Trades

Now approaching my seventh week in the UK. It is amazing how fast my time is going. I have finished one of my tutorials and have doubled up my work for the other. This means that my work load has gotten a little larger, but only for the next two weeks. In the tutorial that I still have, I am learning about the history of trade. I started out with learning about guilds and then moved towards the history of France, Germany, and Russia. Later I did a paper on the Jewish and Islamic culture and their impact on trade, and last week I did a paper on the spice trade of Portugal. The trade of Portugal really interests me. A lot of the history is sad, but it is incredible to think that the reason why the Americas were discovered was to find a fast route for the simple ingredients of black pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, and cloves! Isn't that amazing? Well, it is for me and my time reading about the history of Portugal last week made it my favorite week yet. As for this week, well by Tuesday, I am writing on the Dutch and English trade in Asia and moving toward the Americas.
What I forgot to mention in my last blog is that two weekends ago I went to Portsmouth. This was the popular sea port of England during the time of trade. That day I was able to go on a couple of ships where they have left them as they were during their time at sea in the 1700s and 1800s. I was surprised as to how well they were built. The engineering and precision for each ship catered to the captain and the crew. That evening a couple of friends and I watch Master and Commander to finish off our day at sea. I had not seen the movie and really enjoyed it, but what I enjoyed the most was the music. The soundtrack to that movie is quite good, there is a nice mix of strings.
Yesterday I went to Cambridge, the rival university of Oxford. It is nice, but not like my Oxford. I am biased. The town is smaller and the appeal is different. There are more stone buildings in Oxford, Cambridge had a lot of bricks. What is nice from Cambridge is King's College, Great St. Mary's church, Trinity College and Queen's College. The church of King's college was very beautiful, it had large stained glass windows that made up the majority of the walls of the church. The cool thing about the windows is it told the story of Jesus on one half and a the stories of the Old Testament on the other half.

Spring comes early here, flowers started blooming at the end of January and the country side stays green. The weather has been rainy but with some vitamin D, it does not really phase you.
I have been trying to run a little, just to see if the pain comes back to my foot and it has not quite yet, but I am trying to be very cautious about it.
Other than that, life here is going well and it is going to be hard to leave.