The Oxbridge Week

Once Scott left I was pretty worn out, and I spent most of Easter Monday sleeping, which I think I needed. Most of the rest of the week was spent putting together my internship portfolio, which ended up being 70-some-odd pages long. It was a rather frustrating assignment because all of the questions had to apply to 270+ different jobs, so none of them really meant anything. I ended up getting an A on it, so I suppose I did OK, but it wasn't a whole lot of fun. Interviewing my bosses and making my portfolio pretty were the most fun parts, and this is one of the pictures from that project, of me working in the office. I'm proofreading The Gorse Trilogy in this picture. The book will be realeased at the end of June.

On Saturday I did another of the program daytrips to Cambridge, and it was about the most beautiful day ever in such a beautiful town. I wandered around on my own for a while, and then the whole group of us went punting, which is boating in the squarish, pole-steered boats you see in the picture. It was a guided tour, so our punter told us all these interesting things about the colleges at Cambridge. It was really gorgeous and really relaxing among all the portfolio hubub. I got to see the chapel at King's College and the Bridge of Sighs (in the picture), as well as the general cuteness of the town.

That Wednesday I went to see Dying For It for my class play, and it was pretty funny. And on Thursday, Amanda and I went to see Rafta, Rafta at the National Theatre. We had dinner at the theatre cafe and ate on the South Bank patio area, which was great. The show was hilarious, and I also ended up using it for both my theatre essay and presentation. To get our fill of Indian culture for the week, we went out for Indian food in Islington on Friday night.

And to complete the university tour, Amanda, Petra and I went to Oxford on Saturday. We found a bus that takes you there for 11 pounds round-trip, and the ride is only about an hour and a half. When we arrived and got a map we decided to go to this cafe in a church that my friend Kara had recommended to me. A very strange turn of events led us to free brunch (we had stumbled into a student event) and conversations with a PhD student who went to Carolina. (weird!) We spent the rest of the day hanging out and seeing the sights. We saw the Divinity School and Christ Church College (think Harry Potter), we climbed the tower of the church with the cafe (see picture at left), and we ate in the pub where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien used to hang out and debate stuff. It was a really cool pub, and they didn't capitalize off the history at all, which means it was even better. We got home really late and really tired, but it was a whole lot of fun.

On Sunday I went to Kew Gardens, which is huge and really pretty. The bluebells were in season and were particularly pretty. I got to see every type of tree and cactus imaginable, and there were tons of families out picnicking in the fine weather. I saw the oldest potted plant in the world, which was kinda cool. Amanda joined me after I was there for a little while, and after we left the gardens we went to the town of Richmond, which is just on the west edge of London. We ate at this really cute cafe that's under a bridge, and we watched the river. We walked up the Thames for a while and into the nature preserve, where there were deer and a lot of pretty landscape. Being outside all day made it much easier to have to come home and do homework, and it was a very outdoors weekend. Now there was only one weekend left before the end of it all, so don't go away. Cheers!