carrieineurope

So, I'm freshly back from six days in Italy. It was interesting to say the least. Our intended itinerary was to fly out very early on Thursday morning and touch down in Rome. We would spend two nights in Rome, the take an early train to Pisa, where we were only going to spend a few hours, then take a late train to Venice, where we would stay until Wednesday morning. This plan only half worked. Tristan came down with a cold before we left, and was only barely able to go. I got it (or one from one of the germ bags I live with who are also all sick) a little after we left. We were both partially miserable for quite a bit of the trip, but I'm still happy I went. Flight: The ... read more

I spent going around London doing things so I could complete a bunch of the aforementioned papers. For my English Life and Culture class, I have to write 12 short papers out of a possible 20 or so topics the professor has set for us. Some of them (watching English TV) were very easy. Others (seeing three plays: in Cambridge, out of Cambridge, Shakespeare; punting to Grantchester, reading a famous English novel and writing a report) took more work. Over the course of three days I saw two historical landmarks and ate at two foreign restaurants, bringing my totals up to the necessary three in each of those categories. I saw the Cutty Sark, which is an old tea clipper that has been preserved and is on display near Greenwich. We also went to the Queen ... read more

I went English folk dancing with Tristan. Apparently he did it in college. It was definately interesting, though we were by far the youngest people at this particular gathering. We may later go to some in Cambridge, which would be more people our age. I went back to Cambridge, and that Monday two of my friends returned from 3 weeks in India! They had a load of experiences there... I'm not sure I could have done it. I went to the pub with them on Tuesday night, and then to the local metal club night.... read more

Today I went to the London Aquarium and Westminster Abbey. The aquarium was, of course, awesome. They had a wide variety of fish, and they were arranged really neat. They were in "zones", so you knew where everything originated from. THey also had an awesome clownfish display, which I of course was enthralled with. And you come out in a gift shop (surprise, surprise)... and then you come out in an arcade (which I think might be the only one in London!) and a McDonald's! It was me-heaven. :p We did not eat at McDonald's though... opted instead for Wetherspoon's pub, which is one of my favorite places to eat. There's like a million in London and one in Cambridge too. They have lots of yummy food, and invariably have some sort of non-smoking section, which ... read more

The exiting things parade ground to a halt last week because I came down with a very violent case of the stomach flu last Tuesday night. I remained very, very, very sick until roughly Sunday. It was so bad I even went to a doctor because I was afraid I needed an IV because I was losing so much fluid. Now I'm only a little bit sick, and functioning again. It's been a killer week of classes because art has started and we have four class periods to make up. Lots of classes every day, some of them /way/ longer than my attention span. Monday night it was the 21st birthday of one of the girls in the house, so we did a group pub crawl to carry on the american tradition of getting someone drunk. ... read more

Classes started Monday. I sat in on geography just to see what it was like, even though I wasn't signed up for it - it was really interesting. Computer Science has been so far, both interesting and easy. I've learned much more advanced things, but the things we are learning I don't know. Art is postponed for two weeks - it is normally taught by two different professors, and the one who does the first half has breast cancer, so can't be with us this semester. The man who does the second half is doing both, but he can't be here until two weeks in. History is completely miserable. The lectures are interesting enough, but the guy that teaches it seems to enjoy winding people up, so he irritates me a lot. I solved this problem ... read more

Second day here was fairly eventful. We had a two hour walking tour of Cambridge. It was interesting, but I wouldn't have said two hours worth of interesting, especially in the unpredicted wind that came up. We did get to see several of the Cambridge University colleges and some of the historic churches - including one that was built in 10xx and is the oldest building in Cambridge. The history of the colleges was initially very interesting, but got old after about the third one. There are only so many crests you can look at and still be fascinated. We were done by a little before noon, and we were turned loose for lunch and the rest of the day. I went to a pub (the Sir Issac Newton, a football (soccer) oriented pub) for lunch ... read more