Rob's Princeton Adventures

Day 96/99: Final things

2009-12-16T23:34:00.002-05:00

I've done quite a few things here for the last time now - last fencing session, last Princetonian column, last Junior Seminar, last Greek History seminar, last Butler Gallery meeting, and tomorrow's my last Latin class. I've probably seen quite a few people for the last time, too. I'm quite good with goodbyes, but even so, it's a bit odd.

Princeton's beginning to rev up into Christmas mode - the Wu dining hall decorated itself and held "Winter WUnderland", Christmas-y desserts like Yule logs are starting to be served, and there was a "Winterval" event earlier today with free food, eggnogg, cookie decorating, bowl painting and a Santa wandering around. Photos are here - I particularly like how different US chocolate coins are.

Five of the seven of us taking CLA326 (Athenian Democracy and Its Critics) met up for a goodbye meal in the Whitman dining hall today, after our last seminar, which was really fun - Alex (to the left of me in the photo below) used to be at Cheltenham Ladies' College, and has worked at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, so we bantered about England a bit. Also, apparently Texas is not in the South.

I try not to gush about Verity too much in this blog, but I got a parcel of home-made (and delicious) biscuits from her today, and just had to take a photo (of the ones that broke least in transit):

I'm very aware that I haven't yet fulfilled my promise to do a detailed blog about my Washington DC trip - but I do still have the itinerary, and photos with detailed captions from others on the trip, so I will do that as a postscript blog post at some point.

Day 92/99: End of the road (almost)

2009-12-12T23:24:00.001-05:00

I've just finished my paper on the decline of Greek democracy after Alexander the Great, 3,577 words long - it's a month before the deadline, so after Christmas I'll reread the four main texts and look at it again, but it's basically finished and - I think - pretty good. My Junior Paper also doesn't need much more than a bit of reorganisation - section headings and the like - so basically, the Princeton work that counts towards my Oxford degree is done. I still need to pass my final Latin exam and produce some kind of ten-page paper on Roman Portraiture, but the former shouldn't be too taxing and the latter doesn't really count - it might look nice on my CV if I do well in it, but I'm not going to stress myself out doing work for it.

I'm also mostly packed - all that's left out are my clothes for this week, my Latin textbook and my notes. I've done the bulk of my Christmas shopping, and I've bought all the Princeton-branded gear I want, but still have a fair bit of money left over. Hurrah.

I haven't had time for much that's interesting recently, between work and packing - but I went for dinner with a friend, and met one of her friends who's a Princeton graduate student but went to Merton, so we swapped stories about the more permanent Fellows (Dame Jessie, the Chaplain, some of the scouts, and the History and English senior tutors). That was fun.

I also realised that I forgot to give a link to my latest article - here. It's getting a surprising amount of attention from outside Princeton - a lot of interpreters and deaf people are commenting on it and emailing me. Also, if anyone wants to see fencing photos, then they're here.

One week exactly, and I'll be somewhere over the Atlantic - it's strange!

Day 89/99: New hair!

2009-12-09T12:26:00.002-05:00

I got a new haircut today - I'm not going to bother with a self-portrait, but I'm sure you'll see it in photos before long (and you'll probably all see me within a month anyway). I had it done at the Princeton Barber's Shop, just outside the campus gates - didn't have to wait, it only cost $18, and the guy just cut my hair rather than trying to talk to me (which is always annoying, as they either speak into my deaf ear or are holding a buzzing razor right up against my good ear). He also didn't ask me what exactly I wanted done - it's great to find people who accept "make me look nice for my grandparents at Christmas" as a valid instruction rather than expecting me to think about layers or side partings or ears.

I'm quite enjoying photography now - I upgraded to a two-year Flickr Pro account for £30, and I'm reading a few online photography tutorials and photoblogs. A lot of the stuff is aimed at digital SLR users rather than my point-and-shoot, but I'm happy with what I have for now - a decent SLR with a few lenses to make it worthwhile would cost me £500 or more, even buying second-hand (and buy cheap, buy twice...), and it wouldn't make me any better at taking well-composed photos of interesting things. When and if Ican do that, but feel like I'm being restricted by not having all the manual aperture/focus/zoom power of an SLR, maybe I'll invest in one, but there's no point yet. I've agreed to do some photo work for the Prince - they want to do an exhibit comparing Princeton buildings to the Oxford ones they're based on, so I'll take the photographs in Oxford - and I'm going to try and do some for an Oxford student paper too. I've also started a new blog to try and force myself to take more original photos.

Speaking of photos - those of you who were jealous of the fact that I had blue skies and snow on pretty much the same day will be glad to hear that it rained ridiculously this morning. I got soaked during the walk to Latin.

Only a couple of interesting events in the last few days - my latest article got published in the Prince, I went to a talk by Barbara Bodine (former ambassador to Yemen) on how to discover yourself by travelling overseas, and yesterday it was the opening of the Sympathetic Resonance exhibit I mentioned previously.

A photo of Barbara Bodine (pretty blurry, because I had flash off, so I'm not putting it on Flickr - consider this a blog exclusive):

and of me playing the Sympathetic Resonance machine:

I have more photos of that on my Flickr.

Day 85/99: More snow!

2009-12-05T19:26:00.000-05:00

After dinner, I traipsed around the Princeton campus taking as many photos of snow as possible on various camera settings (ordinary, "snow mode", flash, no flash, high ISO...). My hand hasn't been that cold since Christ Church Regatta, but it was worth it - I ended up with 85 photos and put the best ones on Flickr with the others.

The U-Store has a Christmas tree up, which was cool:

Also, since I had my camera with me, I thought I'd take a photo of my dinner, just for fun.

Day 85/99: Snow! (also, Quad Club)

2009-12-05T15:44:00.004-05:00

Despite the blue skies earlier in the week, it's now snowing at Princeton! I've taken about 45 photos of it, of very varying quality - the best 7 are on my Flickr.

~~More photos will follow when it settles.~~ It settled - I went out at twilight and took more, so the above Flickr link now has eighteen photos.

In other news, it turned out that my prediction, that Charter would be the only eating club I'd visit, was wrong - the Prince's promotions party was held at "Quad", aka the Quadrangle eating club. The party wasn't necessarily that great, but I did get some nice photos (which are again on my Flickr).

As you can probably tell, I'm getting quite attached to Flickr now - by far one of the most tedious things about doing this blog has been uploading the photos one-by-one and getting them to work right in Blogger's HTML editor. Not only do I not have to worry about that with Flickr, but my photo management program lets me upload there with two clicks, and does auto-resizing and everything. I'll definitely buy a Flickr Pro account ASAP.

Also, I saw this banner in the Frist Campus Center - it looks fun, I might go.

Day 84/99: Flickr

2009-12-04T11:24:00.002-05:00

I decided, in the end, that I ought to get Flickr. I've signed up for a free account just to get used to it, but I'll probably buy a Flickr Pro subscription soon so that I can upload full-quality photos and view them all (rather than just the most recent 200).

Anyway, in celebration of the fact that it's sunny and blue-skied here rather than miserable in England, I took a few photos this morning and grouped them into a set.

If you hover over the cart in this one, I've added a 'note' just to try the feature out.

Day 83/99: Charter Club

2009-12-03T23:21:00.002-05:00

So, I went to Charter Club as Janice's guest for dinner last night - my first and probably only experience of an eating club, which are the social hubs for a lot of Princeton students. As always, I took my camera (scaring a lot of people with the flash in the process, but hey).

Campus Club from the outside (in the dark)

The main hallway (Janice wandered into the shot)

The food servery

The dining hall

The "Great Room"

Main stairway, replete with grandfather clock

A room, the name of which escapes me

TV room

The library

It's quite a nice place - reminds me of the Oxford Union but with food. I guess Oxford formal hall has spoilt me, in that I don't think a meal is anything special unless someone else serves it to me, but it was alright (I had chicken, risotto, chickpeas and tomato, with a chocolate-and-cream tart as dessert). I'm not convinced that the eating club experience is worth $8,000 or whatever they pay, though.

I've also emailed in my completed, 21-page junior paper, so I'll get feedback on that this week; I'm also hoping to make serious headway with my Hellenistic Democracy paper this weekend, so I can then spend a while putting together something interesting about Roman priestly statues for my final class (which luckily doesn't count for my Oxford degree).

I've mostly finished my fourth Daily Princetonian column, too, which should be published on Tuesday - I've been confirmed as a full columnist, and been invited to a Promotions Party tomorrow, so that should be fun. At the Butler Gallery, we're hosting a really exciting exhibit, which should be installed over the weekend for a Tuesday launch party.

Some other photos:

The upper floor of the dining hall, where the college office is

A window full of empties that caught my eye

A nice photo of the grassy area outside my dorm

The tiny cakes we had at lunch, next to my little finger for comparison

The cake provision at dinner, which I don't think I've photographed before

A pair of windows that looked Christmassy and festive

Day 82/99: Tea and eclipses

2009-12-02T18:21:00.001-05:00

First, a few criticisms of American tea, particularly in the Princeton dining halls. The photos below are of the basic tea-making essentials:

Two things will be immediately obvious: the mug is ridiculously small (though I do own, back home, a litre-sized Godfather-themed tea mug which I love, so my judgement of mug sizes may be flawed). Secondly, the only teabags provided in the dining hall are Lipton's, which - even if they weren't tainted by the fact that they produce "iced tea" - isn't a great brand. This isn't the case everywhere - other cafes have better brands like Tazo, Rishi and even Twining's - but they're expensive whereas dining hall tea is included in my meal plan.

A better photo of the 'milk' shows the third problem:

Rather than being proper milk, this is some kind of bizarre mix of milk and cream (and strange chemicals, but let's ignore those). I didn't even notice this until someone expressed surprise that I had cream in my tea - I've now switched to using their milk machines, so my tea tastes slightly less funny.

Speaking of machines, the fourth and most important problem is that tea comes from here:

It's the hot water tap of a coffee machine, which obviously is primed at the ideal temperature for coffee (205F, 96C) rather than boiling like you need for tea. It's logical, but still, it's wrong. I can't really have a good cup of tea in my room either (my kettle lacks an off switch, which scares me, and I have no way to wash my mug up), so I'm definitely looking forward to a nice English cup of tea when I get home in two and a half weeks.

In other news, I went to a public lecture on Monday titled "Is an eclipse described in the Odyssey?". It was a really interesting combination of science with Classics. Basically, in the Odyssey, there's one passage where a total eclipse of the sun seems to be described, another where Odysseus navigates by the stars (and it tells you where the stars are) and a few where the gods travel to places, which we can reasonably assume relate to the planets moving around in the sky. If you do the maths and the astronomy, then there's only one solar eclipse that would cover that region in that rough time period (on April 16th, 1178BC) and if you work out the star charts around that date, you do get Venus appearing before sunrise when the Odyssey says that it did, you do get Mercury popping up briefly in the east when Hermes travelled east, the constellations are all as Odysseus sees them when he navigates, and so on. This is all fantastically unlikely to be a coincidence - but on the other hand, everyone basically agrees that Homer only wrote down this oral tradition five centuries later, so it's even more unlikely that all these astronomical signs were just passed down to him, and they couldn't have had the technology to work out the date of eclipses like that. It's a complete mystery why all these dates should match up, but they do. I guess this is what I love about ancient history - trying to figure out what happened 3,000 years ago, getting a really good answer, but then having many more questions which are even harder to answer. I wonder if people will be going to lectures about us in 5,000AD, and I wonder if they'll be as confused as we are now.

Anyway, a couple of photos from around campus to finish off (I'm thinking of starting a Flickr account and putting all my photos there, given how much I use my new camera - good idea?):

I liked the novel, and one of the people running the show is in one of my seminars, so this might be fun to see sometime (especially as I missed getting tickets for My Fair Lady).

It's a rock that got donated by Switzerland in memory of a Princeton professor. What more can I say?

Witherspoons, the cafe in the Frist Campus Center which I visit when I want some Earl Grey ($1.25 for a reasonable amount, so not bad).

Finally, evidence from a Princeton student magazine that they do know who Gordon Brown is.

Expect a slightly more interesting post tomorrow - in ten minutes' time, I'm off to an eating club (Charter) for dinner with a friend. I'll take photos!

Day 79/99: A few photos

2009-11-29T10:20:00.004-05:00

Nothing interesting recently - just writing up my junior paper. Should finish today - only a thousand words to go. I also found a couple of news articles about Mary, who ran the Thanksgiving kitchen I blogged about. Apparently she's both a nun and an insurance lobbyist.

If anyone doubted my claim that Princeton was practically deserted for Thanksgiving, here's a photo of brunch on Friday:

While in that dining hall (Wilson College's, the only one open this weekend) I chanced to see this in their student newssheet:

A talent show, in one college, with flat-screen TVs, video games and iPods as prizes? Princeton is ridiculously wealthy. It makes Mr & Mrs Merton look a bit low-key by comparison...

Finally, I picked up a Princeton-branded USB key, just for fun:

Day 76/99: Happy Thanksgiving! (photos added)

2009-11-26T22:44:00.088-05:00

Nothing that interesting from the past couple of days - been hammering away at my junior paper (now 4,000 words in) and I went to a dinner linked to my DC trip on Sunday, but that's all.

Today, though, was much more interesting - it was Thanksgiving Day, which meant that (unable to go home like 95% of Princetonians did) I decided to sign up to volunteer at a street kitchen in Harlem instead, armed only with several bags of dessert that we'd all baked last night, my trusty pink Sony CyberShot, and a desire to write a really good photoblog post.

Anyway, after catching the train and subway (and after a slight crisis where the ticket machine wouldn't take my $50 note or debit card and I had to use my UK credit card) we reached Harlem at maybe half-past eleven.

The first order of business was to find somewhere to leave our bags - somebody suggested the nearby fire station, but when we asked, they told us they were likely to be called out often (a LOT of kitchen fires happen on Thanksgiving, for obvious reasons) and so they couldn't guarantee we'd get our bags back at the time we wanted to leave. We ended up just leaving our bags behind the serving tables, but not before we got terribly photo-happy in the station:

The street kitchen itself was immense - it pretty much blocked off a whole street, there were 300 volunteers, it fed 2,500 people (not all of them homeless - some were elderly, poor or just too busy working to cook) with very generous portions, for free, and it basically all ran smoothly. The very idea of it was a little bit inspirational - it all grew out of Mary, the founder, serving Thanksgiving dinner to the homeless out of her car decades ago, and it's just expanded. It's difficult to appreciate just how big Thanksgiving is here - it's basically a second Christmas, Princeton has all but shut down for four days, people take expensive flights home across the country just to be with family, and professors were fine with people missing Wednesday classes to catch flights (even professors who would ordinarily fail you for missing more than two classes). Imagine, then, not only cooking extra Christmas dinner, but also spending Christmas Day on the streets serving it out to the homeless - and let's not forget that children were doing the serving just as often as adults were, being far more selfless than I was at that age - and you get some kind of sense of how impressive it is that so many people were running this soup kitchen.

My personal contributions to the day were, firstly, to dole out ambrosia from the trays it had been made in into individual cartons for people to take away, which we started doing pretty much as soon as we got there (after getting our name-tags) and didn't finish until gone 1pm. We then made our way over to get food, but before we could get anything for ourselves we met a Hispanic woman with kids in tow, who couldn't carry the four 'plates' (polystyrene food box things) she needed by herself, so two of us basically took one in each hand and she told the servers what to slop into it. Originally, that had been the kind of thing we were meant to primarily do, but it was a bit of an odd system - a lot of people were perfectly able to serve themselves and didn't need or want a middle-class do-gooder Princeton kid holding their plate for them, so we were only really useful in assisting the elderly or those who were getting food for other people too, and there were more assistants than that small a group needed. Similarly, the were told we'd be eating and talking with them, but there was no eating area and a lot of people just wanted to get the food and go. In a way, I was quite glad about that - not because I oppose talking to homeless people or anything, but just because I have almost no common conversation topics with ordinary Americans, since I don't understand their sports, don't want to risk talking politics, and kept forgetting to wish people a happy Thanksgiving.

Anyway, after helping her with her food, we got our own (as I said, massive portions - I can see why "Thanksgiving" and "food coma" are used in the same sentence) and took a lunch break. I gorged myself (a good idea, since I've ended up not having dinner, because the dining halls are closed tonight) and then took a few photos of the surroundings. Afterwards, I helped an older man load up his trolley with food (which will hopefully last him a few days), and by then the crowd was thinning out, so we had nothing to do for a bit and just stood around chatting and helping get through the chocolates, and then finally we helped collapse the tables, unload the leftover turkeys from the vans, and left sometime after four. Some of our group - who were heading on from NY to visit friends for the holiday - had left earlier, three went to Times Square (but I've been there, done that), and the rest of us got back to Princeton just after half-six. It was a really good day - I'm definitely glad I did it.

This is Mary, who ran the soup kitchen - but even though she was massively busy organising it, right before this photo was taken I saw her take the time to coo over a toddler in a pram for a few minutes.

This was the queue that had formed before the soup kitchen even opened - a testament both to how good the food is and to how big the problems of homelessness and poverty are in America.

This is just a photo of one small part of the operation - the cooking station, where the turkeys are reheated on a grill before being served out.

This is part of the long serving station, where turkey is being carved up and distributed - note also, like I said, that even children were helping out.

The drinks station, which served water, orange juice, apple cider (which isn't alcoholic in America) and coffee.

The basic message of the day! This was also part of the dessert station - I think they served pumpkin pie here.

Chenyu, one of the trip leaders, with two of the other volunteers. This seemed to be a kind of medical supplies table, giving out facial tissues and toothbrushes, as well as candy.

Two other guys from Princeton, hard at work doling out and boxing the ambrosia.

My own fair hand, gloved and in mid-scoop.

The Princetonians relax and take their lunch break.

My boxed main meal - turkey, stuffing, carrots, mixed beans and cranberry sauce. I refused the dark meat, mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes, and never asked for more than they served me, so you can see how generous they were being.

My dessert box - apple pie, saffron buns (cooked at Princeton), Lindor chocolates, chocolate-covered strawberries and cookies.

They had flowers on the serving tables, which was a nice touch - I think they even gave them away to the homeless at the end.

Finally, the line thins out as everyone who wants food has been served.

Clean-up begins and the serving tables are packed away.

These two photos really show the enormous size of the operation - the amount of rubbish that was produced, and the food left over at the end. When you consider that it serves 2,500 people with the generous portions shown above, the mind boggles at how much food they started out with. I joked to someone that it must be using a whole farm, but that can't be too far off the mark.

Even at the end of the day, though, some people had clearly stocked up on as much food as they could carry but still had no home to go to. As we went back to the subway, we passed a man sitting on the street surrounded by our food. In a way, that was heartening - it's nice to see the day's work making a difference to real people - but it also hammered home that the street kitchen couldn't even begin to tackle the problem. Even those who boxed up huge portions to take away will eat them within a week, and then be left wondering, again, where their next meal is coming from, no closer to finding a job, a home or a life off the streets.

Day 72/99 (barely): NYC

2009-11-22T00:36:00.010-05:00

Only a couple things of interest in the last couple of days - I had another column published, for one. I'm becoming deliciously controversial! Comments on my article include "From his writing, I really like this Rob Day kid", "Please refrain from contributing to our newspaper again in the future" and "Stop giving the real Rob Day a bad name" (the 'real' Rob Day edits the Princeton Tory*, the most recent issue of which was entirely devoted to criticism of the new gender-neutral housing policy which Princeton instituted to help make the LGBT population, particularly the transexuals, feel more comfortable - but it would be entirely uncharitable of me to suggest that he's doing quite well enough at giving himself a bad name).

I also went to a talk by Bryan Ward-Perkins on his latest research project. The photo below includes two of the greatest scholars on Late Antiquity, namely Bryan himself and Peter Brown:

Today was pretty fun - I went to NYC as part of my Roman Portraiture class to look at items in the Metropolitan Museum, funded by the Art History department and my professor (who paid for lunch and ice-cream!). It was quite cool - I like New York, and we got to walk back through Central Park - and I bought the cufflinks I linked in my last post (only £30!). A sample of photos (from top to bottom: the train station, the outside of the Met, the modern art installation on the roof, Central Park, one of my new and awesome cufflinks):

For those who are interested: the cufflink is a replica in antiqued 24-carat goldplate of the reverse (i.e 'tails') side of a real coin of this basic type, and the lettering is AΘE (ATHE in English lettering), rather than AOE as it might appear at first glance. It looks closest to the third type on that page, so perhaps third quarter of the fifth century BC?

I also got invited to my friend Janice's room (one of the exchange students who'll be at Oxford when I go back) for birthday cake, which was fun - everyone fawned over my British accent. Also, I signed up to spend Thanksgiving (i.e. this Thursday) helping at a Princeton-sponsored soup kitchen in Manhattan - I don't know whether it'll be fun, but it'll definitely be an experience.

It's currently 5:34am UK time - in just four weeks, three hours and thirty minutes, I'll be touching down at Heathrow. My time here's gone so fast - and I have so much left to do! I'm going to try and get the first 1,000 words of my JP written tomorrow, if I can.

* It was presumably on account of this coincidental name that I received a Facebook message on Friday asking if "my organisation" would like to sponsor a talk by Walid Shoebat, a Palestinian-American who claims to be a former PLO terrorist (but who a lot of people suspect wasn't, due to minor inconsistencies in his story like being the wrong age and claiming to have bombed a bank that wasn't bombed) and who now gives speeches on how great Israel and Chistianity are, and why 'Islamofascism' is the same as Nazism. I politely declined.

Day 67/99: The Megapost

2009-11-17T23:58:00.002-05:00

Sorry for going over a week without updating! I've been really busy and literally haven't been able to spare the time, but after biting the bullet and skipping my two-hour fencing practice tonight, I have just enough time to blog. I can't believe two-thirds of my time here has gone! It's scary.

Academically, everything's going pretty well - I'm still getting along fine in Latin, I have my plan written for my Junior Paper and my advisor thinks I'm on course for an A, and we've been set our paper titles for Athenian Democracy so I can start writing that soon. Roman Portraiture is feeling like a bit more of a burden, but it's a graduate seminar that doesn't count towards my degree, so that was always going to happen, and I basically know which portraits I'm writing about for my final paper for that (which will probably be a bit of a rush job, but I'll still get the CV kudos of saying I took a graduate seminar). I'm probably looking at a mid-2.1 at least for Princeton, and hopefully I'll actually end up with a First - even if I don't, though, I'll still benefit from the experience of writing long independent essays when I'm doing my thesis, and I'll have more revision time per paper when it comes to Finals.

My other extracurriculars are also good - I'm submitting my third Daily Princetonian column tomorrow (and I've put it on my CV!), we're having a Gallery board meeting tomorrow evening, and I'm still meeting up with my BreakOut trip group to plan how we're going to try and convince Princeton to offer ASL classes for credit (I'm planning to devote my next column to the topic). Fencing's going quite well too - I don't really win bouts, but I sometimes score a hit on my opponent, so that counts for something.

Earlier today I went to an interest meeting for the Oxford-Princeton History Exchange, to help out - I regaled all the sophomores with stories about dining with Larry Flynt, getting drunk with tutors and having world-famous tutors sign the books they wrote, and I think I convinced a few of them to apply, so yay. I've met two current Princetonians who are going to be in Oxford for our next two terms - one's the secretary of the fencing club - and they're both going to be living fairly near me, so I'm sure I'll say hi to them. Speaking of Oxford, there's a lecture here on Thursday by Bryan Ward-Perkins, from Oxford's Classics Faculty; I've seen him in the library there before, so I might go to that.

I took a photo at the end of the exchange talk, just to use it in my blog:

In other news, I got my swine flu jab on Monday (yay for barely tested medication! I haven't mutated yet, so it was probably safe). I've also been to a couple of dinners since my last blog post - an informal Indian dinner with the Master of Butler College, where I met one of the girls who's going to Oxford on the exchange next semester, and tonight there was a Humanities Careers dinner where three graduates from English, Near Eastern Studies and Classics talked about their careers to date. The classicist graduated two and a half years ago and is now running a conservative thinktank, so that was cool, and the Near Eastern Studies major gave me her business card and invited me to lunch at the Institute for Advanced Studies where she works - of course, that's also where Albert Einsten was based, so I'm definitely taking her up on that.

Also, I'm going to New York on Saturday, to look at sculptures in the Metropolitan Museum with my Roman Portraiture class. I noticed these for sale in the Met's online store:

I think it's a definite yes.

Finally, here's some photos from around campus: the everpresent squirrels, and a random bowl of pasta left out on a sidewalk for a few days.

Day 58/99 (barely): Photos

2009-11-08T00:35:00.005-05:00

It's just gone midnight and my camera battery finished charging, so I took a couple of snaps of a water bottle on my table to try it out:

I'm really pleased that I could get the writing so clear and readable on the second one - I had to fiddle with the autofocus settings and the distance a bit, but I'd never have managed that on my old camera.

I then went outside to try out the flash (after remembering to crank down the megapixellage from 10 to 3). I alternated between regular flash and "Flash SL" which keeps the shutter open for longer and so captures the background - those have a bit of a reddish tinge, but computer editing or playing with exposure/whiteness settings can probably remove that. I could probably also do with a proper full-size lightweight tripod, to remove my shaky hands from the equation (dear parents, who I know read this blog: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hama-Star-Tripod-free-Carry/dp/B0000WXD16 looks good and it's nearly Christmas, hint hint).

I'm pretty happy with it - Flash photos are a bit grainy and long-exposure ones obviously a bit shaky (which is my fault rather than the camera's), but picture quality will get better when I figure out the more technical settings and use a tripod. At any rate, it takes photos that are more than good enough for my needs, and at £64 I can't ask for much more.

Day 57/99: Back from DC!

2009-11-07T21:59:00.004-05:00

I got back from Washington DC yesterday evening, with a ton of Deaf-related badges, shotglasses, t-shirts, bags, bookmarks and stress balls. As everyone who followed my Twitter will know, I really enjoyed it - the other eleven students were awesome, I got much better at ASL over the week, and Deaf culture and public policy issues are both really interesting. At some point, I'll dig out the trip schedule and talk about exactly what I did, because Twitter forced me to summarise a lot and I couldn't really get my mobile out when meeting with US Government officials.

In other news, I'm still writing for the Daily Princetonian, and I'm invited to a dinner with the Master and other officials of Butler College on Tuesday. I've also been made the Treasurer of the James S. Hall '34 Memorial Gallery's board, and have a pile of tax exemption and expenses claim forms somewhere - I'm also involved in organising one of our next exhibits, a collaboration with the Student Volunteers Council for Hunger and Homelessness week. I'm hoping that in return for subsidising it we can get to keep some of the art and make our lounge space look nicer, but we'll see.

I bought a new camera today! My old one kept failing miserably in DC, and after it was described as being "as old as England" I figured it was time for a new one. I looked on RadioShack's website and picked out a couple I liked, but they didn't stock one and the other was more expensive in-store than on the website. They had a Sony CyberShot, though - it seems like a pretty popular and good camera, it was reduced by $25 because the display camera was the last one in stock, and it was pink - so I grabbed that, and a 2GB memory card and nice case which brought the purchase up to $140 (£84 at current exchange rates). It fits my old mini-tripod, and it's also a lot slimmer than my old bulky camera, as the pictures below (low-quality ones taken from my webcam for obvious reasons) show.

It's charging at the moment, but I'll try some photography in the morning and show y'all* how it goes.

* Even though it's seen as a Southern thing, both in the UK and the US, I heard "y'all" a LOT when I was in DC. I also encountered the construction "Who all did you meet yesterday?" once.

Day 51/99: Off to DC...

2009-11-01T22:38:00.002-05:00

Well, midterms are over - I got 99.6% on Latin, and while my Greek History one hasn't been marked yet, I think it went pretty well. My Junior Paper work is also trotting along steadily - I have a draft title ("How did etymology affect origin myths in the early medieval period?") and some thoughts on how to fill up those 7,000 words. So, all's good.

In seven hours and twenty minutes (i.e. 5.45am), I'll be outside getting into a car - it's my trip to Washington DC. It looks really fun - we're volunteering at model deaf primary schools and even taking a trip to Maryland - but I won't have much if any internet access. Thus, the best way to find out what I'm up to until Saturday is to follow my Twitter feed, whch I can update with texts from my phone - you can see it either to the right of my blog, or at http://twitter.com/rkd91 . Enjoy!

One last note before I go - I bought a US radio (cultural experience) - it's very weird not only having adverts on the radio, but having very frequent anti-gay-marriage ones. God Bless America.

P.S. If you want to email me this week, send it to one of the ones I can check by webmail - my Princeton or Merton accounts - or as a Facebook message, but don't necessarily expect a reply.

Day 43/99: Demon squirrels

2009-10-24T21:58:00.001-04:00

Sorry for the massive radio silence - I had a lot I wanted to say, and couldn't find the time, so put it off, so had even more to blog about, and it was all a vicious circle. Anyway, here goes.

First, photos of things I saw a while back but never had my camera around to photograph - black squirrels are really common at Princeton (they scared me when I first saw them):

and there's a statue here of a boy reading a book:

Steve got home OK after spending a few days here last week, and took an extra bag of my stuff with him - I eventually conceded that Princeton's an informal enough environment that I don't need a dinner jacket - so that'll free up a lot of space for books and Princeton stash come December.

Opera Aida was really, really good - I need to go to more operas, and I'm even more tempted to learn Italian now. I forgot to take my camera, and photography wasn't allowed inside anyway, but the Lincoln Center (where the New York Metropolitan Opera was) is beautiful - particularly the lit-up fountain outside. The only real downside was returning to Princeton at 1am when I had a 9am Latin class on the other side of campus...

Finally, I finished the novel I was reading and decided to join the town library here rather than shelling out more money. It was pretty easy to join, and well-stocked, and I got one of the great American experiences: policemen with guns. There must have been some kind of terrorist scare there (the library assistant asked if I wanted to join "after all this excitement", realised she shouldn't say things that would scare patrons, and clammed up), because when I got there a policeman was wandering around outside with a massive rifle, and when I left two policemen were guarding the door.

It's my midterm exams - in Latin and in Greek history - this week. They count for about 30% of each course, so 2 or 3% of my Oxford degree...guess I'm technically a finalist.

Day 37/99: Phones and deafness

2009-10-18T16:01:00.001-04:00

So, I finally bit the bullet, braved the hour-long round trip to RadioShack and bought a US cellphone (I've adapted and instinctively say "cellphone" rather than "mobile phone", but I can still absentmindedly refer to it as a "mobile", and can't bring myself to say "cell"). It's quite nice - a fliptop phone, cost me $20, plus another $30 for 120 minutes of airtime (plus sales tax, naturally), so less than £34 in real money. It also lets me play sudoku on it. It'll be useful when Steve's here, and moreso in Washington DC.

On which note, I've now been to two of the pre-trip activities for my Deaf Education in Washington DC trip. I know the American Sign Language fingerspelling alphabet (radically different from British Sign Language), we all watched a documentary on deaf culture and cochlear implants (a lot of deaf people, especially the older generation, are violently opposed to them, because they don't view deafness as a disability - one grandmother described her deaf grandchild as having been "blessed by God" - and feel that 'treating' it destroys their culture and their language. The other side of the argument is people who claim that for a parent not to try and cure a child's deafness is abusive, and that they're being selfish rather than wanting the best for the child - it leads to social difficulties, some Deaf schools are appaling, and even the deaf-culture enthusiasts admit that it limits their job opportunities.), and a teacher at a local deaf school taught us some basic ASL words, so I can now make small talk with deaf people.

Interestingly, one of the other trip members (there are 13 of us, but no more than 7 ever seem to show up at once) is from Burma, and since that's a former British colony (I didn't know that - it's great when other people tell you "you used to rule us", and remind you where their country is) everyone's really into football and he was wearing an England shirt and jacket. It's a nice touch of home.

I'm also a Daily Princetonian columnist now! I wrote a guest op-ed opposing the proposed new Center for Abstinence and Chastity here, and it was so well-received that they've invited me to join their columnist team, even though applications closed a fortnight ago. If I write another good column next week (they have a team of columnists, so it's a fortnightly thing) they'll confirm me and I can put it on my CV. I'm quite tempted to offer to write for the OxStu or the Cherwell when I'm back...

Steve's just got here, and is reading my article and criticising my American spelling and tendency to say "elevator". Oh well...

Day 33/99: Book geekery

2009-10-14T19:42:00.001-04:00

I went to the information session for the Elmer Adler Essay Prize (on book collecting) today. It was interesting - and only six students were there and there are three prizes ($2,000, $1,500 and $1,000) so I have a good chance - but the crowning moment of awesome was seeing an original Gutenberg Bible. I saw some pretty cool stuff when Merton got their archives out for the historians, including a medieval copy of Bede, but the Gutenberg is just symbolic.

I also quizzed the Scheide Librarian about how common it was for librarians to do research and write stuff - he does, but he became a librarian before Library Science MAs were common and has a History PhD, so huh. He gave me a mini-book he'd written (The Invention and Early Spread of European Printing, as represented in the Scheide Library) for free, though, so yay.

Those of you with basic maths skills will notice that I'm a third of the way into my trip - everything's going surprisingly quickly. Why have I not done more work?

Day 32/99: Aida very nice day

2009-10-13T23:05:00.000-04:00

So, one of the things that made me decide to write a blog today was a not-so-fun fact I saw in The Daily Princetonian this morning. You all know that the American university admissions system puts a lot more emphasis on "well-roundedness" than pure academic ability. Apparently, when when the modern admissions test (SATs) started in 1901, they were the only deciding factor - if you had a high score (and could afford tuition) you got in. The reason they changed, it seems, was because Jews were too good at the tests - by 1922 20% of Harvard students were Jewish. As the article puts it, "the notion of a well-rounded college (sic) applicant was invented to keep Jews out of the Ivy League".

In other news, I decided to become cultured and bought a ticket to the Opera Aida next Wednesday (apologies for the appalling pun in the post title). It's a really good deal - the ticket's face value is $67.50, but I got it and transport to NYC for $25. Score.

Fencing and academics are still going well - I got 100% on my second Latin test running, so yay. I had a bout of OCD last night and not only tidied my room, but rearranged my pile of loose change:

I have $4.19 in coins. I counted.

Also, I got more information about my Washington DC trip - I'm getting a four-hour crash course in American Sign Language on Sunday and Thursday of next week (two hours/day). Should be fun!

Day 29/99: Americans? Inappropriate? Never!

2009-10-10T22:06:00.000-04:00

In Butler's Class of 1942 Lounge, there stands this plaque:

(Within this college from 1964 until 2007 stood Class of 1941 Hall

Given in memory of the members of the class who gave their lives in the service of their country

Glory uneroded and shining

lights them down the ages)

Reflect for a moment: what would be an appropriate tribute to the Princeton students who died in the Second World War? I guess a picture of a tiger, sitting on top of Earth, modified to look like Hitler, would be pretty inappropriate, right?

Oh, you wacky Americans. I guess it makes sense when you consider that they demolished 1941, 1942 and 1943 Halls two years ago.

Lest anyone accuse them of being ambivalent towards Hitler, there's a badge:

And, for those formal occasions where they want to be classy, a Tiger-Hitler-Globe tie:

There's also a polo shirt and a cummerbund with the logo on, but my camera's on the blink.

In other news, my new favourite hobby is telling Americans about arcane Oxford customs ("I have people who dust my room", "we take exams in gowns" and "we eat dinner in gowns and have our food served to us" being the favourites). One guy got confused between scouts and public-school fags and thought that younger students were made to empty my bins; when I introduced the "formal hall" thing by saying we had four meals a day, he also interjected with "afternoon tea?". Which got me thinking...

Sainsbury's sell six-packs of scones, and do a 2-packs-for-£1 deal (gotta love http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/groceries/). Cucumbers only cost 70p, bread, clotted cream and jam are all relatively cheap, so £5 could buy me six days' worth of cucumber sandwiches, tea and two scones. I think this may need to be an institution in 59 Holywell come my return to Oxford...

Day 25/99: "All good things come by three"...

2009-10-06T22:33:00.000-04:00

...as my Junior Seminar tutor said, having emailed us two scanned books to read and the course syllabus. Still, today was a really good day.

First things first - I got a reply from Oxford's Grocyn Lecturer, telling me it's fine if I do LAT101 at Princeton then join Elementary Latin at Oxford halfway through - the two courses even use the same textbook - so this paves the way for me to take a Latin paper for Finals, which is really good for my thesis options and for postgrad stuff.

Then I heard back from the PACE Center at Princeton - I'm accepted onto the Deaf Education in Washington DC trip. It should be a really good experience - travel, getting involved with Deaf culture, learning a bit of American Sign Language - and only $150, which still leaves me with almost $100/week for the rest of my time at Princeton.

I also went fencing tonight, learnt a new technique ('disengaging') and won a bout 5-4 which I was pretty happy with. I've paid my dues - $50 for the semester - which is pretty good value if you consider that I'm fencing six to eight hours a week for twelve weeks.

Some other stuff happened - I had half of my Junior Seminar outside because it was sunny, and I'm starting to prepare a topic for it (medieval etymology, in case you were interested) - but if I count those as real events I'll have more than three. I've just got back from the Butler Study Break, which meant free pizza and $1 off a purchase at the late-night store; I took the chance to buy some American chocolate:

I'd just like to note that in the US, Milky Ways have caramel in. A moment of silence for our collective violated childhood, please. I'm quite intrigued by the Hershey's - I haven't eaten it yet, but Verity took the drastic step of sending a bar of Dairy Milk across the Atlantic (<3) because American chocolate apparently has loads of wax in. I'm going to try it, however, in the name of anthropology; I'll let you know whether it tastes like a candle.

Day 22/99: Bang bang bang

2009-10-03T21:57:00.001-04:00

So, I went rifle-shooting (50ft, .22 cal bolt-action) today. It was fun. Sadly, I neglected to actually take my camera to the rifle range, but we were shooting at paper scorecard targets, and got to take them away:

You'll notice that I hit the targets ~~quite often~~ sometimes, and in two cases practically got a bullseye. Those of you who know me well will suspect this is more due to a fluke than any hand-eye co-ordination on my part. You would not be wrong.

I also pocketed a handful of spent cartridges as souvenirs:

That's probably legal, right?

Day 21/99: Because I'm a dutiful son...

2009-10-02T21:11:00.000-04:00

(click to enlarge)

Day 20/99: Pieces of Oxford

2009-10-01T19:03:00.003-04:00

Sorry about the week of radio silence - I kind of settled into the routine, so nothing very new was happening and I was fairly busy, a non-ideal combination for writing blogs. Everything's going well - I settled my course choices (doing the medieval seminar, the Greek democracy seminar, Latin and a grad course on Roman portraiture), and haven't missed a single fencing session - I even won a bout 5-2 yesterday, although my opponent was also new and hitting people with a sword scared her. Some of the trips that looked interesting - Philadelphia and Phantom of the Opera on Broadway - sold out before I got to them, but that does free my schedule up to go shooting on Saturday and work more with the art gallery (we're planning the first exhibit, a set of photos from Turkey taken by one of the committee members), so it's all good.

The Butler dedication (formally naming the halls, etc.) happened a while ago - there was nothing terribly interesting about it, except just how much free branded stuff there is. In addition to my Butler College fleece, there are Butler napkins, Butler seat cushions, Butler plastic water bottles, and Butler-iced biscuits:

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted to make Merton-crested biscuits.

Also, one of the staircases in the Firestone Library (like the Bod, but confusing) has bits of Oxford architecture dotted around. Witness:

(text: "Architrave from University College

Brackets from Worcester College

OXFORD")

(text: "From

Pembroke College Oxford

founded 1624

The College of Doctor Johnson")

I'm not sure whether to be pleased or aggrieved that they haven't stolen anything from Merton.

That's all for now - expect an exciting weekend post about rifles.

Day 13/99: The Two Ways of Life

2009-09-24T11:32:00.001-04:00

I promised a comparative post on Oxford and Princeton education, so here it is.

Firstly, there are definitely merits in Princeton's approach to some things. The requirement to take a language to advanced level (i.e. about a quarter of your degree being a language, for two years) is something we don't see so much in England, and it's definitely a useful preparationfor scholarship - if I want to become an ancient historian, I really should learn to read Latin and German, and probably some competency in French, Italian and ancient Greek too.

Nor can I find fault with the independent research work - though I haven't done any at Oxford, and have only just started at Princeton, so I'm really just comparing on the basis of word counts. Once you decide to major in History here (halfway through your degree), you write one 7,000-word paper per semester in your third year, and a 12,000-word or so senior thesis in third year; if you take a "certificate" (what most other US universities call a 'minor'), then you may also have to do another piece of independent work (the length varies), but often a thesis spanning related fields can qualify for both - so a thesis on Jewish history would get one both a major in History and a certificate in Judaic Studies. At any rate, this basically compares with the History Special Subject's extended essay and the thesis at Oxford.

Before proceeding, a bit of statistics to show how the courses compare - to get a Bachelor of Arts (A.B.) here, you need to take 31 courses over the four years, so about eight courses per year. In History at Oxford, you take four papers for Prelims and seven over two years for Finals, so about four per year - roughly speaking, then, the average Princeton course should be about half as intellectually rigorous as an Oxford course. To be frank, it isn't.

To some extent, that must be inherent in the system; at Oxford, the academics setting and teaching the History papers can be confident that everyone sitting them has aced an A-level in History, and has been selected by the tutors on the basis of their skill as a historian. That's not the case at Princeton - almost anyone can walk into almost any history course despite only having a high-school (equiv. GCSE) education in it, and perhaps not even having done that well. Even a History major might only have done two survey courses, such as "A History of the World since 1300" and "Science in the Modern World".

There's also something of a cultural difference regarding vacation work. At Oxford, when I took an Optional Subject on Augustan Rome in Trinity, I thought nothing of an email from my tutor at the start of the vacation before telling me that I should read all the set texts (selections, some quite hefty, from fifteen translated ancient works) and maybe some other stuff - and likewise, someone taking a course on Shakespeare would think nothing of being asked to read his plays over the vac, so that tutorials could focus on specific issues and the secondary literature regarding it. As far as I can tell, this doesn't happen at Princeton - certainly nobody's mentioned having been set summer reading. There are courses - one of which I decided against taking for exactly this reason - which seem to be wholly reading courses, ploughing through the texts at a ridiculous rate (three books of Herodotus between Monday and Wednesday, Dante's Inferno in a week) but with no articles, academic analyses nor commentary to read - no discussion beyond the one-hour, eight-student weekly precept. Certainly in a general, liberal arts education, there is some merit to reading and understanding the texts, but in a university context I think that understanding the relevent scholarship is even more important, and I don't think that that's emphasised enough in Princeton except in higher-level seminars and when doing independent research work.

The mode of assessment is also different. As Oxford students will know, for an ordinary Finals paper you'd write six to eight 2,000-word essays (one a week), have a Collection (i.e. mock exam) the beginning of the term after you finish work on it, and take the real exam - three essays in three hours, like Collections - anywhere from three months to a year and a half after finishing the paper, the exam being the only thing that matters. By contrast, in my History/Classics seminar, thirty percent of my grade is based on my participation during the seminar, ten percent on short quizzes which might happen at the start of class, thirty percent on the midterm exam (lasting one hour twenty minutes, consisting of some multiple-choice questions, some names or concepts for identification such as "Pericles" on which we write a short paragraph each, and finally a short essay), and the final thirty percent on the "term paper", the only real piece of written work needed, of about the length and quality of a weekly Oxford tutorial essay. I am not entirely convinced that this is "about half as rigorous" as an Oxford course.

One final point is about books. At Oxford, between JSTOR, the college libraries, and non-lending libraries like the Bod and the Codrington, you'll never have to buy a book, and most people don't. That really isn't the culture at Princeton - even looking at ancient history courses where all the texts are available as Penguin Classics, the reading lists approach $100 or $150 per course ($1000/year on course books wouldn't be surprising), and it must be even worse for scientists or mathematicians who need hefty textbooks. There is, for all intents and purposes, only one library, and it only stocks a few copies (if any) of each text, making it pretty impractical to use for larger courses. Furthermore, because you often only get the syllabus at the first lecture, there's a lot of pressure to go and buy the textbooks at Labyrinth Books rather than buying them cheaply online - and of course, I don't have a US debit card, so I pay an extra currency exchange and commission fee if I buy off Amazon. Long live the Bodleian, then.

I'm still glad I came to Princeton - it's a good experience, and I'm having fun here - but it has made me appreciate, amongst other things, just how good an Oxford education really is in comparison.

Day 11/99: Fleeces and fencing

2009-09-22T22:44:00.000-04:00

Only a couple of pictures in this post - I went to the sophomore dinner, and free Butler College fleeces were handed out:

Stash, wonderful stash.

I've had almost all my classes now - bar a Roman Portraiture seminar, but as that's a graduate course and a lot of the interesting stuff is in German or Italian (surprise: I don't read either) I can't see myself sticking with it. I have Latin four mornings a week, two 90-minute seminars on Classical Greek democracy, a three-hour seminar on Wednesdays on early medieval maps and histories, and a Greek philosophy course (for which I'm about to bunk down and read Plato's Apology after I finish this post). Amusingly, for my two seminars (the only ones that count towards my Oxford degree) I'm taught by a Spaniard and an Austrian - so not really the "American perspective on history" or anything, but good. I might blog later on the educational differences (example: people *have* to go to lectures here!). Also - got a free book from the Junior Seminar:

I had my first fencing lesson tonight, which was really good - the other novice fencers seem cool, I was actually pretty competent with a foil, they have people who know epee and sabre if I want to try that out, and the guy who was teaching us realised I was British and offered to entertain me with his tea collection (YES) and is going to see if I can get a discount on fees due to only being here for one semester.

I also got an email about this really good scheme for the midterm break - a student-run week in Washington DC learning about issues in deaf education, staying at Gallaudet University, the world's only university designed for the deaf. There's also a chance to pick up some American Sign Language. I've always been mildly interested in Deaf culture, for obvious reasons, and if I can get onto it then it ought to be really fun.

Stay tuned - I should hear about rifle-shooting soon...

Day 9/99: The 'laundromat'

2009-09-20T21:33:00.000-04:00

A brief and boring blog today - my weekend's been uneventful save for doing seminar reading - to announce that I've reached a significant milestone; I did my first load of laundry at Princeton. I don't have any photos (because that would just be weird), but I'd like to note that Princeton's 'laundromats' are better than the laundries at Merton on two counts - firstly, they're free, and secondly, they have fancy displays that tell you exactly how long it will be until the washing's done. I've also broken with the habits of a ~~lifetime~~ year, and hung my t-shirts up in my cupboard to "let the creases fall out of them" etc. We'll see how long that lasts, though...

In case anyone's worried I'm going native, I did see someone today trying to make tea by briefly dipping a teabag in hot water then adding sugar, and all my natural instincts rose against it.

9.1% of the way through Princeton already! It's going fast.

Day 7/99: Chalk, grub and guns

2009-09-18T14:59:00.000-04:00

Firstly, something I noticed a day or two ago but didn't think was worth a post of its own: they use blackboards here. For a comprehensive-schooled kid who thinks of a whiteboard as low-tech, having your Latin professor scrawl, with chalk, on a blackboard for an hour, ending up with ghost-white hands, is a very surreal experience.

I finally remembered to take my camera to lunch today: the self-service canteen was too crowded to get good photos in there, but I took photos of my overloaded plate, the dessert bar, and the immensely cool conveyor belt that whisks our dirty plates away for washing-up.

The main event today was the Student Activities Fair, where all the Princeton societies turn out en masse with biscuits and convince you to join - I've put my name on the mailing list for the rifle club (exciting or what?), fencing, Oxfam, the Shakespeare Company and three publications. I turned down breakdancing, poker and pro-life campaigning, though.

Day 4/99: The campus

2009-09-15T10:58:00.000-04:00

I had a free morning today - nothing until a meeting with my Dean at 11.30 - so I had a bit of a lie-in (only got up at quarter past eight; what a rebel), then did something I've been meaning to do for a while: wander round campus and take photos for this blog.

First things first: a few views of Wilf, my hall of residence.

Some of the other Butler buildings (Wilf's on the right):

Inside - the Butler Gallery (still in progress) and Butler Lounge (replete with grand piano):

The courtyard, and its dedication:

Wu Hall, the main Butler building where meals, meetings etc. are:

Moving away from Butler, this is Whitman College, across the road from me. I can't remember who called it "faux-Gothic" and "like Disneyland", but they were right:

I decided to check out the gym at this point - I'll spare you the dull photos of timetables and weights machines, but suffice it to say that it looks awesome. There's a cardio room upstairs full of crosstrainers and exercise bikes, the Stevens Fitness Center with more cardio stuff (inc. treadmills), fixed weights and freeweights, and a swimming pool downstairs - and everything's free! I could get used to this.

Moving on, the university chapel (it's big and dark, so my flash worked imperfectly and I had to digitally enhance these):

I think the architecture speaks for itself.

Finally, the Firestone Library, which confusingly also looks like a church.

And a few other odds and sods from around campus:

This chap is John Witherspoon, a big figure in the independence movement (boo) and an early president at Princeton.

I don't know whether this comes from Black Books or the Geman, though I like the first option better.

Princeton invariably take the view that it's best to be calm and measured about minor, generally non-fatal health threats.

That's all from me for now - expect another post later, hopefully with a final decision about course choices.

Day 3/99: Needles, picnics and ancient Egypt

2009-09-14T20:19:00.000-04:00

Nothing rabidly exciting today - started off by meeting Claire on the way to a talk on The Arts and Humanities at Princeton, which was more hilarious than I expected (like the Creative Writing professor making a joke about urine samples), got my meningitis jab (a steal at $102), went to the picnic that they held since the dining halls were freshmen-only tonight (got a bread roll, three chicken breasts, potato salad, two cookies and a whole bunch of grapes - though I refused the iced tea on principle).

I also decided to try and call on my next-door neighbour (we're adjoined by the bathroom corridor), and discovered why I haven't met him yet...

..nobody lives there. I now effectively have access to two rooms and my own bathroom, so win.

One of the main academic things I'm doing at the moment is selecting my course choices - I had the Student Advisory Fair tonight, where other people tell me about the choices they took, and I have a meeting with my Dean about it all tomorrow morning. I've pretty much decided on three of them - a Junior Seminar on views of history and geography in the first millenium BC (for which I'll write a 30-page paper), a seminar on Greek democracy and a 9am beginner's Latin course with a professor I had described to me tonight as "one of the best Latinists in the world". I could leave it there - Oxford only ask me to take three courses - but the normal Princeton load is four or five, and I did enough Latin over the summer that LAT101 should be fairly easy-going.

One of my two main choices for a fourth course is The Ancient Egyptian Body - basically an art history course - with a new, youngish professor, which is fairly undersubscribed, so I'll get lots of class time. The difficulties are that I don't know very much at all about Egypt, nor art history, so I can't tell whether I'll be qualified. Another one is Classical Roots of Western Literature: it's taught in the Comparative Literature department by something of a genius who apparently speaks nine languages, and consequently is a lot of work - 200 pages a week on top of everything else (compared to 60-90 for the Egypt course), and student reviews of it online talk of having to read Dante's Inferno in a weekend. That's 432 pages in the Penguin Classics edition.

There are a range of other courses I could take - introduction to art history, or a course on how the Queen of Sheba's been portrayed from Biblical times to today - but they don't grasp me as much as those two do. Hopefully it'll become clearer, as I get more advice from people, which one is best for me.

Day 2/99 - the evening

2009-09-13T22:30:00.000-04:00

Just got back from a meeting in the International Office - found out a bit about what's required of me coursewise, but more importantly, found out about the events they put on - a weekly Chinese lunch for $1 (about 60p), a weekly game of Go (like chess but eastern), and trips - to see Hair on Broadway for about $45 (yes please), or historical tours of Philadelphia. It sounds really fun - I don't think I'm going to be short of things to do here at all. I also hung out a bit with the French exchange students, from Sciences Po, and they rubbished the Sorbonne as not being prestigious at all since it offers correspondence courses anyone can take - and also, two of them remind me spookily of people I acted with at Oxford...

Have also sent an email about the problem with my swipe card (I can't get into my building after 6pm, and have to stand around looking pathetic until someone takes pity on me and swipes me in), so hopefully that will be fixed tomorrow. Tomorrow also has a talk on The Arts and Humanities at Princeton, a third international students' meeting, a few other college meetings, my Meningitis jab, and my first meals in Wu Hall, so that should all be fun.

Finally, I include this photo only because it will bring great happiness to my long-suffering mother:

Days 1 and 2/99: The journey, 911 and the mall

2009-09-13T17:23:00.002-04:00

I'm in America, after one or two points of hassle (not sleeping from 6am to 3am UK time, accidentally calling 911, trains not running) and quite enjoying it. It's really warm and sunny - about 28 degrees Celsius, almost 80 Fahrenheit - and I've spent the day out shopping with the other internationals. I met them all, and the Princeton people responsible for us, last night - though the boxes of Dunkin' Donuts they had for us were easily the best part of the evening, especially as they were all I had for dinner.

A few observations about the US:

On my NJ transit ticket, in the picture above, you may just be able to make out the phrase "Seating aboard NJ Transit vehicles is without regard to race, creed, color (sic) or national origin." I mean, obviously it's nice that they're making the effort, but how many other civilised countries need to make that disclaimer in the 21st century?

Speaking of train seating, it's really nice - 1930s and leathery - which is in stark contrast to the very weird unpainted steel outside of the trains.

As I say, today the Princeton international office ran a shopping trip to a local mall, for which they hired this:

Truly, I am in America.

Between my trips to Walmart, Best Buy and Target, I got bedding, another towel, a phone, a mug, and an alarm clock. I also got camera batteries on 2-for-1 at Boots at the airport, so I should be able to keep photographing away as long as I'm here.

At Best Buy, I take a photo to prove that the "it's going to be a New Jersey winter and you'll freeze to death" predictions of my friends and family were a little bit hyperbolic:

Also, a picture of my bed last night, complete with stolen aeroplane (I keep wanting to say 'airplane'!") sleeping materials:

And, more comfortably, today:

That's a fleece-like blanket on the bed, by the way: it was five dollars cheaper than a duvet ('comforter' here) and I don't need to wrestle to fit the cover over it.

That's pretty much everything - expect to hear more interesting things from me as my schedule gets busier over the next couple of days! As a quick taster - there's a 5k race next weekend to celebrate my college's redesign, which is a little bit tempting...

Introduction

2009-08-26T15:39:00.000-04:00

I'm Rob, and this blog is a place where my friends and family (and, eventually, the Merton College travel fund and the Citi Foundation, who sponsor me and take reports on my activities) can keep up-to-date with the details and photos of my semester abroad at Princeton in New Jersey, from mid-September to late December. I won't publish my phone number, Skype name, or my US address on this blog for obvious reasons, but if you want any of them then ask me on Facebook, by email, or ask my parents.

I'm going to spare you the details of my visa applications, travel immunisations or the joy of packing, so my first real post on this blog won't be until I actually land in the good ol' US of A.

Rob