Monday was a time filled with exploration, landscape writing, and, of course, laughter. Our assignment for class was to find a place that we could write about in a "travel writing" flavor. Bailey, Phil, and I began walking towards the city center, turning by The Round Church, "Dude, that's a round church," and we eventually found ourselves at Midsummer Common, the dreariest park in the world. The northern edge of the common was bordered by the River Killa Cam (I'm just going to continue referring to the river with names that Cameron goes by,) and on that river small, odd looking house boats float tied to the bank. They look like a floating hot dog of some sort and Philip did not like them at all. "Those things are weird. I don't like those things."Every time we'd walk past them, "Those boats are weird. I don't like those boats."
As we sat on a bench in the park watching people go by on their bikes or with their dogs, we wrote about the ordinary and local beauty of the park, but how it isn't aesthetically pleasing at all. It really is a terrible park. But it fit perfectly into what we wanted to do.
After a good sit and note taking session, we left our little park, headed back to Magdalene to write before class. I wrote our first writing assignment, because it was the one that allowed for the most poetic exploration. Also, by writing the first one, I freed myself from having to do any other work for the rest of the week which is always my main priority. Minimize the amount of schoolwork and you will maximize Jake's happiness. We went to class to discuss a few articles that we read. And by "read" I mean "didn't read." But everyone was great at sharing thoughts and ideas about the landscape and culture, and I'm pretty sure that's all that mattered.
After morning class we got free time to do more work and eat. I knocked out most of our first writing assignment before lunch, but Phil, Cam, and Mackenzie were ready to go eat, so we just decided to go and that we would finish our work later. We chose a little Italian place that Mackenzie had spotted, and the food was delicious. Cam had the Spaghetti Bolognese because it's referenced in a Drake song, and I had the Spaghetti alla some-italian-word-I-can't-remember. It was really good; some dish with the noodles in a cream sauce with ham and black pepper. I was all about that dish. We left lunch and met back up with Bailey, allowing me to finish my assignment and for all three of us to return to Midsummer Common to take pictures for our "Walking Tour" assignment. We also had to make a map on power point for this piece of work and Phil made a map that was super sweet. It was legit to the max. We then went back to Magdalene to do our assignment.
After writing, we went to class and shared. I'm going to be perfectly honest: my assignment was awesome. But the best part was how great everyone else's assignments were too. I think the entire class was blown away with the quality of all the assignments shared, and Dr. Wikle was visibly ecstatic. He is the sweetest man on the planet. But I'll talk more about that on my log from Tuesday. Enough of class things.
On Monday night we went to "The Eagle" a famous pub where Watson and Crick announced that they had discovered the secret to life. They lied about that, but they did make their announcement about DNA, the thing that binds all living things together and has led to the deeper understanding of evolution and biology that we have today. I guess you could call that the secret to life, but I think anything called "the secret to life" needs to be a cryptic scroll found at the end of of dark and booby-trapped hallway in a temple in the jungle. But that's just me. The food was alright at The Eagle, and I finally decided that I straight up do not like the dairy in England. Everything is way too strong and sharp for me. The only way I can describe it is everything is so pungent. I don't like it at all. After dinner, I returned to Magdalene.
Phil went out with Ryan to a pub, Cam went to sleep, and I went to my room to read and write. The internet was working again so I was able to surf the web and was even able to have a pleasantly long Skype conversation with only other sentence spoken needing to be repeated. Between the kids from Michigan State (total weirdos) and the Asian students (really loud early in the morning) here at Magdalene, the internet can be a real pain to deal with. It's a college. Your server should be able to handle student traffic for full capacity, and Magdalene isn't even at three-quarters. But I suppose complaining is silly when I'm in Cambridge with a group of kids who are becoming less friends and more family. My memory is foggy of Monday details, so excuse the shallowness of this post and expect better of me about Tuesday.
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