Cambridge and a Pub

I spent yesterday in Cambridge...the UK version. It was amazing. In the US, "really old" buildings are 200 or maybe 300 years old. In Cambridge, those are considered modern. There is so much history packed into a little area, and the architecture in particular is absolutely stunning. Pictures will be posted on facebook soon.

 I woke up at 5:30AM to catch the 6:50 train to Cambridge (the station is a decent walk from my house), and then spent 1.5 hours munching on an almond scone (so delicious) and enjoying the English countryside. Cambridge the university is an experience. Since I spent most of the day meeting with faculty, I got quite a different view than a typical visitor might get. We spent much of the day in a private meeting room with really classy catered food (fruit and cheese platters, shrimp, roast turkey and ham, etc). There was unlimited coffee, tea, and biscuits (except "biscuits" actually means cookies, but I have yet to turn my British friends round to this). Although people don't actually walk around in black robes or anything, there's a really strong sense of tradition, ritual, and hierarchy at Cambridge that you don't get at MIT. It was fascinating. During lunch, I have never been so petrified to eat food (although I'm relatively well-mannered by American standards I had no idea what I was doing when it came to polite consumption of food at mealtimes in the UK). I can only hope I didn't offend anyone.

I got to go around near the end of the day and take pictures, which was fantastic. I'm going back next week and will hopefully have lots of stories!

Feeling like a college (sorry, "university") student again, I got home around 7PM and decided to eat cereal for dinner. That and I had my very first crumpet! Delicious! I highly recommend them.

After that, my half-housemate Jude decided to take me to a real British pub (since I insisted we had to go to one). It was far less seedy than I expected, but I have never seen so many kegs in my life (they had to keep a bunch out back because they wouldn't all fit in the bar proper). I will not go into details about the rest of the pub trip except to say that it was perhaps not the best idea to have my first pub-going experience with an ex-navy Brit...whoops. Interesting observation: I can stand on one foot while rubbing my stomach with one hand and patting my head with the other while being unable to do other things, like, say, walk in a totally straight line. I have witnesses.

Pictures up soon, like I said. Cheers.