well, now what?

there is no pandora in the UK????????

Dear Pandora Visitor,

We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.

an expat independence day

yesterday, in honor of america's 233rd birthday, molly, madeline, and i decided that the most patriotic thing we could possibly do was obviously to go to windsor castle and run through the gardens. in short, it was amazing.

locked outside the gates before starting
looking back down "the long walk" at the castle. at 2.3 miles, it's a seriously long walk

lily pads in a random pond that we stumbled upon when we decided to take a detour
they covered almost the whole surface.

molly in "senior portrait pose" by obelisk lake
(the obelisk is to the left of the tall tree off to the right)

the copper horse at the end of the long walk, mimicking the rider's pose
(we are embarrassing)

we were trying to keep to a route that we had seen in a guide book, but there were so many paths and so many things to see that we quickly lost the original route and settled on running for time. it was a slightly cloudy day but that was appreciated because it meant it was a little cooler. basically, we just wandered around the grounds coming across things like the polo grounds, a totem pole, random bodies of water, the cumberland lodge, and a lot of horseback riders. we met back up with madeline and grabbed lunch at a grocery store which we ate waiting for the train back. including the 30-50 minute train ride (the way out was local; the way back was express) we were only gone for about 6 hours. it was a really nice little day trip. and something that i'll remember much more than seeing a million stately rooms inside the castly itself (which we didn't want to pay for and didn't think they would appreciate our post-run-selves)

for the afternoon, we had heard about an expat gathering in battersea park and had been planning on heading over there for burgers and fireworks. unfortunately, someone had forgotten to register the proper forms for the fireworks, but we did have a quite nice day in the park. the lounging on the grass was appreicated after the busy morning. following this, we eventually made our way to the pig's ear pub where we had a drink over a scrabble game. the staff there wasn't too friendly, but it was still fun.

this morning helen and i slept in, not leaving our beds until almost noon. then it seemed like everyone in the program was scrambling to get the response-paper-blogs posted because they are due sunday evenings. we need to do four of them a week. now that i have them out of the way, molly and i are going to go for a short run and later tonight there is a festival in hyde park similar to the one last weekend in that we should be able to crash it (at least i'm hoping it is since i've talked it up to the summer school kids...). but kanye west is headlining so we're going to go have a picnic dinner and hopefully hear him play for free!!

19th cent. gear

last week during our walking tour, we were in the victoria & albert museum which seems to really like hands-on activities. anne, one of our professors, found a side room with victorian-era clothing and grabbed the closest two students to model it for her.
the results were me in a crinolin which goes under the skirt of dresses and mike in a coat.

mike having problems buttoning up

there was also a corset but i shushed the girl who was trying to point it out to anne.
(i just saw this picture and it reminded me)

portabello road and brick lane

yesterday afternoon, molly and i walked over to portabello road to check out the markets. it was a friday near the end of the day so some vendors were particularly keen on getting rid of some stuff by lowering prices, but we resisted for the most part. after wandering through the antiques, spending a long time browsing through some old books, picking up some nectarines, and ignoring the poorly made new clothes, we came to the used clothes section. this proved to be a haven for everything from 1920s underwear to 1970s hippie outfits to modern clothes. although we escaped the clutches of one vendor who was set on selling us a school uniform blazer that was probably made for a 4 year old (i tried it on and it was so tight i had to shrug my shoulders and the sleeves ended halfway up my arm. molly's only comment was "it makes your arms look really skinny"), we were caught by a man selling broaches which molly was looking for. i also picked up a purse for L2. overall, it was a success.

molly and madeline were having dinner and then going to a show with madeline's aunt so i headed back home to meet up with team-summer-school for dinner. we were planning on going to brick lane. i am willing to guess that this is where the brick masons used to work; now, it's a thriving indian/south asian area with more restaurants you would think could possibly be supported. i had heard that when you go you should bargain with the people to get the prices down. we were going in a group of 10 people, however. this was a big deal. mike was leading the group down the street and although we already had a restaurant in mind from some of our guidebooks, they kept giving him better and better deals as we walked down the street. free naan. free naan and rice. free naan and rice and papadum. no one will pay more than L10. private room. private room with 20% off. we finally settled on a place that would give us an upstairs air conditioned room and 35% off. we had a great time and a great dinner for just L9 each, including a pretty generous tip. after dinner, we headed home on the tube.

overall, a good day.

swiftly and with purpose

ok this post is kind of long but there is a lot of multimedia stuff so it really isn't as long as it seems. but what it lacks in conciseness it makes up for in nerdiness.
first off, in a previous post i mentioned that i was doing lsat work in the garden out back but that the photo-uploader wasn't working. now it is. so here's where i do my lsat homework!

this next one is the view from my room of my little work station.


definitely beats a normal lsat class any day.

now, yesterday we went on a mega-walking tour of historical medical sites throughout london. it was guided by this older woman who really nice and incredibly knowledgeable and kind of how i imagine a british grandmother. she kept getting frustrated that we (at one third her age...) weren't walking fast enough and as she hustled down the street kept yelling over her shoulder "walk swiftly and with purpose!" we did our best. sort of.

a quick list of things that we saw includes:
-guy's hospital by the london bridge which was one of the first places that would take infectious or chronic patients
-a 19th century operating room that was in the attic of an old church across the street from the hospital, removed to there so that the screams wouldn't bother the sick people (but apparently the praying people didn't mind?)
-st. bart's hospital opened in the 12th century
-detour during lunch to millenium bridge
-various sites around soho (which is called that because it used to be fields outside the city proper and people would go hunting there and "so-ho" is a hunting cry) including the garden that dickens based the manette family's garden on in a tale of two cities, where marx lived when he was in london for a bit, a variety of workhouses and hospitals and churches from the street
-john snow's water pump, where he figured out what was causing the outbreak of cholera--a bad water supply! so he removed the pump handle and the outbreak stopped. it was about 85 degrees and by that point we'd be running around for 7 hours so we were really disappointed to see that the handle was still missing...

here are some pictures from all that:

nick, amputating my leg on an actual 19th cent operating table.
he's holding a bone saw; other operating knives are in the wooden box on the right.

us, gathered around john snow's pump

after that rather long day, we took some time to recover. i went for a quick run then we had a group dinner of chicken tikka masala and fruit salad which was really good.
later, molly and madeline met up with us and most of the group went to a pub down the road where we discovered that british tv is bizarre, on the whole.

this morning we checked out the museum of natural history and got shown their rare books collection, focusing on darwin's and wallace's books and writings. it was really really cool. they published a version of on the origin of species in braille! molly crashed this as well and we were going to take stupid pictures pretending to read that but they put it away before we got the chance. but here are some pictures i did get to take while there.

me and my roommate in front of a giant dinosaur in the entrance hall to the musuem,
which has been discussed as a "cathedral for science"

molly super pumped about some fossils, although they weren't collected by mary anning

some cool butterflies from wallace's personal collection

and THEN we went to the science museum, where one of our professors used to work, so he gave us a cool explanation of part of a steam engine, which we were lucky enough to see when it's running because i guess they only do it once a week or so.

the actual point that he was making (which i stopped the camera before he got to) was that when wallace was explaining feedback loops in natural selection, he used this device as an analogy.
finally, we were let loose in the science museum where they have watson and crick's original model of DNA as a double helix!

you can't see it too well in this picture, but the photo on the information placard is this one, which shows it much more clearly:

so cool! ok. off to portobello market with me!

welcome to wellcome

apparently weekdays are going to be pretty busy and kind of mundane in terms of blogging, but although possibly only for the benefit of my parents and marianne-in-the-future, day 2 of class:

wisely packed my own lunch before heading to class this morning, which was good. talked about a sort of general overview of each class, first Victorian engineering, then Victorian medicine. after lunch, we headed to the Wellcome Museum of the History of Medicine, where we saw things like 19th century leech jars and amputating saws (HUGE serrated knives). i'll be heading back here to do research at some point soon because there was a ton that i didn't get to see. and my grant applications said i would. when we got back home i trudged through some lsat stuff, but did so after the happy discovery that my ethernet cord can not only reach my bed but also the picnic table outside, through our french doors opening onto the english garden, which was pretty idyllic (i took pictures but technology doesn't seem to be cooperating right now). after dinner, i had a short nap then started some work for tomorrow and now i'm about to head to bed.

tomorrow, we're going on a medical walking tour of london including bedlam (the hospital for lunatics) and john snow's water pump where he discovered that cholera was due to a bad water supply. becca, i wish you were here. also, i had to start another blog for school which is basically along the lines of 4 short response papers a week. although i would be surprised if you were intereted, just in case, it's here. there isn't much there yet and what is there is going to be all 19th century, all the time.
bed time!

First day of school

quick post.
today was the first day of class and it was pretty good. talked about the victorian age in general, and in fact part of our reading included the wikipedia page, and also the great exhibition, which was essentially the first worlds fair, and crystal palace where it took place in hyde park. during lunch i relearned the value of a peanut butter jelly sandwich and regretted not doing so earlier, but am now stocked for the future. afterwards, we went on a walking tour around the college and kensington and learned that everything here is named for queen victoria's husband, albert (no last name) prince consort.
molly and i then ran to westminister, passing buckingham, harrod's, and parliament which was pretty cool. shower at home then back to molly's for dinner and awaiting madeline's arrival! she got in literally as i was about to walk out the door.
now home again, doing some reading for tomorrow. it's getting late so i should get back to it, but i'm excited for the next few weeks!

(sorry for excessive wikipedia links, but in case anyone cares, that's what i'm learning about; if you want more than wikipedia, click around here for some good primary sources)