Cambridge

Hi friends and family! I posted my pictures separately because I’m not sure how fast my internet money is going away, so wanted to make sure at least SOMETHING got posted 🙂 We’re in Cambridge–literally, ‘bridge over the river Cam’–should probably be CamBRIDGES, because there are a bunch of them. Most famous are probably the Mathematical Bridge (!) and the Bridge of Sighs–this may not be Venice, but they definitely like their river.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Time here has been rather low-key compared with places like Dublin; Cambridge is a town that centers around its colleges, and most of those have been closed this week, so we’ve been busying ourselves with class (a 45-minute walk away), shopping, and checking out the cute coffee/tea shops and bookstores around here 🙂 It’s so very interesting to see how the lives of my English counterparts work: we’re around college students our own age, but they do college life in a completely different way here. First of all, Cambridge University is made up of a bunch of different colleges, each of which is a largely separate entity. Most famous is probably Trinity College, alma mater of people like Isaac Newton, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and A.A. Milne! On Tuesday, a couple of us went to visit Trinity’s Wren Library, where about 15 precious manuscripts are on display. They include a first edition printing of the Bible in English, Shakespeare’s first folio, Newton’s Principia Matematica (with edits in Newton’s own handwriting!!), and handwritten drafts of Tennyson’s and Byron’s poems…!!! I was really, really excited to be there (needless to say!) Later on, we took a tour of both St. John’s and Trinity Colleges, and they look a lot like monasteries inside–in fact, some of the buildings were monasteries seized when Henry VIII dissolved the Catholic monasteries in England. It’s a very cloistered way of studying, which I’m not sure I could handle. But they sure are beautiful buildings: Gothic spires, Cambridge boys in flowing black robes, walls overrun with blooming wisteria 🙂

Flowers are a big part of Cambridge–this is the perfect time to be here! I put up some pictures of more brightly-colored doors with climbing flowers around them. I’m coming to see why the land features so prominently in English literature. The land has a sweet charm, especially when it’s coming to life with all varieties of primroses, peonies, and bluebells 🙂 Bikes are also ubiquitous: while there are cars here, bike is the primary form of transportation for most people. Picture this: rainy day. bike with a basket. little English lady with a woolen skirt. Put them together. Cambridge 🙂

Internet time is kaput. Hopefully I can put up more later. Love to you all!