sociability and silliness

Having just finished the term, here's a flavour of what I've been up to. The flavour of the past week has been largely that of mince pies and mulled wine, Cambridge Christmas being celebrated a month early before people return home.

Last week we had a Christmas party for Globe and Harry's, providing a full English Christmas dinner for international students. There were 79 internationals who turned up. Many of the team were sent home due to lack of space, but I got recruited as a kitchen assistant, so got to eat, though not at a table with internationals. Fiona Ashton's cooking was spectacularly successful - homemade lemon ice cream with Christmas pudding being especially exquisite. This evening I went to two parties, one being for Christ's English people hosted by Dan Wakelin and the other at church. Both were good opportunities to catch up, and I enjoyed pretending to be asleep for the annual improvised HT pantomime.

It's been quite a sociable time since I last posted. The other week I went to formal halls in three colleges (Christ's, Magdalene, and St John's) in the space of five days. Following our formal at John's, many of the Renaissance MPhillers met up together for a rhetoric brunch on a Saturday morning. We had to do group presentations on rhetorical figures, so we decided it would be fun to work over food. We were inundated with croissants, everyone having brought enough for everyone. Thanks to Jo for hosting us in her lovely spacious house! Some of us went to the CICCU carol service together on Tuesday night. We also met up to watch two French films for a seminar - Artemisia and The Return of Martin Guerre, both very interesting. It's be good to get to know my coursemates better over the past couple of weeks.

I've also done a number of silly things. One day I managed to lose all my work (and my phone and some library books), getting one bag locked in a locker at the UL and losing the key, and leaving another behind at church after Risky Living. Another day I walked halfway to the faculty to work before realising I hadn't picked up the bag with my work in it.

Something which was mildly alarming was to have a letter sent to my home address in Lincolnshire from the Board of Graduate Studies saying that I hadn't met the conditions for admission, which was a little strange given that I started my course in October. It turned out that they didn't have a copy of the letter from college offering me funding so thought I couldn't pay my way. Anyway, that's all sorted.

Tomorrow is commemoration of benefactors, one of those wonderfully over the top occasions which make Cambridge the place it is. This involves a service in chapel where the names of everyone who's given stuff to the college for the past 500 years are read out (tomorrow the Archbishop of Canterbury is preaching, which should be interesting) followed by a multiple-course dinner which lasts about 4 hours, followed by drinks in the fellows' parlour, followed by dancing round the mulberry tree at midnight.