Happy Father's Day!!!

I know a lot of daughters day this, but I really have the best Dad a girl ever had.  Today is his favorite day of the year, and it sucks not being able to be home for it.  We've always had a lot of little traditions, Dad and I.  One of them is going golfing on Father's Day  (usually the one time I golf a year...)  which we'll have to postpone until I get back in the States in July.  =(

So here's my lame transatlantic attempt at Father's Day.  See you soon Dad!  You're the best and I love you!!!

I Got Stoned Today...

Things have been so crazy lately.  Everyone's trying to do everything the last week here.  It's been nonstop amazing times.  I'm so sleep deprived, but I don't care.  I need to pack everything I own, do all my readings, and write an essay tomorrow, but I don't care.  This has been one wild ride and I am so incredibly grateful that I've gotten to experience all of this with so many wonderful people.

Highlights of this past week:

Thursday was the "end of term" boat party.  It rained like mad, but we all had a ball anyway.  (Ruined my hair!!)  So much fun.

Yesterday was Ethan's 21st, so we all went to a "bop" at Christ Church.  Which is basically the English way of saying "Lets put a little stage on one end of the JCR, and a little bar on the other end, and play some funky tunes."  The theme was things that used to be cool.  So we all had to raid our carefully planned limited clothing for stuff we actually didn't like.  A little challenging.  Anyway, it was fun.  I ended up bartending for part of it.  Dropped a 2 liter of pop and sprayed the crowd when I opened it.  They loved it.

Then today I went to Stonehenge and Bath.  Oh the puns we came up with when we realized we drove an hour to look at a bunch of rocks from 30 feet away.  Ridiculous and amazing at the same time.  I guess you could say we "became one" with the stones.
 

Bath is the most beautiful city I've ever seen.  The country literally pays its residents to keep up the housing.  It's considered a national treasure-  like, the ENTIRE city.  Of course, it's most famous for it's ancient Roman baths.  And no, you're not allowed to touch the water.  And yes, I did anyway.

There's an abbey right next to the baths, and it had the most incredible stained glass windows I've ever seen.  They were HUGE!

More pictures to come, but I don't have time to post more than this for now.  I'm sorry if I have been ignoring anybody's e'mails, things have just been so insane.  Once things slow down (in a week or two...)  I promise I'll make it up to you!

Christ Church

I have just enough time for a quick update:

One of the things I've desperately wanted to do while I'm here is have dinner at Christ Church.  Of all the colleges in Oxford, Christ Church is the most prestigious.  It is also where many scenes from Harry Potter were filmed, namely, the Great Hall.  

Now, this is debatable, a lot of people say that Christ Church's dining hall was only the inspiration for the great hall, and that it was not actually filmed there.  This is usually backed by the fact that there are only 3 long tables in the dining hall, not 4 as in Harry Potter.  But I was in there today and there is room for 4!  Not to mention the staircases and corridors surrounding the Great Hall are 100% in the movie  (pictured below!)

Anyway, my friends Jessica and James both go there and they took a bunch of us for formal dinner tonight.  I say formal because at Oxford there are two types of dinners you can go to:  formal and informal.  

Informal is as normal as Oxford gets, but formal requires that you wear robes.  Yep, traditional, strange-looking robes.  I got my pair today.  I know I will never have an excuse to wear them again, but it's one of those "part of the Oxford experience" things.  Kind of like getting an ugly as hell college scarf.  

And when they say formal, they mean formal.  The dinner consists of a few courses, which are brought to you by dining hall staff.  Plus, they pray in latin beforehand.  Because it's Oxford.

Tonight they served spring rolls, dinner rolls, baby corn and pea pods, rice, and some sort of chinese pork vegetable thing.  All very good.  I can't believe this is normal for some people here.  

Wales Trip!

So after a short day trip to Wales, I've concluded that it's awesome.  For a country smaller than most American states, it has a definite culture of its own.  At times it seems more Swedish than English, which is strange.  The people there are incredibly friendly.  Stuff is a lot cheaper there than in England, which was refreshing.  

Anyway, so the trip began with a visit to an outdoor Welsh museum.  Below is a group photo of most of the Oxford program students that went.  (Note that they're under a thatched roof!)

Of course there was a castle at the museum.  Here is the front entrance.  GORGEOUS!  It looked like Mr. Darcy's place in Pride and Prejudice.

Soooo pretty!

Then we went to Cardiff, the capitol of Wales.  It's about a 2 hour drive from Oxford.  And of course, what's the first thing we saw in Cardiff?  Cardiff Castle!  Because that's what you do when visiting the UK, visit castles. But first, the stocks.

So Cardiff castle, in addition to it's touristy stocks, is built like a fortress, and has large walls and a few castles surrounding it for protection.  This is one of the more ornate of the castles.  The inside was incredible!

The ceiling of one of the rooms of the castle.

This castle was in the other castle, and surrounded by a moat!  Exactly what you'd imagine when thinking about a castle.  We got to climb up to the top, it was intense.

For those of you who don't know, people in Wales speak Welsh and English.  And Welsh is insane.  It's a language of consonants.  Usually when you see a foreign language, you can at least try to pronounce the words, but not Welsh, forget it.  And the whole city of Cardiff has signs written in both English and Welsh.  It's pretty cool.

Brains is a popular type of beer in Wales.  I tried the Brains SA, and it was actually pretty good!  Better than most English beers I've tried.  

We went to a pub called "The Goat Major" to try some authentic Welsh cuisine, and turns out in terms of food they exclusively sold meat pies.  With "chips" of course!  So that's what I had (popular in England too, so nothing too new)  but so good!

Old meets New.  Castle on one side of the street, city on the other.  No big deal.

So yeah, that's Wales.  Kinda goofy, definitely quaint.  A fun day.

CAMERA!

It won't stop raining.  It just won't.

But I don't care, know why?  

MY CAMERA CAME TODAY!!!!

HOORAY!!!!!!!!!!

Just in time for the Wales trip tomorrow  =)

Till then, I ended up taking weird and random pictures around the house today.  Like the Stonehenge replica James fashioned out of Jenga blocks.

This camera delivery has been a ridiculous ordeal.  It took a month to get here.  I was starting to give up hope.  The flatmates were convinced that I had gotten ripped off.  So we celebrated with a photoshoot after watching Star Wars Episode 4  (Kate hadn't seen it, CRAZY!)

Yep, these are the best pictures we got.  I didn't say it was a glamorous photo shoot.  We followed up Star Wars with a Louis C.K. HBO special.  AWESOME!  We've sort of gotten over the guilt of "I'm overseas, I need to be sight-seeing constantly".  It was rainy and we each just finished 1 or 2 tutorials.  A lazy day was totally called for.

My flatmates are pretty awesome.  I love being here, although I'm starting to get sort of "Englished" out.  The food is horrible, the weather is worse, and English guys are definitely not my type.  I'm excited for Wales tomorrow, and even more excited to visit Scotland and Ireland though.  It's time to see what else the UK has to offer.  

Backtracking...

I never posted anything about Cambridge because pictures weren't available yet, but they are now!

I'm not gonna lie, it was a pretty weird trip.  We started by going to a cemetery known as the Cambridge American Cemetery.

Turns out, after WWII the British gave families of deceased American soldiers the choice to have the body shipped home, or buried here, and about 40% chose to have them buried here.  So Cambridge dedicated all this land to a cemetery solely for American soldiers.  It is truly a beautiful monument for all of them, I cannot get over their generosity.  So much thought went into every part of it.  Even the way the cemetery is landscaped, from an aerial view it is in the shape of a baseball field!  I'm serious, google earth it.  The picture below is from "third base".

There is a gorgeous church with stained glass windows, one custom designed for each state, located on "first base".  An American flag flies at home plate, and a series of ponds with lotus flowers connects the two.  

Our program director told us that students have had families buried at the cemetery in the past.  It must have been so nice for them to see their ancestors respected in this way so far from home.  I'm so proud that we have this here in Cambridge.  

After visiting the cemetery, we went to the University of Cambridge, which is famous for many things, but most of all PUNTING ON THE CAM!   I still suck at punting, but don't think I let that stop me.  See how we're headed for the wall to the left...

James brought his melodica (see the tube thingy he's playing?)  and Kate and I took care of the wine.  We were total champs this time around.  (At the sitting and floating part...)

Except for when Sarah got us stuck under the bridge, but it looked like this, so that was really ok.

This picture doesn't do Cambridge justice, but it's all I've got for now.  It really is an incredible campus. Not nearly as big as Oxford, or as old, but still breathtaking.  

 The Queens Jubilee big finale thingy was today-  with the entire royal family riding around the city (except for the Duke of Edinburgh, who I hear is sick.)  I'm so bummed I couldn't go, (stupid tutorial), but at least I was there for one day of the festivities.  I'll go at least once more before this whole thing is over.  Only 3ish more weeks!  Ahhhh!

The Queen's Jubilee and PICTURES!

Today I took a bus to London with a bunch of friends for the Queen's Jubilee.  Luckily, I can show you all pictures!  Not because my camera showed up =(  still working on that...  but because one of my friends has almost the exact same kind of camera but isn't really a fan of taking pictures apparently.  I was more than happy to oblige however-  

Also lucky, was that one of my friends has a friend in the city who has been living in London since January.  Apparently one of our friends showed him around when he first got there, and so he was happy to return the favor to us now.  So we basically got an all day tour through London.  It was rainy and gloomy, but that's London.  We sucked it up and saw the entire city in a day.  It was nuts, and incredible.  Here are the highlights:

First we went to Buckingham Palace.  I've been looking forward to going there since forever.  As we were approaching the gate, I got so excited, trying to figure out ways to crack the guards.  Just when my ideas couldn't get any more outrageous I saw this:

So...  that was a bummer.  Next time I guess.  They were setting up for the concert tomorrow, that's why it was closed.  So we decided to walk around the surrounding parks.  

(L-R  Angelie, John, Lauren, Jenn, Kate, Me, Cassie)  

Nicole:  Doesn't Jenn look just like Jordan!?!  She doesn't act a thing like her, but holy crap.  

After passing a few red phone booths we finally caved and did the touristy thing...

Then I finally found something I've been looking for since I got here...  BEN!

And right next to Big Ben is Westminster Abbey, which is GORGEOUS!

I can't help myself, I'm too proud of the way I framed this next shot...

Then we stumbled on a castle.  With a MOAT!  (It was filled in with grass though.)  One thing about England, there's no shortage of castles.  They're like pubs, one on every corner.  

And then, something outrageous happened.  We went on this crazy long walk to find the tower bridge, and when we finally got there, we decided to take a picture from far away so we could actually get the bridge in the background.  That photo is below.

But while we were taking that picture, all of a sudden we heard a huge bang and saw an enormous red light reflected in a black tower in front of us.  Now, we'd been warned about terrorist attacks for weeks with the Jubilee and the Olympics going on.  There's been a lot of local anxiety.  So the first thing we all thought was "Oh my God, somebody just bombed the bridge."  Turns out it was a firework, but it scared the crap out of us for a second.  The picture below was taken somewhere between freaking out and laughing at ourselves.  

Here's the Tower Bridge, fully intact.  =)

In the end, we didn't see the Queen.  We reached the Thames an hour or two before the procession, but it was way too crowded to get close.  That's okay though.  We saw other old things.  Plus, the city was all decked out for the Jubilee and I feel like trudging around London in the rain, trying to track down the Queen is about the most English thing I could do at this point.