Dining in the Great Hall

3 July 2013
Tonight is our First formal hall. I am very excited to dress up in my cute pink dress and sit in a huge room with long tables and high ceilings talking with people from all around the world!

Spencer, Griffin, myself, Matt, and Christ at the lawn social enjoying our apple juice prior to the formal hall.

I have already discovered that it is going to be hard to keep up on my writing while I am here at Cambridge. There are so many things to do, so many people to meet, and so many places to see. It has been pretty incredible to experience but I am so tired. I have been bouncing around from class to class like a chicken with its head cut off. Hopefully I can figure out what classes I want to take and which I can let go of… If you can’t tell, I have the hardest time making decisions. It is a problem. It isn’t that I can’t make the decision, it is that I want to do everything and I can’t seem to give up anything! Class has been crazy the past two days. I have been going to so many lectures in order to find out which ones I really want to go to for the next eight weeks. It is very difficult to decide because they are all so different than anything I have ever been exposed to in the states.

I have met so many incredible people. Here I am with all my Italian friends getting ready for the grand hall.

Have you ever thought about if you are living your life in the way that you want to? Lately I have been thinking a lot about whether or not what I am doing is actually what I want to be doing. It is a hard concept to grasp, the fact that life can be shaped in numerous different ways simply by the choices we make. The black and white choices are easy. It is the white and white choices that are hard. When you have two choices that are both good or even both great options, how do you decide which one to make? How do you decide which choice will change your life in the best way? Often you don’t know and you will never know. I have come to learn that sometimes there is more than one right answer to a questions and more than one right path to choose. I think of life as one of those novels where at the end of every chapter you read a series of opinions and choose which page to jump to and continue the adventure. Every ending is different and is determined solely on the different decisions you make throughout the entire journey of the book. That is a lot of power. We have a lot of power in our hands to determine what our ending will be. This thought scares me a little because I DESPERATELY want to make the best choices, but I don’t always know what they are.

I sat in on four classes again today. After this week life will settle down, but I am still so anxious about everything that is going on. Most of the classes are held in the Cambridge Union Society building, a beautiful old building near Kings College. After a day of extremely “intellectual” lectures, I ran home to prepare for the formal hall that was to take place in a little over an hour. Luckily one of my friends Griffin had a voltage converter so that I could use my curling iron! He lives just right down the way from me sooooo I have a feeling that I am going to be visiting him quite often to borrow his LIFE SAVING CONVERTER. I never realized how frustrating it is to have a curling iron and straightener and not be able to use them!

Raw Salmon with pepper herbs for Appetizer…

Crusted chicken and potatoes for the main course.

Strawberry Trifle for desert.

The formal hall tonight was just like the movies. I could of easily seen Harry Potter or Hermione Granger sitting down from me at the long banquet tables or Hagrid and Dumbledore sitting up in the front of the hall with all the Cambridge professors. I sat next to a group of girls from Egypt and it was the best decision I made that day. They all attending the University in Cairo, and were all studying subjects such as engineering, economics, and business. I asked about their life in Egypt during the crisis that has been going on over the past several years. Arwa was the name of the girl who sat next to me and it was so fun to get to know her and her life stories. She is the oldest of three children in her family and her father owns a type of metal crafting business back in Egypt. She is studying business law because she wants to go home and help in her family business because she sees how her father loses lots of money due to lack of knowledge of the laws and rules government places on businesses. It was interesting talking to all of the girls (Arwa, Amira, Ahlam, Yasmeen, and Salma) about their family, education, religion, and travels throughout the world. Taking a World Religions class at BYU exposed me to several of the beliefs and practices of the Muslim religion, but there is so much more that I can learn. During the first few words of our conversation, religion came up. They were curious why I wasn’t drinking or wearing a sleazy dress, and I was wondering what their beautiful scarves that covered their head meant. The comfort and ease I felt in talking to them was actually a surprise to me. I thought they would be very reserved in sharing their beliefs and ways of life, but they held nothing back and treated me like their best friend from the moment we started talking. They were open to answer all my questions and were not afraid to ask any questions of myself.

Sitting at the table with my new friends from Cairo, Egypt. From right to left, myself, Arwa, Amira, and Yasmeen.

Halfway through the dinner, Amira received a text from back home that their president had been overthrown. I will never forget the look of relief and excitement on each of their faces when found this out. The man who had made each of their lives, their friends lives, and their family’s lives so horrible for the past several years had been overthrown. Previously Arwa told me that back in 2010 her and her family had to hide in their safe house for 15 days as Cairo became so bad that people were not safe to be out in the open streets. They had no power, water, phones, etc… for 15 days. She said they would hear gunfire out in the streets constantly and that it was a very scary time. It is interesting how geography really distances people. In 2010 I was starting my senior year of high school, playing sports and worrying about being senior class president… Halfway across the world a young girl and her family were hiding to protect their lives from a corrupt government. Just a short 3 years later we are both sitting at a table at Cambridge University. The thought that our lives are so different back home just doesn’t seem possible as we sit at the same table at the same University in Cambridge.

Everyone enjoyed spending such a wonderful evening together in the grand hall of Pembroke college.

I learned SO MUCH in our short two hour dinner. I wish it would of been many more hours so I could of continued to talk to these amazing girls. Even after dinner we walked down Pembroke Street and stood outside a pub for a long time chatting about our hopes and dreams for the future. It was funny to hear them talk about how they should go clubbing or go sit in a pub to celebrate the resignation of their president. I never thought I would relate so well with the Muslim faith, but many of the things they choose to do and choose not to do are very similar to the choices I make. Next Tuesday they start their 30 day fast where they cannot eat any food from sunrise to sunset. They invited me over on Monday evening, prior to the start of their fast, to have a party and teach each other more about our different cultures. In talking with Amira and Yesmen, guess what? They are belly dancers! I did not realize that belly dancing comes from the Arabic culture! Monday night they are going to teach me and Kailey how to belly dance and decorate our skin with beautiful Arabic drawings in Henna. Arwa also promised me that I could learn the Arabic alphabet over the next several weeks if I really put my mind to it. At dinner she wrote out the entire alphabet in my journal as part of my first Arabic lesson. She also wrote her name, my name, and her friends names out so that I could start to understand how the letters work. I completely forgot that they write in the opposite direction that we write from. Instead of left to right, they write right to left. I have so many stories I could tell about my experience at dinner because I learned SO MUCH. I wish that I could just open up my mind and let you experience everything I have been able to experience since being in Europe. It has been incredible.

My new friends. I learned so much from them in one night, I cannot wait to hang out more!

Mai and I have the same dress, just different colors. Fun!

Drinking is part of the European culture, and it definitely doesn’t slack here in England. Every event I attend has alcohol served at insane quantities. People just drink and drink and drink… Tomorrow everyone is going to be hung over as we travel to Scotland. It is always nice to find people who also understand that excessive drinking and even drinking at all is not the smartest choice. Jada (Italy), another girl I met a few days ago named Rae, and of course all the BYU and Cairo students do not drink. Funny enough, we all happened to sit on the same end of the table at dinner. I bet the servers were so confused why everyone on our side of the table just happened to not want wine. They looked so worried, it made me laugh… MariaChristina (Italy) is the one who keeps Kailey and I on our toes. She insisted that we go to a club with her and her friends, as it was free for PKP students (Pembroke Kings Program). We went and it was an absolute blast, but we got back so late and have to leave early in the morning for Scotland. TOMORROW WE GO TO SCOTLAND…WOOHOO!