I'm here!

I’m in England! And (as far as I know, but you might want to check this…) nothing super-important has been blown up! After being in transit for what felt like eternity and a half…

My dad is a really nervous traveler (Hi Mom & Dad, I know you’re reading this) and made me get to the airport around 5 PM even though my plane left at 9:35 at night. I hung out in Logan Airport for a very long time until I ran into Becca, whom I sort of knew from Aegis, our literary magazine. She and her friend Liz were traveling to Cambridge together. There ended up being a lot of people from the program on our flight.

I didn’t sleep on the flight. Our welcome to the UK was punctuated by rain as we landed. How fitting. This was all rather expected. The rest of that day, however, was unexpected. We wanted to take a prescribed coach to Cambridge but this involved a delay and then a minor confusion with tickets but what it boils down to is that England is not an efficient place. The ride was supposed to take 45ish minutes but was something like an hour and a half. At this point Becca, Liz and I made the executive decision to not actually deal with any more public transportation and just walk from one side of Cambridge to the other as it rained on us. We had no general idea of where we were going and got lost several times; this whole procedure was easily an hour and a half too. The act of physically getting from Boston to Cambridge was a very long journey!

We checked in; I live in S15, which is about 3-5 times bigger than my room in the minis. I feel like I could reasonably fit everything I own and more into this room… it’s intense. The UNH Cambridge people totally lied about internet; there is definitely an Ethernet hookup in here. The only direct internet access we have is through the computer clusters in the library or through wifi if I can find it. I guess they’re really trying hard to disconnect us. I don’t know if I like it or not, though. My building seems to be rather empty, with only a few people per floor. Each floor has a toilet and the building shares a shower. I have a sink in my room, which is cool.

The campus is built in the style of medieval castles. Everything is very castle-esque for lack of a better word: my room is at the top of a very worn down spiral staircase. I’m going to try my very hardest to post pictures soon, because it’s beautiful here! This could take some time without a very consistent internet connection. Down the street are two internet cafes, but they will cost me money and it doesn’t appear that there is any sort of wireless hotspot in Caius.

So far nobody has tried to serve me scary British food. I promise I will write an update about Scary British Food when it comes into my life. Dinner yesterday was butternut squash soup, grilled chicken with some sort of sauce, potato fries, corn, yogurt and crème brulee. I can live with this! Every day the University serves me breakfast, morning coffee, afternoon tea, and dinner.

Classes start today. I’m not nervous about them. Shakespeare is going to be a breeze (round three!) and Ulysses will require some attention. Everyone in the program seems really cool so far, but I miss you guys (aww.)