#hilarious the name of the university is pronounced the same as the name of Cambridge in chinese

[bomberqueen17]

currently in the Fens

I am actually literally in a Fen right this moment apparently. I can actually hear the river Cam, which is doing something and I can't tell what behind a tree, there's a noise so it's either falling over something or being partly penned-up by something or-- like a dam or a waterfall idk. it's really flat here, like that's the salient feature of this geographic area i think, and the river is in like five channels kind of meandering around and of course this place being heavily human-inhabited for the last thousand years at least, but more like five thousand, many of these channels have been tamed, straightened or redirected or whatnot. but anyway some portion of the river Cam is outside my hotel rn.

There's also cows on it, which is kind of wild. There's a cattle guard at the park entrance so obviously those cattle are authorized to be there.

Anyway I am going to see several friends, some Internet and some Real Life, this week and am going to look at some museums and some architecture in Cambridge, and Flag Fen Archaeology Park and the cathedral at Ely and such.

Yesterday getting here was slightly an adventure because we'd researched and knew that by flying into Gatwick we could just directly get onto the Thameslink train and go right to Cambridge and so we bought our tickets and went and looked at the board to ask how to get to Cambridge and it said under Cambridge "please enquire" and oh they had shut down that whole branch of track because of some kind of fire so we Could Not Get There From Here ah shit! So we had to instead go to St Pancras and then nebulously to King's Cross which... I was not clear on the mechanism of whether those were the same thing or not but once we were there it was obvious that they are adjoining, that is the life hack solution etcetera, and then we had to get onto the Ely train to get to Cambridge (I had been pronouncing Eeeeleee right hurrah). But we managed, and it was not that difficult after all, and we could even just still use our same Thameslink ticket and that was great and all but like. Whew ok.

The solution to jet lag is just to be real tired; I slept like ten hours last night. I'm not exactly myself today but I am myself enough to go look at a whole museum in extreme detail. I suspect this museum is aimed at children but that has never stopped or deterred me in any way.

We are staying in a hotel that is university-themed, like why not. There is a giant model of DNA hanging in the lobby and the walls are covered in punts for some reason, and the desk staff are wearing tweed uniform jackets. (I am not surprised by the DNA thing because its discovery was announced hereish in the Eagle Pub ) It's cute. It's weird. It just got acquired by Hilton so who knows how weird it will remain. There's a balcony, which I thought was hilarious given my knowledge of the British climate, but actually it was ravishingly gorgeous yesterday (lightly breezy, meltingly sunny, a warm room temperature) and it is going to remain partly cloudy but warm for most of the week so actually the balcony was a really good call. (The room below, which has the footprint of the balcony as indoor space, was the same price, and Dude dithered a bit but went for fresh air.)

I have updated my bird packs in my Merlin app so i can try to find out what the various birds are (i mean I figured out the swan on my own) but I do not have a good app for plants and my burner French sim won't let me send photos so i am struggling with just not knowing what anything is. I had not realized how much of my psychic landscape is taken up by knowing the names of the plants around me, and everything here is familiar but Not The Thing and it's mildly distressing. There's no goldenrod but there are these exuberant things with pale purple spike flowers, seven feet tall, sprawling in every hedgerow. And there are willow trees along the river bank but this thing is like a huge mutant Japanese maple the size of a Norway maple. And those things have canes like bramble bushes but huge. what is anything.

The only plant I can reliably ID is English ivy which is probably not invasive here, I'm just going off a random hunch there tho.

OK the museum opens in a minute so I'm gonna go look at archaeology which is why I'm here, and having done that I will have largely achieved my goals so the rest is gravy.

[meichenxi]

guys!!! I have an interview for an efl position in a new international school in Shanghai!! they are one of the only positions that is able to recruit from overseas, as they can give the candidates the Chinese vaccine (regardless of any previous vaccinations), and they also pay and provide for 21-day quarantine on arrival in a hotel. literally NO other school is allowed to recruit from abroad, but this one is (who knows why). joining all those 20,000 ‘teach esl in china’ WeChat group chats clearly pays off!!

it would be teaching 15-19 year olds esl and English literature (which...I don’t have a degree in lmao but I can definitely improvise, and they have said that as long as I’m vaguely well-read/intelligent it doesn’t matter), which is wonderful because I am so tired of teaching small children, and that's a great age group - challenging, and I can actually talk about grammar and fun things

the position provides a (two-bedroomed???) apartment, plus visa and relocation stuff for free. and the salary is uhhh....good. it’s for a September start and a one-year contract!

VERY EXCITED!!! I COULD BE GOING BACK TO CHINA!!!