Pre-Trip Explanation and Getting Ready to Go...

From June 25 to July 31, I will be at Cambridge University in England studying abroad through the UC Irvine Summer Session Program. When I started college at UC Santa Cruz, I knew in the back of my mind that I wanted to study abroad at some point. However, the ball really got rolling when my buddy Katie told me late last year that she was planning on going to Australia this summer through the International Student Volunteer program. If Katie was going somewhere, I wanted to go somewhere too! Long story short, my roommate Monique gave me a pamphlet she found about this program, along with the knowledge of how to obtain a coupon of $25 off the admission fee; I applied, got in, my generous parents told me this would be my 21st birthday gift, and now here I am getting ready to go.

I will be taking a course called "The Development of the English Novel in the 19th Century" with Dr. Bharat Tandon, and we will be reading Jane Austen's Emma, George Eliot's Silas Marner, Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, and Thomas Hardy's Return of the Native. I will be living at Pembroke College, and during the 5 week programme we will be going on various trips, including one to Scotland, one to the city of Bath, and another to London to see The Tempest played at the Globe.

After the program is over, I will spend a week in London.

At this point, I'm both excited and scared: excited about traveling and studying, but scared about the impending unfamiliarity of the experience, catching my planes and buses on time, and traveling alone. I have no doubt this will be an amazing experience, though. I'm hoping to use this blog to convey the details of this trip, and if we're lucky it will be supplemented with many pictures. I leave on Friday...Bon Voyage to me!