The finals and the final trips -- oh my!

In the end, my finals turned out okay.  Unfortunately, I had two exams in a row in the end -- drug design and genetics, and I made a bad call by doing unbalanced studying.  My drug design final was worth 88% of my grade, the genetics one 60%, but I was doing so well in genetics that I really only needed about 15% on my exam to get a decent grade.  I think drug design went well because I studied like a maniac, but genetics... there were typos everywhere in the exam, and everything I had studied wasn't on the exam.  It was like someone punched me in the face.

But whatever.  It's over, and I can't change the past.  If I need to, I'll retake it at UIUC.  I'm not happy with my performance, but I think no matter what I did, I would've been unhappy in some form.  C'est la vie.

As soon as my exams were over, everything seemed to be on fast-forward.  There was the Leeds Summer Ball, which turned out okay, but still fun.  Yanfen and I made a spontaneous decision to go to Cambridge to visit another friend (we literally had to make the decision the day before we left), and we spent about 2 days there.  I LOVE CAMBRIDGE.  As soon as we got there, it just felt comforting and like home.  It was absolutely beautiful, yet still had everything I loved about Leeds too.  I wish I could live there, because I thought it was that amazing.  However, part of that feeling might have been because of the people I was with.  As I've mentioned before, it's the people that make the trip for me, and our friend there was an AMAZING host, and I had a great time.

Yanfen then packed and left for Illinois, and I stayed in England.  Devonshire Hall, my home for the past few months, had its own ball.  We expected it to be pretty bad due to some complications in its planning, but it ended up being a blast!  It was the last time I saw most of my Dev friends, so it was also significant for me that way.

England has been an amazing home for the past 5 months.  I have absolutely loved my time here, and it does feel like a second home to me.  I've been trying to absorb as much as I can before going home this Saturday.  

This past weekend I went to Northumberland with a friend to do some hiking.  We spent Saturday in Durham and Newcastle, then Sunday and Monday hiking along Hadrian's Wall (wall built in Roman times, edge of the empire).  It was incredible, and for just three days, I feel like we accomplished a lot.  We stayed at a hostel called Once Brewed in between Hexham and Haltwhistle, and it's about a 1/2 mile away from Hadrian's Wall.  On Saturday it was a dark, drizzly day, so hiking was a little slippery at points.  For just following along a wall, it got amazingly steep at some points.  It was about 7.5 miles going from Once Brewed to Steel Rigg to Housestead's Roman Fort to Vindolanda and then Once Brewed again.  There was a pretty massive bull that was terrifying, and lots of sheep poo everywhere (complete with sheep to pop down some more).

Sunday was a beautiful day with sunshine, and we hiked west to Cawfields Quarry, then down to Haltwhistle following an amazing trail (about 6ish miles, but we took some side walks along the way).  Haltwhistle is apparently the geographical center of Britain, which was cool, but it was a tiny town.  Then we took the train to Hexham to see the Abbey, eat some fish and chips, then head home to Leeds.

I go home in just a few days... so I really need to pack, but I might take one last quick trip tomorrow on my own to Haworth to see the town where the Bronte sisters lived and see their house-turned-museum.  I'm just not sure how to get there exactly, but it should be fun trying, right?