Many worlds

It may be a small world, but it never ceases to amaze me how many incredibly different and distinct worlds it contains.  I just got back from nine days in Fiji, where the schedule most days looked like this:

7:00am -- Wake up
8:00 -- Breakfast as a group
9:30 -- Children's/family snorkel trip
10:30 -- Adult snorkel trip (sometimes only one of these trips)
11:30 -- Shower off
noon -- Lunch as a group
afternoon -- Private group snorkel, scuba dive, or lounging by the pool
3:30 -- Tea time by the pool, check email on iPod
6:15 -- presentation by the marine biologist
7:00 -- Dinner as a group
9:00 -- Bedtime

Granted, this was at a resort and therefore isn't most people's normal life.  However, there exists a place on this planet where people wake up every day under thatched roofs to tropical weather and could walk right out into an ocean filled with colorful fish.  Meanwhile, in Palo Alto, people are looking out the office window at the leafy trees of suburbia and calculating the traffic on the roads, possibly looking up what classic movie is showing at the Stanford Theatre that night.  At the same time, students in Cambridge might be fighting through the tourist crowds, zipping past 700-year-old buildings on their bikes.  I'm not even mentioning the even more extreme versions of life that people experience in a given day -- my personal experience is enough to make me shake my head in wonder.

Now that I've returned to the U.S., I'm starting to write my conference paper on good old J.M. Kemble.  I haven't read everything I intended to, but I already find that I'm going to have too much material for a 20-minute talk.  I'll have to force myself to tell a focused story rather than try to spew all the juicy quotes I collected.

It's strange to think that in exactly two weeks I will be back in England...  I find that when I'm in one place, I feel completely, naturally at home, and the other feels a bit like a dream.  I'm also anticipating a blistering pace for the month of September.  Once I finish this conference, I'll take another little weekend trip with my sister-in-law's sister (let's just say friend), then I'll have to read like crazy for another talk on the 24th, meanwhile expanding my Kemble report for an essay competition whose deadline is the 30th.  These are all things I'm excited to do, I just wish I had double the time for each of them.  Once we hit October, a new strangeness will occur: new incoming students to meet and make friends with.  Some of my friends from last year will still be around, and some will not.  The MCR seemed like a fairly cohesive group, so it's hard to picture the same thing happening again, but I'm sure it does every year.  Meanwhile, back to the grindstone!

Summer update

I started this blog primarily to give those who were curious a glimpse of my life abroad -- a response to the impossible, flustering question, "How's Cambridge?!"  I also like that I'm writing down the medium-sized picture of what's going on every week or so, because while I keep a diary, it's mostly ramblings about how I'm feeling, not information that I'll want to remember later.  In any case, though, I don't feel comfortable just leaving the blog alone while I'm at home, so here's a little update on how I passed July.

As you know, I've been reading up on my new buddy J.M. Kemble (see previous post).  This involves cycling out to the Stanford library a few times a week and reading in the Lane Reading Room.

It's funny, but when I walked in for the first time this summer, I was staggered -- almost offended -- by how much empty, open space there is between all the furniture in there.  I hadn't thought about this before, but the Cambridge libraries pretty much all cram books and bookcases as tightly as possible into the space they have.  Stanford's space felt like luxury indeed.

Dear, quick-tempered Kemble continues to amuse and enlighten.  I get the sense that he would have been a fun guy to invite to dinner.  No doubt I'm just indulging a fantasy, but it's fun to get to know someone from the past to whom few people really pay attention.  I feel like we're buddies in a way that, I suspect, I will never feel about Tennyson.  Maybe that's because T. could be grouchy and arrogant, but I think also because he's such common property that I can't get a sense of intimacy.

I've also started a bit of reading for a different presentation, which I learned recently I'll be giving at the end of September.  This one is just an interdisciplinary colloquium within Cambridge, so I'm less nervous about it.  The topic was so precisely on something I could talk about that I was pretty confident I'd get it, but it's always a great ego boost to get accepted.  Plus, it gives me the chance to essentially do a book report on something I have to read for my dissertation anyway.  I'll bore you with details another time.

The other big time sink has been learning to scuba dive.  I'm taking a trip to Fiji in less than a week, and I was informed by good authorities that I simply could not go without scuba diving.  So twice a week I've reported to the local dive shop, where paper tests and pool sessions prepared me for the ocean dives this last weekend.  Said dives took place in Monterey Bay, in the cold, cold Pacific Ocean.  I was fairly nervous, but my instructor was a real pro, and there were only three students, so everything was very calm and controlled.  And having been to the Monterey Bay Aquarium many, many times, noodling around underwater was just like being inside the aquarium.  What's scary about that?

So now I am a certified scuba diver -- hurray!  I've been so distracted with that process and with reading that the trip itself has snuck up on me.  Only a few more days before I leave, so it's time to start packing!