RTUS Post #2: In retrospect.

It would be impossible to summarize what I have learned on this London adventure, but it would be wrong not to at least look back and diagnose some of the elements which - for better or for worse - made my experience what it was.  In proper Type A form, I have decided to review these elements by dividing them into two lists.

What I will not miss:

1. The food.  There's a reason English food is known for being bad.  Some of it is edible, sure, but you can only have so many fish and chips...
2. The decorum.  Being overly polite inhibits meaningful conversation, and prevents the kind of casualness that is conducive to, well, being friendly.
3. The Tube.  Not needing to take the Tube means I’m no longer living in a big, impersonal city, but rather a small town where you can walk five minutes to the farmer's market where you know the vendors personally!
4. The weather.  But then, who doesn't love a little sunshine?
5. The education.  I still hold that having fun is a far more effective way to learn.
6. The accent.  They can get away with so much just because they sound smart saying it!  It's highly deceiving.
7. The healthcare system.  All free things come with a hidden cost.  In this case, the system just isn't efficient.
8. Starbucks.  Of course they’re also in America, so technically I can't miss them, but I will especially not miss having to pay extra to sit inside and drink my coffee. 

What I will miss:

1. The food.  Shopping for groceries was always a fun adventure, because they have different brands and flavors, like caramelized onion and balsamic vinegar chips.
2. The decorum.   A little politeness can go a long way toward adding dignity to your life.
3. The Tube.  I doubt I need to explain this one, as you all know how I feel about it by now.
4. The weather.  Besides reminding me of home in Washington, it can be nice to have variations in the weather.
5. The education.  Because of the sternness, I did learn a lot out of fear.
6. The accent.  Fine, it DOES sound nice.
7. The healthcare system.  I mean, it's free healthcare.  Period.
8. Starbucks.  It came to represent a special zone of comfort, kind of like a US Embassy, where it was "American soil" in England.  While I can go to Starbucks here, it won't represent that same special sense of security.
9. The people.  This is the one element not found on the previous list.  More than anything about my study abroad experience, I will remember the people I met.  No matter where they were from, or what very different beliefs they held, I will appreciate their friendship.  When I arrived, I was scared because I felt so alone.  But I left with the opposite problem - distress at leaving so many people.  Which is, I suppose, a good problem to have.

Wherever you go, no matter how big and seemingly impersonal the place, you create a microcosm for your life.  And the people you meet give value to the space you're in.  You can adapt to any physical place, so it really doesn't matter where you go, but who you're with.  And that, above anything else, is the most important lesson I have learned while living abroad.

So many smiling faces!  A few of the folks who made Campbell House a home.

RTUS Post #1: Cambridge.

I wrote two blog posts at various airports, during my 20 hours of travel from the UK back home.  I will now publish them postlapsarian, on my second full day RTUS (Returned to the United States; pronounced ar-tus).  I hadn't had time to do so before I left because I was running around packing and all that jazz.  But I still wanted to document the last few insights I had in England.

The last place I absolutely had to see before leaving England was Cambridge.  This is mostly due to the fact that Professor Johnson went there, so it was kind of like a scientific ancestry pilgrimage or something.  Cambridge was lovely.  Like Oxford, the town is clearly structured around the university (though don’t tell anyone that I just likened the two places).  I first went to the Downing Site, where a lot of the science buildings are concentrated.  I was hunting down Johnson’s PI, Christine Holt.  When I'd wandered around long enough to finally run into the right into the place where she worked, by which time it was about noon, the secretary just said, “Yeah, I haven’t seen her yet today, you know scientists…”  Haha.  I nodded and smiled and left.  On my way out of the Downing site, I was pleased to see a brand new Lotus gleaming bright blue in the parking lot.  Apparently being a professor will pay well!

It was very pleasant just walking along The Backs – the back of all the colleges, which run along the River Cam.  You could watch people punting along the water, and if you were lucky, you got to see some of them punt themselves into the water.  Entertaining stuff.  Unfortunately I couldn’t get into the colleges to see their campuses because, again like Oxford, it’s super touristy so you actually have to pay to visit.  This was frustrating, except that it did mean that there were security guards everywhere watching the entrances, and they all wore bowler hats so it looked like everyone was dressed up as The Son of Man, like in the famous scene in The Thomas Crowne Affair. 

Not able to see the campuses, I contented myself with glimpsing them from The Backs.  I sat on a bench, eating a sandwich and watching the ducks.  It was all very idyllic, although there was one duck who thought he was being pretty sneaky and kept inching over to me.  I told him I knew what he was doing, but he kept averting his gaze like he didn’t know what I was talking about.  At the point that I realized was anthropomorphizing a duck, I decided I’d clearly had too much time by myself and needed to go into town and be around people again.  I headed to the market square, but not before seeing one tourist wiggle his way through one of the gates!

He, like I was too cheap to pay to see the campuses, but had more guts.  Kudos to him, I say.  The “downtown” was all very adorable, like the rest of England.  In wandering around, I ran into The Eagle, the pub where Watson and Crick were known to work and famously announced their findings before publishing in Nature.

I finished my solitary Cambridge adventure with a trip to the Fitzwilliam Museum.  I would say it was the best collections museum I have yet seen – and there are a plethora in London.  It was absolutely beautiful, and the collection was impressive.  It was surprising to find on the outskirts of this quaint town, which truly has as many churches as it has ducks.  

Bonus Time!

Seeing as it's Bonus Time for all the cosmetics companies right now, here's a little blog Bonus Time for those of you who can't get enough of it (haha).  My mom has requested that I put more photos online so that she could see them, and it occurred to me that maybe some other people would want to see them, too.  I've also added a sampling of photos from the month of travel that I failed miserably to blog about.  I tried to make up for this deficit by at least captioning all of the photos. Take it or leave it.

Family adventure in England:
https://picasaweb.google.com/113190165212892277691/MyKingdomForAHorse?authkey=Gv1sRgCIrbyar2ib2ISQ

Excursion to France with Mia:
https://picasaweb.google.com/113190165212892277691/LaTourEstIci?authkey=Gv1sRgCPGRnYyWnYf-iQE

General shenanigans (more pictures of what I've blogged about):
https://picasaweb.google.com/113190165212892277691/ThisScepteredIsle?authkey=Gv1sRgCOu_urywqpWEFg

Down and Underground, Skeptics and Soane, Nat Gal and Nudists.

Saturday, I spent an inordinate amount of time at the London Transport Museum.  If you recall my obsessive infatuation with the Tube (previous post), then you'll  understand when I tell you that this place was Heaven.  It was cleverly built; you had to take an elevator to the top floor to start, an elevator of course being a mode of transportation.  I see what you did there, Museum of Transport.  While it was understandably a venue dedicated to technological development, it also provided an excellent overview of London's history and culture.  As the railways burgeoned, London followed suit, then required more railways which allowed it to burgeon more and then require more railways and so on; so it was also a museum about London's growth.  It was amusing to see that even the first public horse-drawn carriages had been double-decker; I guess the modern-day red buses come by it honestly.  They also had lots of very old Underground posters, one of which advertised Kew Gardens as having "fancy ducks," which generated a bizarre image of a duck with a monocle and bow-tie; clearly I'm going to have to go to Kew to check this out.  I was also amused to see that kettles of tea appeared to be used as a form of measurement multiple times -

- and that some things (most things?) about this country have never changed -

Also, I had no idea how many times the transportation system here has been saved by Americans.  I guess there's money in it, but still, I felt a little patriotic when I kept seeing captions like "An American businessman saves the Tube!"
I then transported myself by foot (I was pretty self-conscious about using such an unevolved technology but it was still pretty effective) to the nearby Soane Museum, which is actually just Sir John Soane's old house.  Soane was a famous architect who was responsible for creating Britain's first public art gallery, the Dulwich Picture Gallery (previous post).  He collected artifacts and art pieces with zeal and put them all in his house.  They take up so much space - literally covering all walls, floors and ceilings - that the house is unlivable, but it's a pretty fun experience to walk through an old English town house and run into a sarcophagus.
After popping by the Hunterian Museum again for a final farewell, I was making my way home when I found myself, along with hundreds of pedestrians and unhappy taxi drivers, unable to use Tottenham Court Road due to a nudist biking parade.  The looks on some of the shocked Englishwomen's faces were priceless.  I don't think that sort of thing is as prevalent here as it is on the West Coast. I will refrain from posting pictures of this absolutely hilarious sighting in case there are children reading this blog.

On Sunday, Kelsey and I journeyed to our Mecca, Down House, to pay homage to Charles Darwin.  It was a really meaningful and fulfilling experience for both of us.  Besides being the home of the Darwin family, it was also simply a beautiful house and property.

It was fun to see his experimental gardens and beekeeping house, where he produced data used in On the Origin, as well as wander along the paths which he was known to favor when he wanted to think about his theory.  We got a bit teary-eyed when we were in his study, where he wrote The Book.  Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures... so don't tell anybody about this one -

We met a Canadian gentleman there, who had the strongest stereotypical Canadian accent either of us had ever heard - and we're both from states bordering Canada.  We ended up taking the train back with him, and had a grand time talking to him.  He was an electrician, and a lot of neuroscience has to do with electricity.  So, when he told us he didn't know anything about neuroscience, we pointed out that he probably understood some of it better than we did.  Combining forces, I think all three of us ended up understanding each others' endeavors better.  Just goes to show that people are always your best resources.

After spending Monday in the National Gallery (or as it is affectionately known, Nat Gal), which houses such an impressive collection that it is incredible to me that it is free and always without lines, Kelsey and I met up to see a lecture by Jon Ronson.  He's a journalist most famous for The Men Who Stare at Goats, The Psychopath Test and being portrayed by Ewan McGregor in the film version of the former book.  George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, and Kevin Spacey were also in that film, incidentally.  So he's kind of a big deal.  Despite his fame, he was very laid-back and very funny, though he had a lot of poignant remarks about the psychopath test and the DSM.  The crowd was very responsive and actually asked good questions - it never occurred to me that Q & A could actually be insightful!  But there it was.

Greatest Hits, continued.

Friday, we went to see Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, which is famous for being the longest running show - of any kind - in the world.  It's in its 59th year and has been performed over 23,000 times.  We figured if it has that kind of showbiz longevity, it must be good.  And it was!  But then, who can resist that mixture of English decorum and perturbing murder mystery that is oh-so-Agatha Christie?  Judging by her status as the best-selling writer of all time, not many.

Developing a dangerously fast-growing addiction to the theater, Saturday we went to see George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion (the play My Fair Lady is based on), starring Rupert Everett, Dame Diana Rigg (she was a Bond girl but is most famous for being Emma Peel in The Avengers) and Kara Tointon (Eastenders - she's a big deal here).  Again, it was fantastic.  Since it deals heavily with class, it was especially interesting to watch after having been here a few months and having seen how the class system is still very much present.

Alex also conned me into going to the Imperial War Museum with him, which turned out to be cooler than I gave it credit for.  Although judging by their displays, the English seem to be under the impression that World War I is the only major war ever to have occurred. They had an impressive plane collection...

...and, among other things, TE Lawrence's motorcycle!

Not to be deterred by abysmal weather, we spent Sunday sloshing around in Greenwich.  To get there, we had to go through the Greenwich foot tunnel.  Linking Tower Hamlets to Greenwich across the Thames, the foot tunnel actually goes under the river.  Already having serious doubts about whole walking under water situation  (phobia and all that), learning that the thing was built in 1900 didn't make me feel much better.  It was pretty dodgy, as my English friends would say, and the roar of the water around you was more than a little disconcerting...

Greenwich was (almost) worth putting our lives in danger, though.  It is a very nice area, outside central London and thus more green and suburban.  Or, I think it would have been green if we could have seen through the rain, anyway.  Among a number of sites, Greenwich boasts the Old Royal Naval College and the Queen's House.  The latter was designed by Inigo Jones who is best known for bringing proper Palladian architecture to England, and the former was designed by Christopher Wren who is best known for designing pretty much every building in England that Inigo Jones didn't (best known for St. Paul's Cathedral).  It's really unique to get to see works by England's most famous architects side by side:

The Old Naval College is the Baroque thing in front,
which flanks the Queen's House, at the center .

Greenwich is most well-known, however, for its Royal Observatory and the line which demarcates the Prime Meridian (longitude 0 degrees), and the Mean Time which originates there.

The Prime Meridian is that brick line.

Finally, we made it to the British Library, which I was surprised to find housed almost everything I've ever wanted to see.  They have everything from Jane Austen's writing desk , to Darwin's letters, to Mozart's scores... it was pretty fun seeing the original manuscripts of pieces I'd played.  They've got a Gutenberg Bible and another copy of the Magna Carta - which means I've now seen two of the three Magna Cartas that have been dated to 1215! They also had a really interesting sci-fi exhibit.  I definitely underestimated the Library; it's fantastic.  My favorite find was probably Beethoven's tuning fork:

That about wraps things up for now.  It's amazing that after feeling like I've done a thousand things, there are still a million more to be done!  London can be described by many words, but one of them is certainly not "boring."

Freedom! And consequently, updates.

1:00 pm on Friday saw the end of our painfully prolonged examination term, and the beginning of our existence as free people.  While I can see the benefit of having an entire term devoted to exams - more time to study and all that - I almost prefer the American approach of getting all of your exams and final papers done in one completely insane week.  Once you get into a rhythm, you aren't constantly fighting inertia to keep... studying... a little... each... day.
But, for better or for worse, it is all over!  So the time has come for a summary of The Greatest Hits of the past two weeks.
First, Alex and I made our way to Stratford-Upon-Avon, to pay homage to our mutual hero, Shakespeare.  We went to see where he lived...

...and where he was baptized, married, and buried.

We were fortunate enough to get same-day seats to the RSC production of The Merchant of Venice. Elated enough at having gotten tickets, the vendor told us as we walked off, "Oh, yes, and Patrick Stewart is playing Shylock."  What.  It was a really cool production, set in (anti-Semitic) Vegas in about the 60's.  Oddly enough, this was not the first Shakespeare production I'd seen set in Vegas, but it was certainly the darkest.  The interpretation was satisfyingly thought-provoking, and Patrick Stewart was amazing.  We thoroughly enjoyed it.

Two days later, we reprised our Shakespeare experience (Shakespearience?) by going to The Globe to see an excellent production of Much Ado About Nothing.  We got groundling tickets, and waited in line early to watch from right at the edge of the stage.  Of course, this is the uncovered part of the theater, so we prepared ourselves for having to ride out a few brief summer showers during the show.  However.  We were not prepared for standing in a total downpour for three hours straight without umbrellas.  We were soaked, and freezing, and our feet hurt something dreadful - but it was completely worth it.

Proving my loyalty to Shax.

On the Monday before our last exams, Paola invited us all to English breakfast at Kenwood House in Hampstead Heath.

Even Gabe is smiling this time!

We were blessed with spectacular weather (sure, now it stops raining), so the view from Parliament Hill was stunning.

You can see every major landmark in the London skyline.

Picking out the various landmarks, I came to the startling realization that I have come to love this city.

Sunday at the S'henge.

First of all, as a random point of interest for all of you who know how I feel about boats, I have to make it publicly known that we went to boat party on the Thames last week.  It was pretty cool, seeing both sides of the river at night; the American students were into the sight-seeing, the British students were into dressing up in 20's-themed costumes, and a good time was had by all.

"I'm on a boat and, it's goin' fast and, I got a nautical-themed pashmina afghan..."

The poor soul Ani, who had planned an excursion to Stonehenge on Sunday, allowed me to capitalize on his having done all the travel research by tagging along.  Upon first alighting in Salisbury, we made our way to the famous Salisbury cathedral.  This detour was not in Ani's original plan, but his being a good sport and my being obstinate resulted in me getting my way.

The cathedral boasts the tallest spire in England -

It's not your eyes, the spire is actually leaning to the left.  Oops.

- the largest cathedral close in England -

- the oldest working clock in England -

- the oldest Quire in England, and the best-preserved copy of the Magna Carta! (Sadly, we're not allowed to take pictures of it.)  It is apparently "Britain's finest 13th century Gothic cathedral."

After chasing down the Stonehenge bus, we made our way out to the countryside, passing the Old Sarum in transit.  The Old Sarum is the original location of Salisbury; today it's basically a big raised mound with a ditch around it.  Meaning, it's not much of a picture unless you're in a helicopter, so check it out on Google Images.
The ride was eventful enough, with Ani constantly exclaiming over the greenness and the livestock (I don't think he's ever been outside before).

Seriously, he took pictures of sheep for an hour... 

...and appeared to mistake me for a sheep sometimes.

Over loudspeaker, a Michael Caine voice double informed us of the various sites along the way, as well as exciting facts like the five types of burial mounds the Windmill people used.
Stonehenge (or S'henge, as our tickets read) was magical and all - I remember reading about it when I was little, how they brought the stones from such a ridiculous distance and how it was such an impressive (if seemingly unnecessary) feat.  It does look pretty cool, and we were fortunate in that we got good weather -

(Although it was quite windy.)

However.  Whatever kind of magic there is surrounding these old stones, it is not one of romance. Which is why Ani and I were in denial when we watched a proposal take place in front of our eyes:

"Um, Ani, that couple on the bench, are they..?"
"Definitely not.  This isn't the Eiffel Tower."
"But I think maybe..."
"I say they're newlyweds.  Honeymoon."
"Um, he's putting a ring on her finger."
(Silence).

Neither of us had seen a live proposal before, so we walked around the 'Henge to think through the situation, when, on the next go around:

"Um, Ani, you're not going to believe this, but that couple on the bench..."
"No, not possible, that would be ridiculous."
"Ani, he's on one knee."
"Um."
"And now she's at her ring finger and... ya, there's definitely a ring on it."
(Silence).

Two proposals.  We watched two proposals occur within a period of 10 minutes.  We decided it was unsafe to sit on the benches or else we'd come back affianced, as well.  And that, my friends, is evidence of the magic in those blue stones, dragged from Wales so many years ago.  That is the magic of Stonehenge.