Scene 25: Cambridge

I FINALLY GOT ON A TRAIN!

And I went to Cambridge. My UNC friend Tida is studying Shakespeare there and I got to hang out with her for two days!

The first night we ate dinner at a restaurant named Carluccio's. Both of us were starving, but thankfully, the meal there only took THREE HOURS.

Our waiter was presumed dead multiple times.

The next morning began with a stomach ache for Tida and four hours of sleep for me. Not the best combination.

Add to that spastic weather (raining one second, sunburn the next) and you've an eventful day.

The Music Video of Our Day

Tida had done some shopping (I was not surprised) and needed to return some clothes, so we hit up the stores.

Then we wandered around an open air market that sets up in the square every day and followed that with lunch, for me. Both of our eating schedules were off, so when I ate breakfast, an hour later she ate a croissant. I ate a cornish pasty, then two hours later she ate an ice cream cone. Eventually out of exhaustion (from walking and weather) we had tea together and from tea walked straight to dinner.

It wasn't... the healthiest day.

After shopping, it began to pour rain and we found shelter in a store called Cathy Kidston. Here is the video that ensued:

A Conversation with Tida

Tida persuaded me into going on a tour of King's College. I wasn't that interested because my knees hurt (at that time I'd been walking for, oh, six weeks) but went along with her. Props to Tida, it was beautiful.

Honestly, though? I prefer Carolina.

Tida had been carrying her shopping around with her all day, and when the rain hit her poor bag didn't stand a chance. A moment of silence for the remains:

After dinner I went to Selwyn College, where she's studying:

Someone didn't get their mail.

After Selwyn, I went to Tida's dorm and met one of her fellow Cambridge mates on the stairs and then caught a taxi back to my hostel, where I slept. It was marvelous.

And that was Cambridge!


-B

Scene 24: The National Portrait Gallery

One day, after lunch with the lovely Allison Norman, a fellow Tarheel, I decided to pay a visit to the National Portrait Gallery.

Turns out, I kind of love it there.

It's a tasteful mix of the antique and modern portrait worlds, ranging from sculpture to painting to photography. There was even a black and white Hollywood exhibit going on.

Any museum where a hundreds-year old painting of Queen Elizabeth and a Mario Testino picture of Kate Moss co-exist has to be cool.

The Scary Museum Lady took a while to catch me taking pictures, so I can show you some of what I saw!

First, a little look at some research of the Jacobites (act interested). They had a whole little wing!

A little placard for people who don't know anything about them (like everyone in the museum but me):

A family tree:

A timeline of sad events:

And look! Bonny Prince Charlie:

He was supposedly 19 at the time of the sitting, but he looks about 12. This painting helps explain how he was able to flee England when the revolution failed in the guise of a woman.

Look! A staircase!

But wait! That's not all! Beyond the pillars were creepy little statues of knights and kings and priests and people who looked like they could have accomplished either great feats of evil or piousness in their lifetimes. Odd combination.

Here is a lovely statue of Queen Victoria and King Albert:

Look! Heads!

Margot Fonteyn, famous ballerina:

TS Elliot:

My favorite painting in the museum, the royal family at Windsor:

You might remember this family from The King's Speech. I like how normal they appear. I say 'appear' because it's all an illusion.

That's all I could take before Scary Museum Lady came.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon :)


-B

Scene 23: The Replacement Theory

Human beings are built to adapt.

Wherever you go, after a while you begin to adjust. To the climate, the customs, the language, whatever.

I've always known this, and I've experienced it multiple times. Going to a different school, going to another country. But I always assumed that adaptation was a system that added things to your life- put new things in with the schema of what you already knew.

But what I've learned here in London is that adaptation usually doesn't mean addition- it means replacement.

When you find a restaurant in your new home (for me, London) that is your favorite restaurant out of the others you've tried, it's not your favorite 'London' restaurant. It's just your favorite restaurant.

The places you find that make up your 'new' life aren't new after you've adapted. They're just life.

I have a place I go to get coffee, a place I go to get groceries, to get my hair cut, to buy books. Being here for so long, they've simply become what life looks like to me.

I believe that's why you 'can't go home again.' When you return, you say, "Oh, that's where I used to love eating Chinese food," or, "That's where I used to get vintage cds," because 'home' is no longer your present. It's not until you adapt again that the things you considered your 'favorites' before you left home are your favorites again.

Obviously, relationships are different. No one replaces your family, or your boyfriend, or your best friend. But everyone has those 'high school friends.' That person you 'used to be close to.'

I'm excited to go home in two weeks, but it will be different than I thought it would be.

I'll see Starbucks, and I won't think, "Yay! I can have my latte again!"

I'll think, "Oh, that's where I got lattes before. I'll go there."

I'll see the movie theater I frequented and think, "I guess I'll see a movie at this theater, then."

And the same with everything else. I'll be adapting to my home, which is a strange concept to wrap your head around.

I guess it's preparation for graduation next year, when I'll truly leave and go off into the great unknown and fully implant myself somewhere different.

Then I'll come home for a holiday or quick trip and sit in what I'll then consider my 'old' bedroom, and look at my 'old' pictures, and pick up my 'old' teddy bear, and think, "I used to live here."

I think about America now and that's what pops into my head.

"I used to live there."


-B