And so it ends...

I have been back in the US for a few weeks now, and I already miss Cambridge a little. I officially graduated with my MPhil in Astronomy as of July 20. You can find a link to my thesis here. I am looking forward to the next step, where I will be starting my PhD in physics at Harvard.

I appreciate the time you took to track my year abroad, and I look forward to the next adventure.

Guest Post: Valerie's visit

Hi Everybody,
 I'm commandeering Michael's blog for a day (does it count as commandeering if its been abandoned? whatever). I've been in Cambridge for a week, and it's been wonderful. I've really enjoyed meeting Michael's friends here, and seeing where he's been living for the last while.
  Cambridge is a beautiful city... all the old colleges are incredibly decked out and there are lots of very quaint cobblestone streets. And so many flowers! So we've spent a fair bit of time just walking around and exploring. We've discovered that there are actually a lot of really interesting  museums in town. We went to a science center, an anthropology museum, and paleontology museum (my favorite), a zoology museum, and an art museum, so far. There is still a museum about explorers in Antarctica that is on our list. All of them have been really cool.
   It's also been really nice cooking with Michael again.. he's willing to eat whatever food my experimenting produces (and he's an excellent chopper and stirrer and dishwasher). We did a "dinner exchange" with some friends of his the other night. They are from China, and cooked really fantastically delicious szechuan food for us, and we made pizza. We got the better end of the deal (even though it was pretty good pizza).
  I've got about a week left until I head back to St Louis and let Michael actually concentrate on writing his thesis, but we've got lots more exploring planned.  I am incredibly lucky to have been able to come visit him, and am super happy to be here!
   And here are a bunch of pictures from our visit so far. Enjoy!

That would be an iguanadon skeleton behind us. (:

Michael is a little creeped out by all the taxidermied birds and skeletons all over the zoology museum.

I am short (especially when compared to a giraffe).

The view of Cambridge from the Castle Mount. Yup, there used to be a castle in Cambridge, defending the best crossing of the river Cam, but all of the stone got taken to build the first colleges.

King's College... the architecture is fitting.

St John's College

Walking along the waterfront in Ely, a small town a bit north of Cambridge. It's a lovely place.

The Cathedral in Ely was built in the 1080s... it's stunningly beautiful, and dominates the town.

It's even pretty from a parking lot.

The main cathedral tower.

Pretty! It was a gorgeous day, too.

A stained glass window from inside the cathedral. There were little balconies you could climb to get right up near the windows, which was really cool. I've never been in a cathedral that was so inviting to exploring all the nooks and crannies.

We also visited Oliver Cromwell's house in Ely. Despite leading England as Lord Protector after the English Civil war, Cromwell and his family were apparently short. Or really good at ducking.

They had lots of helmets and hats to try on.

We played dress-up.

It seemed like most of Ely was in some way part of the Cathedral grounds, and a lot of it was grassy parkland. With ponies.

Another view of the Cathedral.

 

LIGO-Virgo Conference

    This past week, I attended a physics conference hosted by the University of Maryland. Aside from the travel to the conference, which of course was made all the more lovely by the lines going through customs upon reaching DC, was relatively relaxed.

    I presented three posters as well as a talk on my research, all of which were (mostly) well received. I listened to interesting talks as well, including one which involved showing the original papers by Einstein discussing gravitational waves as a consequence of his theory of General Relativity (he got it wrong the first time around, but of course got it right soon thereafter!).

   After a brief stint at home, it will be thesis writing time!

Inter Varsity Dance Competition 2013

     Yesterday, we took a six hour bus ride to Blackpool, UK (nearish to Scotland) to compete at the Inter Varsity Dance Competition, which is the collegiate national championships.

    Blackpool was simultaneously the largest and nicest venue I have ever danced in, with a massive waxed floor and basically just a ton of space!

 

     There was even a second ballroom up the stairs here, and this is where the picture I took with Jodie below was situated.

 

     All in all, it was a very successful day for Cambridge. Although the Cambridge A team lost to Oxford A, teams B-F beat all of their Oxford counterparts, and in many cases, most other teams' A teams, and Cambridge took home the overall champions trophy, making CUDT the UK National Dancesport Champions for 2013.

    I had always wanted to drink out of the Stanley Cup, but I figure this is a close second ;)

 

University of East Anglia Dancesport Competition

    Yesterday, we had a competition at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich (http://goo.gl/maps/SVlsf). This was a tune-up before our competition next week in Sheffield, where Oxford and a number of other rivals will be present!
    Due to its relative nearness (about 1 1/2 hours away), we left at the sane time of 7:30 a.m. and were back by about 7 P.M.. Overall it was incredibly successful competition, as our team members won most of the intermediate and advanced finals (we didn't bring our beginners team with us sadly!).

And a Happy New Year!

   I realize I am a bit late in getting my first post of 2013 up, but I intend for the next few weeks to be a bit more exciting, as its dance competition season coming up!

Here in Cambridge, its been snowing the last few days like it would at home, which means that without snow plows or the tendency to salt or sand the roads well, its been a bit disastrous! So here is to warming up soon so that biking is once again not quite so scary!