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.