Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin

This morning sent me about 50 minutes east of London to Cambridge, where we were able to get the inside tour from Mr. Jon Readey who went to Cambridge for his Masters. It's a lot different from London; it's smaller, it's less multi-cultural... more quaint. Once you get into the old part of Cambridge there is no motor vehicle traffic allowed, and everyone gets around on bicycles with baskets on them - they remind me of the scene from the Wizard of Oz where the Wicked Witch of the East is riding on her bicycle with Toto in the basket. The city has lots of cobblestones and old brick buildings with climbing ivy. It's amazing to think that Newton and Milton both attended Cambridge once - and that I've been there! I suppose I know that these great figures were real people who must have gone to school somewhere, but it's so unreal to me to think that they could have ever stood on the same stones that I've stood on.

Oh!!! I almost forgot - we got to take pictures at Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross station in London before leaving for Cambridge!!!! We even picked out a Harry, Ron, and Hermione from the group to pose at the platform.

Anyways... back to Cambridge. Towards the end of the day we got to go punting down the river Cam, which was pretty much awesome. Our tourguide and punters were great and told us lots of fun facts about the University. We also got to see some of the local students celebrating the last day of exams by throwing each other into the river. All of the people who worked doing the boat punting were really nice. They were all fascinated by the fact that we were Americans (and probably because it was a big group of girls) and wanted to know about our hometowns and about our school. It was a more positive response than we had gotten so far from idigenous Englishmen.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Janet, Whit, Margaret, and I ran into a little old lady in the secret garden today who was nasty and judgmental. I couldn't believe her nerve. We had barely stepped foot into the garden when she approaches us and asks if we're Australian. We tell her "no, we're American" and she immediately starts grilling us, asking where we are studying and for how long as if she can't wait until we are gone. She then starts reprimanding us about how this is a queit garden and how we need to be respectful and that we need to leave if we're not going to be respectful. We hadn't even had time to be disrespectful or loud! We had literally just stepped foot inside the garden! As soon as she perceived that we were not British, she automatically assumed that we were trouble-makers and that we didn't deserve to enjoy the garden. We said ok and ignored her - though it took all my self-control not to make a nasty comment back to her about the long curly hairs popping out of her chin - not to mention giving her a lecture about stereotypes, xenophobia, and tolerance.