Parliament, Crêpes, and Macbeth

Long one here! Sorry!! 

One of the many great things my program does is that it plans London trips throughout the weekends for us to choose 1 to go on. So I went this weekend, and everything except food and the ticket fee for a tour of Parliament was provided for. The bus there and back, the ticket itself, and a ticket to Macbeth at the Globe were provided. 

So I started at Parliament, which was unbelievable.  Absolutely beautiful.  We started at the entrance the Queen goes in when she goes for the Opening Day of Parliament each year and followed the path she takes into the House of the Lords.  The rooms were just insanely decorated in the House of the Lords, but the House of the Commons was built at a different time so was much less so. 

From there, my friends and I walked to Buckingham Palace and past Hyde Park, through the Wellington Arc.  Then we walked by Harrods to go to a Créperie that my friend remembered from 5 years ago. It was amazing. Worth the walk.  We all got a Savoury Crépe and a Sweet Crépe.  My second crépe was the best thing ever.  Berries and dark chocolate with cream on top.  Amazing.  Such happiness. 

After we returned to Harrods and yay! I didn’t get lost!  Growing up my Dad would go to London all the time and bring me back bears from Harrods so obviously I went to the bear section.  One of the ones I had is still being made.  Made me happy.  From there we walked to the Thames and along it to get us to the Globe.  We walked across the Millenium Bridge since it’s the one in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that collapses.  Thankfully it did not collapse.  And then we were at the Globe!  Considering our lunch was the only time we sat all day, the whole standing the entire play thing was not appreciated.  All of us said the only thing we could think about was how much longer we would have to be standing.  But the show was amazing.  Lady Macbeth was out of her mind, as she should be, and basically stole the show.  It was pretty cool to have the actors enter from all around us, as they entered doors at ground level in the back and walked up front to the stage.  And I was actually shocked how much of Macbeth I remembered from high school.  Brought back fond memories of my insane AP Lit teacher who had us stretch before reading so that we would wake up and get oxygen to our brains.  Athletes would lead.  She was insane.

The next big thing was our second Formal Hall Tuesday night, which was again so much fun.  We made a scene obviously when we found out the Royal Baby was born and all cheered, resulting in the entire dining hall turning to stare at us.  Whoops.  Classic though, another table started cheering 15 minutes later for the same exact reason.  Late.

            It’s also so bizarre how normal it is to drink with professors here.  The cocktail hour and the dinner is with the professors, and my Spooks and Spies professors walked over to the Kings bar with us.  Just feels weird.

So that’s that.  And as of Friday I am halfway done! Crazy!

Struggles and Busy Schedules

Sorry it’s been a while!

Life’s great- there’s a fudge shop across the street from my dorm, as well as a café that has crepes, milkshakes, and pancakes.  And there’s a candy shop across from my classes.  Not tempting at all.  No struggles here.

For the past 3 weeks I’ve been told almost everyday not to get used to the weather, it will be cold and rainy soon.  It just keeps getting hotter.  Oh the lies.

However, the hotter it gets, the more people go punting (essentially the British version of gondolas).  And punting happens in the River Cam outside my dorm, so I spend a decent amount of time laughing at the failures as people attempt to do it on their own.  The poles used to push the punts are about 12 feet tall, so there are a lot of struggles.

Last weekend I went into London Friday night for my friend from school’s birthday and that was a blast.  Seeing half of JE and 5 boys from my hometown did not freak me out at all.  But really, it was great.  And I had a really dumb moment at dinner that night- a cake came out of the kitchen and I said “Oh a cake!  Hal, we should get you a cake!”  And then the cake turned, towards us “maybe we did get you a cake…”  Whoops..

After the struggle back to Cambridge the next day I had the most delicious dinner (dessert?) ever.  A peanut butter and banana crepe.  Anyone who knows me at all knows how much I would love that.

So the next day, I had a Spooks and Spies field trip to Bletchley Park, the code-breaking center for Britain during World War II. On the way there we stopped at the Cambridge Cemetery for Americans during World War II, which was incredibly interesting.  At Bletchley Park we saw the main building which is a mansion that is just an architectural mess. The family who lived there would go on vacation and come back saying “we want this from Spain” or wherever, so just combined so many styles.  So there we saw the first computer, which was enormous.  We also saw the ENIGMA cypher machine that the German’s used, and the Bombe, which the British used to decode it.  And we saw how all of that worked which was just absolutely mind-blowing.

So that’s it.  This weekend I have a London trip to Parliament and the Shakespeare Globe for Macbeth, which should be a blast.  Then a crazy few days with another Formal Hall Monday night, Final Paper for Spooks Tuesday, and Final Exam for Spooks Friday.  Almost halfway done. 

Scotland Trip: Harry Potter and Hikes

Ah so much to get into this post and I have no idea where to start! This weekend, the program went to Scotland for 4 days and wifi was essentially unavailable.

Let’s start with some entertaining stories.  On the coach buses, the bathroom is in the center of the bus, built into the side, with stairs going down.  So where seats should be there are little stairs.  Getting on the bus the first morning, I was watching this girl and all of a sudden she disappeared and there was a crash.  She fell.  This same girl also played a claw game at a rest stop while the rest of us got food or went to the bathroom.  And she lost her phone.  Struggles.

Second entertaining story- somehow a boy in the program lost all of his suitcases. He was late to his bus and a PA (program assistant) went to go find him and started packing his stuff because he was missing and it looked like he hadn’t returned from formal hall the night before.  The PA packed his stuff in grocery bags.  Turns out the kid was at breakfast.  They pushed him to a later bus and the PA returned to his bus saying, “Homeless boy isn’t coming.”  How on earth someone loses their suitcases after arriving to Cambridge, but nothing else, is beyond me.

All right so back to true Scottish things.  After essentially an all-day bus ride we reached Edinburgh. First night was fun, not too much to report.  Second day though, we started the day hiking Arthur’s seat, this mountain(ish) that overlooks Edinburgh.  Pretty cool.  Except the peak was incredibly windy, so at one point 3 of us were literally blown backwards and had to regain our balance after stumbling over.  A bird was flying up there and literally had no control.  We watched as it was whipped around with the wind. 

From the hike, we walked down to Central Edinburgh, got lunch, and went to the Elephant House.  The Elephant House is where JK Rowling wrote much of the first Harry Potter book.  The place is practically a shrine to her.  Actually the bathrooms are legitimately.  People signed thank you all over as well as their favorite quotes.  Obviously some friends and I wrote in it.  The funniest were over the toilets of both bathrooms.  In the women’s it said “This way to the Ministry” with an arrow pointing down, and the boys said the men’s said “Tom Riddle did a piddle.”  Tons more happened after that, but typical tourist stuff.

Next day, the full day hike I signed up for.  Dunkeld Hike, which was beautiful and so peaceful.  It was less of a hike and more of a walk.  Although as one of my friends said, “I want this hike to be less of walk and more of an amble.”  We ate at a Loch, where I was one of four people to wade in the water.  It was pretty nice.  But then, the saddest thing-  A poor sheep got out of his pen and couldn’t get back in.  And he was terrified of us, but he kept running around the fence and trying to jam his body into the gate.

Then that night, we had a céidihl (pronounced KAY-LAY), which is a Scottish dance thing.  Basically they told you to get in pairs, 3s, or 4s and yelled out what to do.  It was basically a lot of “forward 2-3-4, clap, clap, back 2-3-4, and spin, and spin, and polka!!”  So that was interesting.  From there though, some friends from my hike brought me and a few other people to Greyfriars Kirk, a graveyard by the Elephant House.  Arriving after midnight, we saw the grave of “Tom Riddell, esq.”, “Moodie”, and “McGonagall”.  The supposed story with McGonagall was that he was a poet, but was pretty bad.  So after his death people would “transform” his work. 

After the graveyard, I slept 2 hours and woke up to hike Arthur’s Seat again.  I wasn’t too pleased when the kid leading my group made me scale a mountain at one point, but I’m trying to forget about that.  There were literally 100 people there for the 4:30 sunrise.  Of course it was cloudy so all you saw was a sliver of red.  But it was entertaining.  Edinburgh University had it’s grad ball the night before, and grads came still in dresses and kilts, and still quite drunk.  So that was a scene.

Ah so much! And I didn’t even include the drunk altercation with one man and his girlfriend had with a bouncer, and then the police on our way to the cemetery! 

Classes begin

And I thought there were diverse ideas at Yale… until I stepped into my travel writing class.  It was certainly… interesting?  The kids from the UC schools and the kids straight from China were trying to top each other with creative ideas on questions like what is travel and what is writing and finally, what is travel writing?  I really enjoyed the girl who claimed that you can travel through the internet by learning about a country.  No.  Pretty sure that’s imaginary.  Then when we discussed if you could end up at any destination through travel today, where you would end up.  The first girl said “the middle ages.”  Everyone agreed okay cool I guess, time travel.  She went on to say, “no middle age in life, I am travelling there now.”  One, who wants to be middle age?  Two, that’s your IDEAL destination? And three, that’s just weird.  I said South Africa in case you are all wondering.  Weird class, but guaranteed to be interesting.

However, interesting cannot compete with Spooks and Spies.  There was a plenary lecture last night that they emailed the class suggesting you go.  It was the former head of MI6.  He talked for an hour and a half and it was amazing. It was pretty cool albeit a bit frustrating when he began talking about something then couldn’t elaborate because it’s classified information. But, by far the most interesting was his story of 9/11.  He was the head of MI6 at this time, when it happened he was on a plane.  He was supposed to go through customs with an alias, but when he landed he recognized his bulletproof car outside.  He was ushered out and briefed on the way to Downing Street.  Tony Blair sent him to America to pledge his allegiance, and when he went to the airfield, they refused to fly him out because he didn’t have clearance.  He ended up getting on a cargo plane and promising if he got half way and didn’t have clearance still, he would turn around.  He got clearance, and as he entered US air space, 2 fighter jets met him to guide him in.  They brought him over ground zero (on the day it happened), and he landed in Washington.  He was the only plane to land in the 5 days after the incident.  He went straight to Langley for a week, flew back to the UK, then back to the US with Tony Blair to meet with the President and continue meetings at Langley. Pretty damn cool.

Some more Spooks and Spies fun facts from lecture today for the 2 people I know are extremely interested (and you know exactly who you are)- Mansfield Cumming, the grandfather of the CIA, and father of SIS (original head of MI5), signed all of his documents “C” in green ink.  When my professor asked the head of MI6 if they still signed all papers in green ink he looked at him like he was stupid, and said “of course.”  He was also in a car accident with his son, who died.  To get himself out of the car, “C” cut off his leg with a pen knife.  He returned to work and used an American child’s scooter to get around the halls. And to imitate Germans in interrogation, he would stab himself in his prosthetic since they had no idea he was an amputee.

End of fun facts, although I am sure there are more to come. 

Attempting being normal?

So I did something crazy this morning.  I ran.  At 6 am.  Not really sure why I did it, but it was actually the highlight of my trip thus far.  The streets were virtually empty and I got to learn my way around the city a bit.  And by "learn my way around the city a bit" I mean that I stayed on the same road, and would venture off on side roads for a block or two, turn around and return to my road.  So adventurous.  But anyway, after the run I returned to my room to grab my camera... and then I napped.  Obviously I napped, I woke up at 6 AM.
I've been trying to act like a semi-normal person, it's tough though, clearly running at 6 am is not normal. But I've been restraining myself from showing off my IM billiards skills at the pool table (Andrew come play, Caitlin be proud I haven't shown how weird I am).  I figure I shouldn't advertise my IM billiards skills (although I undoubtably will at some point, what do you people expect from me) after my Dad's response to me telling him I played my first IM game and then informing him that it was billiards was "you know some times I start to think you're semi-normal, and then you say weird shit like that."
Besides acting like a semi-normal human being for once, I have to say, being a fake adult in a foreign country is tough when I have to get my British life together.  You know wandered around an hour looking for the phone store.  It was a block from where I live.  Went to 3 book stores to look for a book that I was supposed to start only to find out I can only get it on Amazon.  It's been fun.  I'm contemplating sending my mother a list of things I have to do so she can send me instructions.
So classes start tomorrow, maybe I should pick up a notebook. A pen maybe would be smart. I'm sure the posts will slow down as classes start.

And some pictures from after my run!!!