Again, apologies for the lack of writing in the past few days.. Still no internet in my room. I’m amazed at how the computer officer here can spend so much time seemingly doing nothing and then take all of 10 seconds to connect someone to the internet, but only after they’ve had to wait for a week. Most other colleges in Cambridge have near-instantanious connections to the internet, it seems to just be ours that has any sort of problem…

Anyway, my rooms for this year are very nice. I have a quite large main room with a window seat and fire place and then a smaller bedroom, also with a window seat which overlooks the chapel court. Anyone in Cambridge must come and visit me sometime – the room is F1, above the Sidney porters’ lodge.

I arrived in my room on Friday and did a little unpacking and poster hanging. I spent a while cutting up poster hanging clips to fit my posters. I had to use a pair of pliers because I couldn’t find any hacksaws around the place unfortunately. However, now my room is all nice and decorated with various posters and paintings from China, Hungary, France and Italy.

On Friday afternoon, Ruth and Natalie came round for a few hours and we just sat around chatting about China and so on, and then in the evening I went out to Christina’s house and had some dinner with her and Ellie. On the Saturday, I spent quite a bit of time unpacking and then went to see some of the freshers. It was quite funny because all the freshers arrived and then at 2:30 we had the usual garden party. The weather was a bit shaky, but there was only a small amount of rain during the garden party until the speaches started at about 3:30 and then the heavens opened half way through Keith’s speach. He struggled on for about 10 minutes and eventually everyone dispersed to the various pubs and festivities that await the new freshers. I went back to my room as there were no new Theologians and myself and Lydia, although engaged had forgotten to put our names down on the list of people to be married and have college children this year! I went round to see various people, Heather, Emma and Dave Mac. I ended up spending the evening with Dave chatting about most things and having some food togeather.

On Sunday, I awoke to the sound of fire alarms in the distance. It turns out that overnight, some freshers had climbed onto the roof of the new Blundel court building and tripped a fire alarm wire. This was about 1am, and the electrician who was “on call” had his mobile turned off. The fire alarms went off at 1am, 3am, 3:15am, 5am and finally every 15 minutes from 6:30am onwards. Everyone seems rather quiet today, rather surprisingly.

I went to Eden as usual and we had a nice communal lunch. There didn’t seem to be too many freshers there, although this evening I met 5 exchange people from America, including one girl who’s going to be studying theology here. From what I understood, they are 3rd years in America but will be doing 1st year over here. I also met a guy from Mexico today who’s studying English over here – he’s only been here a week, but his English seems good, so I invited him to Harry’s and perhaps he will join the team.

After this meal, I went to Holy Trinity to see if Liz had arrived from America. Turns out she had, and a group of us went back to my place and sat around chatting for a while. I went over to Liz’s room after that and had a nice chat with her – it’s strange to see her after a year apart! I then had a bit of a nap and read some books. About 4:30, Richard Trimble came round and we had a bit of a chat until 5:30 when I went to Eden again. Nice student dinner after that and then I went to Macdonalds to see the HT people again. Tab arrived, and I saw her in MacD’s and then we went back to my room to have a catch-up until about now… I should really go to bed, good night!