In Which A Lot of Stuff Happens but We Have Little Time to Write About It

So it's 10:40 pm and our bus for London departs tomorrow at 7:45 am, and we got up really early this morning and went to bed pretty late last night, so I'm (and this will be hard to believe for those of you who know me) going to try and keep this short. 

Some comments:

1. Exchange rate: 2 USD ~= 1 GBP , 1.57 USD ~= 1 euro

2. Coins (that I've encountered so far): one pound, two pound, ten pence, 1 pence, 20 pence. I always get the one pound and ten pence mixed up, until today I guess when I got golden one pounds and the ten pence are all silver. So, I guess I still don't really understand the coinage. Not looking like an idiot at the cashier's counter is quite an accomplishment. As Ashley bragged this morning: "I actually got all my p together!" (p being pence) The 20p coins are heptagons, and the two pound coins are large, thick gold coins, which I like.

3. In Cambridge, a small coffee is about one pound 50 p. 

4. A National Express (nationalexpress.com) bus goes between Cambridge and London airports and greater London etc. and is in general very handy. You can purchase a "funfare" which means you have to have specifc arrival and departure times within a day; these are generally cheaper, although they increase by one pound with every person that purchases them. So, if M. got her tix for 9 pounds, I could get mine (if I were the next person to purchase) for 10 pounds. The amenable day fare for London-Cambridge round-trip is 10 pounds 80 p, so eventually the funfare becomes more expensive.

5. Ryanair is one of the cheap airlines within Europe, easyjet is another. Ryanair only flies out of Stansted in London, though, not Heathrow, and has very specific routes and sales, as well as a max of 33 kg and 81x119x119 cm for checked luggage, so I would definitely recommend using the airline but being careful about planning your routes and luggage. Also, take advantage of the sales as soon as you see them; they disappear arbitrarily.

6. A lot of the shrubbery on the Cambridge College lawns are pruned into this tipped over egg shape with a pointy top, which is apparently a popular style in the British countryside. No idea why. 

7. Isaac Newton, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Francis Bacon are apparently some of Trinity's alumni. No statues of women, though.

8. Sainsbury's is a pretty standard grocery store around here. Cheese is all white, and lunchmeat is all pork, turkey, chicken, ham, pork tongue, liver--no salami or bologna types. Sainsbury's basic is like the Shurfresh/Shurfine of Madison, so I bought a Sainsbury's basic pizza for only 99p, but it was pretty terrible. Oh well.

9. Kitchen at M.'s house is 9 guys, one girl (her), and they share 3 fridges and 1 freezer, except these fridges are like the mini dorm fridges in the US! I guess people go grocery shopping daily here, which is China-esque. The oven is convection, and most of the power is switched off until you need it. There are very few pots/pans, crockery, no napkins or paper towels, only one dishrag...I felt like a pretty wasteful person. On the other hand, I do think that being able to properly wipe your counters after cooking is pretty important.

10. Eating in the dining halls at Cambridge is referred to as "eating slops", and if you're a student, you can get away with paying three pounds for a very decent meal. I also had fantastic creme brulee at lunch one day. 

On Friday Ash and I walked around Cambridge as M. (who says it's okay to refer to her as Mahalia) had engineering projects going on. As mentioned in previous posts, it is GORGEOUS here, and very very clean (the rain seems to wash a lot away). So, our walk was very nice, although I very sadly did not manage to get asked for directions (which was my goal, and still is--I want someone to mistake me for a native before I fly to Ireland. It probably does not help that my British accent is rather lamentable). Colleges we've seen so far (and I mean Cambridge colleges): King's, John's, Trinity, Jesus, Christ, Queen's, St. Catharine's, Selwyn, Peterhouse (the oldest), Caius (pronounced "Keys"). A lot of people are still taking exams now, so everything was pretty quiet. Quote from when we first got here: Me: "Wow, the insulation in your house is awesome, Mahalia, WAY better than our house in Madison. You can't hear anyone!" Ashley: "Actually, I think that's just because everyone is quiet here." It turns out Ashley was right.

In the afternoon we had a full English cream tea in Grantchester Orchard. I skipped the tea part, and stuck with a cheese scone, a bunch of clotted cream, and raspberry jam. It was EXTREMELY good. Also, the orchard/walk to the orchard was beautiful. I chased some birds and mooed at some cattle as well. The fences on the walk to the orchard feature these rolly grate things to prevent the cattle from getting through, which I thought was clever. We saw houses with thatched roofs as well. Also, we "discovered" an interesting type of slug, and as Ashley was the one who noticed it first, I dubbed it "the Ashley." 

I cooked for all of us Friday night (tan pian with eggs and green beans, for those of you Chinese speakers out there), and I guess everything turned out okay because people ate it without grimacing too much. 

Today it finally stopped raining and was actually quite beautiful, which was great because A and I spent the whole day (8-8) visiting Avebury, Stonehenge, and Salisbury via a Roots Travel guided tour (which I highly recommend as an agency in general). It was 35 pounds for a student, which is quite cheap when you realize that these places are over 2 hrs away from Cambridge and quite a bit apart from each other, plus admission to places, etc. Our tour guide was named Matt and was very pleasant and informative, as well as a fast driver.

Avebury was very nice, featuring the largest manmade prehistoric hill, built by Neolithic man about 5000 years ago, either to represent the pregnant belly of a woman, or to allow people to get closer to god (the Sun). We also saw a double circle of stones, which was a very spiritual place back then, consisting of over 100 boulders (now reduced to 27, due to the Christians ordering them to be smashed because they were pagan, etc.). the tall skinny stones represented males, the short, wide stones represented females. In particular, the "obelisk" represented a certain male part, and a stone a bit of a distance away represented a vulva, and apparently at the summer or winter solstice, the sun would hit the obelisk in such a way that a shadow would fall through the vulva stone, representing the man entering the woman. The earth was the mother, the sky the father.

Naturally, Ashley and I wanted to take a picture of us hugging the vulva, but we didn't have time, unfortunately. Luckily, a short ways on, we encountered another male stone next to a female stone, so we hugged that instead. Prasanthi. ( We were not allowed to touch stones at Stonehenge.)

stonehenge was about 45 mins away, and very interesting. You can google the details on this because I really have to go to bed soon, but suffice it to say that there was a Chinese man and woman on this trip, and they'd found out a little earlier I could speak Chinese, so they were very relieved because they found it exhausting to understand English (they'd only been in the UK for six months), so I translated a bunch of stuff, and post-Stonehenge the man came up to me and said, in chinese, "So...it's just a big pile of rocks, then?" I really did enjoy it, though.

Last of all we visited Salisbury, famous for having the tallest medieval structure in the world, the Salisbury cathedral (though I find this a bit cheating, because it's only the tallest because of this gigantic spire at the top; Ash thinks Notre Dame is taller sans spire). The cathedral also houses the Magna Carta. We hung around salisbury for a bit and then went back to Cambridge.

Tomorrow we head to London and will meet with one of my future flatmates, S. at the Tate Modern cafe and head over to Chinatown for dinner! I realllllly hope it doesn't rain.

Oh, and we ate the most amazing fish and chips tonight at the Snug, and they weren't even mean about it when I asked for ketchup. Twice.