Cambridge with Carys - Mid October

Well its been ages since I wrote so there is a lot to catch up on here. In the month since I last posted I have been very busy. I'll start here with my trip to the UK during our autumn break here from school in mid-October. As some of you may know the first few months settling into Denmark has been busy, fairly stressful, and of course a process like anything else. Moving to a new place is fun, exciting, interesting and sometimes challenging. Although I don't tend to get homesick per se, it is tiring to be in a new place where one is still developing a network of friends. By the middle of October i was missing my community in Japan, my home for two years and all the great people and places that made my life there pretty great.

Fortunately, for me one of my nearest and dearest friends, and roomate in Japan for two years, Carys - is also here in Europe. Although based in Switzerland at the moment she was travelling to the UK to speak at some Rotary events as she was sponsored by a UK Rotary club to go to Japan. I arrived in Cambridge a few days after she did. It was so great to see her at the station and feel...home in a way. Home for me is a feeling of being with certain people that mean a lot to me, rather than a place. Carys and I know each other well and it was nice just to relax and be me for a few days. It was also nice not to have to find my way around (Carys lived in Cambridge for several years), find the place to stay (we crashed at her friend Mike') or figure out any languages (everyone speaks English there - yay!)

Most of the time we just chatted and chatted about what was happening in our lives over coffee, beer, nice meals. It was a tourism vacation for me but as we were in Cambridge of course Carys showed me around some of the big colleges that compose Cambridge. Unlike the US system where universities or colleges have departments in Cambridge it works all together differently. There are many colleges which compose Cambridge University and as I understand it the colleges are based on their speciality like education or engineering.

Two of the more famous colleges at Cambridge are King's College and Trinity College. So we went there first. I think this is a pic of Trinity College

















This is the court yard area at King's College
















This is also King's College, the well known church is also visible here.















Meandering in and out of cute Cambridge shops with Carys...no phone, no computer, no books - just relaxing.....