Living Dreams

Hey All

Well as everyone knows, I'm back in the good old U.S of A and have been for a few weeks now. Thus the lack of posts. A lot of great things happened in that last week in Cambridge since when we got back from Amsterdam. I took finals, went to the final formal hall hung out in Stonehenge and Bath and wandered around London. I wish that I had written about it when it was fresh in my mind. Alas, life has been so crazy. I got back to Provo two days after school had already started and pretty much just hit the ground running and haven't really stopped.

But right now is a quiet moment so I thought I would recap things. Just for my own records you know?

So. I had two essays due that last week of classes not to mention a test and a final creative writing assignment for my supervision. I got back from Amsterdam, read over the supervision material I was supposed to be editing, I think I went to class and then I had like, I don't know, two hours to put my final assignment together for my supervisor. It was reworking a scene I had written the week before that she hated. I had to just cross my fingers and turn it in after a minimal amount of work-this is what happens when you blow off homework to go to Holland!

But, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised a few days later when I re-read it before my final meeting with Sarah. Can I just say for a second that I am a genius? I'm a genius! I thought tentatively to myself when I read it over before hearing Sarah's reaction. And then I got some confirmation. She loved it. Might be the least effort I've ever put into a final assignment.

What else? I wrote this awesome paper about how the construction of insecurity for United Nations peacekeeping forces isn't as strong as it is for conventional armies. I also wrote an essay about how Ultra intelligence shortened World War Two by as much as two years. (I knew much less about this topic). I then sat an exam that felt very much like an AP test and wrote some crap about terrorism or...something...America...media...I really don't even know. But that was the end of my Spooks and Spies Class!

After that it was party time. We had our final bash and we all went out on the lawn and took pictures and ate fancy food and reminisced about our last few weeks together. There was a dance and my friend Matt just got up on the stage and danced by himself with some 70s sunglasses on. Kid is awesome. Once it was dark out and people were starting to leave a few friends and I ran across the back lawn barefoot and down to the river (this is strictly forbidden!) That was fun.

On Friday I wandered around buying last minute souvenirs and then I went out to dinner with some friends.  I had to say goodbye to Cambridge because the next day I woke up at 4 am to get to London.

Oh.My.Gosh. It was absolute hell getting my luggage through London. I mean just getting it to the train station in Cambridge was impossible. We had to call a cab. See, remember how they broke my suitcase in France so that the pulling handle no longer worked? Well that was a HEAVY suitcase plus I had a duffle bag and a backpack loaded with bricks. It was just Rob and I for the day and we were going on a tour of Stonehenge and Bath with a tour company. It was so hard just getting from King's Cross to Victoria Coach station. Such a relief when we got on the bus and stuffed our stuff in the storage at the bottom of the bus. Rob's bag was ridiculously heavy and a journey that should have taken twenty minutes took about an hour. Anyway the tour was amazing. I've always wanted to see Stonehenge so that was really cool. And then Bath was beautiful. Such a continental city. I kept looking around and saying "are we seriously still in Britain? Because this feels like France." Things were just so light and orderly. We visited the Roman baths which was way cool but pretty crowded.

We also passed a very small jail on the road. It was in this tiny village and it was just this circular stone room thing big enough for one person where they used to throw drunk people for the night when they were getting to annoying.

Needless to say getting our stuff from the coach to our hostel in East London was yet another trial. It took about two hours. TWO HOURS. Luckily nice men kept offering to carry my suitcase up staircases in the tube. It was quite interesting to see the demographics that helped me. You'd think it would be a certain kind of man but one of them was this young punk kid like my age and he just picked my bag up for me like it was the expected thing.

And who said that chivalry was dead?

That night we met up with our friend Brett who we shared a triple bunk bed with in the hostel. The hostel was a novel experience for me because even though it was perfectly safe, I lead a pretty sheltered life and so waking up in a room full of shirtless men was a bit alarming. Especially when I found out later that a stranger had climbed up into Brett's bed at around 6 in the morning when he left to take some pictures of the early morning landscape. Poor Rob had to leave super early, ended up getting to the tube before it even opened and slept for an hour on the street.

That day Brett and I were super tired. We pretty much just rode a bus around London for awhile (by which I mean at least an hour and a half) and talked about life and problems and important decisions. Then we hung out at the British Museum and he treated me to a surprising amount of Empire history that he remembers from his Roman phase as a kid.

That night he left for the airport and it was just me. I got one of the top bunks in my new room for the night and there were I think 12 people in that room. At one point this European guy my age came in, shined a flashlight in my face because he was on the bunk below mine, apologized and then had a major freak out because he realized he had lost his Eurorail ticket. This sounds bad but hearing him cuss in English so sincerely with his European accent was simultaneously endearing and exasperating. It was like 1 in the morning and I was still so so tired. The next day I literally just bummed around the hostel and the surrounding area. I walked along the Thames and read and called home and sat in a park and read and ate food that I bought at a groccery store because it was a bank holiday and I couldn't find anywhere else. I walked quite a ways into the financial looking district and then turned back.

I then stayed up in the lobby of the hostel until 3 or 4 am when my taxi came to get me. It drove me all through London past all the tourist attractions which was kind of cool. A last goodbye. I had him drop me off at the wrong terminal so I had to wait for the airport tube system to open up and then changed to the right terminal. I was so tired when I finally got on the plane that I feel asleep before take off. Luckily I had the whole row (all two seats) to myself and so I got to lay down. Also there were personal movies which was fun because I don't always get that. Turns out it was the pilots retiring flight so they had some kind of ceremony when we landed in D.C. where they hosed the plane down on the tarmac. That was interesting.

I hung out in the D.C. airport, had to go through security again, got on the next plane to Salt Lake and was just so uncomfortable and so tired and the guy next to me was taking up too much room. My great friends Ashley and her (now!) fiance Aaron picked me up and gave me a huge hug when they saw me. I was then taken back to Provo, shown into my new apartment where my friends had nicely already transferred my storage unit stuff and went to school the next day!

It was quite the whirlwind. I guess a few interesting things have happened since then, but I'll finish this post with my trip and just say a few things.

It was amazing. I loved England and I fell in love with Cambridge. I learned a lot. I made some really great friends and I grew as a student. Going to Cambridge was one of the best experiences of my life and, to be honest, taking classes there just felt so natural. Even though BYU is great, I'm excited to get back out of the bubble for grad school. I loved the diverse types of people I got to meet. Kids from Harvard and Yale and UC schools and Science Po. Kids from places like Moldova, California, Greece, Holland, Texas and Estonia Pakistan and Lebanon.

I loved that I even though I was a visitor I felt at home.


Here are some pictures from those last few days:

London Tube

Brett and I riding the bus around all day

British Museum

Oh yeah and did I mention that we accidentally stumbled into Notting Hill Carnival? Biggest street party ever. Brett thought it was too loud. It was fun at first. But then we honestly just couldn't find the way out.

So many people. So much music. Lots of food.

The locals just watched the festivities from their balcony roofs! 

What a punk

My bird picture from Stonehenge. I'm actually rather fond of it.

You know what this is

Beautiful Bath

Roman Baths

I dipped my feet in Roman water!

Why is the water green?

That infamous suitcase. I threw it away when I got back here.

So to recap and get some closure on my amazing summer here are a few things I did over the last few months. It is by no means comprehensive, but I
-climbed a Scottish outlook in Edinburgh to see the sunrise
-Danced with my nephew
-Played in the ocean
-changed diapers
-Hung out with one of France's top cabinet members
-Danced with a drunk man in Amsterdam
-ate crepes
-Punted down the Cam
-lived at the top of a spiral stone staircase
-Threw my brother in law off a jetski
-Drank the Yorkshire air
-Watched Alex graduate
-rode an overnight bus
-danced at a traditional Scottish Caleigh
-Saw Shakespeare performed with the right accent
-reconnected with my mom's family
-played ghost in the graveyard in a beach house
-chilled out in a hot tube
-drank water that's older than dinosaurs
-took classes with brilliant students from around the world

Thank you 2011 for being one of the most amazing summers of my life. I hope you all enjoyed reading about it even a hundredth as much as I enjoyed writing about it.
Cheers!