Winding Down, Heading Home

Tonight we are getting dressed up and heading to Maddingly Hall for our farewell dinner. It's been a busy week. After another all-nighter to finish my second essay, I spent my final week enjoying the sights around Cambridge. Steven J. and I went on an 8 mile hike around Audley End and visited Audley End house, a Jacobean mansion built to entertain visiting royalty. We hiked through fields of wheat and startled four large dear (two bucks and two does) while they were feeding. I saw two open air Shakespeare plays (a so-so Macbeth and an excellent Taming of the Shrew)and ate at a Spanish Tapas bar and a Turkish restaurant (fried lambs liver is dee-lish). My favorite afternoon was spent in a walk down the river to Granchester, a small village about a mile away. We had tea and cakes (treacle tart- much better than it sounds) at the Orchard, a famous but low key Victorian out door tea house frequented by the likes of Virginia Woolf, Bertrand Russell, Wittgienstien (sorry about the spelling)and Sylvia Plath. Today Brittany and I went punting down the river- by ourselves. It was awful. We couldn't get the punt straight and kept hitting other tourists and running over ducks. I'm sure we'll laugh about it later. I'll be staying in London with Laura for the next two days and visit various museums, stately houses, and some musical that she really wants to go to. I'll arrive back in the U.S., God willing, at around 4 PM EST Monday. I look forward to seeing all my Gainesville friends soon!