Turkey day in England was fantastic. It started with an exciting development: my friends, Freja and Stine, flew in from Copenhagen to celebrate the holiday with me! However, I did have to start Thanksgiving by pardoning myself first thing in the morning: I had a supervision to go over the paper that I had just turned-in last week to my supervisor*. Fortunately, it turned out ok. Rather than being damned for turning in crap, I received the following constructive criticism: "it clearly showed thoughtfulness, despite being all over the place." Good. Thanksgiving need not be corroded into a day of worrying and self-flagellation.
The atmosphere was posh -- there were rows of fully set long tables, with wine goblets, bottles of reds and whites in abundance, and a live jazz band. A stage was also set, and the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Alison Richard, gave a speech about the significance of Thanksgiving to her, as someone married to a Wisconsonite (or was that a Michiganian?), as a Cantabrigian, and as one who finds it important to celebrate Thanksgiving wherever she is in the world. Funny enough, it was the Cambridge Alumni Association's Cambridge in America chapter that threw the event, though none of the Cambridge in American group were present, for obvious reasons -- if they're in America, how could they be in Cambridge? (yes, they could be in the other one in Massachusetts, but that is not the point!) However, there was one point that I had to differ with the Vice Chancellor: she said that it was ok NOT to have pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. Instead, we were met with three delicious slices of other pies:
Also in attendance at the luncheon was my friend Martin, from Kenya:
After the luncheon, Freja, Stine and I went exploring around Cambridge. Martin had to run some errands in town. We explored King's College and Tit Hall (formally known as Trinity Hall).
These places are beautiful.
To round-off Thanksgiving festivities, we attended Formal Hall at Peterhouse. To make it extra special, I served sherry before dinner in the MCR. Here's a view from Formal Hall, before our food was served:
Because the fellows, including the master, were at High Table, I did not take any pictures of dinner. I did not want to get kicked out of Hall.
:-B
Nevertheless, we did resort to deviant behavior to avoid the College corkage fee, and to this extent, we used our gowns well. I hid one bottle in the long, pocketed sleeve of my gown, and Martin hid the other. To everyone's amusement, the bottle of red that I procured was from the South African vineyard Oxford Landing (I think it was a Merlot...cannot remember what red it was). I chose it for its high potential to raise brows in Cantabrigia. The bottle may as well have been labelled "Voldemort." Anything with the word "Oxford" in Cantabrigian space is as racy as Yale locks in Harvard. The irony of the Oxford English Dictionary in the Cambridge Library is another fine example. Jokingly, some refused the Oxford Landing. For that, they got pennied**. You can't let the queen drown, so bottoms up!
Though wine was in abundance, there was not any turkey in Formal Hall this Thanksgiving -- they ran out. Instead, we had a beef stew, which was, in all honesty, a good one. But, it simply was not what we had wanted. But I am getting ahead of myself: instead of a soup, which is typically the first course in Formal Hall at Peterhouse, we had a bad Caesar salad. My friends made fun of me that they served a crappy Caesar as a nod to the fact that it was an American holiday. I did not know what to say to that. Then again, caesar salad is fair game as a band aid for a half-baked, if not last-minutedly-thrown-together Thanksgiving party. For dessert, I do not remember what it was, which may be for the better. But, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, we were grateful for what we had to eat. Besides, Thanksgiving is about company, and I could not imagine better to celebrate Thanksgiving with. My dinner party included me, the sole American, a Brit, two German, two Danes, a Kenyan, and a Frenchman. (aside: Strangely, at Cambridge, most of the graduate-student population is coming from outside the UK. Peterhouse already has the highest proportion of British students in its graduate student population than the other colleges.)
We concluded the evening sipping port in the MCR. Instead of the customary toast to the Queen, I raised our glass to the magnanimity of President Obama's presidential pardon for the huge turkey, and hoped that the turkey's life (rumour has it that it's sentenced to a life in Disney World) will not be a living hell (i.e. in a petting zoo, in Disney). We chatted through the evening, with conversation ranging from the future of aristocratic succession in the UK to Lil' Kim. Thankfully, I fell asleep fully sated and well.
Again, Happy Belated Thanksgiving, and, to my American brethren, I hope that your Black Friday was both productive and rewarding. Cheers!
* In Cambridge, students' graduate advisors are called "supervisors." The qualifying conversations, e.g. going over a paper that the student recently submitted, that one has with his/her supervisor are, thus, called "supervisions."
** as was previously mentioned in another entry, to be pennied refers to the drinking game where one must immediately down their glass of wine if an English penny, which has a picture of the queen on it, in order to save her from drowning. Pennies are thrown in unexpectedly. And one MUST comply with the directive to save the queen, from drowning. Alternatively, pennies may be thrown in your dessert, in which the mandate is to save the queen by immediately eating all of your dessert without utensils! Rumour has it that some moronic undergraduates elsewhere in Cambridge pennied Steven Hawking's dessert -- not cool. They were immediately kicked out of Cambridge.
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