Day to day...

Compared to the bustle and excitement of London last weekend, our week has been relatively quiet so far. I have been catching up on loads and loads of laundry. In the States, I could let the clothes pile up for two weeks and then easily have them laundered in a day. Well, that is not the case here. I did two loads yesterday that did not even make a dent in our ginormous pile. So guess what I'm doing as we speak! Oh well.

Probably the most ambitious thing I have done over the past couple of days is buy a plant. I bought a gardenia in a little tin bucket to put on our windowsill in the kitchen. This is the first purely decorative thing I have bought since we moved here, and I think it is impressive that I held out this long. Let's be honest, I will probably have killed it within the week. If it's anything like my experience with having pet fish in the dorms at OSU my freshman year, I will be lucky if this thing lasts for four hours. But, I'm holding out for some pretty blooms. I know absolutely nothing about gardening except to follow the care instructions on the little cardboard tag that is stuck in the dirt part of my potted plant. I'll keep you posted on whether it survives/flowers.

In other news, we have discovered a new food(?) thanks to our friend Chad. He came over for some crock pot stew last night and brought us a lovely dessert. I'll show you the picture and then try my best to describe it.

Its technically called a malt loaf, but it is not the consistency of bread. Here is what the packaging says: "Squeeze me. Come on, don't be shy. There. Feel that? That's squidgy power, that is. Deliciously chewy fruitiness bursting with energy to help keep you fuelled up and ready for action. But don't take my squidginess too literally - I'm low in fat too." That really is the only word to properly capture this strange edible: squidgy. If you smoosh it, it holds the deformity. It tastes better with Nutella rubbed all over it, but what doesn't? It's a little like a fig newton, banana bread, raisin cookie mashup. Interesting. I don't hate it.

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you! Matthew's birthday is next week, and he did something that I have never known him to do...he bought himself a present, and a pretty big present at that! We brought my laptop, my iPad, and his HP netbook with us when we moved here. That left Matt's huge-screen iMac computer back on his desk in Oklahoma. Well, apparently a teeny tiny 9 inch (if even that big) screen was frustrating the dickens out of my poor hubby while he was working on papers/projects, and I was informed that my laptop sucked after I offered it to him to use...so he ordered himself a large computer monitor to attach to the netbook! And, voila!

The teensy weensy laptop is the netbook, and obviously the large screen behind it is the new monitor. It's a good 4x larger.

He is now a very happy camper. I think he must have said, "I don't think you understand how great this is," at least 20 times to me last night when he got it all hooked up and running. Nothing gets my man pumped up like technology. And food.

A couple more random updates from around here: First, I added some pictures to the door of the creepy freezer closet. Remember the pencil hooks that got a makeover? Now they aren't so lonely on the door all by themselves. I thought to grab a few 4x6 pictures when I was packing, and up until yesterday they were just jammed in my iPad case. Now, they are taped up on the door. Don't be offended if you do not see yourself on the newly created wall of fame. That probably means that your picture is already in a frame in a neatly packed box in my parents' attic just waiting to be put on display in our condo in Houston! I just need to find a place that prints out pictures here in Cambridge. I wonder if Shutterfly or Snapfish have international websites.

Second, we lost our twin bed in our guest room. "How on earth do you lose a bed?" you ask. Well, the maintenance people from your housing complex come and take it away to be employed in another unit. Apparently, somebody needed an extra bed in their accommodations, and since we do not have children running around here and sleeping in said bed, it got volunteered to be moved. The maintenance staff were kind enough to bring a "zed bed" to replace it, which is just a folded up cot thing that has probably been around since World War II. Nevertheless, some lucky visitor will get to test it out when they come stay with us...and by some lucky visitor, I mean Jeff Henderson or Jordan McWilliams. :) Now our poor extra room is so empty. Matt entertained the idea of moving his desk in there to make it a study room, but I decided that would not be any fun because when he is in there working, I would be out in the living room by myself. So, who knows, maybe it will be turned into my crafting room or something. Doubt it, but I can dream.

That gaudy blue metal item is the zed bed. So much wasted space. What to do, what to do?

And finally on a completely different train of thought, I would like to share with you a portion of an email that Matt sent to Dean Reid. In the email, he was passing along information about his program's class size, fellow students, course details, etc. The short excerpt below should give you an idea of the caliber of his classmates and the prestige of his program. I still feel the need to pinch myself when I consider that we are a part of this insane university thanks to an equally insane scholarship.

"As for my program details, Professor Chris Lowe, Head of the Institute of Biotechnology, told me that around 350-400 people apply to the Master’s in Bioscience Enterprise Programme each year. They interview around 75-100 of those applicants for a final class of around 25. My class is composed of 26 students from 15 different countries. Three of them are practicing medics in the UK (another student is a 4th year medical student at the University of Miami Medical School), one has a PhD in gene therapy, another with a PhD in Physics, and an additional with a PhD in agriculture. The “student” with a PhD in physics stepped down as COO of Sagentia, a technical consultancy, to join our class. There are several students with Master’s degrees, one of whom is a Gates Cambridge Scholar.

I talked to you briefly at dinner about how Linda Allan <MBE Programme Director> was describing the W.W. Allen Scholars. After relaying how Chad and I have a wonderfully generous benefactor that has allowed us to study at Cambridge, the first thing she said to Lisa Hall <Queen's College Vice President> was, “Their program is very similar to the Gates Cambridge Program, but a little better.” I just thought it a delightful indicator of what the Allen Scholars Program has achieved in its second year of partnering with the University of Cambridge: it is now being put on par by Cambridge professors with perhaps the most prestigious scholarship program in the world."

In case you didn't catch that, Matt's odds of being accepted into this program were 1 in 14 or 0.07%! (26 accepted/375 average # of applicants)  Divine intervention is literally the only explanation for all of the things that have fallen in place in order for us to be here. Also, not mentioned in Matt's email, his classmate from Scotland who is a plastic surgeon developed an iPhone app. Just because he wanted to. It's apparently the British version of Craig's List. Seriously??? I'm amazed every day at the stories Matthew comes home with.

I suppose that's enough for one day. We may be touring Bath and Stonehenge this weekend because Matt does not have class on Monday. That means three available days for exploring! Also, we are starting to look at airfare for our visit back to the States at the end of March. Matt's class goes to MIT to do a learning exchange for about 10 days. During that time, I will most likely be heading for Houston to scope out some condos. We are trying to figure out a way to spend a couple days in NYC at the beginning of that trip. Magda (Matt's Greek classmate) and Alberto (Matt's Italian friend) invited us to go with them for some sight-seeing around the Big Apple. Sounds like yet another adventure is on the horizon!