The first cheesy pics

And so they begin... here's a few pictures from a fun night out a couple weeks ago at "Cindies," a very cheesy "club" playing extraordinarily cheesy music. During my year in France, I thought the French were bad dancers. Well, the Brits are far, far worse. They're appalling dancers. As long as I just sort of nod my head and bounce on the balls of my feet, I look incredibly graceful by comparison. Which is what I mostly do, because it's impossible to dance to the horrendous music that's being played. It's so horrendous that they typically only play a 30- or 45-second clip of each song before switching (with no transition) to the next song. Unbelievable! So, you have to go with friends and prepared to amuse yourselves.



Grinning with Pascal, a quirky German. He's a grad student at Catz, too, but I'm not sure what he studies.



Random girl, Jenny, Joanna and myself. Jenny and Jo are Catz grads, too, and Jo is in my department, though she's doing the Contemporary European Studies program, not International Relations.



Fellow Catz grads Rachel and Catherine, though they're both PhD students. Rachel is doing something biology-related and Catherine is researching Caribbean writers/revolutionaries in the 1960s... a very convenient topic that she'll probably exploit to get funding to the Caribbean during the dark, dungeon-like Cambridge winter that's poised around the corner.



A fellow American, Max (he just finished his undergrad at St Andrews in Scotland), drinking water from a bowl, in the St Catharine's "MCR" -- the Middle Combination Room -- a couple rooms in the college that are for the grad society's use. There's a few chairs, a mini-kitchen, foosball table, TV, computers, fishtank... and it's conveniently open 24 hours so we can pop in to do some secluded reading/work whenever.

Sorry for the curt captions, but I need to go do some more reading -- I'll post a list soon of this week's texts.

Oh, and I've discovered something quite unfortunate -- the software that I used in 2005-2006 to upload dozens of photos at a time to my blog has ceased to exist, so I'll be restricted to 4-picture posts from now on. I'll try to find a way around it...