cambridge.

cambridge was majestic. large patches of grass. gothic architecture. medieval-looking turrets/towers. lots of coat of arms. the river cam. Also, there happened a degree ceremony going on, so lots of students walking around in fur-lined robes. interesting. it made me love and want to be on a college campus that is actually like a campus, or almost like a palace. we think it's a big deal that the ivies were founded in the 1600s, and in my case, exeter was founded in the late 1700s. BUT! cambridge celebrated its 800th anniversary last year! every corner you turn, british and royal history slaps you in the face. from isaac newton to princes henry and william. henry VI to prince charles. so great.

it's just like a russian doll of communities. the college within a university within a town! it sounds similar to a traditional US campus, but .... not really. of the college campuses i've been to, it most closely resembles yale's i think. but it's obviously much less overwhelming and more manageable.

we took a 2 hr bus ride from islington to cambridge, and as soon as we got off the coach at 11, several tour guides were waiting for us. our tour guide was an elderly gentlemen with a thick scottish accent. he pronounced "gown" like "gone." love accents. in general, the entire trip was really pleasant, especially because it was one of the sunniest days since i've been to london. i could actually see the sun! such a rarity.

entrance to queen's college. on the left, you can see the green sign that says "visitor's entrance CLOSED." but our tour guide was badass, and he let us go in. woot woot.

very serene. felt more like the cloisters at a church, than a college "quad."

sun dial! and it was actually working today because it was so sunny.

the eagle. oldest pub in cambridge.

ceiling graffiti at the ceiling. they're from solders during the second world war.

king's college. started by Henry VI and finished by Henry VIII. it was built specifically for the graduates of the famous Eton school for boys. so, for 400 years only eton boys were educated at this college. don't know quite what to say about that.

king's college chapel. and epic tree.

so my favorite story of the tour was the "night climbing society." once upon a time, cambridge kids created a mountain climbing society, but there are no mountains near cambridge, so they decided to climb.....the BUILDINGS! they had to do it at night, because if they were caught they'd get expelled. the picture above shows a narrow gap between one of the colleges, and an administrative offices. apparently, the students like to hop over that gap a lot when climbing.

the best anecdote of that club is that one morning, people found a CAR on the roof of one of the university administrative offices!! the best part is that no one knew who did it, and how they managed it! so after 50 years, the pranksters revealed themselves during a reunion event, and they said they got the car up using ropes and pulleys. that pretty amazing.

reminds me a lot of the infamous '57 Volkswagen prank at exeter. i miss pranks.

famous king's college chapel. epitome of gothic architecture. large bay windows, buttresses and pointed pinnacles.

beautiful fanned vaults. there is no mortar or cement holding those stone pieces together. they're upheld purely by their own weight.

tudor coat of arms. dragon and greyhound. king's college is intricately tied with the War of the Roses, but the details escape me.

altarpiece by peter paul rubens. priced at about £50 - 70 million!! which is about $90 - 120 millions!

trinity college.

another great story about the night climbing society. what you see here is the statue of Henry VIII at the entrance gateway to trinity college. when first put in place, the king was holding a royal scepter representing the state. then one day, the night climbing society replaced the majestic object with a wooden chairleg. since then many students have replaced the chairleg with objects like toilet brushes, but in order to preserve the tradition, the university still keeps the chairleg in his hand. i would LOVE to be a part of the night climbing society, except i'd be too scared to actually climb. i'd just want to take part in pranks.

castle-esque.

river cam. and punts that take you on the river around the town.

last but not least, a picture of me. well, the shadow of me taking a picture of myself. i personally like this photo a lot.

while walking around cambridge, i thought to myself "i can see myself going to graduate school here." guess that means i love cambridge, london and great britain in general. but...i think too many people would miss me in the states if I am gone for more than 4 months haha. or at least that's what i hope is the case.

i must say, i'm extremely proud of/surprised by how diligent i've been about this blog. once every or every other day is much better than i ever thought possible. i'm so dedicated to this blog, that here I am up at 3am .....good night.

middle east and assyria, and waiting for godot.

today i made my way to the british museum to explore another section of it. after class ended at 1 o'clock, I got free lunch from one of the student clubs here at the university of london. Then, I got to the british museum just in time for one of their free short tours, called "eyeOpener tours," for the middle eastern gallery. I realized that most of my art history training has been too concentrated on western art, and in fact my introductory survey class last semester skipped over the islamic art chapter in the book, despite the fact that it has extraordinary architecture.

so, I arrived at the meeting point at 1:58 for the tour that started at 2. our guide was a middle-aged, somewhat nerdy looking, but extremely kind man. and there was one other middle aged woman, who told me she's on this tour because she had just taken a trip to Syria. so there i was waiting for the middle eastern art tour with the guide and one other middle aged woman. a few other people joined the tour and they were all much much older, but i kinda liked it that way. our tour guide made a point that not all art from the geographic area of the middle east is necessarily "islamic," hence the change of the name of the tour from "treasures of islamic art" to "art of the middle east." in fact, a lot of the pieces he showed us were very utilitarian and secular. also, the loose term "middle east" on this tour is not limited to the area we currently know as the middle east, but it extended all the way to spain and morocco, and included sicily and also india. the tour covered middle eastern art from about 1000AD to present day.

colorful animal miniatures from mogul india around the 13th century.

beautiful arabic scripture on tablet.

popular tile work that adorned the walls of mosques and other interior spaces. these weren't floor tiles for most interior spaces had carpet on the floor.

glass lamps that would hang in interior spaces. on the far right lamp, you can see arabic scripture written in blue on the neck of the vessel.

a few things i learned about islamic art. 1. a lot of it involved scripture, which is where the highly esteemed art form of calligraphy comes in. 2. human or animal representation is rare because it was thought that only allah could create living forms. 3. since human/animal representation was not allowed, most of its decorations are floral, or abstract or geometric patterns.

then after the 45 minute tour, i explored the gallery a bit more on my own, then joined another tour of assyrian reliefs. on the tour I saw some familiar middle-aged faces who were just with me at the middle eastern tour. guess these tours attract a certain type of people. however, there were many more younger people on this tour, even students who were younger than me.

the assyrian kingdom was the first great, and one of the largest, empire in the history of the world. it started about 4500 years ago, and it was centered around current northern iraq. assyrian art is mostly in the form of relief sculpture that adorned the interior walls of royal palaces.

assyrian king in a chariot hunting lions, which was the ultimate symbol of his power and authority. the king is always shown with his bow and arrow. these hunting scenes shows him conquering the natural world. apparently, one of the kind killed 467 lions in one year!!! craziness.

look at this poor lion with arrows puncturing him. it's about to collapse as blood gushing out of his mouth.

more dead lions.

i really enjoyed these daily 45-minute free tours of different sections of the museum. they have one for pretty much all the geographic area or time period exhibited at the museum, so i think i may try and go on as many of these as possible.

so on my walk back home, it was raining and it made me feel slightly miserable. and i came into my room and realized i didn't want to spend thursday night just sitting on my computer. so, on a whim, i decided to go see if they have available tickets for tonight's show of samuel beckett's waiting for godot, starring......Ian McKellan! so I took the tub to picadilly circus, and luckily enough they had spare tickets! in fact, the student tickets on the day of the show are SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than they are otherwise. i had seats in the "stalls," or what we call "orchestra" seats. they usually run for 50 pounds, and I got mine for 20! and my seat was excellent!

the performance was BRILLIANT! i was originally quite nervous about going to see the play without having read it before, but tonight proved to me that plays were in fact meant to be seen as a performance before people started studying them as texts. i was super jealous of the people who read waiting for godot at exeter, and finally I know the play now!

ian mckellan was incredible as estragon. he effectively conveyed the character's physical pain and desperation, but also his innate light-heartedness. there was also great chemistry between estragon and vladimir, as with lucky and pozzo. originally, i was so keen on extrapolating the "dhm" of the play and tried to approach it so academically that it was hindering my enjoying the play. so, i relaxed and enjoyed the production for its humor, acting, and treatment of the play, and that made it much more enjoyable. in fact, that allowed me to better reflect on it after the show was over. waiting for godot really highlights the thin line between tragedy and comedy, reality and fantasy. i really didn't expect the play to be as funny as it was.

the one thing that almost ruined the play for me was the guy sitting next to me. clearly, he was only there because his girlfriend dragged him there, and he was as impatient and fidgety as the 5 year olds i saw earlier at the british museum, whining to their parents. during the performance, he leaned forward and rested his head on the empty chair in front of him, and his girlfriend had to pull him by his sweater to get him to sit up straight. then during half-time, he was complaining how the play was boring, the humor juvenile and not "academic" enough. then, his girlfriend consoled him by saying something even more disturbing. "but honey, plays were meant to dumb and uneducated people." wtf, that's partially true but not for waiting for godot. the humor was intentional to contrast the underlying misery. then at one point, he argued that sienna miller was a better actor than ian mckellan. so, clearly he doesn't know what the heck he's talking about. he ended the night by rudely and immaturely refusing to clap at the end of the performance.

what's so fitting about waiting for godot is that I'm currently conducting a small research project on the influence of irish impressionist painter Jack B. Yeats (brother of even more well-known W.B. yeats) on Samuel Beckett. apparently beckett was greatly interested in art, and particular admired fellow irish Jack B. Yeats.

so yup, i was particularly proud of having a very "british" day today, when i almost spent most of the day in my room.

shrove tuesday. pancake day.

so, today was Shrove Tuesday, the british version of Mardi Gras, the day before Lent. Here, Shrove tuesday is often called Pancake Day after the fried batter recipe traditionally eaten on this day. and pancakes here are not the thick fat kind you get in the states at iHop. they're what we americans call crepes.

Shrove Tuesday gets its name from the ritual of shriving that Christians used to undergo in the past. In shriving, a person confesses their sins and receives absolution for them. (says BBC - Religion)

so...why pancakes?!

apparently during lent, a lot of christians don't eat fats, eggs and milky foods. So, how better do you indulge before Lent than eating PANCAKES, which is made entirely of fats, eggs and milk (and flour)!

though I am not religious at all, I decided to celebrate pancake day as a way of acclimatizing* to british culture, but more importantly, as an excuse to eat crepes!

celebrating pancake day entails eating pancakes, obviously. but another big part of the tradition is pancake racing! pancake racing is a short relay race, where people run while holding a frying pan and flipping pancakes! and there are several of these happening all over the city during the course of the day.

Origin of Pancake races (taken from BBC - Religion)

Pancake races are thought to have begun in 1445. a woman had lost track of the time on Shrove Tuesday, and was busy cooking pancakes in her kitchen. suddenly she heard the church bell ringing to call the faithful to church for confession. the women raced out of her house and ran all the way to church; still holding her frying pan and wearing her apron.

I chose to go to one of the more well-known ones in Spitalfields, off Brick lane. this race happened in front of the Old Truman Brewery, a brewery-turned art gallery that hosts exhibits of emerging artists. despite the rain there were lots of spectators. And many of the teams showed up in fun costumes. so...here's PANCAKE RACING!

sponsoring creperie.

emt team. they, along with many other groups, took this opportunity to fundraise and collected donations from the crowd for their organizations.

the day's master of ceremonies.

and off they go. the emt group and the fireheads. the man in the pink onesie is a GIMP, he tried to bother the racers by stopping them and putting sugar on their frying pans. but to me, he's just a man in PINK ONESIES!

gimp.

some more crazy costumes.

pirate.

superman being chased by the gimp.

aww...the poor girl dropped her pancake!

the scouts skipped the entire race. pretty great.

nerd.

wd-40????

the day's musical entertainment.

exhibition at old truman brewery. they were holding a photo exhibit of the earthquake in haiti, and raising money.

my pancake for the day! crepe with apples and cinnamon...yummmm......

*acclimatized: british-ism meaning "getting used to"

i love audio guides.

Finally, after a month of living in london, i made it to the British Museum for the first time today. it's absolutely ginormous, so i knew it would take me several trips to thoroughly see the museum in its entirety. i was originally planning on attending one of the free tours of specific areas of the museum, but the ancient egypt one that I wanted to go on was cancelled. So, I decided to purchase a fancy multimedia guide and do an ancient egypt tour myself. this trip to the british museum, once again, reaffirmed my fondness of audio guides! just love the quirky facts they throw at you.

great court.

list of kings 1250BC - chronology of the pharaohs of Egypt. interestingly, it omits the few female pharaohs who ruled the kingdom.

hieroglyphic detail.

colorful limestone panel.

rosetta stone.

first tier of text is egyptian hieroglyphics and the last is greek alphabet. very impressive, but too many people crowding around it, made me feel claustrophobic.

statue of pharaoh ramesses II.

cats were an integral part of Egyptian life. they were prized pets, but they also substituted for the form of divinity. haunting fact about cats during the egyptian kingdom: "cats were regularly bred and strangled when they were 3 months old to be mummified and buried with important people."

mummified cat.

daily life in egypt. ivory cosmetic box in the shape of duck carrying her ducklings.

mummy. compare this luxurious burial ritual with......

this modest burial in the egyptian desert. this old man from 5000 years ago was not mummified, and yet he is perfectly preserved because he was buried in dry sand that absorbed all the moisture. he's basically just shriveled up. he's buried with just his vases and daily tools, as opposed to his mummified pets.

new fact. I always associated egyptian with paganism, but apparently, by 4th century AD the population was largely christian. i guess it has to do with the influence of the roman empire. Coptic Egypt is the terminology for 'christian egypt.' it was most heavily concentrated on the area equivalent to today's ethiopia. this piece of tapestry shows virgin mary and baby jesus, flanked by angels.

african tapestry showing Artemis and Actaeon from greek mythology. again interesting mixture of egyptian art representing greek mythology. I've come across the subject of Artemis and Actaeon a lot while touring museums so here it is. Actaeon was a hero known for his fondness of hunting. one day, while hunting and roaming around in the forest, he witnesses the hunting goddess, artemis, bathing with her female attendants! infuriated by this violation, artemis shoots an arrow and transforms actaeon into a stag. Unfortunately, his hunting dogs comes across the stag, but obviously does not recognize their owner actaeon and kills him......

touring the 7 egyptian rooms took me 3 hours. so who knows how long it's going to take me to see every single room in the museum? before I left the museum, i managed to whiz through a themed room called 'living and dying.' it showcases different civilizations/cultures and how they 'live and die' in relation to the outer world. for example, it explained the Thule community, who live in alaska, in the northern most point of America. it showed how they 'live and die' in relation to animals, so on display were their hunting instruments, their kayaks and boats, and their clothing made of caribou skin and even seal intestinal lining!!!

then, guess what these are?

they're coffins! unfortunately, i didn't write down the details, but in the early 1920s, brothers from a south african country (maybe tanzania?) created an eagle shaped coffin for their mother who always wanted to fly. Since then it's been an interesting tradition for people to create unconventional coffins for their dead.

i've decided to see the british museum in little bits and pieces during the remaining 3 months. so, now, i have a map of the british museums with 8 of the million rooms checked off. my goal is to have every single room marked before I leave in may. and of course, I will use the fancy multimedia guides every time. I look like a dork when i'm using it, but i love using them! the audio guide costs £4, but i'm willing to pay it since the entrance to the museum is free. in fact, ALL museums are free in london! woot woot!