October 6, 2011 - First Day of Class (after 5 months)!

Today, I unfortunately have no pictures for you, but I promise to make up for that tomorrow, assuming that the weather isn't terrible. It went from being extremely uncomfortably hot to really cold and windy, skipping the whole moderate and pleasant category that always exists in California, but everyone tells me that this weather is normal for Cambridge, so I might as well just get used to it.

I had my first classes today! Waking up at 7 am was SO difficult. Particularly after not having been in school since June. And I have to do it again tomorrow :( It takes me almost 20 minutes to walk to class, when compared to the 3 minute sprint to class at Caltech, is kind of insane. And the cold weather most certainly makes you want to stay in bed and just curl up. However, my Developmental Neurobiology class was pretty interesting today, even though its all a review from Developmental Biology at Caltech. The first thing the professor said to me when I went up to introduce myself was, "Congrats on becoming the number 1 university in the world!" (For those of you don't know about it, check out the Times Higher Education) This was particularly nice and refreshing since lately the entirety of Cambridge has been bragging about becoming the number 1 university in the world in some other ranking. Wooo Caltech!!! Makes me wonder why I traveled so far away when I was attending such a good school anyways :P Anyways, the classes are about the same size as my Caltech biology classes, maybe around 30 students total.

On the other hand, my Fetal and Placental Physiology class was WAY over my head and had material that I have never learned before. Hopefully I'll be able to catch up in the lectures with some background reading, which sounds really interesting, but also very difficult. I feel like I'm missing a lot of the basics required for the class, and I'd consider switching if Lauren didn't make the course change procedure so impossibly difficult. On my way back from class, I picked up some hot chocolate which tasted so good while the bitter wind hit my face. I seriously felt like I could fly away because the wind was SO strong.

After I got back to my room, I took a nap for awhile before attending the Rambling Club introductory meeting. I remembered to pull out my beanie and gloves before going out again :) It worries me that the weather is only going to get worse.. Anyways, this club is essentially a walking/hiking club that travels around to the countryside and checks out some historic sites. Since I've already been to all the tourist attractions in London, I decided this would be a nice way to travel around. The people in the club were also really nice and welcoming, so I'll probably be going for a walk with them to Waterbeach on Saturday.

I'm too tired to write much more, but I promise some pictures of my class buildings and possibly also the railway station tomorrow!