A Day in the Life of Abby

Common Meal

I live in Cambridge, England. I’m here mainly to travel Europe. However, in between those amazing traveling days, I do actually have to attend classes and lectures, clean the house, and all that mundane stuff. This blog is a little anticlimactic after blogging about London and Scotland and the excitement of the flight over, but most of my days will be spent in this house, and in this room where I’m writing now, and it’s important not to forget the little things that make this trip what it is. I have classes from Monday to Thursday morning (I get the rest of Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to travel every week) and I have to take Art Appreciation, History, Theology, Topics in English Life and Culture, and Global Health. Classes in a British school are much different from schools in America. They never have any homework, or projects, or exams, they have 2 grades for the semester- one midterm paper, and one finals paper. So, in three of my classes, where I have professors from the local universities around Cambridge,I never have any homework. In my global health class taught by my resident director who is from Valpo, all I have to do is read a chapter before class, and in TELC all I have to do is journal my experiences (As you can imagine, I love that class!) So what do I do with the rest of day when classes are over and we still have hours and hours left of daylight? I’ll tell you. We explore Cambridge, we go shopping, we pick up a crepe from the Crepe Cart in the City Centre, we work out. All these mundane things make up my life here, and in a way the memories of these days are just as significant as seeing Big Ben, or Edinburgh Castle. There is a lot of history here at Cambridge as well, and it’s so fun to just wander without a destination in mind and see what I can discover in Cambridge today. There is always something new to see, whether it be where they discovered Mercury, or where the remains of the castle is. As I mentioned earlier, there is a crepe cart at the City Centre and they make the most amazing crepes I’ve ever had. We have been there so often already they have given each of us a loyalty card and after so many crepes we get one free. Holla! There are crepes like Nutella and marshmallow or apple and cinnamon, or there are crepes like egg and bacon or ham and cheese. Whatever your heart desires! Since I’ve mentioned the City Centre a few times, maybe I should explain it. The house we live in is at the top of the only hill in Cambridge and if you walk down the hill towards the center of town, you stop seeing as many houses and you start seeing cafes, and restaurants, and clothing and shoe stores. And then after you cross the bridge, a little ways past, cars are not allowed in and that is where the City Centre is. It is full of every shop you can imagine, and it has 2 shopping malls. It has all sorts of restaurants and cafes, pubs and clubs, shops and stores. This is where we do our grocery shopping, at Sainsbury’s. But walking back up that hill to our house is not fun. Especially since we have to do it so often because the food here has less preservatives so we have to shop at least once a week or food goes bad. However, since last night we found an Aldi’s and it is much cheaper, we won’t have to walk up that hill anymore, praise the Lord! And at night, we watch an average of 2 movies before we go to bed so we can catch up on some British movies from over here. Those are my days in a nutshell, hope you enjoy reading!
With love,
Abby

The Cricket Clock