My British Journal: cambridge university

Wow! What a beautiful day! I'm finally beginning to experience the London that I packed for! Today was nice and chilly. A little too cold in the morning, but it warmed up nicely. I just love sweatshirt weather as many of you know. It was nice to not be super hot and just be able to really enjoy my surroundings!

Today we went to Cambridge University! We all hopped on the bus at 9:00 this morning and about 2 hours later we were arrived! It was a pretty quiet bus ride. Nothing too exciting to report. I slept most of the way, both directions actually. Ha!

Cambridge is a really interesting place. So much history is such a small college town. Here are some random facts that I remember about that town:

The university is actually made up of a bunch of different colleges that are literally small campuses of their own. I don't know all the names, but there is King's College, Queen's College, Trinity and many many more. 31 colleges to be exact.
It was established in 1209 by 2 Oxford scholars that were banished from Oxford for how they were disciplining bad students.
Cambridge was where a great deal of the Reformation took place. Many of the important minds studied and preached there including Martin Luther.
Grades are posted outside the colleges on boards for all to see. WAY intimidating! But I bet my grades would be tons better if BYU did things that way!
The roads are very uneven and you are bound to stub your toes about 234081 times. I did.

What a beautiful town. It is a very interesting place. It really is a college town, but way cooler and so different from Provo. There are lots of students there, but TONS of tourists. It was actually kind of irritating how many people were there today.

Our day in Cambridge started off with the King's College Chapel. Dr. Paxman had been informed that the chapel was closing a ton earlier that day and he kindly passed the news on to us (Tricia, Kaitlin, and I) and we headed straight there closely followed by Dr. and Sister Evans. What a fun chapel! It was built by Henry VIII (I think) and had his initials everywhere including his initials along side Anne Boleyn's. So cool! The stained glass was mind blowing! I've never seen anything like it! I posted a picture of some, but it barely does justice. We weren't allowed to use flashes, so its also kinda blurry.

After the chapel, Kaitlin went to meet up with one of her friends who is going to Cambridge for the summer with some BYU program (he shows up later in the story as well) while Tricia and I went on the epic search for a public bathroom. We had been pointed in the direction of this mall but still could not find it. I went in a store and asked a worker where the "restrooms" were and he looked at me like I was a crazy woman. So then I asked for the "water closets" and he said they were just out the door and to the right. Well... I think he's dyslexic or something because they were definitely on the left and thanks to Tricia we finally found them.

Then it was sweatshirt time. I had decided that I wanted a Cambridge sweatshirt as opposed to just a London one. I got one in red and a pretty blue one for Trevor.

Then it was off to the Fitzwilliam Museum to see the Darwin exhibit. We met up with Kaitlin and started walking. Turns out we were going the wrong way and it took us a bit longer to find than we originally thought. (Cambridge can really make one feel pretty stupid. I think my brain turned to mush the instant I got off the bus because I was surrounded by so many smart people and kept doing/saying such stupid stuff!)

The museum was nice. It was a lot smaller than the ones we've been going to here in London which was nice. It wasn't as overwhelming and seemed a bit more intimate. The Darwin exhibit was a bit of a dud to be honest. Maybe its because I'm not much of a science person or something, but I was super bored and the only thing I found cool was the first edition copy of one of his books.

The rest of the museum was great! Degas, Monet, Renoir, Suerat, Cezanne and so many others! Its so cool to see paintings I've seen pictures of in real life! Kinda a crazy feeling!

After the museum it was shopping time! There is a great mall there with lots of fun stuff in it. Did I also mention it was super expensive?? Well it was! But there were lots of fun clothes. I ended up finding a pretty cute skirt for 6 pounds and I'm super excited to wear it soon! Fun Fun!

Then it was time for the really cool stuff! We met up with Kaitlin's friend, David, and got our own private tour of the city! :) He actually took us inside 2 of the colleges including King's College! (We can all say we used a bathroom in King's college! How cool is that?? HA!) He pointed out some really cool churches where Martin Luther taught and other people involved with the reformation. He showed us the oldest bookstore, Heffers and some other fun stuff! It was really cool to walk around the actually colleges themselves! Only students and professors are allowed past the gates, so we sure are lucky! He showed us one of the dining halls which looks just like the Great Hall from Harry Potter and some other fun things! Then we said goodbye, popped on the bus, and came home.

Some people put in Emperor's New Groove which I watched for a little, but now its getting super late!

Good night world!

Love you all and hope you are safe and having fun!!! See you in 5 weeks!

Oh and did I mention that David (Kaitlin's friend) was GORGEOUS! And basically all the other girls on the study abroad kinda hate us now! haha! Not really, but he kinda was ridiculously good looking, no lie! haha