culture?

I think I could spend the rest of my life in the University Library and still not know much of anything. That would be very nice. Currently writing you from the tea room, halfway through my first busy week in Cambridge. I am having a wonderful time! Since I shall be here for a relatively long time this summer, I have been focusing on my course and hope to learn about the city and university in due course. That is not to say I have not been peeking my head into Victorian buildings and all sorts of gardens… This room is full of all sorts of posh and absentminded intellectuals, including a dotty white-haired man with his library card on a cord around his neck and the German-accented post-doc in tight levi’s. I feel a voyeur, but this is a good place to study.

The course is starting midway through some theories we explored in my last semester: exploring a number of -isms on either side of now. It is a good starting place, although I am apprehensive about my first tutorial tomorrow: with just two students and a professor, there will have to be a lot of discussion.

This morning’s literature lecture was the best so far. “Brain man and the medieval imagination” explored the medieval perception of sight and brain processes. Ah, science. These ideas were then used to develop further discussion of medieval life and literature, including Chaucer and John Donne.

I am relieved that the busy traveling part of the summer is over. I saw more of people I didn’t think I’d visit and visited fewer people than I had hoped to see. But all in all, what an adventure!