A Week of Adventures

All is well here. This past week has had some adventures. These include:

-seeing Love's Labor's Lost. very well done and very witty play. have you ever seen it? you would like it. "ahh, now we are even." "yes, we are four..."

-taking my final for Gothic architecture. an hour straight of writing. my hand muscles were unhappy. however, i think i did quite well.

-taking the King's College Chapel roof tour. way cool to see the other side of the vaulting and then to go out on the real roof!

-watching Stranger Than Fiction. lots of people in the group hadn't seen it. i still don't know how that was possible...but it made for a most enjoyable evening! everyone does such a good job in that film

-going to London for the day. saw Wicked again. went to the Tower again. wandered Westminster. ate at my favorite Indian place in London. was the general tour guide.

-church. sang in a special musical number and got asked to teach gospel doctrine (my favorite Sunday calling) and got hinted at another special musical number. we shall see.

This week I start a new class: Spooks and Spies. It is on the 20th century espionage of the US and UK. I'm pretty excited. Also, I got a little behind on my supervision this last week, so I have much to do today and in the next few days!

As far as further schooling goes, I think I've decided to come to Cambridge for my MPhil and then go back to the States to get my PhD. I hope that will happen at Harvard, but only time will tell. The unfortunate thing is that I now must take the GRE...and here I thought I was done with standardized testing. Oh well!

Be sure to check out the new pictures!

AMAZING commercial

Well worth your time. Enjoy! And if you don't understand the humor, youtube the Old Spice commercials.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ArIj236UHs

Cambridge...the first 2 weeks

Suffice it to say, life is great in Cambridge! I arrived two weeks ago and things have gone forward at breakneck pace! Classes here are good, but very different from the US. Lots of lectures and small group seminars (involving field studies and document studies). My gothic architecture class is AMAZING! Look at the pictures to see some of the buildings we've investigated. My supervision is going well. Martin (Dr. Ennis) has a wealth of knowledge about all sorts of things and is a grammarian extraordinaire! I have lots and lots of work to do, but it is fun to have some direction and a clear goal. And the more work and analysis I do of my notes, the more I realize that the doctoral dissertation that was recently done on this subject was VERY poorly done. Blatant errors all over the transcriptions!

The interesting bits of the last two weeks:

-formal hall. a little long and loud, but a good experience with a multiple-course meal. however, having floating candles above the tables would've made the experience more like hogwarts... but at least we got to walk on the grass at king's!

-a trip to Scotland over the first weekend. long drive up and back, with visits to richmond castle and fountains abbey on the drives. while in edinburgh, we traveled to the trossachs for a great hike! and I also bought...a KILT! fun apparel for fun times, especially for the scottish dancing and hiking arthur's seat.

-visiting ely cathedral as part of architecture. the crossing tower and the northwest tower both have fallen in the history of the building...crazy.

-going to the duxford air show today. amazing airplanes and flying. so much fun!

I'm really loving just about everything. The buildings, the atmosphere, the library (24-hour access is incredible!), the king's cows across the river. so good. The only real annoyance: tourists! Somehow we will manage...

Well, it is late. And I can't think of too many more details at this point. Shoot me an e-mail if you have any specific questions or suggestions for my next post.