SAA

Student Alumni Ambassadors

SAA Abroad

Good day, mates!

It’s a very rainy spring day in Cambridge, and I thought I’d go ahead and write about my life here in Europe for the past couple weeks before all the real craziness starts. I went to Ireland from March 14-16 and Scotland March 20-23, and I had a blast in both places. Here’s my short assessment of both:

Ireland

My trip to Ireland was amazing. Eireann (as it’s spelled in Irish) is a very beautiful island, and yes, it’s green everywhere. The trip started out rough: one of my roommates has a program on his computer that takes signal from his TV back home in New York and transmits it via internet to his computer, so I catch Lost every week at 1 or 2am our time (which is primetime on the east coast). So I didn’t sleep b/c I watched Lost, then caught a 3am bus to the airport to be there early enough to check in to out 6am flight. We then waited more than an hour to get through immigration (I’ve never taken longer than 5 min to get through before)…probably all the Americans coming for St. Patrick’s Day Weekend—the 200 people (thankfully) behind us in line were in a high school marching band from Pensacola. I hadn’t heard that many American accents in one place since December.

There were only 2 of us for this trip which made it really easy to decide where to go and what to do (as opposed to trying to organize 9 people like in Prague). In the day and a half we were in Dublin, we went to Christ Church Cathedral, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin Palace (filled with Waterford Crystal chandeliers since Waterford is in south Ireland), Trinity College (where the Book of Kells is kept), the Post Office (where the pillars had bullet holes from the Easter Uprising in 1916), the Guinness Storehouse (which has the best view of the city of Dublin—360 degrees 7 stories in the air), Kilmainham Gaol (literally: jail. Where they held and later executed the leaders of the Uprising and quelled revolts until Ireland became a republic in 1922). We also walked around Temple Bar for a little bit. Temple Bar is the Irish version of a classier Bourbon Street. St. Patrick’s Day celebrations were moved up this year by the Pope to that Saturday so as not to interfere with Holy Week, so I was in Dublin for the celebration. Probably would’ve been more exciting if I didn’t go to sleep around 10pm b/c of sheer exhaustion (only slept 1 hour the night before on the plane)

We also went to Cork—Ireland’s second largest city. Although it’s the second largest city, it comes in at a far second. We were there for 1.5 days and it was really only a half-day city. But we also took the 30 minute trip up to Blarney to visit the world famous Blarney Castle. It was a beautiful castle in the beautiful Irish countryside with rolling green hills. The castle is famous for having the Blarney Stone—a gift from Robert the Bruce to the Irish for their help in defeating the English at the Battle of Bannockburn (yes, Robert the Bruce is the guy who betrayed William Wallace in the movie Braveheart). Anyways, so the stone is said to have ‘mystical’ powers: if you kiss it, you are granted the gift of eloquence. So people have been traveling there to kiss it since the 1700s. I gave it a nice big smack. Blarney Castle and the grounds around the castle were probably my favorite part of the Ireland trip.

Scotland

My trip to Edinburgh (March 20-23) was even more amazing than Ireland. I met up with my girlfriend, Megan, and one of her roommates (they were/are on spring break), and we had a blast exploring Edinburgh. We took a free walking tour that was amazing (I’m definitely taking the tour by the same company when I visit Paris and Berlin) and went all around the city. It was nice to have a guide (I never had a guide in Prague, London, or Ireland…though I did have one in Italy!!!) to give us all the history—including the story about Greyfriar’s Bobby, the dog who sat by his master’s grave for 14 years after his master died.

We saw so many bagpipes and kilts, I was practically in heaven! (and I got a couple accessories for my own kilt!) Among other highlights of Edinburgh: the castle and Stone of Destiny (every Scottish—and most British—kings/queens were crowned on this rock…it was kept in Westminster Abbey till 1996), the Cathedral, the National Museum of Scotland (which was gave a very in-depth view of Scotland’s history…including the stuffed body of Dolly the sheep—the first successfully cloned animal).

Edinburgh is also the home of more literary history than I knew about. I already knew my favorite poet, Robert Burns, resided there in the 1700s. But I also found out that the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde originated from Deacon Brodie, a promiscuous city leader who secretly (at least for a while) had 4 different lovers and families. Also, I hung out at the café that J. K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter in (and got her inspiration for Hogwarts at a school you can see from the window…so I have seen the real Hogwarts, though I’ve never read any of the books)

It also snowed while we were there! I haven’t experienced snow in about 3 years, so it was really exciting!

Oh, and how can I forget?! We had haggis! (yes, Tittl, real Scottish haggis is very delicious, you should have some sometime…I thought about asking to see if they shipped)

I also know this is not my last trip up to Scotland. Next time (hopefully sooner rather than later), I’m spending a couple days up in the highlands—wearing my kilt and playing my bagpipes.

---

Now to today: I finished my classes up yesterday, but still have 40 pages to write for my finals (all due next Wednesday and Thursday). I’ve finalized my travel plans for the month of April: Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Florence, Rome, and Venice. I’m really stoked! I can’t wait to put my 3 semesters of German to use.

I’ll post pictures at a later time since I’ve reached my upload limit on Flickr for the month : (

Anyways, I need to get back to my paper-writing. I hope this finds everyone well and living in better weather than Cambridge’s gloomy spring.

Cheers,
Matt

Good day, mates!

(yeah, they say that in Britain—it’s the Aussies who shorten it to “G’day mates”)

It’s been a while since I sent out the last update email. But that’s ok, not really too much has been going on in my life here (yet…). I’ve spent the vast majority of my time here in Cambridge keeping up with classes. I have completed 7 of my 12 weeks here and so far, submitted 5 of the 12 papers I have to write (though I have 2 more due this week).

Cambridge is a nice little city, and there’s plenty of things to keep me busy. I’m content with just walking around the city or down by the river. The weather sometimes dictates the frequency of my walks more than I’d like (i.e. it fluctuates from sunny and 55 degrees to cold and foggy and 35 degrees during the day).

Though I have made sure that I got out on a couple occasions. In mid-February, I made a day trip to London. I’m bummed that I went on a Sunday (when most places were closed), but I still got to see many places including St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, London Bridge (which is not very impressive at all…the children’s song should have been about Tower Bridge), Big Ben and Parliament, Buckingham Palace (and the surrounding parks), Scotland Yard, and even a protest against Scientology. I had fun, and I’m pretty sure that I walked at least 12 miles (even with using the Tube).

This past Friday (we don’t have class on Fridays), some of my housemates and I went to a little town called Ely (pronounced EE-lee) about 15 minutes north of Cambridge by train. It used to be an island surrounded by eel-infested waters (hence the name), but has since been filled in and now about 30 minutes away from the North Sea. There’s not much in Ely except a beautiful cathedral, so we went up there for a nice half-day trip away from Cambridge.

I found a better way to distribute the pictures I’ve taken (so as not to clog up your mailbox with attachments)—I posted them up on Flickr. So far, I have 3 albums: Cambridge, London, and Ely. You can go there to check out my pics (and check back since I’ll be updating it every once in a while). The URL is http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattthomas2/

I’m really excited because I have only 4 weekends left in the program, and 3 of them will be spent traveling. I’m going to Prague in the Czech Republic this coming weekend, Dublin and Cork in Ireland the next weekend (for St. Patrick’s Day, of course!), and up to Edinburgh, Scotland the weekend after that. Needless to say, I’m really excited!!! [Except too bad I don’t have my kilt and bagpipes to play up in the highlands of Scotland…oh well, some other time in life]

Anyways, hope this finds you all well.

Cheers,
Matt