We learn something new every day...

Two 8-year-old students and a 23-year-old student learned a bit about the world from each other this morning.

8-year-old: "Guess what... in France, people don't say £1.64 as 'one pound sixty-four', they say 'one EURO sixty-four'!"
Me: "Cool! Do you know what they say in America?"
8-year-old: "I don't know America yet."

I love the expectancy- "yet". Like, ask me tomorrow, I might know then. No hurry. I've figured out France, so America will come soon enough.
Knowledge, one country at a time.

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8-year-old: "What language do you speak?"
Me: "Uh, English."
8-year-old: "But I thought you were American!"

That is the most confusing thing... even as I assured her that Americans speak English, I realized what a crazy idea that is. Why don't we speak American? She was clearly baffled and tried to say something about me not talking like her, and I said something about how I have an accent but I speak the same language, but THAT'S totally baffling too, since lots of people around her speak English with accents because they speak other languages at home. Why wouldn't she assume that the lack of a Cambridge accent implied multilingualism? Who would guess that my German friends who speak perfect British English learned it as teenagers, and that my New Zealander friends speak incredibly thickly accented English as their mother tongue?

We just can't rely on anything these days- not money, not language, not logic! Thank goodness we can still learn from each other, right?

Diversity rocks.

A friend who grew up in Oak Park and went to high school with me visited Cambridge on Sunday. Andrew went to college in Scotland and now is taking a masters degree there, making this his 5th year in the UK. We laughed about language barriers and culture shock and the British degrees that we are working for but don't understand (What the hell is an MLitt? an MPhil?!) and the pub culture that is now our second nature. We discussed Obama's image abroad and how he has made both of us less likely to claim Canadian citizenship in polite conversation. It was a joy to share such common opinions and experiences, ESPECIALLY when he said, "You know, it really takes someone from Oak Park to know what I mean when I say I miss black people, Jews, and Mexicans."
BAM.
THAT IS SO TRUE and so hard to admit in a politically-correct way. I'm surrounded by diversity, in that yesterday I rowed in a boat with 8 people of 6 nationalities and my dorm of 15 people comprises 13 countries of origin. The school I volunteer at has 440 students who speak 52 languages, and there are number charts on the walls labeled in French and Urdu. But Cambridge at a glance is very white, and is in a Christian country. I had to learn to recognize and appreciate a different kind of diversity from Chicago's, in that two white people here might speak different languages, come from different cultures, and hold very different beliefs, not to mention pursue a variety of academic interests.
Sounds obvious, but I was used to diversity meaning multicolored. I look forward to going to London where there are black people (although they most likely have British accents and not the South-Side-of-Chicago speech that I so miss) and people in Islamic dress, and my head turns when a rare conversation in the street is about bar mitzvahs, and I sadly try (and fail) to make my own guacamole.
I love my global community, though I wish it had some more Northern hemisphere minorities in it, and I am for the first time aware of how lucky I was to grow up in a place with racial, cultural, and religious diversity. Missing ethnic groups still seems not PC to me since of course no two Mexicans are the same, etc, but recognizing the value and fun of knowing people from very different backgrounds may be the most important lesson I'm learning in this little town of people who look the same but have wonderfully different life stories.

Spring!

Cambridge has a magical way of organizing classes: 3 8-week terms, separated by 5-week vacations. Technically graduate students are supposed to continue their research during "interterm time." As a good rule-follower, I'm spending this interterm time diligently researching European travel.
Here's a photo summary (click on the photos to make them bigger) of my past few weeks spent witnessing the arrival of springtime in three countries. My apologies to those in the Midwest who are still snowbound!

Clare Hall celebrated the End of Term with a concert by college members- 8 performers from 8 countries! I played 5 minutes' worth of jazz and Mozart (badly). Luckily it was a laid-back crowd and inexpert musicians... there were a lot of false starts and some cursing (Really! A professor stopped in the middle of his piano performance and said "bollocks"! HILARIOUS.). Note my music thrown on the floor. Classy.

The River Cam with WILDFLOWERS EVERYWHERE. In an institution where it is forbidden to walk on the grass unless you are a professor (really!), the uncontrollable growth of wildflowers all over the perfect college lawns must be so irritating. Serves Cambridge right for restricting grass access!

More wildflowers and a sleeping pair of duck-mates. It is that season, you know.

My parents and I spent a fantastic weekend appreciating the springtime beauty of the Acropolis in Athens. The place is SO GREEN. Even the ancient columns had plants growing on them!


My mom being a professor in the birthplace of modern education- the ancient marketplace where Socrates taught! The original "spring" of the Socratic Method?

My mom and me with the founder of modern biology- Darwin! This new statue is in honor of Darwin's 200th birthday this year. Isn't he cute?

A budding tree branch in front of the Charles Bridge (on the left) over the Vltava River in Prague. This beautiful city in my first post-Communism country has an amazing history going all the way back to 200 BC, which includes 2 castles, 2 ancient cemeteries, and countless governments. Also, "Prague Spring", funny enough, was a brief reform movement calling for better civil rights under communism in 1968, which the Soviet Union squashed by invading Prague.

This is my childhood friend and Prague host, Sonja, a Czech-American who is going to film school and plays ice hockey for the Czech national team. WOW. She is also a fantastic tour guide, and while strolling around Prague we went to castles, churches, cemeteries, old buildings, new buildings, cafes (one where Einstein hung out!), jazz clubs, museums, AND a free concert held in "garaz" which we assumed was a club but was literally a parking garage!! (See red road sign in Czech.) The garage was TRICKED OUT with a beer tent, hookah area, fantastic lights and sound system, and lots of people who looked much less surprised than we did to be partying four stories underground!

Another (more airy) music location- on the Charles Bridge! These musicians played fantastic jazz to an audience of passerbys. Notice the violin player's homemade "amplifier" (giant gold horn!), the banjo's broken strings, and the two rockin' clarinetists! All performing on Prague's most pictoresque bridge! I would have happily paid a lot more than my donation of 20 Czech crowns ($1) for the fun of that concert.

And to think- only 2 more weeks til term starts!! I have so much to learn before then...
Enjoy your own springs, wherever you see them!