Sorry it’s been a while!
Life’s great- there’s a fudge shop across the street from my
dorm, as well as a café that has crepes, milkshakes, and pancakes. And there’s a candy shop across from my
classes. Not tempting at all. No struggles here.
For the past 3 weeks I’ve been told almost everyday not to
get used to the weather, it will be cold and rainy soon. It just keeps getting hotter. Oh the lies.
However, the hotter it gets, the more people go punting (essentially
the British version of gondolas). And
punting happens in the River Cam outside my dorm, so I spend a decent amount of
time laughing at the failures as people attempt to do it on their own. The poles used to push the punts are about 12
feet tall, so there are a lot of struggles.
Last weekend I went into London Friday night for my friend
from school’s birthday and that was a blast. Seeing half of JE and 5 boys from my hometown
did not freak me out at all. But really,
it was great. And I had a really dumb
moment at dinner that night- a cake came out of the kitchen and I said “Oh a
cake! Hal, we should get you a cake!” And then the cake turned, towards us “maybe we
did get you a cake…” Whoops..
After the struggle back to Cambridge the next day I had the
most delicious dinner (dessert?) ever. A
peanut butter and banana crepe. Anyone
who knows me at all knows how much I would love that.
So the next day, I had a Spooks and Spies field trip to
Bletchley Park, the code-breaking center for Britain during World War II. On
the way there we stopped at the Cambridge Cemetery for Americans during World
War II, which was incredibly interesting.
At Bletchley Park we saw the main building which is a mansion that is
just an architectural mess. The family who lived there would go on vacation and
come back saying “we want this from Spain” or wherever, so just combined so
many styles. So there we saw the first
computer, which was enormous. We also
saw the ENIGMA cypher machine that the German’s used, and the Bombe, which the
British used to decode it. And we saw
how all of that worked which was just absolutely mind-blowing.
So that’s it. This
weekend I have a London trip to Parliament and the Shakespeare Globe for
Macbeth, which should be a blast. Then a
crazy few days with another Formal Hall Monday night, Final Paper for Spooks
Tuesday, and Final Exam for Spooks Friday. Almost halfway done.
