Monday, April 7, 2008

Cambridge Trip

4/4/08
We started off our day at 10:45 am when we took the train to the town of Cambridge. The day was beautiful and the sun was shining. When we first got off the train the town seemed really modern and we had to walk about 20 minutes before we hit one of the colleges. The buildings were so old and I honestly thought that this town was better then Oxford. They are both really different though. Oxford is a larger city/town. And Cambridge is alot smaller with more to see all compacted all together.

We made our way to the center of the town and found the main river that flows through all of the old town of Cambridge. We decided that the best way to see the town would be to take a punting boat ride on the river. Many of you know what a gondola ride is in Italy, it is where there is the man on the back of the boat that stands and pushes the boat with a stick. Our tour guide was so funny and told us some great stories about the history of Cambridge and what students are like today. He told us about a student a few years ago that lived in one of the dormitories and when he went to take a test he looked on his contract for is dorm and it said that "a man must be given ail and cheese when he would take an exam." And obviously this rule was made hundreds of years ago but he thought that it would be funny to start enforcing that rule again. Well his teacher gave him his ail and cheese after a huge fuss and then after he took the test his teacher failed him, not because he did bad on his essay but because his teacher did a bit of homework of looking at the rights on the contract as well and what the boy forgot to read is that he must bring a shield and sword with him to class, and he didn't so the teacher failed him. We all laughed at that story. The tour took us to all of the colleges and the ride was about 45 minutes long.


After that we headed to some of the shops to get some souvenirs. Then we made a mad rush to the train station. That tends to be the story of our lives here. We always stay until the very last second in a place and then we end up running to the train. Well we missed our train but that was ok because the train runs ever half hour so that was good. Then when we got back to the center we decided that we should finish up on some home work but that is about our day in Cambridge, it was great!

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

4/2/08

Today we started off by getting up at 6 am for breakfast and heading out the door by 7:30 to catch the bus for our final and last away trip around England! It was a really sad thought and we all tried to not think about it.

Our first stop was at Blenheim Palace where the duke of Blenheim still lives! Crazy huh, he lives in the far left side of the palace where they obviously didnt do tours there. But we got there around 9:30am and our tour didnt start until 10:30 so we had an hour to walk around the gardens and the cemetery. There was a really pretty lake with a monument on a hill side. We still dont know what the monument was for but it was still a really neat thing to see.

During the tour of the palace we learned alot of really neat things about Consuelo Vanderbilt, she married Charles the 9th duke of Blenheim who was completely broke at the time and if it werent for her money the Blenheim palace would not be in existence. She was forced into her marriage and was in love with some one else way before she even married Charles, but her mother threatened her that if she ever married the man that she was in love with that she would find him and kill him. She really Consuelo Vanderbilt had no choice but to be forced into a marriage. She had two children with Charles and there is a tapestry that hangs in the drawing room in the palace with the family sewn on it. She was a really pretty woman and I wish I could read more about her life, she seemed so interesting to me.



After our tour we headed back out to the bus to go to Cotswald village. It was about an hour away. There was a little path way that we had to take to get to the main town and my professor said that the main part of town reminded him of Disneyland on main street. There were a bunch of people and alot of tourist shops. So my professor took us on a path way through the country side to this place called "Lower Slaughter." The is the complete opposite of what the place is actually like. As you can tell by the picture it is alot quieter then the main town and the houses are alot older and more picturesque. There were little streams with ducks swimming in them and we went passed the old mill where we bought some really good ice cream. The weather was perfect all day! The wind didnt blow at all and the sun came out every once in a while but it was never cold and we enjoyed every minute of it.

On the drive home most of us slept. My friend Anna fell asleep with her mouth open and I decided that it would be funny to take pictures of her with her mouth open. We were all laughing so hard.

When we got home our professors had pre ordered gourmet burgers for us from this place by our flat and they were amazing! I got this cranberry chicken burger and they were huge, most of us could only eat half because they were so big. But our fridge has been broken the past few days so its not like we could save our food and put it in the fridge. Hopefully that gets fixed soon, but the day went great and I am so sad that it was our last trip!

Oxford v. Cambridge Football Game

3/29/08
Sorry, I was suppose to post these pictures a long time ago and I just havnt had the time this week.

On saturday we got tickets to the Oxford v. Cambridge football game! The tickets were really cheap and we had to go to a real football game while we were in England so what better game then the two top univeristy rivals in England! Seeing as that we are huge Oxford fans we all decided to wear our Oxford t-shirts and I wore my sweat shirt.

The weather was really bad and rainy that day and it had been one of the coldest days that we have had in a long time, but we went to the game around 12pm and we got seats right up close to the grass (which we loved) but then the rain started to come in hard side ways and we got soaked so we had to move up higher into the building. But when Oxford scored their first goal we jumped up and started screaming and cheering and as we looked around us we realized that no one was cheering with us. Just when Cambridge scored their first goal. The entire crowd on our side stood up and cheered. We were on the WRONG side for Oxford! Every stared at us, even the cambridge guys with their powder blue blazer jackets on. (They were wearing vintage blazers from way back in the day) But it was pretty imbarrassing. Oh well we still didnt move and our favorite player for Oxford, Homer Sulliven, ran past our side of the stadium when we made him first goal so that was pretty exciting.

The game ended badly. Oxford lost and we were all pretty dissapointed...and very wet. A bunch of people wanted to go to the famous boat race against Cambridge and Oxford but it was so cold that I went home with some people (the majority of us left.) But from what I heard Oxford won the boat race!

The rest of my day included writing a 12 page paper for my Sociollogy class and bed.