2817 words...I'm hoping it's done. A bit overwhelming but it worked out.

p.s. Cambridge shuts down at like 6 pm. all the restaurants, markets, shops, malls, etc. close at 6 or earlier. only one of the supermarkets and the bars/clubs stay open. we don't get out of class until 7 pm on Mondays because we watch a movie in my film studies class on Mondays, and dinner is only served on campus between 6 and 6:45 (lame!). but last night we discovered an awesome noodle restaurant called Dojo's that actually stays open until 8:30 pm. It had Japanese, Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese and other asian styles of noodle dishes. I got a basic chow mein type noodle, chicken skewers and edamame. it was delicious and filling and they were super fast in serving it! Typically a decent sit-down dinner costs about 10 pounds (expensive i know!). At dojo's our bill was only 17 pounds for 3 people! definitely a keeper.

it was a lovely weekend

we once again took the busses
stopped at stonehenge!
surprisingly, the road comes right up to it, it's odd
but they have plans to put the road in a tunnel underground and made a new visitor's center 3 km away and have a train take people out to it. i think that'll make it a little more magical.
nonetheless i didn't find it disappointing.
it was roped off but at the beginning you get to be pretty close to it
it was super windy and apparently it can get 80 km/hr winds!
they had little audio guides but they were pretty annoying
the whole time it was like "this is what we think happened. this is why we think they built it. but we don't really know. we don't know. we don't know..."
alrighty then!

Picture time!

next on to the city of Bath
Soooooooooooooo beautiful
my new favorite city in the world
it was so quaint and felt really quiet and relaxing
it's a "holiday town" or vacation town
the romans were the first to exploit it's hot springs
the only natural hot springs in the entire UK
after the romans died out, bath was rebuilt in the medieval times
but it was thought to have healing powers so it was all poor and diseased people
then in the georgian period (17th/18th century) it became popular among the royals
it was a luxury, social place where people went to see and be seen
Jane Austen lived there and made it famous in her novels
although she actually didn't enjoy living there

we first took a 2 hour historical walking tour with an adorable older woman
it was freezing cold and drizzly
then we took a break for dinner
found an amazing italian place (always italian! it's the safest choice)
had penne tuscane.
the sauce was made of tomato, olive oil, red wine, rosemary and tuscan sausages. yum!
then we found an amazing gelato place
got white chocolate and apricot
i'm so excited to go to italy!
then we got to visit the roman baths
soooo cool
they've only been uncovered in the past 100 years
those romans were so smart it's ridiculous
it's hard to understand how they were defeated
the water still comes up into the baths
though you are highly discouraged to even touch the water
it's pretty nasty and apparently the romans used a lead piping system
so it's kind of toxic to drink
we stayed at the local YMCA hostel, 14 beds in a room

the next day my friend Laurie and I went to the Jane Austen center
we walked through the exhibit and took a tour
then melody and jenny met up with us
We had tea in the upstairs tearoom
super cute
i had peppermint tea and crumpets with clotted cream and honey
delicious!
then we just walked around a bit
the city is so beautiful!
i definitely want to go back some day

STUDY abroad? oh yeah

so the whole school and homework part of this journey is kicking in. i guess it had to at some point, which means me spending my days cooped up in my room or in the library. but we're going to Stonehenge (yeah!!!) and the city of Bath this weekend so that will be a nice little break.

Midterms are over!

Let me start with the 4th of July. They threw us a BBQ with delicious burgers, kebabs, corn on the cob, watermelon, etc. There was lots of red white and blue decorations, though our silly TAs threw in some hats with the british flag on them! Then one of the TAs got up and read the Declaration of Independence! It was pretty funny. Then a couple of us went to movie night hosted by the TAs. We watched Independence Day...which isn't the best "4th of july" movie, but hey it's will smith, makes you feel like america right? about halfway through the movie(maybe 11:30 pm-ish), we started hearing really loud noises and even flashes of light. We thought we were imagining things. One girl ran outside to see what was going on. She ran back up and yelled that there were fireworks. fireworks! none of us were expecting that here! we got so excited we ran downstairs, outside, across pembroke's campus...without shoes on. we caught the very top of one of the explosions so we kept running, outside the gates and practically across town (still barefoot) before we ran into a bunch of other people from our program. apparently the fireworks were set off from a barge on the river. but we had basically only caught the very last one. so we got fireworks. and very black dirty feet!

Finally, pictures from my London Day Trip!

Saturday morning we left for London bright and early. I went with a group to the Imperial War Museum, it was pretty cool but we only had two hours which was not enough time to go through all the exhibits. There was one really interesting spy exhibit in particular. They had actual spy equipment dating back to the first world war. a lot of the information was released for the first time for this exhibit! Then we were dropped off in front of big ben, we grabbed a quick lunch and then got on a boat for a river cruise on the Thames. we sat on the top and had great views, but it was ridiculously windy. then we planned to go to Westminster Abbey but it was closed to visitors early on Saturday. I was bummed. so we went off in search of dinner. we ended up at a great italian chain restaurant called "pizza express". it was fancier than the name implies! (why is all the best food i've had in the UK italian???) After that we got to see a live performance of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at Shakespeare's Globe Theater. That was really really cool. We had cheap seats, behind a pole, practically behind the stage, but it was still fun. the best place to be is actually standing, but we were so tired from walking around all day i don't think i would have made it. the play was hilarious, the actors were fantastic.

I added some more to my album ofCambridge Photos too.

I turned in my film midterm and my creative writing midterm today. i've been pretty much locked in my room for the past three days working on them though. tonight is another formal dinner which will be fun!

helloooooo

so midterms are this week. ahhhh already? when your class is only 4 weeks long, everything is too soon. midterms=the first 1500 words of a creative writing story and a 300 word proposal of what i plan to do for my film class final. meaning i'll be a bit MIA until after wednesday.

the 4th of july and london pictures will come later. but for now i'll share my adventure today. Jenny, Corey and I wanted to go to church tonight. We looked up the time but not the actual location of St. Andrew's Baptist. we wandered for about half an hour and finally found it, 20 minutes late to service. Luckily the service this weekend started 15 minutes later and they were a wonderful, lively bunch. Plus we found our friend Yoseb from the program already inside. The church was celebrating the minister's 60th birthday. so a bit of party hats, noise makers and birthday streamer's were involved. we walked in just in time for a little musical chairs/dance off, which we lost. then the minister dave came up and gave a really great talk about some key things he's learned about God in his 60 years. ended with worship and a hilarious round of happy birthday. such amazing, God-loving people, they knew everyone's names and were so welcoming. until i get some pictures uploaded here's a few to enjoy:

it's been raining here for the past two days. but it's a very lovely rain, quiet and sparse.

my classes are going well. i'm more creative than i thought i was, not in the arrogant sense. after taking 2 years of essentially math and science classes, a creative writing class and film class are a definite change of pace. but i haven't been drawing complete blanks, i've been coming up with ideas and stories. the midterm/final for both my classes is basically a creative project. for writing it'll be a 3000 word story and for film we have to come up with a 5 minute sequence of a larger migrant story in the form of a storyboard or screenplay. it's going to be hard. but not impossible.

everything is so expensive here. even after considering the exchange rate. it's just ridiculous. and the school isn't providing all of our meals. there's a few comforts of america right here in cambridge: mcdonalds, starbucks, borders and gap (and the disney store...?). i went into borders yesterday and no longer felt like i was in england. the mcdonalds is a different story. they have different menu items, like onion rings and the "arizona grande" burger thing. i'm afraid to eat there, the mayonnaise in britain is odd. it's like a mix of miracle whip and dijon and they put mayo on EVERYTHING. they don't really have salad dressing here, they use mayo instead. it's gross. i don't know how they stay so skinny.

tomorrow is the 4th of july. it'll funny to celebrate it in the country that we (america) defeated. they organized a capture the flag game, america vs england. should be interesting!