bath and stonehenge

spent the weekend in bath then stopped by stonehenge on the way back! we stayed at the university of bath, which...well, it blew. it basically looked like a prison/factory/prison-factory, what with all the pipes sticking out, the rust and dirt, and the overall griminess of everything. oy. i feel so bad for students who normally live there. i didn't even bother taking pictures of it. one potentially good thing was that we had private bathrooms in each room. except there was no shower curtain, so the shower water just kind of filled up the entire bathroom floor....sigh. anyways, we went to the city, which was much prettier than the university and took a tour.

the abbey

haha the angels are climbing ladders to heaven...if you haven't seen that southpark episode, watch it! it's hilaroius

the circus. this was a very nice looking area - very relaxing.

the royal crescent. these houses cost something like 8 million us dollars. how crazy is that?? but they look really nice, and i guess you do get 5 stories to yourself.

the bath
me, sharon, kat, paula, and monica in front of the bath
some pool where a ton of people threw money in. there were some large bills in there! -__-
spa water fountain - the water tasted like ass, though. metallic, mineral-fortified ass. it was even warm!

pretty view at night

there was absolutely nothing to do at night, though...we walked around/sat around for a couple hours. then we walked around/sat around some more. then we went back. -___- bath is really just a one day kind of place, i guess.
and then the next morning, i pulled another 'shakespeare final.' i went to sleep at around...130? and i was going to wake up at 730 for breakfast at 8. some guy knocked on the door a couple doors down from me in the morning and told the guy that they 'needed to go.' i groggily checked my watch and saw that it was 930. this was when the buses were going to leave. damn damn damn. so i bolted out the door and turned in my key. thankfully i wasn't the last one and the buses were still there. sigh. at least i made it. this is the second time it happened, though (and i woke up at the same time both times!) - i need to set like 5 alarms the next time i have to wake up early.

me and jane austen doin the dirty.

stonehenge in all its smaller-than-i-thought-it-would-be glory
our attempt at a jumping picture. well, i guess kat succeeded.

so the weekend at bath/stonehenge was alright. stonehenge ended up being pretty fun since we just took a bunch of retarded pictures. otherwise, though, london and scotland were much much better. i'm looking forward to the rest of this week, though! formal hall, harry potter, stratford upon avon (for macbeth), and hopefully london again this weekend? we shall see.

a weekend in london

just spent an entire weekend in london! it was incredible! let's see...on friday, we went to the tate britain and were going to go to the tate modern, but kenji and i had to check into our hostel, so we shuttled our way over there and dumped our stuff. then we went to covent garden to eat and then kenji realized he forgot his othello ticket, so we had to go back to the hostel and back to the globe, where we managed to make it in time.

the tate britain.

the london eye

emo kenji

the globe theater - it was really nice.
the cast of othello - good production, but because i had never read it i had no idea what was going on for the first 15 minutes or so. always takes me a little while before i get used to shakespearean english. also, i stood as a 'groundling', and by the end my back and legs were killing me -___-

on saturday we checked out of the hostel, which was a decent one. there were 10 people in the room, and only 2 bathrooms on the floor. the people were nice, though, and the night went by uneventfully. we went to the tate modern because we missed it yesterday. it was good stuff. i really like georges braque after wandering the museum. i think he's definitely one of my favorite artists so far. after that we went to brick lane for lunch. such good curry! then we sat around in leicester square for a while. at 5 we went to see AVENUE Q!! it was such a good show! absolutely hilarious. after the show we actually returned to cambridge for the night.

brick lane! the curry was delicious - one of the best meals i've had here. =)

on sunday i woke up nice and early and headed with the TAs and other people to go check out tour de france!

the anticipation
the bicyclists! they passed by in about 30 seconds...but it was still cool. the bicyclists all looked really intense.

after tour de france, we went to wimbledon!! ohh man this was crazy. wimbledon itself is pretty and well-kept, but the match was the crazy part. federer vs. nadal. it went all the way to the 5th set, and the first 3 sets were all really close. such a good match. federer was slipping in the 4th set, but then he pulled ahead in the last one. i had to meet up with the TAs again at 6:45, and it was almost 6 and the match was almost winding down. i was hella nervous cause i thought i might be late for the bus or i might miss the last point. luckily, though, federer got his act together and won the game at exactly 6! such a good last point, too. everyone was nervous that nadal would double fault at the last point since both times it got to championship point he missed his first serve. i got the last point on video =D and after that i hauled ass out of there, making it to the station just on time. talk about cutting it close..

wimbledon
nice grassy courts
ashray and chris enjoying strawberries and cream at wimbledon.
all of us in front of the 2007 sign.
nadal the neanderthal - so bestial
federer - much more of a class act. haha
federer after he won. if you can't tell, he's crying out of joy. go federer!

ohman, what a good weekend. i'm pretty glad that i didn't do all the super touristy stuff such as visit the london tower, parliament, buckingham, westminster, etc. i mean, it would be nice to see them sometime, but this was a great way to spend my weekend in london. a couple museums, brick lane, a musical (my first!), tour de france and wimbledon. such craziness. i was in the tube for like a third of the time, though, shuttling back and forth. quite the experience. =)

FREEEDOMMMM (empire day)

went punting on the river cam! i didn't actually punt, though (hopefully i'll get a chance to). instead, it was a bunch of us in the boat and the ta punted for us. it was really relaxing, though. haha and at one point, the other ta got his oar stuck in the river, and we pulled it out. we were about to hand it to them, but our ta told us to deny them. so mean. but they got it back eventually. =P

look at all those punts!

will - hard at work

the bridge of orgasms. lol. apparently if you're on a bike and you roll over this bridge, you get a 'plesaurable feeling' (as will put it) as you cross it, hence the bridge of orgasms. haha

the bridge of sighs. i read the poem about this bridge! i don't remember it anymore, though.

view of king's college from the river. everything was really pretty and picturesque.

the other group lagging behind us because we didn't return their oar =P

i forgot what this bridge was called, but it looks nice.

the day after, we celebrated independence day! well, the british don't call it independence day, they call it empire day. but still. we had 'bbq'...it wasn't really bbq, but the food was still good. the director gave us all tea bags so that we could throw them into the river cam, which is exactly what we did. =) go america! haha

so many american flags

jenn, and kenji adamantly looking away

more blockage

just call me mr. america.

getting ready to throw our tea bags into the river as an act of defiance. =P it was strangely satisfying.
at the club!
more clubbing

haha so much fun. except i had so much alcohol at that club and i still didn't get drunk...sigh. and i rewatched my sassy girl today caues we had nothing better to do. haha such crazy times =P going to london tomorrow! i'm really excited for this, since there's so much to do and so much planned out already. more updates after i get back!

the school and scotland

whew so it's only been a week, but it's felt like a loooong time. i guess that's cause we didn't have much class last week and we spent most of the time in scotland. now that we go to class every day i think time will pass by much more quickly.







cambridge is really pretty. it's like something out of a victorian novel, what with the ivy and the well-kept lawns.

sheep! except they weren't that cute and they were pretty annoying. -__-

this is the trossachs/highlands of scotland, and this is the path we had to hike up. there was mud everywhere...my socks were pretty much completely brown after i got back. it was about an hour long hike up, but it was all worth it because of the view.

the view.

the elephant house - apparently this is where j.k. rowling first scrawled out harry potter onto a napkin. it was actually a really nice cafe on top of that. =P

part of edinburgh. the orangey building in the front is the national gallery of scotland, which was very cool. lots of pretty pictures. it helped that one of the TAs here is a medieval art history major, and she gave us a nice informative tour.
edinburgh castle. very forboding, indeed. it cost too much to enter though (about $20), so i opted for the cafes and pubs.
fountains abbey, where we stopped by on the way back. it was incredibly...sublime and peaceful. nerd that i am, it also reminded me of something out of a video game. this was also about the time my camera battery died, so i couldn't take too many pictures of the place...=(

i really liked edinburgh. the city wasn't too big so that you could walk everywhere, and it was full of little cafes and pubs. it was fun just sitting around in a cafe and writing. although at night, the pubs and clubs were good stuff too. i blew most of my money on food and alcohol. =) aand i went clubbing for the first time! first time was at this club called cabaret-voltaire, which was kind of this stony, old/classic looking place that was playing weird techno music the night we went. and these two guys came up and hugged me for some reason. hm. the bartender there made an amazing amaretto sour, though. second time i went clubbing was at this other club called the city, where it looked really modern. they had two rooms, a small one which played american music such as 'sweet home alabama' and 'footloose'...which is not really clubbing music at all. or mainstream music for that matter (the club was supposed to play mainstream music). they had a large room too where they played weird euro-techno-funk. it was odd. and they had these smoke machines that sprayed crappy smelling smoke what seemed like every 30 seconds. but! i guess true to their euro-techno style, they played 'what is love'!! haha i got a huge kick out of that.

scotland was a ton of fun! it's a shame that we have to start going to class every day, though the structure will probably be good for me. it feels kind of strange to be studying here, but i guess that's the point of the program. excited for london this weekend too. it's too bad that i'll only be there for 2 days...there's so much to see! alright, more updates later!