I've finally started a blog!

Although it took me a while, I've finally found time to begin a blog. Because it would take me hours to write in detail about everything I've done so far, I'll just give you an abbreviated version of my adventures in the UK so far.

I arrived at London Heathrow airport on September 15th after about 6 1/2 hours of flying on British Airways. The flight actually wasn't that bad, and I actually managed to sleep a few hours on the plane. When I arrived at the airport I had to go through passport control, where they asked to see my passport and proof of financial guarantee. After I got my bags, I went through customs, which really only meant walking down a completely empty hallway and then out into the rest of the airport. I had booked a transportation service called Dot2Dot that took me from the airport directly to the door of my dorm. Although it took longer than a taxi, it was significantly cheaper, and I'd recommend it to anyone traveling to or from the airport with a lot of baggage.


When I arrived at the dorm, I quickly met a few people from my floor. They filled up the hallway as people arrived, so there were already a few people on my floor when I got there, and more people arrived soon after. However, because international students came a few days before everyone else, this meant that my floor was almost completely international students, including many Americans.


I was really excited to see London, and Rachel (an American from my floor) and I decided to go explore the city. We wandered around for the whole afternoon, and we saw Westminster Abbey, the House of Parliament, Big Ben (which is actually just the name of the bell inside the clock tower), the Thames river, China Town, and many more places. We brought back dinner to the dorm (since the dining hall in the dorm wasn't going to start serving food until the next Monday), and we decided to eat in the hallway. It turned out to be a really good thing that we did, because a lot of the people from the hall came and joined us in the hallway. We got to meet a lot of the people on the floor that way.


The next day, we decided to go for a tour of the House of Parliament and then to a Shakespeare play at the Globe. Unfortunately, neither of these worked out. We went to the House of Parliament but we found out that the first tour was at 1:30pm. Unfortunately, that would have meant missing the Shakespeare play at 2:00. We decided to go to Westminster Abbey instead, which ended up being wonderful. There was an audio tour included in the admission price, and it did a really great job explaining what we were seeing. The abbey is beautiful, but we were not allowed to take pictures inside.


Then we went to the Globe, but we found out that the play was sold out. (Now I know that the plays sell out many days in advance, but we didn't know that then.) We decided to walk back to the dorm and see more of the city on the way. We got back pretty late in the afternoon, and then we got to meet some more people.


The next day, Wednesday, the international student's orientation began. We had a formal welcome, and a few other events that day. That night, we ate in the hallway again, and then we played taboo for over three hours. There were a lot of people playing, and by the end,at least ten to fifteen people had played for at least some of the time.


Over the next few days, I met with the biology department affiliate advisor, went to dinner and meetings with WashU's orientation program, and went on a wonderful tour of London which was also arranged by WashU's program.


I had thought classes would begin on that Monday, but it turns out that there is Fresher's orientation for the week after all of the new students arrive. Although we have a few people on the floor that are at UCL for all three years (the British University system only takes three years to complete), most of the people on the floor are affiliate students. There were a lot of events at night during the week, but almost all of them were parties (I didn't end of going to any of them). Orientation was interesting here. In America, orientation events are usually full of icebreaker-type games, and other social activities. Here, all of the orientation events included alcohol of some sort, and usually involved going to a club or a pub. Even the international students' welcome social included free wine.

The dining hall opened on Monday morning, and breakfast turned out not to be that bad. They had eggs, potatoes, cereal, and a few other options. Dinner that night wasn't bad either, and they have a vegetarian option for every meal, which is really great.


By the end of the weekend, I had become good friends with Rachel and Julie (also an American from my floor). We decided to take advantage of not having class by going to Buckingham Palace on Monday. The palace was beautiful, and you can get free audio guides after paying for admission (which is expensive but worth it). Tours of the staterooms ended for the year at the end of September, so we wanted to make sure that we had a chance to go. The room where the queen hosts banquets was really neat. When a visiting dignitary comes, the palace staff has to begin setting up the room two days before the banquet. All of the place settings have to perfectly aligned -- the napkins have to be exactly the same distance apart, and the staff uses rulers to make sure everything is perfect. If they do it correctly, you can look down the table from one end, and it will look like there is only one place setting. They had the table set up for the tours, and everything was perfect. When there is going to be a banquet, the queen checks on the table after it is set up, and decides if anything needs changing. It takes 15 people to wash the dishes after the banquet is over. We had to leave before seeing the last room because we had to get back to the dorm in time for dinner. The nice thing is that the tickets are good for a year, so we went back on Friday to see the last room.


The three of us woke up really early the next morning to go to Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's birth place, which was about a three hour bus ride. When we arrived, we went first to the theatre, because we wanted to see a play that night. Unfortunately, getting a ticket would have required us to sit in a queue (British English for a line) all day, so we decided that we just wouldn't be able to see a play while there.


(An aside . . . ) We had gotten to see Merry Wives of Windsor at the Globe in London, though. The play was amazing -- the actors were great and the play was extremely funny. We were in the standing room and since we got there early, we were able to stand right near the stage. We could see the actors' faces perfectly.


After waiting a little while in line at the theatre in Stratford, we left and bought tickets for the three houses in the town that were related to Shakespeare. One of those was Shakespeare's birthplace, and we got to see the room where he was born. Later in the afternoon, we decided that we wanted to experience English tea, so we went to a tea house, and had Cream Tea, which included English Breakfast Tea, scones, Cornish clotted cream, and jam. It was really good. The clotted cream had a weird consistency -- somewhere in between whipped cream and butter. It tasted good though.


We then walked to the hostel we had booked, which was about 1 3/4 miles from Stratford. After walking for a while, we finally found it, and we had dinner in their dining area. Then we went up to our room, which had 8 beds, and three other people in it. The hostel was very clean and nice, and we went to bed relatively early because we had to be up at 5:00am the next morning in order to catch our bus which left at 6:50am. We made it to the bus, and arrived back in London about 4 hours later.


The next day we had the Fresher's fair, which was the activity fair where all of the student groups tried to recruit the new students. I joined the jitsu club (a martial art that focuses a lot on grappling), the Jewish students' society, and a few others.

On Saturday, I went to the local synagogue for the first time, which is only about 7 minutes walking from my dorm. The synagogue is very big, although there weren't that many people there. The people were very nice though.


On Sunday, Rachel, Julie, and I went to Canterbury. Our bus left at 8:30 in the morning, and when we arrived two hours later, we went straight to the museum called The Canterbury Tales. It was kind of like a wax museum which had an audio tour that told you about many of the stories told by the pilgrims in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It didn't turn out to be all that great because the lights were so dark you could barely see the wax figures and because the audio tour wasn't synced with the lights in the rooms. After the museum, we went on a really nice historical boat tour of the river Stour that runs through the city. We got really lucky because Canterbury was having a food and drink festival that day, and we spent a while wandering around the different food stalls. We bought food there, and had a pretty good lunch. The city still has walls that were build in the 13th century, so we spent a while walking along those. Then we went to the Norman Castle, which is the ruins of a really old Castle that was in Canterbury. We even got to walk up the stairs in what was left of one of the towers. That was my favorite part of the day. Rachel wanted to go to the church service in the Canterbury Cathedral, so we went there after exploring the castle. The building was really beautiful, and since it was an evensong service, the choir was sounded very pretty.


We wandered around the city a little more, and then we went to dinner at an Indian restaurant. The food was really good and not too expensive. Then we headed back to the bus station to catch our bus back to London.


Courses began on Monday, and I had my Topics in Neurobiology course (classes are called courses). We had an hour of class from 11-12 and another hour of class from 2-3. The two lectures are completely separate, as though they were on two different days. The lecturer (not all teachers are called professors) was pretty good, and the material sounds as though it will be interesting. I didn't have class on Tuesday or Wednesday, which works perfectly with the holiday schedule. I went back to the same synagogue for Rosh Hashanah. There were a lot of people there on the first day. They have a men's choir, which sounded really good but meant that most people did not sing along during the service. After the service, I went back to my room and spent most of the afternoon doing reading for my classes. The second day of Rosh Hashanah was pretty similar to the first.


On Thursday, I had my first Primate Behavior and Ecology course. The lecturer is very interesting, and I think it will be a good class. I had already learned almost all of the information we discussed in class, but hopefully I will learn new information later in the course. We also signed up for tutorials, and mine will be on Thursdays at 2pm. This works really well after next week, but it will be a problem on Yom Kippur. I talked to the lecturer about missing that tutorial, but he said that I really couldn't miss it because we will have to sign up for a lot of things that day. It seems weird to me that they won't make an exception for religious observance, but he said that there are people from so many religions that they can't be fair and still make allowances for everyone. Definitely a different attitude than that in America. I guess I'll just have to sit through the tutorial.


On Friday I went with Rachel, Julie, and two of Julie's friends who were visiting London to Borough Market. It is huge, and consists completely of stands selling food and drinks. I ended up having really good falafel for lunch, and I bought a loaf of Irish Soda Bread to eat during the week. That night, people were watching the Vice Presidential Debate, so I watched it with them. It would have been really neat to have been at WashU! The debate was certainly interesting, and Sarah Palin was very funny. I doubt that there have been many other instances of shout-outs during Vice Presidential debates.


I haven't done all that much today. I edited one of Rachel's papers, and read a few papers for my Topics in Neurobiology course. I don't know what I'm going to end up doing tonight.


Overall, I'm having a wonderful time in London, although I definitely miss everyone at home and at WashU.


I'm planning on writing at least every few days, so there probably won't be any more posts as long as this.


Here are some pictures of what I've been doing over the past few weeks.






Outside the gates of Buckingham Palace (Julie, me and Rachel from left to right)





Stratford-Upon-Avon







Outside Westminster Abbey






House of Parliament and Big Ben






Big Ben






Westminster Abbey (I think)






Our hostel in Stratford-upon-Avon