During a typical week in the life of a student studying abroad in Cambridge, my week always starts on a Monday. Granted, my schedule is a bit different from the rest of the students in the house due to the fact that I am neither taking Art nor Global Health meaning I do not actually have any classes on Mondays or Wednesdays. However, every Monday we have to clean the house. Each week we are assigned a different room in the house to clean, or are assigned to make common meal, which means we do not clean that week but go shopping with Nola at Tesco instead. Common meal is a group meal that two people will make each for the entire group. It consists of an appetizer, drink, main meal and a vegetable as well as dessert. So far people have made enchiladas, chicken pot pie stew over biscuits, spaghetti and meatballs, breakfast for dinner and sloppy joes. Common meal is a great time that brings everyone together and allows us as students to have a nice meal at least once a week.

Mondays are usually a good day to recover from a weekend of traveling or do any last minute homework or reading that may have been forgotten while gone all weekend. For food, we are on our own to cook and wash any dishes we make. Tuesdays start off with Theology at 9 in the morning, followed by History. Unlike what many people are used to when they have class, we have class on the top floor of our house and our professors come to us. We also rarely have homework in these classes but will have a paper or exam at midterm and final times. They are all British professors from different universities in town. At 11:45am, History ends and Professor Murphy will drive Rachel and myself across town to Anglia Ruskin University so we will make our 12pm Contemporary Fiction class.

Class at Anglia is much different from class in the house. Where our History and Theology class are both lecture based, Contemporary Fiction is a discussion based class. CF also allows us to interact with British students and hear their thoughts and opinions during discussions which often are different from our own. We do have homework for CF, however. Each week, we are responsible for reading a novel as well as secondary readings, such as different articles that relate to the novel or ideas of the novel. The novels that we have read thus far have been quite different from any book I would have chosen myself, but have brought about very interesting and rewarding conversation and caused me to think about things differently than I would have otherwise.

As of last week, we found a great church with an awesome worship service and bible study that is held at night on Tuesday. If any night, Tuesday nights are usually the nights that we will go out to the pubs or clubs if we choose to. I personally, don’t have any classes or anything I will need to be up for on Wednesday until our house meeting that is usually a noon, so it works out nicely. Though, most nights we stay in we stay up until the wee hours of the morning bonding anyways.

Wednesdays we are really able to do whatever we like after our group meeting is over with. It’s a good day to make sure to get out of the house and go down to the market in town and go shopping. Common meal starts with appetizers at 6:30pm and usually goes until 7:30-8pm depending on how long we converse and eat. After, we usually change into comfier clothes and hang out, watch a movie, or play games. Another popular activity is to plan trips for weekends to come. It may sound easy and fun, but can get very stressful. Looking up flights, hostels and calling to book train reservations can become very overwhelming at times.

Thursday after morning classes are weekend begins. Promptly after classes, we are usually packed and ready to hop on a train and travel to different towns or countries depending on the week. We’ve taken the train to Manchester or Edinburgh, or to London to head to the airport and fly to Dublin or Paris. Each weekend we usually find somewhere new to explore. We will usually always return on Sundays, depending where we are going to. The weekends are the best, exploring new countries and cultures. Seeing places that you usually only see in photos on Google. Next weekend we are heading to Paris and I’m sure seeing the Eiffel Tower will be a completely unreal experience as well.