Cookham and The Spider in My Room

For many days now I have been meaning to go somewhere with a friend. You see, since the beginning of school his car has been parked right outside my window every night, and through that deep connection we've become friends. Emanuel is a 30-some year old fashion designer and natural medicines student from Paris here for the school of English.

This Saturday evening we finally got coordinated enough to go somewhere. So we gathered some friends, hopped in his car (with the steering wheel on the correct side) and headed for Cookham. Cookham is a cute, one-street town on the Thames river about a 30 minute drive from the college. We arrived just after sunset - just late enough that the bugs were beginning to go back to hibernation for the evening. Our first sight that greeted us was The Crown, then we passed through an old graveyard/church on our way to a path that follows the river.

By this time the last trace of dusk peeking through the leafy trees was nearly gone. We stopped at several benches right along the water at took some serious, and not so serious pictures.

Esther holding Emanuel while he tries to get up on the bench to take a picture

The picture worth all the trouble

The final bench we came to and stayed a while at

[Emanuel (France), Esther (Sweden), Clément (France) and Susanne (Norway)]

Cookham is a nice town because it is close enough that it doesn't take much trouble to get to, but little-known enough that you aren't dodging fellow pedestrians on the sidewalk constantly and you can really get close to the water without stone barriers.

This last picture is of a spider that had been hanging in the exact same spot, a corner by the door, for literally three days. I thought of killing it, except that I have been killing a spider everyday here and this one didn't look as vicious. The interesting thing about this spider is that it hadn't moved a single inch in the three days that it was just hanging out there on it's string. I call it my lazy spider friend. Today, however, I woke up and it was gone - it's a sad day.