2/3 = 23

And what a grand day it was! Slowly unturning each of the leaves that are true and tried Cambridge traditions. I awoke to the sun shining which is a rare sight to behold, but it breathed life into me, and like the bulbs that are now poking through the mossy grass of my back garden, I awoke and began the blooming of turning 23. Superstitious as I am, I thought I'd best begin with a hope for the future since my horoscope spoke so much of new beginnings. So before anything, I crossed my fingers and sent away a job application I've worked for a week on--after so many haphazard and mishandled attemps, I figured I needed to focus and even marched myself into the Career Services Office for advice as if they were the fortune tellers I actually want to hear from...

Then I wandered myself through the Fitzwilliam Museum and basked in the feeling of youth that comes from standing in the shadow of a statue from the fourth century BC or something. After I felt I was nearly newborn again and could no longer stand not satiating the infantile woes of hunger wallowing within me, I darted off to the Market Square. Spoke French to the guy selling baguettes, bought two along with a can of pâté du canard and fancied myself so chic that I just had to buy couple of romans en fraçais from this stall of only the best of books. Those and a copy of Alice in Wonderland with all of the original illustrations that I had plastered to the walls of my house in preparation for my mad tea party. Then, with a pound of cherries and one of the prettiest yellow plums from a fruit vendor and some hommus and carrots from the store, I was off to meet friends on the banks of the Cam.

And after watching ducks swim along as we scouped up their livers with bread, we set off on bikes to that very bucolic dream of Cambridge's metropolitan imagining of itself, Grantchester. Locked up our bikes near the cemetary and wandered through it--some its inhabitants centuries old, some nearly our coevals, we mused about many of them and made sure to spit plum pits away from their headstones. We stumbled into the orchard were Virgina Woolf sipped so many cups of tea and Rupert Brooke scratched out so many bad poems but rushed straight through the mud and over fences to a glorious low tree with branches like outstretched arms we embraced, climbing into its lap, singing it songs, and sharing with it our elevated picnic. It was as lovely as anything, but perhaps not the "holy peace" Brooke thought it to be, and I'm glad for that.

Then I went home for a much needed birthday nap and spoke to my parents as I readied myself for yet another formal hall. At Robinson this time, that red fort of a place made of 10,000 bricks if the sirens of tornados wailed here as they do where I'm from, I'd easily risk my life for the 20 minutes it takes me to ride there, because it is a bunker from any element, perhaps even the lead shells that once fell from these skies. Met all of my coursemates and had one of the best meals any formal hall has cooked up, and is, in its entirety, listed below for your mouth-watering pleasure:

Lebanese Tabbouleh with Feta cheese and mixed olives served
with garlic and coriander flatbread
*
Citrus and ginger roasted red snapper
Tartare and prawn mash
Roasted peppers
Green beans
Tyrolienne sauce
*
Rhubarb and strawberry cream roulade
Raspberry compote

All but the rhubard, which is something I might never understand. And then hours more spent chatting and chiding and then off to meet more friends and then to ride myself home again, tuck myself into bed again, a year older and maybe only one day the wiser.