visiting cambridge

I visited Cambridge today in a one-day tour for international students arranged by EISU, a division of English Dept. After more than a year here, I finally wanted and visited the university. As usual, most of the students are Asians and the others are Europeans.  When I say Asia, that means Chinese students and European here refers to students from continent Europe . Every tour has been predominant by Chinese students and obviously they share a large part if not the largest of international students.

Anyway, the tour was nice. I tried to avoid any googling about Cambridge prior to the tour. I rather to find out whatever I found than to have a particular plan what to visit and what to do. I was curious about the canal, somehow. I thought that the whole University circled by a river but in fact it's not but a large part. I was about to enter some of the colleges when suddenly it came to me that  hanging around might be a good idea. If I really want to know about the story and history of the buildings and so on, I can find it from many sources. But to find out the story out of the text, that's the moment i thought. So, my first stop is a small market selling handicraft and art stuffs. It's a quite small open place though. I bought my first cup fair trade coffee of the day there and then walked around.


Second stop is in front of a church listening to a street singer. He's old and her voice is louder than his guitar, i guess. I noticed that he repeated a same song twice. I heard four of his songs. While listening to him, I observed people around :) I do really like to observe how people behave and act. Some young people were busy offering punting service and visitors taking photos regardless the right spot for a good light, or whatever but yes that's cool. Then, a group of Chinese putting their banner in a right place where people around can see them clearly and their message. Their message is clear: to dissolve a single party, Chinese Communist Party. I noticed that this is quite surprising if not shocking to Chinese students visiting the place. And if this banner took place in China, for sure, the protesters would disappear immediately by Chinese authority. But, they do that in England, so that's quite safe. Concerning about China, there are just a lot dots appeared in my head on the way home. But hopefully, I can write about it tomorrow.