Visitors from Durham

While Sarah’s fiancée, Joel, was in town (see previous post), our friends Orrey and Kristi came down from Durham to visit for the weekend, and we had a mini OBU reunion (since me, Sarah, Joel, Orrey, and Kristi went to OBU). We had a fun-filled Saturday that began with punting down the Cam and then having a picnic on the lawn of Great St. Mary’s in the middle of town. And one of the highlights for me was having a true English World Cup experience. We went to a pub. It was packed, and when I say packed, everyone was standing so close to each other that every time I shifted my feet, the guy behind me put his hand on my shoulder to keep me from moving into his field of view… he was kind of jerk about it, but he was pretty short, so he could have been bitter about that. It was noisy, and when I say noisy, I mean it was painful not to have my ears covered during the chanting, singing, yelling, and cussing that flowed ceaselessly from the multitudes. We watched the game, and when I say game, I mean the most important sporting event in the history of England. In fact, the last time the US and England played in the world cup, I’m pretty sure it was in the 50’s, and the American team was a rag-tag bunch of factory workers who could barely afford uniforms, much less the plane fare to Brazil, and the England team was a group of world-class athletes bred from birth for this one purpose. America beat them, and the story goes that the next day the newspapers in London couldn’t believe the telegraphs that reported the result: England 0 USA 1. They assumed there was a typo, and some printed the score as England 10 USA 1. The game we watched was pretty fun… and the atmosphere made for an awesome experience, and a great way to top off a fun day. Happily, we tied with England, which means America didn’t care so much, but the British were really angry.

The next day we went to see Ely cathedral, which was really fun… Candice and I were excited:

We saw geese in the park, and I tried hypnotizing the goose with magical whistling… the others tried to help by staring intensely.

I’ll leave you with that last picture for now :)