Is it Christmas yet?

This week has been pretty up and down.  I think it was inevitable, what with being sandwiched between retreat and the arrival of my family, this was bound to be a drop and change week.

Some highlight include...

1. getting a free (FREE!) pastry from Patisserie Valerie on my way to work the other day
2. learning to knit
3. some pretty nice in situ stainings
4. and the fact that it is currently snowing.

Lowlights include...

1. getting sick after retreat (that was fairly predictable)
2. everyone I know having already gone home for the holidays, causing my to spend a lot of quality time with my computer-turned-television
3. my overexpression constructs not digesting into the right size fragments (i.e., stuff not working)
4. having to stay at work until 2 am to clean up after our institute christmas party.  I thought I was done yelling at and cleaning up after drunk people when I left college. Go figure.

Ye Olde Vicarage of Herefordshire (i.e., Brand Lab Retreat 2010)

So, anyone who's tried to e-mail me in the last week knows that I've basically been MIA.  And that's because I spent the past week (well, Mon to Fri) in the middle of nowhere in England on retreat with my lab. Basically, we all lived in a big house together with, well, questionable, heating, and spent all day talking about science and all night playing games and enjoying "adult" beverages.

In terms of the science, it was a great opportunity to both put my work in a larger context and and learn what other people are doing in the lab.  It was also a great way to get to know the people I work with better.  After you've played multiple games of charades and done multiple tequila shots with someone, you basically are by definition friends.

The weekend wasn't all fun and fuzzy science fellowship.  As I alluded to, the house was in less than perfect working order.  It was a beautiful and huge house, but the heat was a challenge and we ended up huddling around fireplaces trying to stay warm!

Also, one of the new PhD students and I were sharing a room in the attic.  No big deal, it was a nice room. The problem was that the attic toilet had a macerator, which apparently broke the first night we were there. That meant that every 10 minutes there would be this sound that I can only describe as what I imagine it would sound like to put your tennis shoes in the dryer.  It was so bad that we ended up sleeping on a couch on the first floor for the night.  The next day, we learned that the macerator was the culprit.  To see if flushing the toilet would help, we did, and.... well, ended up with sewage on the floor.  In the end, the guy who takes care of the house came and cleaned it up, but it was, let's say, an experience.

We also experienced internet detox while in the middle of nowhere.  Some took it as an opportunity to reconnect with the non-virtual world.  Others went into tech withdrawal.  There was a dragon statue next to the window that we dubbed the "reception dragon" because it was the only place in the house were the holy iphone would get a signal.  Our boss also had something she really needed to get done requiring the internet, so she ended up spending quite a lot of time at the local pub using their wireless (which they were not super happy about!).

All in all though, the challenges just made it an even more hilarious and fun week, and I'm kind of sad that it's over.

Here are some pictures (credit to Kat Gold, who takes amazing ones!):

Making fires to stay warm!

The "reception dragon"

Lab Christmas lunch

Lab photo!

The Fairbairn Cup

Remember when I said the river was frozen and it was too cold to race?  Turns out Jesus Boat Club (which runs the Fairbairn Cup) got a barge to go up and down the river and break up all of the ice so that the novice crews could race today.  However, they did have to shorten the race, which in my opinion is all to the good since this is a really long race (it was 2700 m and I think we actually did something like 2k).  The morning was gorgeous and snowy and the ambiance was really fun, even though it was super super super cold!

The way the race works is different from Clare Regatta that I wrote about last week (and actually a lot less stressful!).  This race you only have to do once, and it isn't a head-to-head (because of how narrow the river is).  Boats start with 30 seconds in between, and you aren't allowed to overtake (well, you are once you reach the open bit, but the race today stopped before then).  If you're really keen and think that you'll overtake, you are supposed to say so in advance and get moved to a different slot.  But I'm getting away from the point.

Basically, this race is an opportunity to show what you've been doing in practice all term and just row against the clock, which is much more relaxed than rowing against another boat.  I was pretty nervous, since our last race was kind of a disaster, but I think we got that out of our system and rowed really well today.

There was one hiccup though.  As we came around a corner I could hear our coach yelling at us "easy there" which basically means stop, which is weird because we were in the middle of a race.  Once we did stop (it took a while to sink in because of the adrenaline. I was sitting there thinking, he said stop but we're still rowing, what do I do!?). It turned out that the two boats in front of us had collided and were just sitting in the middle of the river.  When they moved a little away, we just started up again, but it was quite strange and made the race harder (since it take more energy to get the boat moving from a stop) so we lost some time.  I think that the Marshals will subtract some from our time because of it, hopefully.  Kudos to our cox who was super calm and just had us start up again.  She's very relaxed in the boat, which helps you not panic or quit when you get really exhausted at the end!

All in all, it's been a great term of rowing.  I've loved being a part of something here at Churchill, because I feel like without it I just wouldn't spend any time here.  It's been fun getting to know the girls in my boat, many of whom are undergrads, and actually experience what it's like to be a British student here (most of the MCR, again, are from the US).  I think I'll definitely keep it up next term.  I can't wait for May term when it's warm and lovely on the river!

Here's our boat after we got back to the boathouse, decked out in Churchill pink!!!

Christmas is on the way....

....but Chanukah is already here!

Happy December everyone!  Tonight is the fist night of Chanukah and I hope that everyone has a wonderful beginning to the holiday.  Ironically, I "celebrated" today by going to church.  Well, sort of.  Today a friend and I went to the sing-along carol service at King's.  I sometimes regret being in one of the more modern colleges, and today was one of those times.  King's College chapel is a wonder of gothic architecture (actually, it's fan-like ceiling is a unique style unto itself).  I, despite being jewish, as many of you know, am absolutely crazy about Christmas, and this was a great way to start off the holiday season.  Christmas celebrations start super early here, because the Cambridge term ends this week so everyone wants to celebrate here before going back home.  Each college has a Christmas formal (ours is tomorrow!) and even the Porter's Lodge is decorated with tinsel!  I dont know if things will be different after the students have left, but for now I'm loving the holiday spirit. (PS, I got yelled at by the priest for taking these pictures, so you'd better enjoy them!):

The downside of its being December, of course, is that it is FREEZING (literally, below freezing).  This is problematic as we have a race tomorrow.  The river has been frozen all week, so it is unlikely that we'll be able to race.  It's kind of sad because we've been working up to this the whole term and it would be anti-climactic to not do it.  I'll keep you posted on what happens!

First Cambridge Snowfall!

So, technically the first snowfall was Saturday (actually during our race), but since snowfall is supposed to be joyous and all I felt then was annoyed, I'm saying that one doesn't count.  When I woke up this morning, and looked out my window to see this:

I felt the true joy that one is supposed to feel at the first beautiful dusting of snow!  It did present a problem (to cycle or not to cycle) but made me super happy nonetheless.

Some other pictures of the snow:

King's back.

More King's (see the chapel?)

Queens

Clare Novice Regatta

So, as many of you know, Saturday was my first ever rowing Regatta (or race).  It was a race run only for novices and it was run by Clare College (hence the name).  The way it works is that the race is 800m and it's head-to-head, which is unusual as the Cam is really narrow.  If you win, you move on to the next race, and you keep racing until the final.

We've been doing really well in our practices this week, so we were expecting to do quite well in the race.  However, we lost our first race, which was pretty anti-climactic.  All of the things that we'd been doing well totally went out the window, which was super frustrating.  Now I remember why I don't play competitive sports, because it is so frustrating to have one chance and to totally screw it up.  We have another race on Thursday though (this time it's 2700 m!) so at least we have another chance, and hopefully we've gotten all of the butterflies out of our system!

I sit bow (the FRONT of the boat, but since you face the opposite way it feels like the back), so I get to wear the race number.  This time I really wanted to take it home, for obvious reasons:

Since I was kind of bummed, I didn't do much for the rest of the day.  However, I dragged myself away from reruns of my new favorite British TV show (Downton Abbey) to go the MCR Guest Night in the evening.  The theme was James Bond, and the night comprised of formal hall (with James Bond themed food) and then a bunch of entertainment after.  There was karaoke, a chocolate fountain, and "gambling" run by the Churchill Casino.  So all-in-all it was a nice way to end a pretty frustrating day.

My artsy photo: The reflection in the glass of everyone waiting to get into hall.

The dinner menu with James Bond themed food.

In case anyone was wondering what a syllabub was.  It's basically whipped cream, this time with vodka in it.

Happy (Belated) Thanksgiving!

I was supposed to post this yesterday, but I was in a bit of a food coma...

The title of the post basically speaks for itself.  Happy Thanksgiving to all of you in the US and all around the world.  I hope you all had a fantastic day filled with good food and good friends (wow, that really sounds like a Hallmark card, but it's true!).  Being in another country really makes me appreciate Thanksgiving more than I do when I'm at home.  I miss family and friends, of course, but everyone here made such an effort to make us feel at home today, that I can't help being happy in spite of being far away.

For lunch, the Cambridge in America alumni organization runs a lunch for American students at the University Center, so I went to that with a bunch of friends.  They made an effort to do the traditional staples, and it was nice to have some pumpkin pie.  We also had pumpkin pie at work actually, as the people who cook our food love any and all holidays.  We tried to make people go around the table during tea and say what they were thankful for, but I dont think the British people were really into it.

Then, for dinner there was a formal Thanksgiving hall at Churchill.  Again, attempt at Thanksgiving classics and more pie.  So right now (or when I wrote this last night) I'm hugely full.

I had been pretty apprehensive about today, thinking that I would be super homesick.  I thought that it would be impossible to celebrate without the specific food I'm used to eating and the specific people I usually spend the holiday with.  Again, I do miss all of that.  But at the same time, the Thanksgiving spirit was totally alive here.  It was almost kind of nicer to be able to go to work and say Happy Thanksgiving to all of my co-workers and see them getting happier at how happy I was.  So, I guess my point is that, no matter where you are, I hope you are still able to have a great Thanksgiving.  I know I did!