Week 4: Olympians and Poets

Unsurprisingly, this week has carried an Olympic theme.  

On Monday, I attended a lecture in the Cambridge Union Society on “The Olympic Ideal.”  One of the speakers was an Olympian named Cath Bishop.  She is an alumna of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and she won a silver medal in rowing in the 2004 Olympic Games.  

I was intrigued by her description of life as an Olympic athlete.  She had to take scrupulous care of her body: she avoided crowded spaces and even family members to keep from catching an illness.  And she trained seven days a week for years on end: by the time she retired, she had rowed a distance equivalent to several times around the Equator.

The Cambridge Union Society

Oxford

On Sunday, July 22^nd I went Oxford, which Cambridge students call “the other place.” 

After a short walk by the river, my friends and I went to the Eagle and Child, the pub where Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and their writers’ group the Inklings used to meet.  As a fan of both writers, I was thrilled!

The outside of the pub.

The Behavioural Ecology of Week 3

In the somewhat colorful words of a friend of mine, “This has been the week where everyone realizes, “Oh f***, oh f***, oh f***, we have finals in one week.’”

The Pembroke-King’s Programme offers both four-week and eight-week courses, so I have a final exam coming up in my four-week course, “The Behavioural Ecology of Animals and Humans.”  Accordingly, this week has been largely consumed with (1) an essay on the evolution of altruism and (2) some of the most amusing labs (aka “practicals” or “seminars”) I have ever done.

For instance, on Monday we went to the mill pond and fed the ducks in order to test optimal foraging theory.  On Friday, we looked at the personals ads on Craigslist to identify trends in human mating preferences.

The Mill Pond

Week Two Highlights

(1) First guest lecture for my Creative Writing Supervision.  The lecturer was Graham Joyce, and he spoke about narrative structure.  (Interesting note: Joyce compared developing plot to an archeological excavation, which is the same metaphor Stephen King uses in On Writing.  In my experience, writers often describe their process in uncannily similar ways.)

(2)  Walking along the Cam.  The scenery is beautiful, and in some places you would never guess that you were at the edge of a city.

Trip to Edinburgh in Scotland

Thursday, July 5^th

Today was the long coach ride up to Edinburgh.  Along the way, we stopped near Ripon (which is mentioned in the television series Downton Abbey, by the way) to visit the ruins of a monastery called Fountains Abbey. 

The abbey was founded in 1132 and abandoned in 1539 upon King Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries.  The ruins are very beautiful, and unlike anything I had seen in England before.

Then we crossed the border into Scotland.  We drove past rivers, fields of cows and sheep, dense forests, dramatic hills, and ruined stone buildings all shrouded in mist.  Everything looked ghostly and mysterious through the thick fog.

Finally we arrived and settled into the student housing at the University of Edinburgh—I was in Baird House.

First few days in England

Arrival: Saturday, June 30th

Last time I flew to England, the flight went like this:

Sleep.

Sleep.

Sleep.

AAAAAAAAAAGH!!!

The angel-faced little girl behind me, bored after many hours on the plane, had crawled under the seat and grabbed my ankles.

This time was much better.  And I was lucky enough to be picked up at the airport by my relatives, so I didn’t have to mess with trains in my jet-lagged, zombie-like state.

By the way, this was a useful checklist when I was packing (though if you’re bound for England I doubt you’ll want to take shorts or a swimsuit!): http://thestudyabroadblog.com/study-abroad-packing-list-2-2/

First day of the Pembroke-King's Programme: Sunday, July 1st

I couldn’t check into the Pembroke-King’s Programme until the afternoon, so I spent the morning with my relatives in Dedham.  We walked along the Stour to Flatford Mill, an area much beloved by the famous painter John Constable.  In case anyone had forgotten how beautiful the English countryside is, some reminders: