Weekend 2 Part one

Tea at Granchester with Zina and Drew plus lots of others not featured in this picture

Fireworks for some kind of weekend festival... who knew?

Punting on the River Cam after a wonderful American BBQ, P.S. I don't like this pic of me but there you go.

This would be our Italian singer punter who also models while punting, oh gotta love it! Picture would be curtesy of Camille, Thanks Camille!

SO I've been a slacker on blogging lately so I have a lot to say as always. The weekend for me started on Thursday and besides an American BBQ, it was actually very English :) So on Thursday we had a late fourth of July party on Darwin Island in Darwin College, very beautiful. We had hamburgers and even doritos and rootbeer which the English says tastes like cough syrup and I must disagree! Thanks to good leaders we had boats to go punting in on the river Cam which runs behind all the colleges of Cambridge. So for those who don't know what punting is, because I definitely didn't before I came here, you get in little boats and then one person stands up and propells the boat with a pole so kind of like what I imagine Italy would be like. Our boat included me, Jen and Derek- the married couple- Camille, Christina, Megan and Jared so we had a really great crew. Despite loosing the pole a couple of times and running into people we had a pretty smooth ride thanks to Derek and Jared. The guy featured above would be Jared who serenaded us in Italian while he punted, it just doesn't get any better than that :) and then we went through some willow trees in which the girls all broke out in "kiss the girl" from the Little Mermaid because that's what it felt like. All in all super fun and I want to go again when there are less people on the river.

Friday was good, had a classic BYU party including card games. Afterwards we went and watched fireworks which made up for the ones I missed in the states of the fourth. Definitely a lot less grand but hey, you can't be too picky right? They were still pretty good. Saw some great things at the carnival there including a guy dressed in an astrounaut suit claiming the Martians are coming, one of the funniest things I've seen!

Saturday then was tea at Granchester. It was about a 45 minute walk away to this field that followed the river. It was great seeing people sprawled out by the river, it pretty much looked like a beach! We even saw a couple who had just been married and their reception was being set up and there were ladies in big hats and the dainty umbrellas and the whole get out which was a perfect setting because it just felt like the bride belonged there so that was cute. Then we arrived at this area where chairs and tables are set out in circles and you can buy tea and scones and cakes. It was so nice, I got a scone with apricot jam and we just sat in a circle and drank our tea and ate and enjoyed the nice afternoon. I felt very English, ahhhh so nice. There are just old traditions here that the states definitely don't have which is too bad.