The Final 2 Weeks: Italy & France

Well it's sure taken me long enough to get to this last entry.  As you can probably tell, things have been pretty busy since I returned.  So after I finished my program, I took the train to London to meet up with Alex and then we proceeded to Heathrow and flew to Rome.  Since I already talked about Rome earlier in my blog, I'm not going to recount everything I did, but rather just discuss the new things.  We stayed in a hotel near Termini Station, which was nice because both of the metro lines met up there and so it was easier to get around (although still not nearly as easy as Paris and London).  Unfortunately it was very hot and so that zapped our energy and made for shorter days (which was OK, it was a little more relaxing =)).  We did pretty much the same things I did with my family, except we also went to the Roman National Museums.  The first two we went to were pretty small and underwhelming, but the last two were very nice.  I particularly liked the frescos and mosaics, while Alex was particularly fond of the coin collection.

We spent about 4 days in Rome and then went to Florence for 2 days.  It was nice getting to go to Florence again, because when we went on my cruise, we only got to stay there for 4 hours and that wasn't nearly enough time.  We visited the Uffizi and Academia museums, which were both very impressive.  The Uffizi was mostly just one floor, but it was HUGE.  From Florence, we took an overnight train to Paris.

Paris was great and I know this sounds stereotypical, but I really love the Eiffel Tower.  On Sunday when we got there, we went to the Catacombs and randomly saw one of our friends there from UCLA (Michael Bright!).  We then went over to the Eiffel Tower and walked up to the 2nd level, which had an amazing view. We stayed there until the evening and saw the magical light show on the Eiffel Tower which happens on the hour for about 5 minutes.  For the rest of our time there we bought a 4 day Paris Museum Pass, which was nice because we got to cut a lot of lines and didn't have to worry about buying tickets in advance.  We went to see Notre Dame and walked up in the towers while I sang "The Bells of Notre Dame" the whole time =).  We also saw St. Chapelle, the Pantheon, and the Pompidou (a modern art museum).  The Pompidou was really neat and I wish we'd had more time to look around.  On Tuesday, we first spent a good amount of time at the Musee d'Orsay.  We also saw Napoleon's tomb, walked around a bit, and sat in front of the Eiffel Tower again (because I liked it so much =)).  On Wednesday we started the day by climbing to the top of the Arc de Triomphe, then walked down the Champs Elysees, then spent the remainder of the day in the Louvre.  On Thursday we went to Versailles, which has amazingly vast gardens that I really enjoyed wandering through.  On Friday, we took the Eurostar to London, spent the rest of the day in London, and flew home the next day.

Overall it was a great trip, but very exhausting.  I jumped into an all day staff meeting for band the next day, followed by 10 days of band camp.  Thankfully things have calmed down a little bit now.  Thanks for reading my blog and make sure to look at my photos (they're mostly on Alex's facebook)!

Album 1: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150333561344508.357768.630119507&type=1&l=1a2ee0987e
Album 2: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150333583709508.357773.630119507&type=1&l=38f39655c7
Album 3: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150342499679508.359577.630119507&type=1&l=1bb56a3218
Album 4: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150342537289508.359581.630119507&type=1&l=6c211b0185
Album 5: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150342756559508.359613.630119507&type=1&l=7e28c04071
Album 6: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150342791624508.359619.630119507&type=1&l=910eaa9bc7

The Final Countdown: Cambridge Week 8!

I can't believe it's already the last week of the program!!!!  Where did all of the time go?  This week was an interesting mix of stressful and extremely fun.  Monday started with Alex still visiting, so it was kind of a touristy day.  We visited the colleges, went shopping around town, and went punting on the River Cam.  I was really excited about trying to punt myself, but it didn't last very long because I was so terrified of falling in the water that I couldn't really go anywhere.  Oh well, instead I got chauffeured around the river by Alex and my two other friends =)  The professional punters make it look so easy, but it's really not!  On Tuesday, Alex went to London and I returned to life as normal, which mostly consisted of studying for my final on Thursday.  I went out to dinner on Wednesday with a couple of friends, but other than that most of my time was consumed by studying, so it's really not that exciting.

I took my final on Thursday and I think it went well.  After I got back, I did a final read through of my paper, submitted it, and then was officially done with classes at Cambridge!!!  In the evening we had our final formal hall at King's.  Although a good number of people had already left to go back to school, there were still a lot of people there and I had a really great time having dinner with my friends.  The PKP program hosted a competition for blogs and photos so that they could use some additional material for marketing next year and my blog won as one of the top 4 blogs!!!  I can now officially say I have an award winning blog! =) hehe.  I won this really nice 800 year anniversary book about Cambridge autographed by the Master of Pembroke College, Richard Dearlove (who was the head of MI6 for a while!).  The only unfortunate part is that it's very large and heavy, so transportation is a bit of a difficulty.  Afterwards there was a BOP in the King's Bar and adjoining room and I had a great time dancing with my friends!  Today (Friday) was spent packing, responding to emails, doing laundry, exploring Cambridge, etc.  Basically I was doing a bunch of things that needed to get done before leaving Cambridge.  It was raining for most of the day, so I didn't really want to do much, so it ended up being more of a relaxing day =).  I very much enjoyed my summer in England and all of the friends I made!

Tomorrow I'm taking the train into London, the tube to Heathrow, and then Alex and I are flying to Rome for a 2 week vacation before band camp starts.  We'll be going to Rome, Pompeii, Florence, Paris, Versailles, and then back to London.  It should be very fun and very exhausting.  I'll have limited internet access, so don't expect a post for a couple weeks.

Here are the pictures from this week: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2291518045985.130469.1190024172&l=0e84b7de35&type=1

Cambridge: Week 7

On Monday, I went to see "Much Ado About Nothing" in the King's College back gardens as part of the summer Cambridge Shakespeare Festival.  PKP purchased tickets for the Shakespeare class and they had some extra, so I was able to go for only 5 pounds when the regular concession price is 11 pounds!  What a deal! =).  It was really nice and thankfully it didn't rain on us.  On Tuesday I went to a British Regional Accents Night where a professor and his actor friend imitated accents from the different regions of the United Kingdom and Ireland.  It was very similar to my Varieties of English class and it was neat hearing other people try out the accents.  One of the funniest parts was when one of the PAs imitated a "California" accent.  I put California in quotations because it was crazy valley girl speech.  It's funny how we're stereotyped like that and in reality sound like normal people =).  On Wednesday there was a formal hall in Pembroke, which was good.

Friday was definitely the most fun because I went to my first ever Salsa class!!!  Despite the fact that some guys were not terribly coordinated/thought it was OK to criticize us when they didn't know what they were doing, it was really fun!  We took a class for 2.5 hours and the time flew by because it was so much fun!  I'm definitely going to look into taking a Salsa class at the UCLA gym during the school year.  On Saturday, Bisera and I explored Cambridge.  We saw a lot of the different colleges and I really got a better feel for the city.  The colleges are all really beautiful and unique, yet also similar.  King's has a really different feel than most of the other colleges we visited.  While a lot of the other colleges have enclosed spaces and courtyards, there's not very much enclosed space at King's at all.  The courtyards are gigantic and open.  On Sunday I met up with Alex!!!  It's incredible that it had been 2.5 months since we'd seen each other.  I gave him my phone number so he could call me when he arrived, but it wasn't working.  Thankfully I ran into him on my way to the train station.  It could have been bad if we hadn't been able to find each other, but the crisis was averted.  By the time we got back to King's and settled in, it was around 4/5pm and a lot of things were closed because it was a Sunday and around closing time for stores here (stores here close anywhere from 5-6pm daily, which is really weird since stores usually stay open a lot later at home).  Anyways, Sunday night became a napping night for Alex (because he was still on CA time and hadn't slept a lot on the plane) and a work/catch up on emails evening for me.

Besides all of these fun activities, I attended class daily and spent a good amount of time working on my paper for my Finance class, with the hope of getting it done before Alex arrived (which I mostly succeeded with!).

Cambridge: Week 6

Trivia on Monday evening was fun.  On Tuesday I got to go on a tour of the Wren library in the afternoon.  The Wren library is the library of Trinity College, which is one of the richest and most famous colleges of Cambridge.  There's a lot of construction going on in Trinity this summer, so no visitors are allowed, so getting to go to the library on the campus was an even bigger deal!  The library has the original manuscript of Winnie the Pooh, original copies of Newton's books, and even a lock of Newton's hair (which is kind of weird and creepy if you ask me).  In the evening I watched Monty Python's "Life of Brian," which is the first Monty Python movie I've seen.  Interesting humor, but I'm not sure if it's quite my type.  On Wednesday I went to a plenary lecture in the evening, with the topic being "Is the Internet Dumbing us down?"  I understand now why I have such a hard time concentrating on things for long periods of time =).  Thursday I watched "Submarine" and it was interesting.  On Saturday, three friends and I took the train into Canterbury and spent the day exploring the city.  We went to the Canterbury Cathedral, on a river boat tour, and on a ghost tour in the evening.  Canterbury is a cute little city, but I'm starting to think a lot of the English towns look very similar to each other.  On Sunday we went to Dover, which I found more interesting than Canterbury.  We spent the first part of our day in the Dover Castle, which was really cool!  The castle is absolutely huge and there is soooo much to see.  My favorite part was the secret underground war tunnels, which were used extensively during WWII, especially to bring troops back from France to escape death by Nazis.  In the afternoon we went to see the White Cliffs of Dover, which were very beautiful.  This stop was very relaxing and we could see the coast of France in the distance.  There were no guard rails on the sides, so it was a little bit scary getting towards the edge, as you could fall without too much difficulty and it was a long ways down.  Thankfully no one got hurt and we returned to Cambridge in the evening after a productive and fun weekend.

Here's a link to the album which has Canterbury/Dover pictures: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2247232058863.128614.1190024172&l=0656da4a0a&type=1

Cambridge: Week 5!

The beginning of week 5 was basically an extension of Module 1, as I had a final essay for my Creativity and Business Innovation class due on Wednesday.  However, I was able to squeeze in trivia on Monday night (where we didn't get last place, we actually got somewhere in the middle!) and 2 plenary lectures.  The plenary lecture on Tuesday was one of my favorites so far.  It was about Colonel Gaddafi and was accompanied by a powerpoint presentation with really interesting pictures.  The professor speaking was really funny and gave a very interesting perspective on this issue and history in general.  I learned that Gaddafi had a goat he drank milk from daily and the military was able to find him by tracking the goat.  I also learned that he had plastic surgery later in life, but when he originally started ruling, was considered one of the best looking leaders in the world.  Very interesting stuff!  Anyways, on Wednesday evening I saw The Full Monty, which I hadn't seen before and I liked.  My friend and I were both thankful for our "Varieties of English" class last module, because it helped us to understand more of the dialogue.

Thursday through Sunday I went with friends to London!!  On Thursday we traveled to our hotel, dropped off our luggage, and got a little bit lost and soaked in the process of doing so.  Afterwards, we went to the British Museum and returned home for the evening to plan out the rest of our long weekend.

Friday we started out with Buckingham Palace and the Changing of the Guards.  It was very crowded and we didn't see too much during the ceremony, but it was still cool, especially to see the band march in! =).  The band arched up inside the gates and played some interesting song choices, including "Don't Stop Believin'" and "Sweet Caroline."  We left a little early to go take pictures at the gate nearby and when we were there, the band marched out along the long street leading to Buckingham Palace and practically no one was standing along the street!  That was the best place to see the band and we definitely took pictures and then chased them down the street several times to see them again and take more pictures!  From there we walked through the park and to Parliament.  When I went 2 years ago I was able to go in for free, which is apparently only an option when Parliament is in session.  Because Parliament currently isn't in session, we weren't able to go in for free and didn't want to pay for a tour (plus there were no open spots), so we just admired the outside.  We walked around Westminster Abbey and did the same thing of admiring but not going inside.  (Tip: If you don't want to pay to go into a church but want to see the inside and don't mind investing a little time, go to a service, as they're free to attend.)  From there, we walked to Trafalgar Square and admired the scenery and sat by the fountain for a bit.  We went to the National Gallery for a couple of hours and saw lots of (probably famous) paintings.

Saturday was probably the fullest day of the trip!  First, we went to the Natural History Museum and explored there for a couple of hours.  There was a dinosaur exhibit among other cool things.  The afternoon was reserved for the Tower of London!  (Tip: If you want a cheaper ticket, ask for it without the voluntary donation.  The prices listed are with the voluntary donation and I saved about GBP 1.55 by doing this!)  There are free tours offered at intervals throughout the day and we weren't planning on doing one because we knew it would be crowded, but we literally walked in just as it was starting, so we decided to give it a chance.  The tour guide ended up being really funny and informative, so we stayed for the whole 1 hour tour and explored for the next 2 hours until we were kicked out at closing time.  We definitely could have spent more time there, but I guess that just leaves more to see for next time.  We saw the crown jewels and some torture equipment, among other things.  An interesting fact is that all of the Yeoman Warders (aka Beefeaters) that work there actually live in the Tower of London and are required to serve in the military for a minimum of 22 years.  And the guards that work there and wear the funny, tall hats are actual soldiers in the British military and this is one of their rotations.  So the soldiers that are there currently were in Afghanistan 4 months ago.  Pretty crazy, huh?!  Such wildly different jobs!  After that I met up with AMANDA MICHAEL and it was glorious to see her!!!  With her and my other friend, Jess, from the PKP program, we had dinner and then went to the Tate Modern museum, which is a modern/contemporary art museum located next to the Globe.  Out of all of the museums, I think this was one of my favorites, because there are so many different mediums and different styles.  For me, modern art museums really spark conversation about the meaning behind it, what art is, and what gives it value or makes it "good."

On Sunday, I went to the Science Museum in the morning and there was a really neat space exhibit.  I went to Notting Hill for lunch and was going to walk around afterwards, but it was pouring down rain, so I decided to do something else.  I was waiting for Amanda to finish a play at the Globe and the Tate Modern was right next to it, so I decided to go back and wait for her there, as we only got to spend a little over an hour there the night before.  Afterwards, I went back to the university accommodation to get my stuff and Amanda and I met up and were going to have dinner, but because of little time and few open/available food options near her hotel, I decided to go to King's Cross and eat on the train.  We made the train we wanted to and got back to King's College in Cambridge by about 9:30pm.  It was definitely a really fun trip, but I was glad to be back, as I had things to catch up on and walking/standing all day for 4 straight days had left my muscles pretty sore.

Here's the link to my pictures from this long weekend, plus some other punting pictures from Cambridge, which will  be discussed in the Week 6 post: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2247232058863.128614.1190024172&l=0656da4a0a&type=1

Pictures from the last 2 months!

So this weekend I finally decided to upload my pictures to Facebook, which pretty much took the entire day!  If you're friends with me on Facebook, you can view the pictures directly on there.  If you are not, however, below are the links to all of the albums.  These pictures are from my vacation with my family before my study abroad program go through the first four weeks of my Cambridge program.  Enjoy!

Album 1: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2227018393534.127652.1190024172&l=c026fdd828&type=1

Album 2: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2227085635215.127655.1190024172&l=feaaddd66d&type=1

Album 3: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2227178557538.127659.1190024172&l=d54076316a&type=1

Album 4: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2227310080826.127665.1190024172&l=3d109c5f58&type=1

Album 5: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2227399643065.127673.1190024172&l=d0a13d103b&type=1

Album 6: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2227561527112.127685.1190024172&l=5231854d8d&type=1

Album 7: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2227639449060.127689.1190024172&l=ae4b29772b&type=1

Album 8: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2227795692966.127701.1190024172&l=8015433bb0&type=1

Cambridge: Week 4

Week 4:

Week 4 was definitely the most stressful to date because of finals.  I had a final paper due on Friday, along with 2 final exams on Friday.  Yay...Unfortunately the week days were rather uneventful because I was studying a ton (and taking breaks to watch Arrested Development =D).  On Tuesday night I went to a formal hall at Pembroke College and we ate dinner in the Old Library, so that was neat.  For our last Varieties of English lecture, it was really neat because we had our lecture in the evening on the bank of the River Cam (which our professor called King's Beach).  It was a beautiful view, with the river right in front of us and King's College directly behind it.  There's a cow pasture right behind the college and our professor and the guest speaker were lecturing from inside the pasture and would look back occasionally to make sure the cows weren't getting to close, so that was pretty funny!  On Friday after exams, PKP planned a Bop, which is the British term for a dance.  The dress code was "fancy dress," which is what Brits call a costume party, with the theme being "Cool Britannica."  Unfortunately I was cheap and lame and didn't dress up, but still had a fun time even though we got very lost trying to find the location (it was called "Hidden Rooms," and it was mostly because no one looked at the map before we left, not that it was really that hidden).

On Saturday I went with friends to Oxford and that was really fun.  One of the girls in the group studied abroad for a whole year at Oxford, so it was nice having someone knowledgeable in our group and I learned a lot of cool facts.  Did you know they have a whole college building just for taking exams?  Crazy, I think!  Unfortunately we couldn't really go into any of the colleges because they were all having graduation that day (poor timing, but who knew?).  Sunday was a relaxation/do my final essay for my Business class day (which isn't really all that relaxing).  Thankfully, it's almost done as of now, so I'm very happy about that.