Christmas concert and the first installment of France photos

So on the day of Christmas Eve, I woke up around 5:30 and started standing in line outside King's College Chapel at 6:30 to be admitted to the chapel at 2 in the afternoon and hear the choral concert/Christmas church service. Waiting in line wasn't too bad because the day wasn't too cold I had about half a dozen other people to wait with and I could periodically leave to go get hot cocoa from the cafe at King's College.
The concert was broadcast live by the BBC, so there were lots of notes in the programs about how people shouldn't cough unless absolutely necessary. Also, children under I think 5 or 6 years old were not allowed in and there was a lengthy notice about why having small children along for the concert would be inappropriate and probably cause noise during the taping.
The King's College Choir was very good, but unfortunately a lot of the carols were unfamiliar to me. Further, there are new carols commissioned to be written for the concert every year. The little pamphlets we were given at the beginning of the service had all the lyrics, and one of the new carols, called "Mary" had some seriously bizarre lyrics. Here's the first stanza:

"The night when she first gave birth
Had been cold. But in later years
She quite forgot
The frost in the dingy beams and the smoking stove
And the spasms of the afterbirth at dawn.
But above all she forgot the bitter shame
Common among the poor
Of having no privacy.
That was why in later years it became a holiday for all."

What?
I'm glad that I saw this because I was curious, but I have to admit I was a little bit disappointed by it.

Anyway, enough about weird Christmas carols. Here's some photos from the first full day on my trip to France.
The previous day, we arrived at Charles de Gaul airport and took the train into Paris. To be honest, the hardest part about going from Cambridge to Paris was coping with the coach ride to London Luton airport. The coach driver wasn't announcing the stops. At the first stop in the Luton area, I wasn't sure if it was the stop for the airport or not, so I got out and asked the driver as he was helping some new passengers onto the bus. He just looked blankly at me the first two times I asked and then when I asked again if the bus continued to a stop that was closer to the airport, he told me he didn't know. How could the driver of the coach not KNOW where the coach is going! It was really frustrating. Then I realized that maybe he thought I was just some random person bothering him. I said "I'm on the coach right now. I want to know if this is the right stop for the Luton airport." "Oh," he said, "where are you going?" "The Luton airport," I said, attempting to remain polite. He said "Oh, it's the next stop." It was like pulling teeth.
In general I found people in France to be nicer and more understandable in French than I find people in the UK in English. One of my friends pointed out that in the UK, people have a stronger tendency to think you should know what they're talking about because you speak English, so it's often really hard to get British people to understand your questions.

We stayed that first night in a nice hostel in Montmartre, which is a neighborhood in the north where Amelie is supposed to live in the movie Amelie.
We started the next day by spending the morning in Montmartre, particularly by seeing the Sacre Coeur basilica. We climbed to the top, backpacks and all. This is a view from the front:


We also saw a lot of the rest of Montmartre, including the small vineyard it contains, the outside of a smaller church in the area, St. Pierre, and some of the windmills that the area is famous for. In particular, we went and saw the outside of the nightclub/dance hall which shares its name with a movie, the Moulin Rouge (translation: red windmill). Here it is:

Next, Sandra and I took the metro out to Trocadero, which is a big park and a few museums:
And from Trocadero it's possible to see...

It was a rather foggy day. Since it was cold we decided not to go up into the Eiffel Tower. Instead, we walked through the Champ de Mars, past the Ecole Militaire and to the closest metro station, where we took the next train to the Musee D'Orsay.

This museum is particularly known for its collection of Impressionist paintings and, in general works from before and after that time. When I visited there was an exhibition with Manet's Le dejeuner sur l'herbe as well as a lot of sketches and paintings by Picasso which are studies on this painting by Manet.

Some other cool stuff I got to see includes a bunch of Monet's pastels of the exterior of Rouen cathedral, including the one below:

There were also several very recognizable works by Van Gogh, including The Bedroom and this self-portrait:

After looking around the Musee D'Orsay, we went over to the Louvre. It turns out that on Fridays the Louvre is open free to people under 26 from 6 pm to 9 pm, so we got in free. Yay!

Here's one of my favorite works in the Louvre, Winged Victory of Samothrace:

The Louvre is way too large to walk around the whole thing over the course of just a couple of hours, so we saw the Mona Lisa and then walked through the Ancient Egypt and Ancient Mesopotamia areas and then went to the metro. That night we took a late train out to Metz and then to see Alex. More about that in my next post!

We managed to see an incredibly large number of different things that first day in Paris. I think that it would have been completely impossible during the summer when the peak tourist season is, but in mid-December all of the big tourist draws were remarkably quiet and sane. There were still a number of other tourists around, but the metro and the museums were mostly full of Parisians.

End of Term and Break

Term ended in a flurry of activity. It felt very odd not to have exams. With almost all the undergraduates and many of the graduates leaving for the winter holiday, there were a lot of Christmas parties relatively early in December. Personally, I just felt really tired at the end of term, so I decided to miss out on the math department Christmas party, the Christmas formal, and the rowing formal.
I did, however, make the effort and get all dressed up for Churchill College's guest night, which is mostly for graduate students. I invited 6 of my non-Churchill friends, bought two bottles of wine from the Cambridge wine merchant, put on make-up, and wore my new cocktail dress and heels. Photographic evidence of this very out-of-character event is below:

The organizers did a really good job of planning this event. Guest night started with before-dinner drinks, then dinner and then continued with a casino, karaoke, dancing, lots and lots of after-dinner drinks, etc. It was actually a masquerade event. I took a photo of the elaborate dessert that came at the end of the dinner as well as my friend's mask:
It was a really fun evening.

After that, rowing camp started two days later. I got to go on four outings in three days and got a lot of coaching that felt really helpful. I won't be getting to row again until a little bit before next term starts, so I hope I won't forget too much of what I learned.

Then, my friend Sandra and I went on a Grinnell-in-Cambridge field trip to France. For a couple days we met up with our fellow Grinnellian Alex as well, who is teaching English in a French school. All-in-all it was a really successful trip, and I'm planning on making the next few posts about it. I have a lot of great pictures. We got back last Friday. Unfortunately I got a bit sick the day we headed home. I'm getting better but still feel kind of tired.

Since getting back, the weather in Cambridge has been nice. I don't think it's even been freezing at night, and some confused trees have started budding a little bit. Winter solstice passed a couple of days ago, so although it still gets light around 7:30 or so in the morning and dark at about 3:30 in the afternoon, at least now it should start getting better, not worse. All of England is actually farther north than anywhere in the continental United States.

Two days ago I started my plan to explore Cambridge further by exploring its cafes, so I have been walking into town to work for awhile and have some coffee. So far so good.

For Christmas Eve day, I am planning on seeing the nationally televised choral concert in King's College Chapel. I've been told it's very famous, and many people in the U.S. have heard about it, although I hadn't before coming here. Admission is free, but we have to get in line a bit before 7 in the morning to be certain of getting places, and the concert starts at 3 in the afternoon. Fortunately I'll be with some other people and we can alternate who goes out and gets hot cocoa for everyone.

I've been warned that on Christmas Day and Dec. 26, which the Brits call Boxing Day, that basically everything is closed. I believe it. Even though Cambridge is far more populous than little Grinnell, Iowa, everything here has shorter hours and closes earlier at night. Furthermore, due to labor laws, people can only work limited hours on Sunday, and so shops do not open before 11 in the morning on Sundays. I found this out the hard way when I wanted to go to a grocery store first thing in the morning to buy eggs for an early brunch.

I've gone to the grocery store already to make sure I'll have things to eat for Dec. 25 and 26, and I already have some plans to relax and watch movies with friends, so it should be a good holiday. Merry Christmas!

Fairbairns and Thanksgiving

Last Thursday I rowed with the Churchill women's novice boat in a big race called Fairbairns. After getting to the starting line and a lot of waiting in the cold it was finally our turn to race, as you can see in the photo below:


I am second from the far left, rowing at number 7. The front of the boat is cut off in the photo, but the cox is sitting right in front of number 8. You can also see some swans, who really don't care that a race is going on, on the opposite side of our boat. The results came out and we rowed the 2700 m course in 12 min. 18 sec. which put us at 18th out of 58 women's novice boats. Everyone on the team was really excited, and I'm really glad that I got to row that day. Actually, half of the women in the boat are American graduate students.

In case anyone was wondering, I did get to have Thanksgiving here in the UK. Since there are so many students from the US here at Churchill College, the master of the college invited us all to a free Thanksgiving dinner in the fellows' dining hall in Churchill. I hadn't been into this room before, and I was talking to some of my friends waiting for dinner to start, when I suddenly realized what was hanging on the wall across from me:
Marilyn Monroe prints by Andy Warhol (photo from the Churchill College website). I asked the master about them, and he said that they belong to a graduate of Churchill and are on loan to the college; they are probably too expensive for the college to actually buy them. The master said that they have a joke here at Churchill about them: at other colleges, they count the silver after the formal dinners, but at Churchill, they count the Marilyns.

The food at the Thanksgiving dinner was all right, though not as good as the scenery. Everything went just fine until we got to the pumpkin pie, which I'm pretty sure did not have pumpkins in it. It was very bland tasting and was white. I think they don't use the word pumpkin in Britain and we were speculating as to whether some other sort of squash had been used. The next night a lot of the American grad students cooked various dishes and brought them all together for a second Thanksgiving dinner. It felt a lot more like Thanksgiving and a lot of the students here are great cooks. Someone made absolutely fantastic pumpkin pie.
In other news, my Michaelmas term lectures are over. For the next couple of days I'll be taking part in activities for rowing camp... an outing or two per day plus a gym session. Then I'll be in France for a week. Otherwise, I'm going to be desperately trying to learn the material from this term so that I can get ready for next term and for writing my essay.

Rowing

Before I start talking about rowing, I found out what Cambridge students are called! I got used to being able to call Grinnell students Grinnellians. Cambridge students are called Cantabrigians (and incidentally the City of Cambridge rowing club is called the Cantabrigian rowing club) and Cantabs for short. I don't think there's a name for Churchill students, but students studying various disciplines are referred to by different names... mathematics students are called "mathmos." Sometimes I think British English is fairly manageable, but I have absolutely no intuition for how people decide to abbreviate names for things... for example, I thought, from context that "ents," which always seems to go with a list of planned events was short for events, but it's actually short for entertainments.

I've been rowing crew here at Cambridge and I rowed in my first race out on the river this Saturday. I rowed with the women's novices from Churchill College at Winter Head, which is a 2500 m race on the Cam. This race didn't have a lot of novice teams rowing in it, and so our time of 15 minutes 28 seconds was comparatively slow, but there were several other boats that came in behind us. Actually, this was only the second outing we'd been on where we had actually rowed with all 8 people at one time. The first one was the day before the race, so I think we did well.

Rowing for 15 minutes as hard as you can is really exhausting. I had a blister on my right hand from the day before and it, as well as another blister that formed during the race broke open, which was really nasty and hurt the rest of the day. But fortunately I am getting some calluses on my hands now, so this should get better. And no, we're not allowed to wear gloves for rowing. For people who row in very cold weather there is something that fits on the oar over their hands, but rowers' hands need to be in contact with the oar; it's the rules for races. After the race I was tired and hungry for the rest of Saturday.

So more about rowing... all the colleges in Cambridge (perhaps excluding some very tiny ones?) have teams, so it's not that big a deal to go out with the novice rowers. It's very friendly and accepting, so everyone who wants to try rowing gets a chance. Here at Churchill once we get past the first term we will probably have first and second women's teams as well as first and second men's teams.

As far as how rowing crew works, there are 8 people in a typical boat as well as a cox, who gives us instructions for maneuvering and keeping in time over a microphone. Each person rowing has one oar that goes to one side. I've been rowing at spot number five, so my oar is on bow side (to my left) and I'm roughly in the middle of the boat.

Although power is important in rowing, being in time is in some ways more important. When we were rowing in the race Saturday, whenever we got in time better we would have a big burst of speed. So I found out the crew is kind of different from a lot of sports in the sense that if you're not in time with you're team, you are messing things up for them, so even if it's miserably difficult you just kind of have to keep going, which is pretty rough. If you pull your oar out of the water too late, it gets stuck, which is called crabbing your oar, or catching a crab. Also, when you row you have to turn your oar on the recover, which is called feathering your blade. I think having to turn my oar has been the main source of the blisters on my hands.

Going out rowing on the Cam in the morning is a lot of fun, though. We typically practice about twice a week; the Churchill boathouse is about 10 or 15 minutes by bike from the college. Out on the river, there are lots of swans and ducks as well as people's house boats. And it's a pretty good feeling when everything is going right and the boat starts to move really fast. So I definitely feel like I'm getting the authentic Cambridge experience.

Guy Fawkes Day

Today is Guy Fawkes Day, also known as Bonfire Night, when English people all get together to celebrate Guy Fawkes's attempt to blow up Parliament some 400 years ago.
So, for a study break tonight I went to see the fireworks at a big carnival here in Cambridge. The carnival was huge... crowds, big spinning rides, flashing lights, loud music. I also saw a carnival game where the prizes included the usual stuffed animals, but also cans of Foster's beer and for one of the larger prizes, a giant handle of Jack Daniels. Somehow I don't think this would happen at an analogous family event in the U.S.
I think the closest thing I could compare the whole celebration to was the Fourth of July. I suppose one of the good things about it getting so dark here so ridiculously early here (I think we're at roughly the same latitude as Maine) is that we could have fireworks at 7:30 in the evening. The fireworks were pretty spectacular and directly overhead of me and my friends. In fact, so directly overhead that my friend standing about three feet away from me got hit by a very fast-moving small cardboard tube that must have been casing for one of the fireworks. She was fine, but a bit startled.
As far as other notable events recently, of course yesterday was election day. Late last night I went down to the Cambridge University Union with some of my American friends to watch coverage. I could pretend this was really cool, but actually it was really crowded and they didn't have a very good sound systems set up. So after watching cnn without being able to hear it for about an hour, I got tired and went home before any states were called. Some of my friends were up until 3 last night to find out the outcome. I got up at 6 this morning and so I found out the result then, and then I went out for rowing practice, which was a lot of fun. It's definitely not anywhere near as cold as it gets in Iowa right now so this morning it was really nice out on the river.
I hope to be able to make some more posts soon and I have some photos of the math building to put up, but right now I'm really busy with my courses and a handful of various applications. We are reaching the halfway point of Michaelmas Term so things are getting pretty rough. I keep telling myself that if the work here were easy, I'd feel disappointed.

Quiche and My Weekend

I ate quiche for lunch today. I think it is about the 6th time I have eaten quiche since arriving in Cambridge. It is a vegetarian dining hall staple, and I think if I eat it again that I will turn into quiche. The dining hall also serves leeks regularly, chopped up and cooked. They are actually pretty good. During the first week I was here I had another interesting culinary encounter. I bought a prepackaged sandwich at the buttery in Churchill; I was hungry and it was the last one left and the label said that it had cheese and pickle.

I bit into the sandwich, only to discover that "pickle" means something different over here. It's this brown gunk that most definitely has been pickled, but does not have cucumber. Apparently it's some sort of vegetable scraps. Also, the tendency over here for food not to have any artificial coloring added would seem like a good thing, but it seems to result in a lot of food in the dining hall that looks sort of brown or gray. Maybe that's just the Churchill dining hall, but in any case, it's not horribly appetizing.

Tonight I made myself a peanut butter and banana sandwich for dinner, and it was one of the more satisfying things I've eaten in a few days.

Anyway, my weekend was pretty good, despite the fact that I have class at 9 and 10 in the morning every Saturday. Friday evening I biked to Tesco, which is kind of like Wal-Mart... it's big and gloriously, gloriously cheap. Saturday afternoon I went with a friend to see the Fitzwilliam, a museum in town, for an hour or so. I only saw the lower level, but it has a really nice collection particularly the Egyptian artifacts, which included several mummies:

and would a museum in Britain really be complete without suits of armor?
Then on Sunday I played some squash first thing in the morning and then later I got to go rowing with some other people at Churchill who were new to it. It was a lot of fun. The Churchill boat house is a 10-15 minute bicycle ride from the college (I'm getting more used to cycling here; I still haven't been hit by a double-decker bus). Then Sunday night I went to one of the clubs in town for a party for graduate students from across Cambridge. The drinking culture here is such that people have no problem attending an event involving lots of drinking and being up really late on a Sunday night.

St. John's, Trinity, and King's

So I thought I would go ahead and post some photos that I took almost two weeks ago. One particularly beautiful afternoon I went and looked at some of the other Cambridge collges. This first is St. John's.

St. John's Chapel. Part of the courtyard at St. John's.
The Bridge of Sighs passing over the Cam; this bridge belongs to St. John's College.
The courtyard at Trinity College.

King's College. Part of the chapel is on the left.

King's College, including the front of the chapel.

More about Churchill

I started attending lectures on Thursday, so things have been a bit hectic lately. I feel like an overwhelmingly large amount of things have happened to me in the past several days, and so it's hard to know where to begin. Each day seems to be full of embarassing questions like, "How does this door work?", new challenges, like riding my bike into town on the left side of the road and hoping I don't get hit by a double-decker bus, and fun information, like finding out about real ale. Real ale contains live yeast, so it will spoil relatively fast if unused. The beer is unfiltered and unpasteurized, and the bartender actually has to pump the tap to pull the ale up, since it's not under vacuum.

So I thought I'd say a little bit more about Churchill College. We are the only Cambridge college which is a national memorial. Apparently for Winston Churchill's 80th birthday, it was decided there would be a national memorial in his honor, which turned into this college. The college has a lot of students studying science as well as a lot of graduate students. Also, the college colors are pink and brown, so the boats that the Churchill rowing team uses for crew are bright pink, which I think is fantastic.

The weather these past few days has turned absolutely beautiful, so I was able to take some photos of the Churchill site.

OK, so this is the Winston Churchill tree, planted by Churchill himself, located in one of the dormitory courtyards. It doesn't seem very tree-like because at some point it fell over, and apparently the groundskeepers work really hard to keep it alive.

This is the slightly forbidding entrance to Churchill College. If you go up those stairs, the Porter's Lodge is on the left.
This is one of the many sculptures around the grounds. I am told people like to climb up on it and occasionally get stuck on the top.

The top of this building is the second highest point in all of Cambridge. It belongs to the Moller center, where people come to have conferences a lot.

Below is the Chapel on Churchill's grounds. Francis Crick (of Watson and Crick) was among the first fellows at Churchill and was vehemently opposed to a chapel being established on the grounds. He was so irritated that he sent Winston Churchill 10 pounds and requested a brothel be opened on the Churchill campus. I read his letter at the Churchill Archive, which goes so far as to specify that a madam should be hired and that she be given a place at formal College dinners.

Margaret Thatcher's Handbag

So today was fairly eventful. This morning I found a mall here, called The Grafton, and found the pound store, called Poundland. That's right, the equivalent of the dollar store, just British and, due to exchange rates, more expensive, but still an awesome deal for here. I got a big tube of Colgate toothpaste for 1 pound, so that was pretty exciting.

Then I came back to campus and ate some spinach and granola bars in my room for lunch because I'm weird and haven't quite figured out my meal routines yet.

After a bit I walked to the University Societies Fair, but realized the line was insane and that I needed to leave without seeing any of it so that I could get to my appointment to set up a bank account on time. I made this appointment last week on Thursday and was set to come see someone today at 2:30. I got my bank account, but I didn't get out of there until 4. I had to rush as fast as possible back up to my college and then the maths (that's right, I'm starting to say maths because people won't understand me otherwise) building to meet with a professor who is my Director of Studies. After the 10 minute conversation, I went back to Churchill College for the tour of the Churchill Archives, which I can see from the window of my room:

It's the building on the far right which has the vertical white cement sort of pattern on the outside. I actually got to see the shelves upon shelves of archives where Churchill's papers are stored. Also, Margaret Thatcher's papers are there as well. As for some non-paper artefacts, they have John Cockcroft's nobel prize as well as one of Margaret Thatcher's handbags. It was black and sort of alligator-patterned. Sorry to be disappointing and not have a picture.
I also got to read a letter from Francis Crick (of Watson and Crick) to Winston Churchill involving a chapel and a brothel... it's a good story and I'll try to post the highlights tomorrow as it's getting late and I have my first meetings for part iii maths in the morning.

Sometimes, it's a little bit amazing that I live in a town that looks like this. I took this photo yesterday, when I was running an errand. I was walking past "the backs," that is, a parklike area running behind some of the more famous colleges. Also, these were the first cows I saw in Cambridge, and they made me feel a little more at home. In the distance is (I believe) King's College.

Arriving and Settling In

So much has happened since I've arrived in the UK. I've met so many new people and had to adjust to living here so much that it's still hard to process everything that's happened. I think I'm going to like the year here.

The trip here was difficult. It was two hours from the time the plane landed in Heathrow to the time Sandra and I made it to the Heathrow coach station. The coach took about two hours to get to Cambridge. After arriving, I took a local bus over to my college. Before I could get on the local bus, I had to wait for a new bus driver to come since it was the end of someone's shift, so I had the fun of waiting for a long time at the bus stop with my luggage in the chilly Cambridge air while being stared at by an elderly English couple.

Then, when I made it to Churchill College, I stopped by the Porter's Lodge to get my room key. As I struggled some with my luggage, one of the porters said to me "Well, you've brought too much, haven't you?". Apparently the British sense of humor includes trying to give people a hard time. The porters are the campus security, but they seem to have more administrative tasks than campus security at schools in the US. They are also good at answering questions about where to find things in town or how to get something done around the college. Some of them are really nice.

But anyway, once I made it up the stairs to third floor, I was pleased to discover that my room is awesome. I took some photos once I got more moved in. I have a really large window, which has a good view when it's not all fogged up like it is in the photo.

I also have a lot of furniture. Clearly a desk and bed, but also a bookcase, extra cabinet, as well as an "easy chair" and coffee table.I also have a closet, as well as a sink, which both are behind sets of doors:

I feel pretty happy so far with where I live. My room is very spacious compared to singles at Grinnell (by the way, no one ever has a roommate here). My room is what's called a staircase room. In the main part of the college the rooms are organized around courtyards in units called "staircases." The reason for this name is pretty self evident when you actually see them. They're rather boxy structures in which the student rooms are organized in several floors around a main central staircase. Something like 10 people usually live in a given staircase.

I've gotten a bad cold from the abrupt switch to chilly weather here and I had a late night last night (grad fresher's hostel crawl... apparently people at Cambridge play beer pong, too) so I'm not going to write any more for now, but I'll try to post regularly.

Waiting to Leave

Tomorrow I am leaving for the UK. I will be doing a 1-year taught master's in math at the University of Cambridge. The program is called Part III of the Mathematics Tripos and the degree conferred is called the Certificate of Advanced Studies in Mathematics. A lot of my friends have told me they are curious about how my time in Cambridge goes, so I am planning on writing about it and posting photos here.
It feels like it has taken a long time to get to this point of departure. Late October last year, I was splitting postage with my friend Sandra to overnight our applications across the Atlantic. A few months later came the "Conditional Admission" which I accepted to continue the process. Then I was admitted to a College, which means something different from how we use the term in the US. The University of Cambridge is divided into 31 colleges and I am affiliated with Churchill, one of the relatively new ones. For graduate students like me, the college is where I live and it provides a social focus.
To complete my admission to Cambridge, I had to demonstrate by the end of July that I would have adequate funds to cover tuition and living expenses. In early July, the US Dept. of Education hadn't yet approved Cambridge to certify my federal loans. So, I had to get private loans, get admitted, and cancel the private loans when the US Dept. of Education finally got back to Cambridge around July 28. Only after I got formally admitted could I apply for my visa, which involved driving to St. Louis to get my fingerprints scanned, sending copies of what felt like every official document ever with my name on it to Chicago, and crossing my fingers and waiting. So now, finally, after all the waiting, work, and agonizing, (I think) I have all the official paperwork completed, and Sandra and I will be flying out tomorrow.
This summer has been really long, and I'm ready to stop being an unemployed bum living in my parents' house and start being a student again. Graduating seems like a really long time ago. Since then, I spent 6 weeks in Lincoln, NE at the IMMERSE program, had an ill-fated job as a cashier at Office Depot for a week and a half, visited Grinnell a few times and felt out of place when people kept asking "Aren't you supposed to be in Cambridge now?", and visited my brother in Florida. But lately I've spent a lot of time going to the gym, reading, and renting episodes of The Gilmore Girls. Early this September, I felt more jealous of the students starting fall classes at Grinnell than I ever thought possible.
So here I am, nervous and excited about my upcoming departure. I hope to be writing the next installment from my room in Cambridge.