The Cambridge Chronicles #1: upon arrival

I had a colossal bag with 49.5 pounds of essential living materials. Lugging through hot, sticky, sweaty, grimy new york city. Bus trips and transfers, ticket lines and security lines. So many lines. Then a 6 hour, 9 minute flight to London, Hethrow airport. Where we arrived at 6:00 am local time—which means 2:00 am Averill time. 3-hour bus ride, attempting to sleep in the most awkward bus-sitting positions everrrr. I felt like a rag-doll filled with sand, dipped in water. My fingers were heavy.

Finally we arrive! It’s about 50 degrees outside. Not Celsius. It hasn’t been 50 degrees in the states since… February? So it’s a good thing I planned for a hot humid summer, tons of light t-shirts and skirts, and literally DID NOT PACK ONE SINGLE SWEATER.

Freezing and exhausted I tried to keep myself awake until a reasonable bedtime. We checked in, mingled with the college elite—although I have yet to meet any Harvard/Stanford/Yale people yet. Had a great conversation with some Penn students. And saw girl, who I haven’t seen since sophomore year in high school. Crazy random.

The bar opened, and everyone got really excited! Us BYU kids stared at each other pleasantly much preferring to get excited about the upcoming food. An incredible buffet was set before us, and we chit-chatted and asked questions like, “where are our classes?” “how do we do laundry?” “when are we going to scotland as a group?” “wait, we’re going to Scotland as a group?” “anyone know anything about anything that’s happening at this program?” the general answer to that last one was no.

We took a walking tour.

Some fun facts about my stay here:

• Charles Darwin lived here: in the dorm room right next to me. No big deal.
• Oliver cromwell’s head is buried in a garden on campus
• Newton’s famous apple tree was uprooted and replanted right outside of trinity college. So that was cool.
• The creator of Winnie the Pooh drafted this masterpiece on campus.
• There are incredibly low ceilings leading my room. (I didn’t learn that from the walking tour, I learned it from hitting my head several times on my way)
• It stays light here really long. Last night it was10:00pm, and it’s finally dim enough to use the light from the street lamps. 
• It is stunningly beautiful here. The buildings are older than my country by about 300 years, and  the light just seeps into your soul. I've caught the motherland bug. (pictures soon to follow!)

We had FHE tonight: BYU students are seriously a force to be reckoned with. Harvard, Yale, Penn, Berkeley, Brown, Princeton kids: Watch out.