I’m pretty sure that me saying I’ll post more often is a guarantee that I will NOT post more often. I am very sorry for my silence all week; although Grandpa insinuated via Skype last night that my absence was due to “all the bars and pubs you’ve been going to,” it’s acutally just because we were crazily busy with finishing up classes. We had to read a ton each night (one night, our assignment was two whole novels), and on Friday, we handed in proposals for our two final research projects. One is a 7-10 page research paper and the other is a short presentation on any object. I chose to do my research paper on the emergence of eugenics as a result of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, and my object is a painting that a crazy guy in Bethlem Royal Hospital did while he was there. Pretty exciting stuff. I’m going to meet with my professors in a few hours about the ideas, so hopefully they like them and all that.
As a result of all the boring work-type stuff we had to do, the week was pretty uneventful blog-wise. On Monday, we spent the day in Cambridge, which was really beautiful and medieval looking and whatnot. Cambridge University is celebrating its 800th anniversary this year (yes, that means it was founded in 1209—and we think Harvard is old!) and it also happens to be the 150th anniversary of something Darwin did that I can’t remember and can’t be bothered to figure out the math for. Anyway, we were there studying Darwin things, so we went to the University Library and looked at some of his letters, books, notes, etc. They had a whole exhibition set up for him. My favorite thing in the exhibition was a drawing his children did on the back of one of his manuscripts; it was called “the battle of the fruits versus the vegetables,” and it showed two kings facing off, one riding a carrot-horse and one riding a blueberry-horse. Those kids had some kind of artistic talent.
Anyway, after the library, we went to meet this Harvard professor, Jan Browne, for lunch. She is a Darwin expert, and we read part of one of her books for the class. Unfortunately, we all got separated into two tables, and she was sitting at the other table, so I didn’t get to talk to her at all. Oh well. After lunch, we were meant to go to some other museum, but it turned out that it was closed (apparently museums close on Mondays?) but Professor Durant didn’t seem too upset about it. We got the rest of the afternoon to do fun things, so John bought us a bunch of these famous “Chelsea Buns,” which are mainly just glorified sticky buns, and we went punting on the Cam. If the phrase “punting on the Cam” means absolutely nothing to you, let me explain. The Cam is the river that runs through Cambridge. People “Punt,” which is to say they take little gondola-type boats out on the river and navigate with a long pole, which they push off of the shallow bottom of the river. It looks quite easy, but let me tell you it is way more of a challenge than it seems. Our group split into three boats, and I was in the boat with John (professor Durant) who attended Cambridge University and is an excellent punter. He punted for a good while, then we all took a turn trying it. I was surprisingly not terrible at it (I think it requires a lot of upper body strength, thanks polo!), but some of the other girls in our group (cough Krystal cough) had us crashing into other boats and walls. John is hilariously English and proper, so whenever we would be heading towards a wall about to crash, he would say in his British accent “Oh, looks like we’re about to go admire the brickwork over here.” It was really a fun time, and we punted all along what are called “the backs,” which is basically the back side of the ancient colleges. The Cam is really narrow but very pretty, and we got to see a lot of the University that way.
We pulled off to the side of the river to picnic on sticky buns and soda and talk about Darwiny things. After punting, we had a really yummy dinner at the pub next to the punt rental place, and then headed back to London on the train. We didn’t get back until about 10:30, and we still had like 100 pages of reading to do for class the next day, which was unfortunate.
Tuesday and Wednesday were uneventful, with class in the morning and then reading and proposal-writing in the afternoon. Wednesday evening, I met up with our friends Julie and Billy, who are studying in Oxford for the summer. They were in London on a field trip, so we all went out to dinner together before they headed back to Oxford. Thursday, more things happened that are too boring to mention on this blog, but it was our last day of class!! We were all very very excited about that. Friday, more boring stuff, I went running and worked on my project proposals some more, then we all stayed in and watched Shaun of the Dead in Whitney’s room.
Saturday, I went to Portobello Road with a few others, which is a huge open-air flea market that is open only on Saturdays. This place is enormous; it’s about 6 blocks of stalls, with wall-to-wall people the whole way. There are antiques, fruits and vegetables, food stalls, vintage and new clothes, tourist stalls, and really just anything you can possible think of wanting, they have it there. We tried staying together at first, but it was pretty futile so we went our separate ways soon enough. I ended up wandering around the vintage clothing area for the most amount of time, but I also checked out a few record stores and this delicious cupcake bakery called Hummingbird.
Saturday afternoon and Sunday were also boring, filled with much acaademic blogging (all our posts were due at midnight last night, so we were all finishing up the posts we had neglected over the four weeks of class). Highlights were seeing my family (and Grandma and Grandpa!) via Skype. I’m looking forward to exploring London in these next few weeks, but I also really can’t wait to be home!
I’m not going to sign off with a promise of posting more, because that seems to jinx it, but I’ll try to update as much as is realistically possible. I’ll also upload Cambridge pictures as soon as I can!
