Going off to Cambridge

There was a farewell dinner earlier tonight for the MIT students going off to Cambridge. The current Cambridge students at MIT and past CME students were also invited to the dinner. Everything was really informal and they setup tables by Colleges. Our exchanges from Cambridge and past CME students kindly answered all our questions about life at the other Cambridge. It seems like for a lot of people, it was an "even" exchange, meaning if a Cambridge student studying Biology from Queens College came over, there is an MIT student studying Biology going over to Queens. That's not the case for me or any of the Course 1 people though.

I met Chris from Gonville and Caius College. He's an Econ major and is trading places with Ross. Rebecca (I met her the other day at the course 1 pizza thing) also came to the dinner. So between the two of them and eavesdropping on other people's conversations, I found out some very interesting things. Apparently at Caius, the difference between the first and second sitting at dinner is just the gowns. The food is exactly the same. In other colleges, the food is usually better at the second sitting (and costs more too, I think). The food itself is not that great but since they force you to buy dinner tickets and so many of them, most people eat at the dining hall. So it's a great place to socialize and make friends.

Chris said that he applied for CME for the American experience. There are people who came for the MIT experience but he wants to travel around and see America. A lot of these Cambridge students have already been to Cape Cod, New York, and other nearby places. The exchange rate is in their favor, I guess. They say that they really miss the weekday night life at Cambridge. MIT students tool too much and don't really DO anything during the week. Sure they'll hang out and such for a few hours but they tool during the evening whereas people in Cambridge go to bars or around town at night. The drinking age is 18 over there, not 21.

After being the last ones to leave the dinner, I came back and packed some more. I lifted one of my bags and was shocked at how heavy it was. American Airlines only allows 50lbs so I was worried. I took it down to the basement and weighted it. It turned out to be 53lbs. I switched things around and got the bag down to 48.5lbs. The other bag, however, is now hovering around 50lbs. I'm kind of worried but there's not much I can do at the moment. I'm just going to cross my fingers and hope for the best. Hopefully, they have a scale before the counter and I can shift things around if I had to.

Did I mention they're getting a bus to take us to Logan? Yeah, isn't that nice? I was worried about having to lug two 50lb bags all over Boston but now there's a bus taking us to Logan and a bus picking us up from Heathrow. I don't know how I would manage otherwise.

I changed the time on this blog to GMT. And on my Google Calendar. It looks strange now because other people's schedules are now at weird times.