My first day in Cambridge has been rather mellow and informational. Breakfast in Hall was fairly early, leaving me with 5 hours until my class. Its a cloudy and cool day outside, warm enough for shorts, but a sweater on top for sure. After walking around the campus area I've spotted a few places I'll be frequenting during my time here. A large open air market is just around the corner and full of good. Spices, fresh produce, royal wedding paraphernalia, your basic market array. Along with a coffee shop, bookstore and Thai food restaurant, I'm a happy girl.
The rest of my first full day was pretty relaxing. My first Shakespeare in performance class was today and I had a 9 person group taught by Dr.Hartle, a true Shakespeare expert with a full arsenal of British humor and literary references. We focused on the first scene in A Midsummer Night's Dream with particular emphasis on identifiers Shakespeare wrote for his audience. To put it simply, if you were at the Globe watching a new Shakespeare live on stage, how would you have any idea who the people were and what was going on? You'd look at costume which gives you the characters status, as well as names they call each other and lines that set a time frame or introduce an urgency. Odd as it may seem, it was fascinating. The first full plays we dive into are The Merchant of Venice and Othello, a new one for me.
Afternoon tea was short and sweet, then the Buttery and dinner in Hall followed. I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but the Buttery is the in house pub where we all meet to socialize and wait for the official call for dinner, prompt at 6:30 sharp. Tonight was mellow again with a walk around the city, finding more hidden gems and jewels to visit again in the day time. I was able to skype with Mike this evening, afternoon for him, which was a lovely way to end my first full day here. Now its on to reading the Merchant of Venice (again) for Friday's class and then onto, once more, some much needed sleep.
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