Hello world!
This last week has been kind of crazy. I finished my term paper and my first round of finals, and today I began my first day of new classes for the new module. Today marks the beginning of the last four weeks that I will spend here - and I really can't believe I only have a month left. It's going to be one quick month.
Anyway, I've really wanted to write this blog for a long time now. I've been posting a lot about trips and activities, but I haven't really had time to blog about what daily life is like here. I think this post is - more than anything - something I want to post for
me. I want to have something to look back on when I try to remember what life was like when I was living abroad. Now that I have lived here for a month, it's the perfect time to try and sum up all the things I've learned as a student at Cambridge and as an American living in the UK. Some of it might be repetitive, but oh well.
On we go!
1. The Routine
I think the daily routine of a student is really healthy here - in terms of timing. Classes start at 9:00am and run until 5:00pm latest. There is a very tiny window for dorm meals, which was a little hassling at first, but I think it's the best way to do things. Lunch runs from 12:00-1:30pm, and dinner is only open from 5:30-6:30pm. Unlike at Berkeley, where I feel like there is dorm food available almost every hour of the day, you really don't have any choice but to eat at these allotted time slots. Most people complain about it, but I really like it because it forces you to commit to eating at the same time everyday, which is a lot healthier for your body. At Berkeley, dinner runs from 5:00-9:00pm, and I usually end up dawdling and procrastinating and eating at irregular hours. I like that I know when I'm going to eat my meals everyday, and with such a short window, everyone eats their meals all together in the hall. It's cute in a big family/mass dining way.
I wake up everyday to a view of the Bowling Green and the Pembroke Library clock tower in the back. I usually grab a quick breakfast at the Pembroke Parlor Cafe, and then head out to the Union for my lectures. The Union is just over
half a mile 0.8 km, a brisk 15-minute walk, or a 20-minute walk if there are heavy tourist crowds (which there usually are). There are also punters (see costume post below) every 5 feet and they get in your face about going on a punting tour. If you go to Berkeley, I can tell you that walking to class in Cambridge is like trying to walk through Sproul Plaza from 12-1pm. Yeah.
After class in the Union, I'll stop by the programme office to chat with the PA's and check the bulletin board for new activities to sign up for. There is usually one new activity in the afternoon/evening that I sign up for each day of the week. I head back to Pembroke for lunch between classes, and after my last afternoon class I usually walk around town, lounge around in a college cafe/bar, or hang out at King's. After dinner, I hit the books in the library or read on the grass in the courtyard. I usually stay up on gchat to catch up with friends back in the states, but with the time difference this usually means I'm up until around 2:00am. Oops.
2. Life at Pembroke
 |
| Panoramic view of Old Court, courtesy of wikipedia.org. |
I cannot reiterate enough how much I love Pembroke. At first I was disappointed I wasn't living in King's, but I know now that I've really hit the jackpot. Out of 285 people on this programme, I think only about 25 of us actually live inside Pembroke College. Everyone else lives in King's, or four of the University-owned apartment houses/hotels. Pembroke is a lot smaller, a lot greener, and a lot more intimate. It's a five-minute walk from the city centre, which is actually quite nice, considering the lack of tourists. My friends at King's are always telling me about how tourists swarm their college and try to take pictures of them when they study by the river.
My building/house only has 10 students living in it. It's so cool, because if I were a real student, I would get my name painted (painted!!) on the wall in the staircase entrance.
 |
| Yo Robinson, I have your room. |
The names are painted on the walls because during the school year, the professors come to visit the students for one-on-one education in their rooms, instead of the other way around. A one-on-one college education?! SHIT. I feel like that kind of thing is unheard of in the states.
I was feeling a little homesick last week, so I did myself some good dance therapy. I pulled back the carpet on my floor and my room is big enough for me to dance and do turns on it! Good stuff.
 |
| Me and my half-rolled up socks, just like good ol' dance team days. |
3. King's
Not much of an update on King's than I had before. But I do have another panoramic photo stolen from wikipedia!
I spend most of my time at King's for seminar classes (my lectures are at the Union building) and in the 24-hour library.
4. The Library
Last week was finals week and I got a really good taste of what it was like to be a student cramming for finals in the King's Library. Almost everyone from the programme was there at night, so it was kind of cute to see everyone in the same place, at 2:00am, the procrastinators that we are, slaving away at last-minute term papers and exam preparations. It definitely reminded me of home. It's a nice and cozy library, and it definitely helps to be in a good environment when you need to crank out material.
 |
| Me in my natural habitat. |
5. Food
Food here is... interesting. It's very meat and potatoes at times.
I don't really understand. It's not just the fact that English people don't add salt to anything they cook, it's that I SWEAR, they add some kind of anti-taste ingredient to all their food... because even plain food has SOME taste. The nice thing is that I'm sure everything is healthier here. The portions are smaller, and the coffee and sweeter drinks don't have a lot of sugar in them. I think I will be (hopefully) leaner when I get back to the states... but then I will just hit up Asian Ghetto at Berkeley and gain it all back in one sitting. SIGH.
6. Coffee/Tea
Maybe it's a habit that I've picked up from the English, but I've been drinking a lot more caffeine here. I love drinking coffee with a scone in the morning, and I like drinking afternoon tea with tea cakes!
For finals week and London weekend, I stayed up for 20+ hours for at least three days out of the seven. I haven't even felt that tired... but it's probably because the coffees they serve at Pembroke Cafe are HUGE. I started writing my Gothic Architecture paper last Monday afternoon, took a two-hour nap at 3:00am, and got up at 5:00am on Tuesday to finish it before my 11:50am class. It was 10 pages of cathedral analysis and it had footnotes!! Me and my science-major self are very proud (the last time I had to do footnotes for a class was like... Lit Honors in high school.) After my class, we left straight away to train to London for Phantom of the Opera. The only thing that kept me up was this huge, soup-cup-sized iced coffee I got from the college cafe.
Bless the coffee bean, but man, this is a habit that is going to bite me in the ass later.
7. Water.
There is a distinct lack of water fountains here. And water in general. People will gladly serve you wine, beer, and even mineral water (what is it with you British people and carbonated water?!?), but I just want WATER. I usually just drink tap water, but the faucet I have in my room is kind of lime-y and crusty and I don't trust it anymore. Last Friday I woke up with a searing headache, and it didn't go away for two days, even with Advil. I concluded that I was probably really dehydrated, because I realized that the only times I drank liquids was during lunch and dinner.
 |
| BLEHHHHHH this is SICK KATHERINE |
The tea and coffee definitely do not help with the lack of water here. I thought I was getting a fever, but after buying giant 2-liter bottles of water and finishing both of them in the span of 6 hours, I was a lot better. I still felt very sick though, until Monday. Watching "Inception" with a blaring headache on the Sunday of opening weekend the day before my term paper was due was a very interesting experience.
 |
| I just want some clean water. |
8. Cleaning Ladies
For those of you who don't know, students are pretty spoiled and pampered here at Pembroke. First of all, I have a bedder. Yes. I have someone that comes in to make my bed, everyday. I also have someone that empties my trash everyday and cleans my sink too! The cleaning ladies also come in once a week to replace my sheets and towel, and they vacuum my room twice a week. Apparently, in every other dorm, this cleaning/bedmaking/vacuuming amazingness only happens once a week - but here, I get the service EVERYDAY! You would think that a clean freak like me would love this. But there is onnnneeeee small problem.
Well back up. The first week of school, it was definitely amazing. I would come home from class and my bed would be miraculously made, my sink would be clean, and my trash would be empty. It was like magic! It was like the shoemaker and his little elves. But then. Then. After a week, the cleaning ladies started coming in very early in the morning. They come in everyday
before 9:00am. Lately they have been coming in consistently at 8:15am. 8:15am. Really. If you read this blog or know me at all, you know that I cannot even get up for my Berkeley classes this early. Forgive me. But if my earliest class is at 10:25am, 11:25am, or sometimes even 2:00pm, there is NO WAY IN HELL I am going to be up at that hour. No more magic. No more little elves. I am starting to envy the people who only get their rooms cleaned once a week. Forrreealz. Apparently we're not allowed to tell them to go away, or hang up a "do not disturb" sign, or tell them to come back later. I tried once, and they just looked really confused. One time they told me that they would come back after they were done with the rest of my floor... except that my floor only has 3 other people on it. EFF. It's super embarrassing and awkward to pretend to read or be on the computer when they come in to make my bed... especially when I have messy bed hair and my sheets are STILL WARM from me sleeping in them. Sometimes they don't even knock and just barge in! Ughhhhhhhhhh. I understand that many people have jobs and classes that they have to wake up for much earlier than me. But it is summer. In England. And I stay up very late, and I haven't been able to sleep in past 9:00am here once.
Don't get me wrong. I love cleaning. I love the cleaning ladies. I know I sound super spoiled right now. I just. I just. I can't be in a pleasant mood at 8:00am. I am all for the "forcing a good daily schedule" thing, but I just. Oh man.
10. Cars
Yes. People drive on the other side of the road here. Maybe this next comment will speak volumes about the quality of my driving skills, but I really do NOT notice that cars drive on the "wrong" side of the road. I didn't even really notice when I rode the coach the entire way to Scotland. The only thing that does freak me out is when I'm riding in a bus and it starts to make a right or left turn into the OTHER lane. For a second my brain freaks out.
I also always wait on the wrong side of the bus before realizing that the passenger door is on the OTHER side.
For the most part, I get really confused when I cross the street. Pedestrians definitely yield to cars here, as a rule of thumb. When someone tries to cross the street, sometimes some of the cars will speed UP. RUDE. And the
BIKES CYCLES. The cycles are worse. They have it out for me.
11. Weather
The weather here has been pretty nice so far. It's very California - because I'll wake up and it'll be windy and cloudy outside, and then the minute I walk to class, it's hot, sunny, and humid all of the sudden.
It's windy here. I don't know what it is about the air, or the wind, but my hair is ALWAYS messy. Always. It will become messy in the first ten minutes of me stepping outside. It is always messy in my pictures. MESSY. One day I took a before and after picture.
 |
| Before a day of classes. |
 |
| After. |
The sad thing is, unlike my slob pictures, this one is NOT staged. Grrrrrrrr :(
12. Chores
Last Wednesday I did laundry for the first time over here. I have discovered a new love - ironing. The iron we have at home is a dangerously broken, oldschool hunk of metal (the kind you have to manually pour water in...), so I have never had to urge to iron something. They have a nice, large iron board and an iron in the cupboard next to the laundry room here at Pembroke. I like to take my iPod down there and just iron things sometimes - it's peaceful. Maybe it's a product of living in Cupertino my entire life, but I find joy in the domestic parts of daily life. In Cambridge, I've actually really liked doing laundry, folding clothes, going grocery shopping, going fruit shopping at the market, and just... regular things that make me feel like I am at home here. Even with all the trips and activities, I think I've been most happy here when I find myself doing something simple - like reading in the library, ironing the folds out of a shirt, or writing postcards on the grass. Maybe this makes me a lamesie, but I like it.
13. History
The sheer amount of history associated with this town is astounding. The other day, we took a tour of Trinity College. Isaac Newton, A. A. Milne (and Christopher Robin Milne), and Lord Byron are just a few of famous graduates of this college. We went to the college library - the
Wren Library - for a tour of the artifacts they have on display there. First of all, this library is gorgeous. Maybe even more gorgeous than Pembroke's and King's.
They had A. A. Milne's original manuscript of
Winnie the Pooh and
The House at Pooh Corner. They had Isaac Newton's (HOLLLLAAA NATE!) original edition of Principia Mathematica, with notes and corrections for the second edition in his own handwriting. Holy SHIT. This thing held the three principle laws of physics. It's so weird to think that the basis of all physics was started with this book that I was staring at in this case in this library. Crazy stuff. They also had Newton's notebooks, a lock of his hair (which has traces of Perkins DNA in it hahaha HOLLA NATE), his walking cane, and sketches of early concepts of gravity. The library also had early first editions of Shakespeare plays, and church manuscripts from the 7th century.
7th. I love it. I've heard that there are small gold plaques everywhere in Cambridge that say things like "Darwin lived here" and "Watson and Crick sat here after they told everyone about DNA" and I want to spend a day looking for all of them.
14. Military Time
I've gotten pretty good at reading it! In an attempt to really integrate myself as much as possible, I've reset all my phone, computer, and facebook settings to English (UK), although I am still pretty bad at doing metric system conversions in my head. I especially suck at the Celsius to Farenheit one. Ughhhh.
15. Internet
Besides water, the other thing I've taken for granted in the US is a high-speed, high-quality internet. I have lived in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley my entire life. My elementary, middle, and high school were the first three schools to have internet; Vice President Al Gore effing visited us in 1994! Being out of the US, even if you're in an English-speaking country, surprisingly gets you blocked out of a lot of websites. Among these, I cannot access NBC, ABC, or Hulu because I'm not in US, which makes it very hard to watch TV.
me: NOooo I can't watch certain music videos because of vevo country restrictions
Hermes: lol
yeah
you know everyone in europe cant watch official tv shows online
like
no hulu
etc etc
and then all of the shows are like 1-2 seasons behind
Hermes: everyone from europe in nepal didnt know that LOST ended
lol
me: HAHAHA
On top of that I also have a very, very low bandwidth limit here. The other day I watched one high-quality episode of
The Bachelorette on megavideo, and shortly after I got an email that said something along the lines of:
"YOU HAVE COLLECTIVELY SLOWED DOWN THE INTERNET.
YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF.
DO NOT USE THE INTERNET FOR THE REST OF THE DAY,
YOU BANDWIDTH HOG."
Oh man. This also puts a limit on the number of hours everyone can Skype a day, so it kind of sucks.
16. Education
The differences in education between the U.S. and U.K. are pretty distinct. As I've mentioned many times before, the education system here is very hands-off. At a typical UC class, you usually receive a syllabus with detailed information: deadlines for required readings, quizzes, papers, tests, etc. For most of the classes in the U.K., you basically just get a reading list - a long list of books and texts - and that's it. You rarely get a syllabus that outlines the structure of the class, and what materials you need for each lecture . All of the pacing and reading is up to you, which I found kind of frustrating at first. Most of the time, the professor will assume that you have read a certain text by a certain lecture, and how people seem to figure this out is a miracle to me. There is more emphasis on the independence of the student, than the tutor (professor) teaching the student material. One of my teachers made a note about how American students know how to take very detailed notes, but don't really know how to fill a class discussion - which I really agree with.
For our term paper, we got a very general topic, and got very little guidance on the rest of it. There was no specification on format, structure, or what details he was expecting in our paper. We got a word limit only about a week before it was due. My Architecture term paper was basically based off the words "analyze a gothic building," and that was it. It was kind of knitty-gritty in a good way though, to do all my research, comb through library books, and put together the longest paper I've written since high school. I really felt like I put a lot of my own work into it. It's still a very apparent shift from what I'm used to in the states. There is a huge emphasis on reading and writing in all classes. I know people in science and math courses that still had to write a 10-page term papers for their classes... which I just find odd. Most British students have been rigorously trained to write well, and most British faculty expect higher standards of quality.
17. Money.
All I can say is, it disappears. And rapidly. I think I've spent most of my money on food and traveling, but it still makes me queasy when I think about the exchange rate. I don't even know where my money goes. I've withdrawn a hundred pounds at least twice in the last week. Ughhh. I've been pretty good about not spending money on useless souvenirs, and I didn't do any shopping in Paris OR London. But the Friday afternoon after finals, I finally cracked and went shopping at the Lions Yard mall here in Cambridge. The prices aren't too outrageous, and there is pretty cheap stuff at H&M. Retail therapy is good to me.
 |
| Post shopping high. Pre no-money meltdown. |
But not to my wallet.
WORD FOR WORD -
I have so many new ones.
1. Pants = Trousers
Apparently the word "pants" in England refers to underwear. So if you said "Hey. I like your pants" it could potentially be an awkward/offensive comment. My friend asked for track/running pants the other day in a sports store. That was an interesting conversation.
2. Trashcan = Rubbish Bin
"Trash" is apparently offensive... or at least that is what the guy told my friend in his 10-minute speech about how ugly the American English language is. We just asked where to throw away our litter!
3. Restroom, Bathroom = Toilet
This one isn't THAT different. But I giggle immaturely when someone says "Wait for _____, she's inside the toilet." Teeehehehe.
4. Manwhore = Lad (used in context of "such a lad")
Use: "Oh man. That Tiger Woods, he is such a LAD."
There are so many I can't think of right now. It's really the subtle differences though, which I've learned through basic trial and error, especially in restaurants. If you ask for something in a different "tongue" you will be met with many, many blank stares.
THINGS I STILL HAVE TO DO:
- Sit on the grass by the River Cam at King's College and watch the punters go by
- Bike around the town at least once, and see all of it
- Go to ALL 31 of the colleges! No seriously. I'm going to do it. It might take me a few days, but I'm going to do it.
- Go clubbing in Cambridge... just because I haven't yet
- Find historic plaques hidden all around town
- Go on a real punting tour all the way down the river
- Send postcards home (give me your addresses!)
I'm excited for my classes this module, but I'm going to have twice as much work. I have a modern philosophy class and a political cartoon/humour class, and both courses look really promising. I am lucky because awesome Dr. Oldfield (see last two posts) is teaching my political humour class, so more good memories are sure to be coming.
I'm playing my first croquet game on Wednesday, going to see Lion King in London on Thursday, and then I'm leaving for Brussels on Friday. Exciting stuff.
I hope all is well for everyone, and thanks for reading!
Until Belgian waffles and chocolate,
Katherine
\
