Before I applied for the Pembroke-King's Programme during my second year at UCLA, I had a distant notion of what studying abroad would entail, and the vague desire to undergo this (allegedly) transformative experience. I was far more concerned with the process involved in applying for the program: UCEAP application, PKP application, essay with handwritten remarks to be scanned, official and unofficial transcripts, health clearance, letter of recommendation... the process dragged on for two months.

In January I got an email stating that I had been accepted to the program. While I came to understand the truth that yes, I was going to England for the summer, I was immediately bogged down in travel details: ensuring my passport was updated, that I had the necessary documents to go through customs, schedule classes, apply for scholarships, and to fret over the logistical minutiae. So went my life for the next six months.

On June 29, I was waiting for the Virgin Atlantic terminal to call my boarding group so I could take a plane by myself for the first time ever. I am no stranger to traveling by plane, and had sat separately from my parents before, but this was honestly the first time I had no one to talk or rely on. It wasn't as if I was going to jump out of a plane and parachute down, but I was starting to realize that my wits would be the first and last thing I would be able to rely upon in another country that I had never been to before.

It would be a challenge. But challenges are two things for me: terror and fun. (Ironically, I like to take risks with my Model UN committee design, my life choices, but not with roller coasters.)

After an eleven-hour plane ride, lugging my carry-on (that did not have wheels, to my immense dismay) through Heathrow, the briefest customs check I have ever experienced, and a three-hour bus ride while it was pouring rain, I arrived at Cambridge.

The first thing to know about Cambridge's city center is that it is not a planned city. The streets are positively medieval. If I had to choose one occupation I would never undertake because of the risk to everything within a hundred meters of my person, it would be a bus driver in Cambridge. Of course, this is how I got lost because I thought that it was a ten-minute walk from the bus station to Pembroke College. Google Maps is not incorrect in this regard. However, without a proper GPS system or internet connectivity, a photographic memory of a place you have never been to is fundamentally useless if you cannot tell which direction is north. I ended up hailing a cab fifteen minutes into the pointless exercise.

The next few days were full of introductions: almost four hundred students from around the world attended the programme and so I was meeting, greeting, and forgetting names left and right. However, I did learn that repeating names and never being too arrogant to ask for a name during a second or third meeting definitely helped awkward situations five or six weeks into the program. Even so, I did accidentally call a peer a wrong name at the end of the program when we were working on a group project together. I like to say my memory's good, but it isn't perfect, and so I should respect my limits and to be polite and humble about my ability to remember things, especially others' names.

The summer was not just full of learning major threats to national security and challenges to the legitimacy of international law, but also in understanding the way that British culture functioned, and a bit about myself and my own limits of knowledge. It is one thing to be challenged in a familiar environment like UCLA, and another to be challenged to a high personal and academic standard in a new country and school. I really enjoyed my summer at Cambridge and consider it one of the best experiences of my life.

For some additional fun: pictures from Cambridge.

On July 7, the Tour de France passed by Cambridge. It was fun having the peloton ride about six inches in front of me.

On August 21, I had my last final exam for Foreign Policy Analysis at eleven in the morning. I spent that morning on a punt (flat-bottom boat) with a good friend from the program enjoying the beautiful architecture and nature of Cambridge. It put me in the right mood for my final exam and the end to a lovely eight weeks.

That same afternoon, I had tea and crumpets for the first time (don't ask me why it took eight weeks for me to get around to afternoon tea), and I still cannot replicate the buttery goodness of those crumpets. Delicious!