Biggest Summary Ever.

First thing´s first:

M E R R Y x C H R I S T M A S !

¡Feliz Navidad! (In honor of my being in Madrid right now.)


I forgot to post. For a very very long time.

So here comes the longest summary ever.

Michaelmas term ended December 6th, and after that I went straight to Tignes, France, for the Oxbridge Varsity Skiing Trip! Then Jon (a Clare friend of mine) and I joined Teresa, Marianne, Nati, and Miriam (fellow CMErs) in Barcelona to embark on a small Euro-trip. We spent 5 nights in Barcelona and am currently in Madrid before leaving for Lisbon on the 26th. And then I´ll be back in London for New Year´s.

I will post about each city destination in separate posts for organization´s sake.

But for now, I´ll attempt at a summary of the past term. I guess I have November and December to cover. Oh boy.

1. Classes and such

I found myself in a bit of a doozy by the end of the term for my Cambridge classes. Because classes are organized by lectures and example papers (like problem sets without formal deadlines), I literally had 1/10 of the motivation I usually have at MIT. We also have supervisions which are led by a grad student and shared between 2 students, but my supervision leaders were all chill, so I never felt too nervous around them. Whiiich meant I never started example papers earlier than ~3 hours before the supervision. (New Years Resolution #1: Start example papers at least 1 week before the supervision!)

We also have one laboratory paper to write per module and one huge FTR (final technical report) to write by the end of the term. Needless to say (because I´m a classic procrasinator), I blew off the FTR the weekend (because I had BCD (Clare´s boat club dinner) and a swap) before it was due and was cramming the whole way up to the morning of the deadline (bad, disgraceful even). So lots of room for improvement next semester! I resolve to fix these horrible habits.

I did enjoy the classes though! I was taking 3B3 Switch-Mode Electronics (power conversion for devices), 3B5 Semiconductor Engineering (lots of band diagrams, very relevant to my UROP freshman summer), 3F5 Computer Systems & Networks (a mix of 6.004 and 6.02 and 6.033 for you MIT folks), 3E2 Marketing, and 4C4 Design Methods.

One thing I´ve found is that I really respect my peers for having the self-discipline for studying on their own, and also more importantly, knowing the right amount of time they need to study.


2. Fun stuff

First of all, Cambridge food >>>>> (you get the idea)> MIT food.

Clare´s Christmas formal! (photo creds to the very hipster Jon Lee)

Yay, a proper Christmas tree! (We determined it´s real too.)

There are so many opportunities to eat at Formal Hall, which is the 3-course formal dinner offered by each college. I got to visit Jesus College´s formal hall with Adrian, go to Queens College´s for RAG swap, go to Robinson College´s with Robinson Chapel Choir, and Pembroke College´s for Halloween Formal (which was with the CMErs). 

Queen College Formal Hall

Callie, me and Teresa dressed up as lax bros for Halloween.
Apparently British people only dress up as scary things (think Cady as the "ex wife" from Mean Girls) for Halloween, so we stood out quite a bit...

After Pembroke Halloween Formal. Uhh, I don´t even.

I also went to a few swaps (kind of like mixers) and bops (college dances)! 

Predrinks at Hillside (a Clare dorm) before Clare´s Christmas Bop

At Clare´s Christmas Bop 

(why yes we did have our very own Grinch but he gave us free candy.. and condoms if I recall correctly)

3. Extracurriculars

Remember that long list of clubs I said I was going to try? Haha.

I´m still participating in hockey, squash (though to be honest, I didn´t play at all in the last month of term!), rowing, and Christian stuff. I was in Robinson Chapel Choir, but I auditioned and got into Pembroke´s Choir which has less time commitment (er, better free food to rehearsal ratio), so I decided to sing there instead. They are definitely different in style and culture to Robinson, but I like the people so far! I also decided to join a Eco Product Design contest with 3 other CMErs so we´ll see how that goes! Sadly, I haven´t been doing anything with EcoRacing, but I still really want to, so I´m going to try joining one of their projects next semester.

I also miss coding. So I´m going to try doing something on my own next semester to keep it going.

4. Trip to London

I made a weekend trip to London during Thanksgiving! It was fun and I´ll put up a separate post link here for all the stuff we did there.

5. Rowing

Rowing has been super rewarding and I really enjoy it!

Because I missed two morning outings (I suck at waking up at 6:30am for my 7:15am outings :/ - er I hope that´s the reason haha), I was put into Novice 3rd women´s at the beginning of the season. But then I was put into Novice 2nd women´s for our first novice races of the season: Queen´s Ergs, which is an indoor ergs 8-person race. We actually won our division and I got a decent time (best out of the boat at least) for never erging before this. They had put me first in the lineup and then realized I´d never erged a few minutes before the start of the race and put me second instead.
And then we had CNR (Clare Novice Rowing, another race), where we were finalists in our division. Don´t give us too much credit though - in 2 out of 4 races, the other boat would be ahead of us and then crash into the side of the river while we slowly passed on ahead.
The last race of the season was Fairbairns, and I got to race on Novice 1st, but on stroke side instead of bow (just the two different sides of the boat), which felt different at first, but because of how I hold a stick in hockey, it actually worked out better. We finished 7th, which I think is good enough :)

I´m definitely going to continue with it! I trained with the senior girls a few times, and really missed the feeling of working out and feeling sore the next day. We´ll have training over January so I´ll update on how that goes :)


6. Varsity Trip!

All I will say here is that Tignes is beautiful. More in a separate post!


So there you go. There are a ton of photos from my trip to Barcelona, Madrid, and Lisbon so far, so I hope to get those up in a post soon as well! Missing everyone for Christmas back home, and hope you have an amazing winter holiday and new year!

xx
Becca

Normal Life

I guess I should describe my day-to-day at some point.

1. I'll give you the virtual tour of my room!

It might seem a bit small in this picture, but I kid not, this is the same size as my Maseeh Hall double last year... It pains me to think how my roomie and I lived in such a small confined space.

It's an en-suite, so I have my own bathroom!

The view from my room which is on the 1st (2nd) floor. Prime creeping spot (jkbnr*...)

I live in Castle End, the newest of the dorms in the Colony. The Colony is off of Clare's main site, but it's where most 2nd years and a few 3rd and 4th years live.

Closet

[Note to people who have ever lived near me:] Look long and hard- this is the neatest my closet has ever been. Maybe because of the fact that I have a fraction of the stuff with me right now.
But give me some credit :)

Every Tuesday, a bedder (Maria) comes in to clean our rooms and bathrooms. She's really nice and friendly too :) She vacuums, wipes down our bathroom floor/shower/sink/windows, restocks toilet paper, and empties our trashcan. Wat. Contrast that to MIT where, sure, I never cleaned or emptied my trash but consequently lived in shithole. I love Cambridge.

2. My first cooked meal!

I've also been cooking a lot more in Cambridge. The buttery (cafeteria) is on Clare's main site which is 10 minutes (obviously too far) away from me, so I've been resorting to sitting on my ass and cooking in the kitchen two steps away from me instead.

First meal I ever cooked (I guess cereal doesn't count :/ ) was pork and cabbage below (this photo's from a while back):

Teresa taught me to season meat with soy sauce and a Chinese 5-spice mix. She's right, it's soo good!

Fooooood.

*just kidding but not really (but I hope you realize I'm kidding)

Joining Societies!

So along with the end of freshers' orientation came the end (well, it never really ends) of massive recruiting efforts from the various societies on campus.

There are approximately 12,000 undergrads at Cambridge and almost 19,000 people total. So it's safe to say that there's bound to be a huge spectrum of extracurricular interests on campus.

One benefit of doing the Cambridge-MIT Exchange is being able to be a fresher (freshman) again and trying out the things you didn't get to do the first time around.

I had devised a small list of activities I wanted to do at Cambridge, but I pretty much tossed the list out the window once I arrived because my tiny mind hadn't accounted for all the other opportunities Cambridge has to offer.

What I was planning on doing:
- Hockey
[hah, in England I don't have to say field hockey. I was going to try out for one of the three university hockey team but I saw how much it costs (approximately £330 a year) and figured there's better things I can do with that time. It's also a huge time commitment with many weekend trips.]
- Rowing
[apparently they don't call it crew here]
- Orchestra
[I'm always falsely optimistic that I'll get to play the bassoon again. alas.]
- Singing
[in some kind of chorus or chapel choir if I'm lucky. a cappella isn't that big here.]

What I've signed up to do:
Just at Clare:
- Clare Hockey (my college's intramural hockey team)
- Clare Lacrosse (" lacrosse)
- Clare Squash (" squash)
- Clare Badminton (you get the idea)
- Clare Voices (Clare's open chorus)
- Clare Rowing (our boathouse is awesome!)
- Clare Ents (our Friday evening entertainment committee)
- Clare Sound (the events tech/audio team at Clare)
- Clare Actors (ok, they were just really friendly)
- Clare Politics
University Level/Other Colleges' Societies:
- Christian Union (kind of like Intervarsity back in the States)
- Ultimate Frisbee
- Varsity Ski Trip (this huge ski trip that Cambridge and Oxford go on together)
- Engineers Without Borders
- EcoHouse (a project to create sustainable, practical housing for Ecuador and Brazil)
- Eco Racing (solar and electric powered cars team)
- Cambridge Union (a society that puts on debates involving famous politicians/specialists)
- Cambridge Entrepreneurs
- Robinson Chapel Choir (randomly signed up to audition and got in)

- I promise you there's more but I'm tired of typing... I'm sure you get the idea :)

What I think I'll actually do
(after sifting through the inevitable wave of enthusiastic society emails I've drowned in):

- Clare Hockey
[super chill, 1 game a week and even though we're in division 1, apparently we don't win too many games. I'm okay with being the underdog.]

- Clare Squash
[joined kind of by accident, but I find this much more natural-feeling than tennis so I quite like it! Clare has its own squash courts and free racquets and balls to use, so it's very accessible as well.]

- Clare Rowing
[went on the water for the first time on Sunday, and it's terrifying! I thought I was going to fall in a million times. note the river Cam is also much much narrower than the Charles.]
Like so:

The River Cam

via flickr 

VS

The Charles River

via Juergen Roth's blog

Uh huh. Continuing on....

- Clare Ents
[they're cool people, and hold small concerts/dance parties in our pub (called The Cellars) every Friday.]

The Clare Cellars
(They used to be the crypts for the Clare Chapel upstairs. Deeelightful.)
(Plus we have really nice leather sofas now instead of the wooden stools.)

- Christian Union
[This is one of the societies I'm most excited for. To be honest, I wasn't very proactive about finding a Christian community back at MIT. In fact, I did the absolute minimal: went to church on Sundays, left right after service, and repeat. I didn't even follow through with a Bible Study group I joined freshman spring. And yet here, I've already met a solid group at Clare (one of them is a third-year engineer with me too) who took me to one of the local churches this past weekend and I really enjoyed the service. The church also has a Bible study night for Cambridge students. It was so effortless for me to fit into a Christian community here, and I'm grateful for how I've been welcomed.]

- Varsity Ski Trip
[Practically every CME person has decided to go, and it's basically a huge party in the mountains so I figure, why not?]

- Eco Racing
[Doing electronics and software simulation for them.]

- Cambridge Union
[pricey, but equally fancy and legit]

- Robinson Chapel Choir
[Ironically, one of the main reasons I auditioned was because I heard there was free formal hall (fancy 3-course meal) provided weekly. Then after I joined, I realized that every meal coincided with the local church's Bible study. Oh the irony.]

- And it's still too many activities, so even though I'm genuinely excited about all of these societies, I'm going to have to whittle them down :(

I'll write about classes/academics at Cambridge (yeah that stuff happens too) soon!

Sadness.

This is a short entry but a point had to be made:

Erm... WHERE'S MY HONEY BUNCHES OF OATS?!

ok I'm done. more legit post coming soon to a computer screen near you.

Food.

All in all, food at Cambridge has pleasantly surprised me.

Before leaving for my trip, my impression of British food was:

- small portioned

- mainly potatoes and ... well just potatoes

- bland

And yes, now that I've arrived, these preconceptions are true for the most part (and officially confirmed by the locals).
However, I'm at the University of Cambridge, not just normal UK. So there are exceptions.

Like the Matriculation Dinner.
Basically, last Monday, we were inducted into Clare College as official members of the college. Following a beautiful choir service at the chapel, we were seated with other freshers in our major and our relevant Director of Studies (DoS, a faculty member/advisor from our college) and served the best three-course dinner ever.

In a Harry Potter-like Great Hall:

With a grand speech by the College Master and red wine and port and the whole shebang.
We even wore our black Hogwarts Clare College gowns. With flowy sleeves where we hide our wands.

I promise you the food was amazing, but I was so caught up in devouring it, that I didn't remember to photograph my food until dessert -______-. But here's the menu:

Mmm, duck..

The aforementioned dessert

Post-dinner feast coffee and college-emblemed chocolate. I mean, why not?

To continue with the food theme, I also tried something interesting from the Market Square the other day:

... an Ostrich Burger.
(Well, and a delicious kid's hot chocolate from Starbuck's.)
It was quite good. The meat is tougher than beef, but definitely edible. And the grilled onions and slice of mature cheddar make it even better.

Apparently there's an ostrich farm not so far away with 40 ostrich inhabitants.
The more you know.

Nice old gentleman grilling ostrich burgers.

Other updates:
- I finally met third year engineers (aka people my age) and they're cool people.
- I failed my credit check and therefore haven't gotten a SIM card yet. (More on that in another entry.)
- The sunny, almost-warm punting weather is gone, and it left us with wind, clouds, and rain. (More relevantly, damp and heavy sweaters, bad hair days, and mud-stained clothing.)
- I started classes on the 10th and joined some cool societies! (More on that later as well.)

Day 1, 2, and 3*

* long live the Oxford Comma

Brown, quaint, and the left-hand side.

Those were the first thoughts I had when I looked out my plane window at the surroundings of Heathrow Airport upon my landing. It was completely different from the scenery I had left in Philly.

All the houses were brick with brown roofs and I was excited to see the red double-deckers making their way around a roundabout.

Once we arrived at Cambridge, I was pleasantly surprised. I was assuming that the area around the university would be more like the countryside, but it is more like a town with lots of shops and restaurants packed in the middle of the town.

All the CME students went out for dinner as a group at The Eagle, the pub where Watson and Crick first announced their research in DNA.

iPhones don't work so great at night... you get the idea though.

I ordered a steak and ale pie with chips (fries) and a Pimm's and Lemonade. (Lemonade is actually more like a sprite here.)
Most people ordered a Fish and Chips entree and cider since it was a lot of our first times in a pub and we didn't know what to order - we're such noobs.

Teresa and I went shopping around the town center on the first day to see what it was like.

Sainsbury's is the closest grocery store (much like Shaw's or Acme) and Boots is the local pharmacy. They also have a large mall with a few department stores inside (John Lewis is a lot like Macy's). We were excited to see some familiar ones like H&M and Zara and also this one (kind of):

I'm pretty sure they sell the same things as T. J. Maxx...

The market near Lions Yard. There seems to be merchants here everyday.

I didn't actually get to see my own college, Clare College, until my 2nd day here. I live in the Colony, which is Clare's off-site housing for 2nd and 3rd years, so I never really got a chance to walk down to Clare because of all (and I mean all) the CME orientation meetings.

But when I finally got to see Clare...

...it was spectacular.

This is one of the gates into the second part of Clare's site. Tradition is that if you walk through the middle gate at anytime during your Cambridge career, you'll be cursed with bad marks (grades).

This is the view of the Cam River across Clare Bridge. Since Clare's the second oldest college, its bridge is apparently a popular tourist site.

A view of the neighboring King's College court.

The entrance into one of Clare's gardens.
Clare takes special pride in its gardens and they are well-maintained. They will be closed soon for the cold weather, so I wanted to get peak before that happens!

The garden sits by the River Cam.

People punting along the river.

This bridge is on my way to the Colony where my room is. Also a great view :)

I'll try to write another post soon about International Freshers orientation and meeting my neighbors (and put up more photos), but all in all, I like it so far!

(t - 1)

Surprise, surprise. I packed too much.

I've been planning for my trip to Cambridge since February, but now it's actually happening.

It's weird - I imagined my last few hours in the US to be a little more interesting, but I've ended up with a day not too different from all my others while home. I've got a doctor's appointment and time where my mom and I are home alone since everyone else is at work/school (which I vow to not spend watching Criminal Minds).

Similar to walking into an MIT midterm, I'm experiencing mini moments of panic. I still don't know much about England. Sure, I know the cute stuff like they say "trousers" instead of "pants" and "boot" instead of "trunk," but I'm going to be living there for 9 months. Well I guess I'm wingin' it. (That's kind of my approach with MIT midterms too, I guess.)

To all my friends/family in the US, I'm going to miss you! I wish you all the best for this year :)

I'll try my best to write up another entry in the first few days of my arrival in the UK!