The Front of the British Museum - it's very impressive! |
On
Saturday I went on an excursion with the summer school to the British
Museum down in London. It wasn't a guided tour; we were in charge of
ourselves, and didn't even have to stay in the museum if we wanted to go
elsewhere in London. I wanted to stay at the museum, and did so all
day. These photos will demonstrate why; they are a sample from over two
hundred that I took!
The original Rosetta Stone |
The British Museum is
incredible, if you ever have a chance to visit it, even for a few hours,
it is an incredible experience, even for people who aren't usually
interested in museums.
A beautiful marble carving of Venus (Aphrodite) the goddess of love, from the ancient Greek and Roman exhibit |
Today
I finally went punting on the river Cam. It's been on my to-do list
since I got here, and now, after two full weeks, I've finally done it! I
wasn't at all brave enough to hire one and take it out on my own as
some people do, so I went with a group of other tourists with a guide
who did all the punting. It was quite a relaxing experience: the boat
sits quite high in the water, it rocks gently as you're propelled along
by the punter's pole, and the sites along the Backs are incredible. The
Backs is the name for the route that the water course takes, which is
literally along the backs of some of the colleges. You can see King's
college, Queen's college, the university library, St Clare's college,
Trinity college, and several others. Our punter gave us a brief history
of each of the important buildings we passed, the bridges we went under,
a short history of the town itself and of punting. And we only bumped into a few other boats.
A reconstruction of an elaborate golden headdress worn by an ancient Mesopotamian queen - Queen Puabi. She was buried in this headdress |
This
week I have started a new schedule of classes. In the morning after
breakfast I go to my class called Versions of the Tragic, and each
lesson we talk about a different tragic play that we've all previously
read. I'm not at all well-versed in tragedies, so I took this class to
learn more about the genre of tragedy. After this class we have a
plenary lecture, which we must all attend. These are a series of
lectures given on the theme of triumph and disaster, and we've heard
about topics as diverse as Virginia Woolf's 'To the Lighthouse',
Shakespeare's 'Antony and Cleopatra', and the psychology of C.S. Lewis.
These lectures are given by various members of Cambridge university
teaching staff, and it's really interesting to observe the different
teaching styles and the different approaches to the topics we've heard.
After the plenary lecture we are given an hour and forty-five minutes
for lunch, which we buy for ourselves. There is a sandwich shop directly
below my room at St Catherine's, so I usually buy a panini from there
for lunch. At 2:00pm we go back to class, which for me is Power and
Wonder in 'The Tempest'. This
class is a bit more in-depth than other classes I've had here because
we focus on only one play and are going through it act by act. This is
very helpful for me because I am writing an essay for this class.
A famous hunting horn, carved from an elephant's tusk, used during the time of forest law after 1066 |
Breakfast and dinner are provided for us at college. Breakfast is a large buffet in the dining hall with
everything from cereal to croissants with cream cheese: orange juice,
grapefruit juice, tea, coffee, cereal, toast, yoghurt, you name it! We
can also go into the kitchen where we can have bacon, eggs, sausages,
fried tomatoes, hash browns and porridge.
A Christian wood-panel painting of St Paul |
Dinner
is a served sit down three course meal. Each night is different, but
it's always delicious! For example, last night we had fruit for entree,
kebabs, rice and stir-fried vegetables for mains, and mango sorbet with
wafers for dessert.
Chess pieces from a medieval chess set found on a beach in Scotland |
The
weather has been very erratic the entire time I've been here. It was
raining when I first arrived, then overcast the following day, then
sunny the day after that! And that pattern has happened more or less
every week: it will be sunny for an afternoon, then at night it will
rain, then the whole next day will be dry but overcast.
All the locals I've talked to have said
that it is very unusual for it to rain so much at this time of year,
and I've heard that there's even flooding in other parts of the UK.
Fortunately I brought an umbrella :-)
Jemimah
Jemimah Halbert is participating on our Cambridge Literature Summer School Program in the UK. Jemimah is currently in her 3rd year of a Bachelor of Arts at Edith Cowan University.