Fall 2013 Clear-As-Mud

19 July 2013

I understand that several of you need some clarification as to what exactly I will be doing this fall. Clarification meaning, I am going to clear up the information I was trying to convey on my previous blog and Facebook posts about my whereabouts until December 2013. I went off on several tangents trying to get to my point, so here I will lay out the truth in short and simple terms. I have not met a boy here at Cambridge who has captured my heart, and I am not moving to London for the rest of the year. The truth is that from September to December of 2013 I am going to study at a University in Lisbon, Portugal called ISCTE. It doesn’t sound as extravagant stating it in such simple terms…yet it clears up the miscommunication. I will not be coming home between my semester at Cambridge and my semester in Lisbon, but will gracefully make my way to Lisbon via a route that will allow me to take a nice week break in my favorite city of all time, Paris. I have a few things that I was not able to accomplish the last time I was there, and I figure now is my chance. Now that you know in clear terms what I will be doing the next five months of my life, feel free to ask me whatever questions you may have. I would love to answer them!

As I have said a million times, there is just so much to do here at Cambridge. It is so hard to spend the adequate amount of time in the library studying when you want to be outside exploring. I can’t tell if it is that there is just more to do here in England, or if I simply did not open my eyes to everything there was to do in Utah. I definitely don’t spend as much time with my head in the books here, which is odd because I am at Cambridge and I am being fed massive amounts of knowledge everyday. I am learning and retaining so much more being abroad than at home. Much of this probably has to do with the style of education at Cambridge, but I believe part of it has to do with the fact that things are so different hear-and are therefore very interesting. I was able to obtain a guitar from one of the boys in my apartment complex at Pembroke, and play a few tunes on it tonight. The strings felt so good against my fingertips and I realized how much I have missed playing. The chords came back easily, but unfortunately I quickly discovered that my internal song repertoire was greatly diminished. It has been a good two years since I have consistently played my guitar day to day. Boy do I miss those days… The attractiveness of the high paying street performing gigs here at Cambridge is a good incentive for me to get back into the habit of playing everyday. Who knows, maybe panhandling on the street with my guitar will earn me enough money to take another flight on Ryanair to somewhere new…and that is a tempting thought…