KORITISH: Christmas break and my sister's wedding

Technically, Christmas Vacation was obviously a vacation in that undergraduates live off campus for a couple of weeks, and all the electrical power in the department is off for around 10 days. It is a bad idea to travel Cambridge during this period (roughly between 20th December and 5th January) since tourists are not allowed to get into the colleges. It seems like English never stop working throughout the year and have 10 days off at the end of each year (It doesn't mean they work harder than other countries, I'm afraid)

After 2 months of hectic work, we had 40 days of christmas vacation, but massive workload was greeting me. The paper on which a list of essays and courseworks is written is still posted to the wall commemorating the Christmas vacation in 2010.

MEMS (4000 words) : 18th January 2011
Societal & Ethical dimensions (2000 words) : 14th December 2010
Literature Review (5000 words) : 18th February 2011
Science Communication in Business (four pages essay) : 24th January 2011
Science Communication in Media (write two news articles) : 24th January 2011
Science Communication in Research (one post) : 18th February 2011
Mock exam : 19th January 2011

On top of these courseworks, my sister's wedding ceremony was scheduled on 23rd January. I was quite uncomfortabel because there was nothing I was able to do for my sister's wedding, but at the same time, it was stressful as I had to finish most of the course works before flying back to Seoul to attend the ceremony. Luckily I was able to work in my room because a noisy and cocky american flatmate spent his Christmas vacation in Paris with his girl friend. For the people who are in the late 20s, internal elements are less likely to be big issues in carrying out tasks. Once you know your strength and weakness, managing yourself for a task is not extremely difficult. However, as for external threat (e.g. working environment), it is extremely difficult to deal with it, and hence luck is so important in human life.

I have been living in the UK for three years so far, and I have never seen snow this frequently ever before. As it was anticipated by BBC and newspapers, definitely it was freezing cold in December. Once the temperature goes down under zero degree, it is very likely to snow due to the 'typical British weather'. The amount of snow is normally not enough to make a snowman, but you can easily see the people playing a snowball fight. It is also interesting to watch the foreign students from south Asia or India because it is their first snow experience. For me, snow is one of those stuffs I should be grateful to. People are keen to travel to some exotic places to escape from their routine life spending a lot of money. On the contrary, if the environment gets changed by itself, you get the exotic feeling without spending money. Why wouldn't I thank snow?

I know snow is not common in the UK, so if it snows, I bring out my camera from the drawer and get out. As for me, winter is the best season in Cambridge in terms of mood and beauty. Seeing the people dressed up for formal dinners on the street makes me feel like I'm living in 15th century, and particularly in winter.