I’ve been battling a cold all weekend, which has really limited my productivity and sadly prevented our semi-planned trip to London today, but that doesn’t mean the weekend didn’t have any highlights.

As I mentioned previously, I had the opportunity to attend the conference hosted by CRASSH at Cambridge this week, which explored the growing role of new media and its uses in alternative politics.  Just a note, CRASSH is but one organization that makes up the alphabet soup of organizations at Cambridge and this particular acronym stands for Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (just noticed that they don’t use the serial comma in their organization name…which, while apparently a strong trend in written English language, never ceases to anger me…also, I’m thinking of giving the old blog an acronym to fit in better with my new surroundings…I’m thinking of KJAB or EOA or KJAB:EOA…yes, I know, I crammed a lot of stuff inside these parentheses). 

On Sunday, we finally managed to venture outside our township and check out one of the British sights, with the help of my college.  In fact, our greeter at Chartwell (Sir Winston Churchill's home) informed us that Chartwell was the best historical sight operated by the National Trusts.  So, there you go.

So, remember how a few days ago I had some trepidations about cycling around town and what not. Well, after a mere few days…it turns out that I’m quite good at biking.

So, because I can't sleep and I know this is the photo blog you've all been waiting for...I present to you the Cambridge Tour Edition.  (We took a brief, 2-hour, walking tour of the city centre and some of the colleges as part of our Freshers' week festivities today). 

But first, a few notes.

- You know what I found to be a really awesome idea?  Riding our new bikes home after dark from the bike shop.  Jolly good fun, that!

Nothing too interesting to report today as I didn’t have any official program events scheduled.

Michelle and I headed out this morning to the University Societies and Activities Fair for Freshers (or something) that was held at the big event center on the east side of the city centre.

So, if you ever get the urge to have yourself knocked down a few pegs…or better yet feel the need to make your life up to the current point seem like an exercise in mediocrity and boredom…I suggest that you sit in on an introductory session at a Cambridge graduate program (Development Studies, for example).  Of course, not everyone there has done extraordinary things (like live and work in Japan or Ghana, help prevent human trafficking in the US and Haiti, start and run a non-profit, or clerk at the UN), but many have and those are the ones that stick out.  Add on top of that the ones that previously studied at Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, Johns Hopkins (or some combination of those) and you have quite the intimidating crowd.  Not to mention that 95% of the people in the room are younger than you…some significantly so.

So, some huge news today…we bought bikes!  Turns out that this was pretty much a must have purchase as seemingly everyone here has them.  The bike shop said we should be able to pick up our new babies next weekend.  Because we bought the “student specials,” which were the only bikes that were remotely reasonable in price, there was a bit of a wait.  Safe to say in Cambridge that it’s definitely a seller’s market for bicycles!  Putting that aside, we’re very excited about cutting down our commute time to the city centre from 20 minutes (walking) to like 5 minutes biking.  While I was never particularly adept at cycling and I haven’t been on a bike in like 15 years…I plan on riding fast, because that’s how I roll.

So we’ve had a chance to get out and check out some of the sights of Cambridge the past few days.  Since we arrived on Wednesday, we’ve had alternating weather days…rainy on Wednesday, sunny on Thursday, rainy on Friday, and sunny (for the most part) on Saturday.  Temperature has stayed in the high 50’s to low 60’s during the day…very pleasant when the sun is out.

Cheerio!  So we arrived safe and sound in jolly old Cambridge at around 3:00 pm (that’s British Time for all of you rubes still stuck on crappy East Coast Time) yesterday afternoon.  The trip from Dublin to Cambridge was quite smooth…overall, the entire trip was surprisingly easy.

Happy to report that we reached our layover point (Dublin, Ireland) with ease and way ahead of schedule.

A couple of notes from the first leg of our journey…

-  Thursday was my last day of work.  It’s kind of nice to have those obligations out of the way so I can move on to the next chapter.  However, it was certainly more than a bit bittersweet leaving the lab on the last day.  It’s basically 3+ years of my life in the books and one thing’s for sure…I’m pretty much lost without my routines and familiar patterns.  Hence, while moving to a new country might not seem like much to some of you (on second thought…would it not be a big deal to anyone?), for me it’s a particularly monumental endeavor.  Anyway, I’m trying not to think too much about it until Tuesday.

From the week gone by and the upcoming weekend...

Ok, so I think we’ve come a long way on this blog since its inception nearly two months ago.  By now, you readers are way more hip for sure and your awesomeness has certainly increased simply by association.  In addition, you should now possess at least a rudimentary knowledge of a bizarre mix of interesting topics from Lady Gaga to Rwanda (On that note…did you catch the VMA’s last weekend? That is perhaps my favorite night on the calendar every year that does not involve a sporting event).

It’s funny how little things can get under your skin.  For the last several months I’ve passed by this sign every morning as I enter my building at work.  It never fails to bother me...and not just because of the horrendous grammar.

Last night it seemed for a few moments that we might be adding a new little addition to our family…

Observations and thoughts about Rwanda from a person with no direct knowledge of the country or its people...just a true interest and curiosity (second post in a two-part series)

Observations and thoughts about Rwanda from a person with no direct knowledge of the country or its people (first post in a two-part series)…

As I mentioned before, the back to school crush has certainly taken its toll on my lunch time routine.  While I used to complete my entire dining experience in 15 minutes or so…it now takes me a good 15 minutes just to get my food and get situated.  But, on the bright side…the new term has brought some new blood at the Q and some new opportunities to people watch.