Back on the blog and better than ever

Howdy! It’s been a while.

As if the last two years weren’t wild enough to satiate anyone’s taste for adventure and uncertainty, as soon as I finished my year of grad school at the Zoom University of Toronto, I got married and moved to England.

• Yes, we moved overseas 3 weeks after getting married with COVID travel/testing restrictions changing week to week.
• Yes, we left almost all our wedding gifts at home because we are only here for a year (and our flat is tiny albeit adorable).
• No, I am not a student, I am a student’s wife. I get free drinks and party invites with none of the 9 AM lectures. Ideal!

Although I discerned that further academia was not for me, I was absolutely delighted to accompany my dear husband to Cambridge, as I spent 10 weeks studying abroad in Oxford (or The Other Place) in 2018. In Oxford I lived in a city with buildings over 500 years old for the first time, my love for medieval studies was set aflame, and I experienced a great deal of spiritual renewal in the presence of numerous traditional Catholic communities such as Blackfriars and the Oxford Oratory. While I loved my 2020-21 academic year, during which I devoted myself to St. Isidore of Seville and the liturgy of Visigothic Iberia, I am excited to have a break from the grim grad school cycle. Ironically,  given that we’re living in one of the oldest university towns in the world, it feels more like I’m in school than the time I spent cooped up in my Toronto Airbnb during lockdown! I met more people (in the context of legal social gatherings) in my first week here than I met (semi-illegally) during the entire time I was in Canada (TYVM Boris).

My freelance remote work as a marketer and Latin tutor grants me a very self-directed schedule which allows for me to spend sunlit time exploring pretty parks, browsing magical antique shops (vestiges of the Victorian era appear in all sorts of lovely kitsch), and peeking through somber iron gates into the various colleges with closed to visitors signs out front.

Cambridge is truly a place for an old soul like me to flourish given my love for all things medieval, liturgical, and charming. During our engagement, before my husband and I even knew where our first year of marriage would be, I determined to do my utmost to make that place homelike, so we could build our lifetime of love on a foundation surrounded by comfort, joy, and serenity. I truly cannot imagine a better site for this special year than our vertical hobbit hole with asymmetrical doorways, iron lattice windows, and a corkscrew-like stairwell.

But a few items are lacking in our home: straight lines (see picture), a dishwasher (well, it’s lacking until I step in as a replacement) a freezer. The latter has severely jolted my Costco-accustomed shopping senses and I am still learning how to adapt to not buying frozen vegetables in bulk. While the (electric) dishwasher’s absence is understandable, is the freezerless life a European thing? A British thing? A cramped student housing thing? I still have not figured it out. The straight lines…well, let’s just say our corners have more liquid curves than Venus de Milo and our doors are all custom-cut to fit unusual trapezoidal doorways. Heads have been bumped, especially in our bedroom which sits in a narrow gable that would put a cartoon caricature of a medieval village to shame.

Perhaps surprisingly, we are blessed with a very modern kitchen and bathroom! I love cooking and consequently love shopping for food and cookware, and the added challenges of small space and Britain’s obsession with mushy peas just give me more reasons to get out and about to bakeries, niche markets, and good old Sainsbury’s. I probably spend more waking time in the kitchen than anywhere else inside our home, offering me ample opportunity for prayer, podcasts, and binge watching The Office (American version) which I have never seen before.

I am quite impressed with the grocery offerings and agribusiness regulations of Great Britain as well. My favorite fun fact to start gushing about is how the eggs here are forbidden from being chemically sanitized, allowing them to retain their natural protective layer and incentivizing clean and happy living conditions for the hens (who are vaccinated against salmonella). As someone whose family has raised chickens for about 15 years, you can see (and taste) the difference when it comes to unchemically altered eggs from happy hens, and I am sorely tempted to smuggle a few truckloads back to the States with me someday. The accessibility of local farms and produce (see my raving on cows below) also gives me a sense of trust and comfort with the food I cook every day which is hard to attain in any city in the U.S.

Our flat is centrally located for my husband’s studies and ideally located for my own explorations. A soaring neogothic Catholic Church is a short walk away from our home, as is a 3-story TK Maxx (don’t tell the Holy Spirit which I spend more time at!) And furthermore, one of my very favorite aspects of living in Cambridge: the countryside crowds so close around the town, I could pull a Marianne from Sense and Sensibility and lose myself in the rolling hills. Cows graze behind King’s College, cows graze by the nearby shops at Burwash Manor, and cows graze along the train ride from London (can you tell I like cows??) Cows from a nearby farm even make their appearance at the open-air market, neatly packaged and labeled with “grass-fed beef” stickers…by far my favorite manifestation of the local cow population. Long walks in the countryside are important to this born-and-raised farm girl, and I am grateful to the cows of Cambridge for affording me this connection to my erstwhile home in the Shenandoah Valley.

I am excited to regularly update this blog with my explorations and reflections on Cambridge life as we embark on this exciting journey for the next nine or so months. Check out my updated about me page to learn more about my academic perspective, religious ideas, and the history of this little corner of the internet.

Ciao,

Carolyn @florentissima

P.S. If you too like to greet your internet friends with “Howdy,” might I suggest my favorite passport case which is great if you worry the border control guard has any doubt that you are not, in fact, from the U.S. of A.