First day of class and projects. And oh yeah, food.

Projects. pbth. not my favorite. I mean, I really appreciate you sending me out into Cambridge in the middle of the day, because we really shouldn't ignore this amazing place we're in simply because we are really busy studying genetics, but do I really have to build a DNA model with materials reached through political compromise? Those don't work! Everybody gets something that would go wonderfully with his or her own idea of what it will look like and then they all are combined into something pretty awful. A model can't be held up by laffy taffy, no matter how long the taffy is! It just kind of… falls over.
Anyway, we managed to come up with something, weird looking as it was, and I'm just glad we survived. Yes, I know the structure of DNA really really well now, but it was a lot of work to put in for little benefit.
Also- Most of the stuff in class today was review. Not terribly riveting, but some of it (like PCR and Sanger sequencing) was still interesting.


Let me tell you something about the food here. There is a lot of it. And nearly all of it comes with tea. Tea with a medium sized to large breakfast. Tea during the coffee break (which had cookies). Lunch (no tea, actually, but there was orange juice). Tea during Tea (and cookies). Dinner (not much to drink at all actually.) I'm beginning to see the source of all of the stereotypes about the British and their tea. Good think I like tea. (Also, tea in the room, in case we want it sometime during the night)

Let me tell you about lunch. OMG. We thought we were going to the cafeteria for lunch, but apparently, unbeknownst to the people organizing the program, we were scheduled to eat lunch every day in the great hall. It is called the great hall for a reason. It is a GREAT HALL. Like 17th century noblemens' halls. We are getting lunch buffets with waiters on standby and clearing our plates. We have actual place settings. We have comparatively fancy glasses (the cafeteria/buttery is just downstairs and it isn't as classy as the DC in Davis, let alone this place. There was a wedding going on in here when we arrived on Sunday.) And we get dessert. Yum, tiramisu. I think there was rum (uncooked?) soaked into the bottom and although I didn't mind it too much, it was kind of bitter and I probably wouldn't have put it in if I had been making it, but that's just me. I definitely wouldn't have liked just the rum, so the dessert covered it up/made up for it a lot.
Needless to say, I was stuffed. STUFFED. I need to make sure I eat a lot less tomorrow, now that I have some idea of what meals will be like here. I'm going to miss this in Stockholm. erp!

Yummy food. Red/black think is a thing with sweet onions and goat cheese!

Fancy lunch

The great hall, complete with pictures of dead people