It was a tedious week at work. I finally hit that internship lull. There would be two hours where I would be doing something, and then an hour where I was doing nothing. Then there would be three hours where I was doing nothing and one hour where I was doing something. One day I drank five cups of tea throughout the day, purely because it gave me something to do. I hit a wall this week, and I needed a break. I needed out of the city, just for a day, out of the routine, so I took a little trip to Cambridge to visit a friend doing the Wake Forest abroad program there. It was just what I needed.
On Saturday morning I woke up and caught an early train to Cambridge. My friend was there to meet me at the station, waving excitedly when I came into view. She had been to London a couple of times to visit me, but this was my first time being where she was. I could tell she was excited to play tour guide and show me around her area, for a change. She had our entire day planned out, filled with every tourist attraction one could think of.
We hit the big sights first, like the Christopher Wren library and King’s College cathedral. Both of these are architectural gems. Seriously, some they are of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. I love the oldness of it all. It is mind blowing to me that I am able to look at buildings that are from the 1200s and beyond. It’s incredible to think that something so old is not only still standing, but has remained timelessly cherished by people all over the world. Today, centuries later, people are still in awe of these buildings.
If you’ve ever been to Oxford then you can pretty much envision what Cambridge is like. Like Oxford, Cambridge is made up of a multitude of individual colleges. It may be known as Cambridge University, but Cambridge itself is a town. For example, my friend goes to three different colleges all within Cambridge. According to my friend, the students at these colleges don’t interact. In fact, there is apparently some kind of animosity between them all. I find this surprising, as I feel that since Cambridge has such a college town feel and relies so heavily on the universities, that all of the students would mingle and hang out together. It seems like a great opportunity and environment to meet people, but apparently not. My friend has yet to have a real conversation with a real Cambridge student even though she sits in class with them every day.
The view from punting — a bridge at Trinity College
After we toured the buildings we went punting. Punting is a main tourist activity in Cambridge. When I first heard the term ‘punting’, I, for some reason, envisioned a ball of some sort being involved. In all honesty, the word ‘punting’ does seem to have some kind of recreational connotation to it. At least, to me it does. As you can probably guess by how much I have gone on about this, punting in no way involves a ball. It’s not even a game. Punting is basically sitting in a boat as a guide steers you down the river with a steel pole. It felt like I was on a gondola ride.
The guide pointed out all of the sights of Cambridge and gave brief historical facts about each one. It was a great way to see all of Cambridge in a very short amount of time. And me, being the huge tourist that I am, loved it. I think it’s a waste of time to go somewhere new and not learn everything you can about it during the time you are there. I’m all about monuments, tours, museums, etc. Luckily my friend is the same way, as evident by the fact that it was the third time she had been punting while in Cambridge. We were able to embrace our quirky tourist sides together!
It started to get dark around four o’clock (bummer) so we were forced to shut down our sight-seeing. Luckily Cambridge is quite small so I had basically seen all there was to see and we made our way back to her flat. Her way of life and living situation is so different from my program. She lives in a flat of three floors with eleven different people. They all share one kitchen, two bathrooms, and a common area. I guess in my set up I do have a floor and you would call us ‘housemates’, but we are all doing different things. We all have different work schedules, go to classes on different days, and really don’t interact that much. In my friend’s case, her housemates are the only people she interacts with and they all have the same basic daily schedule. Essentially, she is limited to this circle of people while in my program I feel that I have no structure of any kind of social circle. I’m on my own a lot, but I think this is mostly due to the fact that I am working rather than taking classes. By no means am I trying to say that one way is better than the other; I am just pointed out the differences in social interaction within the programs. I think it would be nice to have a constant group of people that you know are having similar experiences as you, but with the scheduling of my program, I do not have that opportunity.
Seeing the difference in programs that are class oriented rather than internship oriented really opened my eyes to the diverse impressions that abroad can leave upon people. My friend feels that she is truly a student in a different country while I feel like I am a resident. Both programs work for us and our different personalities, but there is no denying that we are having completely different abroad experiences, despite both being in the United Kingdom.
This weekend was a great break from the hurried urgency that you sometimes feel in London. London is a huge city and is always moving 100mph, and I think I had begun to really feel the exhaustion of such a frenzied consistency. I was in need of a healthy dose of small, country town. I am now refreshed and ready for another week of work.
This week I am giving into old desires and habits and going to see the midnight premiere of Breaking Dawn with my older sister. That’s right, I’m a Twilight nerd, and I embrace it. I have never missed a midnight premiere for any of the other Twilight movies, and being in London is not going to stop my streak. Regardless if you are interested in Twilight or not, expect a full report in my next post. I’ll try to throw in some cultured stuff too…