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.)