Back to School..

The first official day of class started today. I didn't get much sleep last night. Blogging so late last night was definitely a bad idea, but I can't let all my readers down.

So class officially started today at 9:30 AM. In order to make this time, most people, myself included, woke up at 7 AM. Got dressed and had breakfast with my host dad. I had buttered toast and honey flakes from the Sainsbury local market. I left my house around 7:30 with the paper map that my host dad drew me to get to the bus station. Today only we will ride a bus to Studio Cambridge, which is midway between our homestays and class.

We all showed up at Studio and picked up our bikes. From here Layla would direct out entire group of 17 people to our college.

Travis, Clair, and Bryan

This was quite an interesting experience, and by interesting I mean life endangering. Not necessarily for my own, but for the group. First of all, no one know where they are going but Layla. Second, riding bikes in Cambridge is not for the novice rider, and we are ALL poor riders. Riding on the wrong side of the rode is messed up. Riding through round-abouts consisted of getting off our bikes and walking it through the intersection. Now to give an idea of the magnitude of how far we have to go here is a map.

School is where I have circled on the left, and we start way off the map on the right. Kinda hard to see

So basically what I am trying to say is that it is really really far. Really. Also when you factor in getting lost every 5 minutes, getting to school or coming back takes quite a long time.

So we finally get to our college all sweaty and some of us in a lot of pain. Our college is called Department of Applied Math and Theoretical Physics, or DAMTP for short. This place is pretty amazing. We have seen pictures, so we knew what to expect.

But for those of you back home it looks like this:

It looks like some sort of futuristic NASA base. It has a metal fence all the way around and kind of a moat around that, but there's no water in it. It is the premier instituion for research in fluid flow and mechanics in the entire world. Stephen Hawking has his office in this building. S-t-e-p-h-e-n H-a-w-k-i-n-g. For nerds who like space, like myself, Stephen Hawking is a major star (pun intended). He has contributed to the fields of general relativity, cosmology, and quantum gravity, especially with black holes. If you haven't seen Stephen Hawking's universe, you should definitely rent it.

I'm not sure if they carry it in any movie rental stores, but you may be able to find it in a NASA gift store or something. I definitely want to see his office, but I might get stopped by security. So we started class today and Dr. Diller gave us a nice intro. Then we jumped right in.

Biomedical Engineering 353: Transport Phenomena Systems in Living Phenomena.

Now for those of you who don't know anything about Dr. Kenneth R. Diller, here is a brief rundown. He is an international authority on the application of the principles of heat and mass transfer and thermodynamics to the solution of many different types of biomedical problems and on the use of light microscopy to investigate the dynamics of biological processes at high and low temperature. And yes, those were definitely my own words. In the McDonald's case where the lady sued McDonald's because she got burned by her coffee, Dr. Diller was the authority put in charge of finding out exactly what happened. Basically the guy is world famous, yet he is spending a month of his busy schedule to teach us. Pretty cool

The man himself with Ani and Bryan.
We ended class around 12:30 and walked to Churchill College for some cafeteria food.

These are duck in a row.

The lunches are all paid for, we have food vouchers. This is

Michael, Bryan, and me.After class, we went back to the classroom to work on our homework. Dr. Diller went back to his residence, but he arranged for us to have the classrooom until 5:30, which is really good for us to finish all our work. When we got back to the room, we were all very inspired to get started. However after about 10 minutes, we all seemed to hit a bit of a minor setback.

Clair and Rebecca studying
But eventually we got our act to gether and got a lot done. Then we headed home at about 5 PM.

Riding back home.

We got lost a bunch of times coming back today. We were looking for Jesus lane and basically it went downhill from here. We just simply couldn't find Jesus. The experience was good though because everyone was in good spirits and we all had a great time. We also got LOTS of exercise. One of the guys Garrett at one point just walked out into the middle of traffic and stopped like 3 cars so that we could cross. It was pretty funny. One of the girls, Rebecca, led our group for most the time. She is a trooper and I had no problem following her. Well half the time I had no choice because she was hauling way in the front half the time. She tied her coat around her neck and it flapped like a cape in the wind. I took this picture while riding, a bit dangerous but well worth it.

Notice the resemblance to another famous girl.

Garrett and I had a great time in the back. We wanted to get lost more, but we all had to make dinner at 6.

Now on the second night we had dinner with Dr. Diller at a pub. During dinner he mentioned that it takes him about 15 to 20 minutes to get from Cherry Hinton (Where we live) to the DAMTP building, so it would probably take use twice as long. Now I took this as a challenge. I consider myself to be in decent shape, and I said to myself there is no way that Dr. Diller can do it twice as fast as me (no offense to Dr. Diller of course). So turns out that he was right. When I got home, it was about 5:50. So if you do the math.. it took 50 minutes to get home. Not only did it take twice as long, but almost three times. However, I refuse to be defeated. I need some inspiration.


Lance


My host dad got us fish and chips. It was actually really good, and I, Harry, Lauren, and Simon (the dad) has a great time.
The neighborhood was gearing up for a get together in their culdesac, kinda like a block party. It's really amazing the community they have here. The kids play and the parents chat and have drinks. As I was leaving, the mom, Karen, apologized to me if any of the ladies were a bit vulgar when I came back. I enjoyed that. After dinner, I walked to meet a group of us to go the the local Tesco. I guess you could compare it to Cost Co back home or most people say Wal-Mart. Some of the girls bought some things they needed, like water and a mirror.



Laura, Jennifer, and Kacie



Afterwards we walked around the town and just hung out not doing much. I had an amazing time, it was a lot of fun. Thanks guys.

Jennifer, Susannah, and Natalie standing in a round-about

Tomorrow is the famous Strawberry fair in Cambridge. It's been happening for hundred's of years and people from all over come to have fun. It's somewhat comparable to ACL fest, but there are more shows and the bands aren't as good. There is however a lot of marijuana smoking and various other drugs. It's a little, as my family says, "flower power" or hippy-ish. Apparently we should really watch our wallets there. A bit dodgy, but should be interesting. Ok LATAZ.

-James