October 7, 2011 - Second Day of Class (with pictures!)

I was too exhausted yesterday to finish my post, so its technically a day late. Anyways, my second day of classes went a lot better than my first day since I felt like I understood my classes (particularly the Fetal and Placental Physiology one) a little bit better. I also had the crash course on orientation since I missed orientation day, but that definitely made me feel like I understand the system a lot better. I also finally got ID card access to the buildings with my classes and the Physiology library. They really spoil third year students around here though, because Part II students have their own computer room and even a separate section of the library (in addition to the tea room I mentioned earlier I think)! I'm SO glad I'm taking Part II classes since I also have weird hour gaps in my schedule, and having some facilities there to just chill in makes the wait slightly less annoying. Today I had a three hour break so I decided to go down to the Railway station and get my 16-25 youth railcard made (since you get 1/3 off all tickets with that). On my way down, I stopped at Subway, which was really really nice since the food was something I'm actually somewhat used to.

There was also the Emmanuel Chapel, which at this angle looks much more impressive than when cars are just zooming by it or when you just walk past it. Essentially, as a whole it looks a lot better than the individual buildings. Its also kind of cool how the clouds seem to surround the chapel, but are not directly on top of it.

Once I got to the Railway station, I thought that I had brought my passport photo with me, but it turns out that I had left it in my room (almost a 40 minute walk away), and so now I have to go back on Monday to get it made, which I'm not too eager to do. It also started lightly drizzling when I was walking back, as you can see with the intimidating black clouds over Parker's Piece (a popular 25 acre grassy field).

And these are just a few random pictures that I took on my walk back to my 4 pm class in the Zoology building. I love the way the buildings are designed here so you'll probably get a lot of pictures like the following...

This one was just so that you could see me. My classes are located in the building directly behind me here.

I think I've already explained how the academic buildings are all located in clusters throughout the town, so here is the cluster for most of the Natural Science and Biology courses:

For the past two days, the Christian Society has been setting up a stand right here and giving out free tea/coffee with biscuits, which is really nice since it's been SO cold! I don't think they do it all throughout term though...

This was just to show you the circular fire escape design I mentioned earlier. Its on every single building in this cluster:

I also completely understand why all students have bikes here with classes so far away, but I'd also be so scared to ride a bike with the way cars drive around here too. You have to be rather skilled at signalling and predicting what cars will do to ensure your safety.

And this is the Physiology building, where I will be spending most of my time every day:

Other than going to class, I didn't do too much today. I was supposed to meet up with Connie (from Hong Kong, pictured earlier) to show her around St. John's, but she got delayed and couldn't make it. So I ended up just having a nice and relaxed evening in my room, which was pretty nice when compared to how crazy my weekend will be! 

OH I almost forgot. Remember the professor who yesterday told me congrats on becoming the number one university in the world, well today he was wearing a Caltech shirt! I don't think it was a coincidence, and it made me miss Caltech SO much :( Also, I went to my first Cell Assembly and Interactions class today, and it was absolutely amazing!! I'm really excited about that class, particularly because the professors are very interactive and engaging. At the end of today's lecture, they showed a movie of a neutrophil chasing a bacterium, and asked us, if you had all the money in the world to do whatever research you would like, what questions would you ask in this situation? That lecture reminded me why I started studying biology in the first place and why I'm so fascinated by it, which reassured me that I made the right choice coming to Cambridge for a term to study biology even though I'm so far away from home and my friends.