Day 0, The Flight

After finally making it to bed at 5am, I slept until around 9:45am. Yangyang helped make sure I was up in time before taking off for work. I made sure everything was in my recently purchased backpack, put on my fleece, raincoat, weird hat thing from REI, Polar Girl and semi-isolating water proof ear buds, and left CU Boulder's Newton Court housing for the Broadway/Baseline stop of the RTD AB Boulder airport bus.



Playing starcraft on free airport Wifi is dodgy at best, but it certainly helps pass the time. After boarding the on time plane for the Denver-Chicago leg, I almost immediately fell asleep and caught up on the previous next for a good 2 hours. Wake up. Gather belongings before disembarking. Wander through the psychedelic B-to-C terminal passage. Eat bad Chinese food. Board plane.

On the Chicago-London leg of the flight I listened to the first 3.5 books of the Amber Chronicles while playing Tap Quest. Oddly enough, the 7.5 hours of flight seemed relatively short compared to the 10-14 hour flights to/from Hong Kong that I've taken over the last 4 years. I slept fitfully for the last hour or so of the flight itself, though I blearily spent the 25-30 minutes taxiing to the gate.

My first picture in Britain, is, of course, of a Polar Bear:



Shortly after passing through Customs, Aidan Ross picked me up and led me to her beautiful car in the light rain so reminiscent of Northwest Washington for me. And at 8-10C, the weather felt absolutely wonderful (especially after the -20C in Boulder on the previous night). We gossiped all the way back to her flat in Cambridge and continuing chatting until around 3pm when I showered, brushed my teeth, and made the mistake of trying to take a 45 minute nap.

The 45 minute aspect of the nap was a success, I did indeed rise out of bed after the allotted time, but I was so absolutely foggy and incoherent that I'm surprised Aidan and Matt didn't take me to an asylum me somewhere on the walk to Christ's College. However, they didn't... at least as far as I recall.

The first thing that struck me as we walked through the city was how old everything appears. The streets appear very haphazard, corners of building aren't square, a great variety of architectural styles are crammed together, and the wear on occasional structures is often extreme.

Formal dinner at Christ's College Cambridge with Qiaochu was fun, got to meet a whole bunch of his friends/housemates (none of whom were native Cambridge students... apparently Cambridge doesn't want their pure stock mixing with those MIT mongrels.) I think I was the least well-dressed person there with black jeans, belt, button up (but short-sleeve) shirt. Drinks at the bar afterward (though, as usual, I didn't drink), then I headed back to Aidan's with her and Matt and crashed.

Long but fun first day!