• Napping and Noodles.

...is basically what my wonderful weekend with Ms. Elisabeth Day consisted of.

A quick photo/summary list of our excellent adventures:

1. Going down to the River Cam at night

OH HEY girl.

2. Taking pics with Pitt by the Pembroke Library

3. Shopping at the market

4. Playing a game of croquet in the King's fellows garden

5. Going to the roof of King's Chapel

I finally took my Inception-themed photo!

6. Going PUNTING!

7. Shopping at H&M, Zara, and Top Shop... and then looking at our credit card bills. Death.

8. Going to my favourite Cambridge pub (The Bath House) and drinking Pimm's!
We were SO British.

9. Lots of good napping.

10. Eating noodles. Many times. It was our obsession.

We bring the Asian with us errrrryyyywhere.

Are we not the cutest?! I felt like such a Cambridge native with all our outings :)

It was so nice to have a taste of home. When we shopped in the market place, we made home-y little comments like, "I could NOT pull of that shirt, but Crystal probably could" and "that bag is SO Paulina" and the occasional random "I wonder if Tomasz is still a walking tropical infection." We gchatted with Ben, Nate, Sam, talked about how much we miss Gina Mawla, watched the best music video ever made on repeat, and discussed our future plans to move to Europe forever. I've been having a great time in England, but I definitely miss home at times - especially the people. I think Liz's visit was just what I needed. It was a perfect blend of getting to talk with someone I really know (and feeling completely comfortable dumping my disheveled self on), and getting to show one of my friends around "my town," where I go to school. It reminded me of college visiting, and how great it is when you get to share part of your daily routine with someone. Cambridge is such a charming little town, and nothing is better than getting to share it with someone from home.

Then we went to visit Joan and Roger (aka globe-trotter parents) in London, where they treated me to the best food I've ever eaten. We went to Gordon Ramsey's Petrus, drank good wine, and were very fancy. People keep asking me what I ate... but to be honest I have no idea. It was THAT fancy. J&R were very nice to me and I was so thankful that I got to stay with them! Those two sure know how to live it up.

Then Liz and I went to watch Step Up 3D... because we HAD to. It was yes, a god-awful movie in every sense of the word, but we expected just as much. We really went for the dancing (which was AMAZING), former SYTYCD dancers (Twitch!), and of course, Harry Shum Jr. aka Cable aka Mike Chang aka Mr. Dreamy.

It was a great weekend with really good company. I love you Liz Day. Have a great time in Africa and see you in the new year!


Anyway, I guess I should go through some much-needed updates.

1) BELGIUM.
Two weekends ago. It was gorgeous.

I am really digging this compilation of photos thing.

Lots of walking. Lots of museums. Lots of stunning architecture and mouth-watering food. I really wish someone would invent the equivalent of the camera for olfactory senses, because then I could record the smell of Brussels. With all the art, food, and music - Brussels was so culturally rich and absolutely stunning. Top places included the Musée des Instruments de Musique (MIM), the René Magritte Museum (one of my favourite surrealists), the Grand Place, and the Atomium.

The MIM was one of the best museums I've been to in a while. As a music lover, I was in instrument heaven. The audio guide was the COOLEST thing ever - it was a wireless headphone system that sensed where you were in the museum. The guide would automatically play a sample of the instrument you were standing in front of - either in the form of a single melody, ensemble, or solo piece. This museum had almost everything from traditional bagpipes (with pig bladders), to ancient Chinese instruments, to Baroque etched violins, to 17th-century painted pianos (I almost died of happiness). Getting to see the all instruments was already a treat, but getting to hear them was amazing - especially with the older instruments. The best part of the museum was walking around and seeing people with their eyes closed, nodding along to invisible melodies.

Absolute bliss.

Our hotel room was so sweet. It was only 10 euros per person per night (what a steal!) and was the best hotel I've ever stayed in. The walls changed colors! I'm not sure how we found a 4-star hotel for that cheap, but its sure was great.

The food was so delicious. I guess after living off semi-tasteless English dorm food for the past five weeks, Belgium waffles, chocolate, and mussels were all heavenly gratifying. The quality of living and food in that country is just better.

I've decided that heaven has Belgian waffles.

We bought TONS. OF. CHOCOLATE. We went shopping in the Galleries, and I think I went overboard. I ended up buying almost 90 euros of Belgian chocolate (like $140 worth)... and it was all bad. But all good. But all bad. The store owners were so flattered that they gave us all thermo-isolating bags to take our chocolates home without them melting!

Then we took pictures.

And then we wept for the incalculable doom that would soon approach in the form of our credit card bills. Which brings us to our next item...

2) I am BROKE.
In the past week, I've hit the last £180 in my bank account. This is pretty bad, considering that it costs £20 just to get into London from Cambridge, which I will do at least two more times before I leave England, not including the time I will actually have to leave for the airport. Few things are as gut-wrenching as scrolling through your bank account balance and seeing the numbers go from four digits - to three digits - to two digits. Except for maybe the "Married Life" montage in the movie Up. Maybe.
The exchange rate keeps getting worse. The $ to £ ratio is now 1.6 USD to 1 GBP. GUH. Where has all my money gone?! Well...

Chocolates. Yeah.
I will post pictures of myself drinking beer and wine in England on facebook, but I dare not post this picture for fear that my parents will kill me when they see it.

At least with the group pictures you can't tell how much of it was mine.

This goes for random souvenirs in general. Packing will not be fun.

Shopping.
I don't know if I've mentioned this, but a few weeks ago I discovered a secret side door at the back corner of Pembroke. It reduces the walking time to my class by almost 5 minutes! The only problem is... I cut through the town mall on this "short cut"... which, if you can't tell already, has been the basis for my financial downfall. Essentially, discovering this backside door also meant me discovering that the mall is literally a two-minute walk from my room. I can literally seen the edge of the mall from my friend's room. So instead of saving 5-minutes walking back from class, I usually end up wasting over an hour in the mall because of something pretty that catches my eye. I knew I had a problem when I went shopping three times in one day last Tuesday.

My life in depressing-comic-book form.

 H&M and Zara have such cute UK-wear... all at £5-9. I CAN'T NOT. But I really can't anymore.

Traveling.
Cambridge is a pretty secluded town, so to get anywhere, I have to train into London first. I'm pretty sure half my £££ from this trip is sheer taxi rides to the train station, train tickets, and metro tickets. Last time my round trip to London for Lion King cost about $55 in US dollars... and I've been to London like seven times already. Mannn.

3) POST

Cambridge has beautiful postcards! Slowly but surely, I will send them all :)

4) CLASSES
OH man. Having double the classes is pretty hard, and I've been sleeping less and waking up earlier, and pulling lots of 20-hour days again. Bad. I am so behind in my reading, it's ridiculous. But so far, nothing is going too horribly. Art and Satire is going really well because it's taught by Oldfield, and I am really familiar with the way he structures his class. My Enlightenment Philosophy class requires us to sketch and reflect on many of the buildings around Cambridge. It's actually pretty fun! The readings are all really heavy though... and I am beginning to suffer from being the only person in the class with a non-English, non-history, non-political major background. In fact, I've been one of the few bio/chem science majors in most of my classes. A lot of the discussions in my philosophy class deal with very complex concepts, and it's really intimidating to hear all the political philosophy majors duke it out during debates... while I just sit there with a blank deer-in-headlights look. I talked to my professor about how I came from a very science-heavy background, and he told me not to cut myself short. And he also told me that my reflections could be better-written (haha...), but I had an artist in me! That was nice :) I haven't had time during college to draw and scribble around like I did in high school, so getting this back in my system is good.

5) GOB.
We are nearing the final countdown (♪ we're leaving togetherrrrrr ♫), and I have just under two more weeks here. Class work is definitely getting heavy again, but I still want to make sure I really enjoy my time to the fullest. Sigh. Lots of mixed feelings.


College Checklist:
Christ's
Churchill
Clare
Clare Hall
Corpus Christi
Darwin
Downing 
Emmanuel 
Fitzwilliam
Girton
Gonville and Caius
Homerton
Hughes Hall
Jesus
King's 
Lucy Cavendish
Magdalene
Murray Edwards
Newnham
Pembroke  
Peterhouse
Queens'
Robinson
St. Catharine's
St. Edmund's
St. John's
Selwyn
Sidney Sussex 
Trinity 
Trinity Hall 
Wolfson


I was going to provide a "Two-Weeks-Left Bucket List" but I just realized that this blog is very list-heavy. Even my lists have sublists in them. Oops. I hope some people still read this. I am very behind on uploading pictures and this will probably be my last post for a while. Hope everyone at home is doing well!

Love,
Katherine