Those Lesser Provincial Colleges up in Oxford...

I'm pretty sure Howard Davies (the LSE's president) or some other authority figure described the schools in Oxford or Cambridge, or maybe both, in this way when comparing them to the LSE during one of my orientation events. In any case, Oxford, in my opinion, was pretty incredible and I've heard that Exeter and Christchurch and the many other schools there are rather prestigious (eat your words Davies!). In any case, Laura and I had the opportunity in the middle of November to go up there and visit with some friends of mine from SDSU (Shane and Wendy) who are both in Ph.D. programs as well. We went via bus early in the morning and spent most of the morning and afternoon just wandering around the city. It's rather incredible. If you didn't know, Oxford is not, in and of itself, a university. Rather, it is a small town which contains about a dozen universities all of varying age, the oldest of them being established in the 1200s. This means, that there are numerous old gothic buildings from the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries scattered around the city. They're incredible! The LSE has nothing like that since it was established in the late
1800's. Indeed, the whole town just has a much more old world feel to it than the hustle and bustle of London, so it was a nice break for us. In any case, that afternoon we met up with Shane and Wendy for a beer in the smallest and one of the oldest pubs in Oxford, Ye Olde White Horse. It was great! We later had supper with Shane and his girlfriend at a spectacular Greek restaurant and finally hopped back on our bus back to London just in time to catch the tube home before they closed for the night. Overall a spectacular trip. Just a note on some of the pictures, the hazy one with the square building is Christchurch Uni, I believe, the one of us is inside the White Horse, the one if the round building is the Bodleian Library, and the last one is a big vine growing up a university building, but I can't remember which university.

Cockney Rhyming Slang Phrase of the Week

The first person to successfully interpret the phrase into proper American English will receive, in five years time, a Little Orphan Annie Secret Cockney Decoder Pin.

This week's phrase IS:

Wait a cock linnet while I put on me weasel, then we'll be out the rory.

Good luck!

The Thames is a Tidal River

I bet you didn't know that! Well, we didn't. One day we were crossing the millennium bridge and noticed the river was moving toward the East, and the ocean. Which makes sense. Then, several days later, from the top of the Tate Modern museum (when we took the Blog Title Photograph above!), we noticed that the tricky Thames was moving in a westerly direction. WHAT?!

We were confused.

Then, we went to a little town called Southend-on-Sea. It's kind of like a wannabe Atlantic City crossed with a Chuck-E-Cheez. But it's also quainter. And it's on the ocean--actually the Estuary of the Thames. And accessible by train, and one of the less expensive destinations from London. It was here that we discovered that the River Thames is, in fact, a Tidal River all the way to London, and perhaps farther inland than that. This means that the ocean tides affect the current of the river.

Southend-on-Sea also has the longest pier in the world! It's about 1.34 miles long. There it is, stretching out behind us toward shore, where there is a lovely, cheezy amusement park!

The most excellent Bloggers in the world

Yep, we're back. Did you miss us?

We're currently digging through our pile of photos to see which ones we should put up next...and we're trying to decide if we should opt for chronology or favoritism. Or entertainment value.

Well. If we don't start toward the beginning, we may never catch you up. Which, incidentally, may be just peachy. Still, here's the short version. We've been to:

The British Museum. (which looks like THIS on the outside!)

And which houses artifacts of all kinds, including the Rosetta Stone, some incredible mummies, parts of the Parthenon and other Greek and Roman sculptures, and, okay, well it's just so huge that's all we've really seen yet. Good thing it's free! We've already been there 3 times.

Here's Kyle on a bad day. Actually, it's some old Egyptian who, apparently, made too many pots. And was buried with them. Luckily, the sand almost perfectly preserved him and his spiffing pots, so that we can now observe him encased in this lovely glass...or, really hard sand. Huh.

The Underground

A.K.A The Tube

A.K.A. (in our Bastardized American Lingo) The Subway

In my (humble) opinion, there are two good things about the Tube. One, it is rather convenient: both quick (usually), easy to navigate (usually), and easy to access from most places in the city. And two, live music! It's nice to hear the song of a one-man band, a guitar and vocal duo, or in this case, the Scottish bagpipes echoing throughout the tunnels of the stations!

More photos!

The London School of Economics (or, the LSE)

The campus is plunked down right in the middle of the city, albeit somewhat seamlessly. It seems like another little section of central London. Location-wise, if you type in "the LSE, London, UK" in google maps you can see it just north of King's College and just off of Kingsway and Aldwych (the half-moon shaped road).

If you zoom in far enough, you'll find "Ye Olde White Horse," a fabulous place for having a pint after class, or a hot whisky on a cold day. Ahhh.

There are 83 other PhD students in Derek's Department alone (Geography). Yikes! One of the best things about this is that the students are from all over the world--from New Zealand to Italy to Switzerland to Nigeria to Mexico. It's a great way to gain some new perspectives, no matter who you are! Derek has been both taking and auditing classes this semester as well as working on his own research for his particular topic.

The picture above is one of the streets on campus, which harbours the Waterstones Bookstore as well as some admin buildings. This was actually taken on our very first day in London; this was our first view of the school also.

YUM!

Front: The most delicious portobella burger EVER.

Middle: Laura thoroughly enjoying the most delicious portobella burger EVER.

Back: St. Paul's Cathedral, a fantastic view from the window at Gargantuan Burger Kingdom (which is, incidentally, not the actual name of the restaurant but will hereafter be known as such, since the burgers were not JUST grandiose in taste but also in mass and volume.)