Christmas Cambridge Style

Time sure flies, and amazingly my first term in Cambridge is finished as of last Wednesday, but with only 8 weeks to the term I suppose thats no real surprise. However in the space of a week and a half I'll have gone to three Christmas dinners, two of which were black tie. It's funny, there's so much going on here, that if you go out any night there's almost always a group of students dressed up going somewhere. I know I've dressed up more this term than I have at any point in the last 4 years - dress mess and full dress not counting. Last week was the Christmas exchange dinner at King's College, and a group of 15 of us from Jesus got to go to that. Not the most impressive dinner, but it was fun to see another college, and after finding out that they don't have a seperate grad hall each week, kind of made me appreciate being in Jesus a little more. Wednesday this week was our Jesus Christmas dinner, and it was a blast. I don't think I've ever had a formal dinner quite so fun, the stories people were telling had everyone laughing starting as we sat down and I don't think we stopped til after dinner was over.
Of course we had all the traditional accoutrements for an English Christmas Dinner, with mulled wine beforehand, and everyone had a cracker at their place when we sat down. The crackers make a loud noise when you pull them (they're a round tube with fancy paper wrapped on them, and look a bit like a very large tootsie-roll), and inside is a paper hat, some of the lamest jokes you've ever seen, and some sort of toy). Dinner was turkey and stuffing, but with an English twist since apparently sausages wrapped in bacon is another tradition, but I'm not quite sure its something I'll be wanting to bring home with me. Dinner was a Christmas pudding, and I think I'm finally coming around to the point where I understand what the British mean by a pudding, because it is definitely not the pudding that we think of as pudding in the states. Pudding here seems to be some sort of soft, cakey-type dessert that is usually served with custard or cream, and Christmas pudding is incredibly rich with a whole lot of fruit thrown in, so its a bit like a fruit cake only more cakey and softer. It was interesting because we sand Christmas carols before hand, and it was obvious that some of the students had never heard them before. I guess thats one of the best parts of being here and surrounded by such a diverse group of people is that we've all learned and picked up bits and pieces of things.