Les Mis and Labsickness (Caveat: Rant Ahead).

Mia left yesterday, which is quite a bit of a downer.  On the plus side - and I never thought I'd say this - my room actually seems large now!  I suppose I actually have to study now since I don't have someone to come up with superfun distractions for me anymore...
One of the superfun distractions, which we did a week or so ago, was go see Les Miserables in the West End.  It was INCREDIBLE.  I haven't seen too many professional productions of musicals, but this was definitely the best of those I have seen.  I can see why it's been playing here for over 25 years!

Outside the Queen's Theatre.                                         Mia looking quite revolutionary.

The mind-blowing show aside, Mia and I were astounded to watch as members of the audience entered the auditorium with food and drinks (lots of drinks).  Now, we're not talking the kind of small snacks you hide in your pocket to take to the movies because you refuse to pay the exorbitant prices at the cinema.  We're talking complete multiple-course meals.  The people next to us, for example, brought a full picnic with starters, a main dish, side dish, dessert, and all the time juggling some very large, very full cups of alcoholic beverage.  In the Queen's Theatre!  I couldn't believe there weren't sticky residues on the chairs and odd stains on the floors... maybe the British are just better at eating cleanly.  It was very strange.

As for my rant:

On a completely different note, this past Friday we had our first "Practical" (lab) for Cellular Neurophysiology.  It was infuriating.  We were modeling neurons as circuits, nothing too difficult theoretically; for Pomona profs reading this blog, it was very similar to NerveWorks.  BUT unlike in a Pomona lab, the professors and TAs, of which there were many, were unhelpful and in some cases, downright condescending.  It's true, I have a very high standard for what I think comprises "good teaching" (Pomona professors), but why, why, WHY would you EVER become an educator if you are not interested in students' learning?  It's fine if you're good at science; go do research.  But don't for a moment think you deserve to be rude to other people just because they are younger and less experienced than you.  Absolutely unacceptable.  And to top it off, the lab, which only runs 2-5, stops AT 5 and you will be kicked out whether or not you're finished, with no ability to come back later.  In which case you are totally screwed because then you can't write your lab report.  So, let's say you want to have multiple runs, including one with no signal, so you can average them, subtract out the zero, and get the best accuracy for your measurements.  Nope, no time for that, no time for good science.  Just go through the motions and git 'er done.  Also, it was very obvious that the TAs and one of the profs thought we were idiots because we were American.  One of the pairs of Pomona students next to me raised their hand for help.  A prof came over and said, "Do you need help again?" They responded, "Yes", and he said sneeringly, "I thought so."  It was so unbelievable, I was speechless - and I'm never speechless.  I myself got told off by a TA with, "You Americans and your slick answers."  So much hostility was distracting, and especially bad when compounded with the stress of a tight time constraint.  Sigh.  I've heard it called, "hand-holding" sometimes, what they do for us at Pomona, and that incenses me to no end.  It's not "hand-holding," it's teaching.  It's someone caring about the fact that you understand the material. 
End of rant.  The point is, while we are all enjoying our time here, everyone agrees they miss Pomona greatly.  I especially miss lab.  Real lab, I mean.  Where you run experiments and learn things.  Where you discuss things and work as a team.  But most of all, of course, I am labsick for my flies : )

Christopher Wren and afternoon tea.

Last Wednesday, Dr. Pedarzani (our sort of adviser here) took us all out for a full English afternoon tea.  It was heaven.  First of all, we dined in the heart of the British Museum, which was a supercool venue for feeling rather posh - pinkies out when you sipped your tea!  We passed this on the way there:

Perpetuating the conspiracy!  Everyone got overly excited and began taking pictures; Paola (Dr. Pedarzani) looked very confused.

Secondly, it turned out to be a complete meal.  We all got our own pots of tea and towers of goodies - sandwiches, biscuits, and sweets.  Our table looked like:

Mmmm... my heart still beats a little faster at the memory of so much sugar all in one place.

On a completely different note, my architecture class has turned out to be a weekly themed tour of London.  Our professor is named Spike Sweeting and looks like he is secretly Dr. Who.  We're pretty sure he doesn't actually exist.  Anyway, I thought I'd post some of the places we've visited, in case anyone was interested.  I know most of the images have a really weird perspective thing going on; this is because I am short and the churches are tall.  Spires, sigh.  These are photos of churches by Christopher Wren, best known for designing St. Paul's Cathedral.  He was hired by the king to design 50 churches in the City of London.  He had a limited budget but was still expected to design churches that would make Catholics and Protestants jealous of the Anglicans (who apparently don't consider themselves Protestant; this surprising discovery caused a rather embarrassing misunderstanding for me), thus the spires and my weird photography.  He also had to build in awkwardly-shaped spaces, forcing him to get creative with layout.

St. Mary Abchurch

St. Stephen Walbrook + Starbucks (those few churches which survived The Blitz are now conserved but heavily built around)

St. Mary-le-bow

The front of St. Paul's Cathedral, which shows what Wren could do when he was given a limitless budget.

Mia and the side of St. Paul's.  It may look strikingly familiar: many capitol domes are designed after this one, such as our very own nation's capitol...

... or my favorite, the Washington state capitol dome, in my hometown.  When Mia and I first saw the St. Paul's dome, we thought we were back home : )

Hope you enjoyed the tour; more soon!

Catching up.

Oh boy, am I behind.  This blogging thing's a real responsibility; I'm going to have to stop doing things so I don't have to report back about them!
First things first.  Mia and I got back from the Cotswolds late Sunday. We had a wonderful time, although getting a cold took a shocking amount of fun out of things.  Such is life.
We first met up with one of Mia's friends who is studying in Oxford, and she showed us around.  You can't access the campus if you're not a student or if you're not willing to pay (meaning you're a student somewhere else), so it was great knowing some one with all the ins.  Oxford was beautiful, my kind of town.  It was refreshing after London, where I have mistakenly equated city ways with English ways, because I've never lived in a city and can't easily separate the two attitudes.  In Oxford I was able to say, This is the England I've heard so much about.  Just look at it!

It only got better in the Cotswolds.  We stayed in a hostel in Stow-on-the-Wold, and trekked - in January, and as I mentioned, with the snivels - to the Slaughters, Burton-on-the-Water, and Icomb Hill.  The charm of the Cotswolds was readily apparent from the night we arrived, when we had fun discovering the oddities of our living accomodations.

You got vertigo just going up the stairs.

And I'm pretty short.

On the "footpaths" (which turned out to be private farmland kindly paved for us with horse manure), we encountered a wide variety of gates and locks ingeniously designed to keep the animals from getting out.  In some cases, they were rather effective at keeping us from getting out, too.  We decided they needed a guidebook on how to work all the gates, like the following:

 

All the work was worth it.  The area was phenomenally beautiful, even - or perhaps, especially - in winter.

Other highlights of the trip included having a full English breakfast (the largest meal I've ever eaten), seeing the church entryway that inspired J.R.R. Tolkien in his creation of the entrance to Moria (in The Lord of the Rings), and meeting just about the nicest people in the world.  But be warned, they take a hard line against criminals:

 

Lots more soon!

We interrupt this broadcast...

I am leaving for Oxford and the Cotswolds this weekend, so I won't be posting for the next few days.  Stay tuned for pictures on Monday!

Mia and me!

It's been a little while since I've posted because my friend Mia arrived Saturday night.  Mia is my oldest friend from home, and we have grown up together watching the BBC and dreaming about being in England together, so now we are living the dream! It has been fun so far, except for the fact that, seeing as my room barely fits one person, it's extra snug with two.
The night before Mia arrived, the neuro "majors" (or whatever they call them here) arranged a get-together, paid for by the department, so we got to meet the British students in our classes.  The most memorable part of the night was when I introduced myself to one of the guys and his response was, "Whenever I hear the name Meredith, I think of the hindquarter of a camel."  Well, that's one I haven't heard before; in fact, that was one of the few moments in history when I have been completely speechless.  Usually people make references to Meredith Grey from Grey's Anatomy or the ditzy blond fiancee in The Parent Trap.  This guy, whose name was Dom, explained that in elementary school, he played the hindquarter of a camel in their school play, Meredith the Christmas Camel.  This raised a whole slew of questions in my mind, ranging from why the primary schools were putting on plays about camels to why Meredith, of all the names you could give a camel, would really make you say, "That's the one." I didn't get any answers, unfortunately, as our conversation sharply turned to follow Dom's shock at the revelation that Meredith was originally a masculine name.  Apparently my name is a real ice-breaker, who knew?
So that was Friday night.  Saturday morning, with burning questions regarding Meredith the Christmas Camel still fresh, I made the mistake of trying a spin class.  Paying money for a gym membership makes you do crazy things, like try out classes you otherwise wouldn't, so you think you're getting your money's worth.  I should have listened to my instincts when they told me that spin could only be taught by a sadistic instructor who would torture you until you couldn't walk.  Because my instincts were right. 
Miraculously, however, I was still able to hobble over to Euston Station to pick up Mia later on Saturday.  She is armed with a serious sight-seeing plan, so soon I'll have something to post pictures of!  Today we purchased tickets to see Les Miserables in the West End (an area which looks so American, it wasn't even worth taking out the camera), and will go Thursday.  In the meantime, I'll be planning my own West End production, a revival of the old classic: http://www.musicroom.com/se/ID_No/08503/details.html

Being a student at uni.

It's finally Friday and I've had my first full week of classes at "uni"!  Steven, Kelsey and I celebrated our first week here by going to Starbucks, where we proceeded to demonstrate our complete inability to work a simple door.  Now, all exterior doors in the U.S. are required to open outwards because, as my dad frequently mentions, it's a fire hazard if they open inwards (he sells safety equipment).  So we were somewhat justified in our confusion at the door not opening out when we pushed on it, but were less justified when we took into account: 1) we'd had the same (but opposite) issue when we'd entered; 2) we'd been there a number of times before; 3) there were three of us working on the issue together; and 4) we're Pomona students, studying abroad at the world's fourth-ranked university.  After concluding that we were trapped inside Starbucks, and resigning ourselves to a destiny of drinking peppermint mochas and eating chocolate muffins for all eternity (come to think, I'm not sure why we wanted to get out so bad), some brilliant Londoner walked in, pushing the door in our faces.  And so we left.
Despite this momentary lack of mental acuity, the rest of the week has gone pretty well.  I've understood my lectures, and have had my prejudice against large universities pleasantly challenged.  All of the professors have seemed enthusiastic and genuinely interested in our education, although most don't seem to like taking questions during lecture, which I'll just have to get used to.  It's hard to say too much about my professors, as my two neuro classes have different professors for each lecture, which is an interesting concept.  I am taking two neuro courses (the reason I'm here), London Architecture (which is site-based, so should be lots of fun), and Science in the Mass Media.  The last course will probably prove the most difficult, as the professor is focusing on the media in Britain, with which I am unfamiliar.  One of the biggest differences in classes here versus classes at Pomona is that they seem to happen haphazardly, with different schedules and locations each week.  You have to stay on your toes just to make it to lecture!
One of best parts about going to school here is the location, and consequent beauty of the campus.  The architecture in this area is magnificent, with the exception of those buildings designed in the 1960's.  Here are some pictures!

The entrance to the Cruciform Building, shown again below...

...which forms a large X, seen aerially.  Very cool.

Across the street from the Cruciform is the main entrance to UCL, here being Vanna White-ed by Rachel E.  The domed building, called the Portico, houses the main library and is the inspiration for the UCL logo: http://www.google.com/search?q=ucl+logo

This is the Rockefellar Building, where we have some neuro classes.  The ballroom on the top floor was used in the party scene of The Dark Knight, and is used for the pre-med annual ball.  Let me repeat, the pre-meds have an annual ball.  Also, they're called "medics" here and finish their whole degree, including undergrad, in 6 years.

Between the Cruciform and Rockefellar Building is a great view of the famous BT Tower, which is visible from many parts of campus.

One of the bio facilities, the Darwin building, is actually where Darwin lived and worked in London.  Like, one of the profs' offices is in his old living room.  Also, that neon art seen through the window is a depiction of a protein.  It rivals CalTech's supercool nerd art.

Right next to campus is a famous bookstore called Waterstone's.  Bloomsbury is known for its bookstores, and was once home to a group of famous writers, imaginatively called the Bloomsbury Writers; Virginia Woolf was one of these.  Dickens also wrote a number of novels nearby.

VIP Visit!

Last night, Anjali, Kun-wei, Kelsey, Raven and I checked out the UC Opera, and found it to be a lot of fun.  It was interesting to see how music rehearsals were run here (because one rehearsal for one group can really be used as an accurate measure of how all music rehearsals go in all of Britain...).  The director just had us dive into the music, sight-singing Weber/Mahler's Die Drei Pintos.  It was a little overwhelming, putting together handwritten lyrics with a very compact score while having no idea how the pieces went, but we all thought we'd give it another go next week, since it's pretty satisfying to be able to say you are in an opera.

Today we were graced with the presence of three members of our Pomona family, Professors O'Leary and Seligman and Director of Study Abroad Rhoda Borcherding.  They kindly took us out to dinner at a fantastic Turkish restaurant, for which we were all grateful, as this was probably the first real meal (a.k.a. something other than sandwiches/salad/soup) any of us had eaten for a few days.  All 10 of the neuro study abroad students were there, and a good time was had by all.  Prof. Seligman seemed especially eager to be in all of the photos, so I decided to spite him here and show more photos that included Prof. O'Leary : )

Just look at those photogenic smiles!  Kelsey, Prof. Seligman, Kun-Wei, Anjali, and Prof. O'Leary.

Kun-Wei and Anjali with Rhoda - without whom none of us would be studying abroad!

O'Leary takes his desserts seriously.

All 10 neuro students plus O'Leary (to be fair, Seligman is taking the picture).  There are a lot of great things going on in this picture, but Rachel L. in the back is definitely the best part.

Mondays.

Yesterday was the start of term.  My 9:00 Monday class wasn't beginning this week (or, the tutorial was, but not the lecture or practical or something?), so I only had class at 11.  Thank goodness for that.  My alarm clock didn't go off, so I woke up at 10:50, only I thought it was 1:50 pm.  The screen on my alarm clock got damaged while traveling, and combined with military time, 10:50 could be interpreted as 13:50.  So I panicked for about 5 minutes, thinking I'd missed class completely.  I was momentarily relieved when I realized it was only 10:55, but met with renewed panic when I realized class started in five minutes, and I didn't really know where it was.  It was an exciting start to the day.

I bought a new alarm clock immediately after class.

Today I checked out the gym (haven't failed my New Year's resolution yet!), and discovered that NO ONE wears shorts here.  And there were a lot of people at the gym.  Whatever, it's way too comfortable to wear athletic shorts when you're doing, you know, athletics.  They're just going to have to deal with some American leg.

I have to leave soon to check out the opera program (that didn't sound elitist), but I wanted to post at least a few pictures of the beautiful buildings in this area.  

This is the building across the street, I have a great view from my room.  I love it because I think it really encapsulates the uniquely British ability to honor tradition while progressing forward, fuse old and new.

I pass this on my way to campus.  It's a spectacular cathedral, and I think the telephone booths really add something.  Like, the color red.

This is for my family and anyone else who has seen me eat cilantro.  I'm struggling between the fact that the restaurant looks good and is close-by, and that its name is Cilantro.  Who named it that?  Some one prejudiced against the people for whom cilantro tastes like Ivory soap, that's who.  Mom, I wasn't kidding: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/dining/14curious.html

People.

I know it would be premature to begin analyzing a culture I’ve only just dropped into, but I’m going to anyway.  The past few days have been filled with a barrage of surprises and new things, and having never traveled before, it’s been overwhelming.  It’s all good fun, but things are more different here than I’d expected.   

1. People talk quieter.  I know that I’m not the best judge of proper conversational volume, but I’m beginning to wonder if the stereotype of the Loud American is really a result of the Quiet Englishman.  Perhaps because their population density is so much higher, each person has a decibel quota, to keep nationwide decibel levels reasonable.  It's a theory.

2. Accents.  So far, no two accents have been the same.  What has been the most difficult to get used to has not been understanding the accents, however, but becoming the one with the accent.  The first night we arrived, a number of us went to an Indian restaurant (which was fantastic, incidentally).  The waiter’s first words were, “So where is this accent from?”  Since then, I have become to hear my speech as accented, and am very self-conscious every time I open my mouth.  I really do sound… American.  

3. They talk about the weather.  Constantly.  And not if it happens to be a nice day, but because it is so perpetually gray and wet.  At home (Pacific NW), we sort of try to ignore the fact that it’s so cold and rainy all the time, and might comment once in awhile about how we’d wish it would stop.  They take the other approach here, perhaps confronting it?   

4. Queuing.  Do not mess with the queues.  Jokes about how much the British love their queues do not exaggerate.  If there is more than one cash register open, they still only form one queue, unlike in America, where we agonize over which line we think will move the fastest, then spend the rest of the time in line convinced that the other line is moving faster.  There might be something to their method here.

5. The food.  And I don't mean liver pies; I mean the processed foods.  A lot of companies here have taken over products that we have in the States.  Like, do these potato chips remind you of anything?

P.S. The Smoky Bacon tastes disturbingly like real bacon.

And Cheerios are made by Nestle. What?

6.  Their signs are very polite.  The crosswalks are all marked with signs like this:

Which have turned out to be extremely useful.  Steven overlooked one and barely got out of the street in time after I shouted at him (yeah, I saved his life, it was no big deal). The Tube has two-foot-wide yellow painted areas on the platform which say, "Mind the gap" to keep you from getting too close to the trains.  In the U.S., I think it would probably say, "STAY OFF YELLOW."  Their exit signs are either pleasant yellow writing saying "Way out" or hieroglyphic signs with a person, an arrow, and a rectangle (these took us awhile to decipher).  Compare to "EXIT."  I think we try to make our signs super-direct in the States so they can't be interpreted any other way, to prevent lawsuits.

7. Also, this is legal here:

I went into Waterstone's Booksellers yesterday to buy The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (those darned books are like crack) and spent an inordinate amount of time in the bestseller's section looking straight at it but not seeing it, because the covers are different here, too.  Feeling stupid and frustrated for the umpteenth time and thinking I'd never be able to adapt to this unexpected sense of culture shock, I walked into a Starbucks.  The large display as I entered was promoting the Pike Place Roast.  Pike Place Market is a very popular farmer’s market in Seattle, near where I live.  So I got a sandwich and some coffee, and when the cashier rang it up, he smiled and said the coffee was on the house.  And I realized two things: it really is a small world after all, and no matter where you go in it, you will always be able to find good people. 

Live from London!

I'd ambitiously hoped to begin this blog the day I arrived, but the past 72 hours have been a such blur of sleep and rain and travel plug adapters that this obviously did not happen.  But finally I have the time and the ethernet to report home!
After meeting Jessie and Rachel L. at Heathrow baggage claim, we set off like Hillary and Norgay except with more luggage and less idea as to how we'd get to our destination.  We decided to use the Tube, which in retrospect may not have been the best idea, as the billion staircases (± 5) proved formidable for three small girls and six 50+ lb bags.  But make it we did, with lots of help from British passerby who we found to be extremely polite and helpful.  One said we were like "little soldiers" with our system of dividing the labor to get all the suitcases up the stairs.  We weren't 100% sure what to make of this, but decided to take it as a positive remark and anyway, he helped us out, too.  We were so tired at that point, he probably could have called us a whole number of terrible things and we wouldn't have cared, so long as he lent a hand.  We're all pretty sore from the excursion (lesson learned: taxi next time), but the Miracle Ball Method and I are working out the kinks, so I look forward to assuming a position other than horizontal again soon.
My room is Lilliputian, but could be optimistically considered cozy.  I especially like the part where I can sit on the side of my bed and be working at my desk - no chair required! The edge of the bed barely misses the door, when opened.  The showers are fascinating - you push the faucet on just like you would a public sink, and it runs water for about 10 seconds, then you have to push it again.  I think this is an attempt to conserve water, perhaps to make up for the fact that they don't recycle here (a shocking revelation), but I'm not totally convinced it's working.
We met up with our Affiliate Tutor, Paola, on Wednesday and she showed us around campus.  It is really beautiful - as is the rest of Bloomsbury - with a neat juxtaposition of old Gothic and Ikea chic architecture.  At the International Students Orientation held the following day, the speaker called out countries and had people raise their hands to show nationality.  There was generally an equal spattering of folks from each country, but it was interesting to note that absolutely no one was from France (which the speaker concluded must be due to its great distance from Britain) and over half were from the U.S.  None of us expected that.
Many of the Pomona students met up at a pub for dinner (yes, Mom, just for dinner), where I had my first fish and chips (the mashed peas initially looked disconcerting, but overall, it was good) and watched "football" with a bunch of Brits.  Now, watching American football in the Course family household is a pretty exciting experience, and pretty hard to outdo.  The absence of my mom yelling at players to stop running up the middle of the field was hard to overcome, but the twenty-something-year-old Brits definitely gave it their best. It was a lot of fun.
Next time: more pictures and less writing!