Kickin it in London

I'm still just hanging out in London. A couple of days ago Melissa and I took a little day trip to Brighton which was simply lovely. The weather was perfect - sunshine and big puffy clouds. The train ride was cheap and short and we ate deliciously sinful fried food - including those doughnuts that they make in an automatic machine as you wait...so fresh...so greasy...so good. The ocean was perfectly blue and smelled salty and sharp.

My trip to Crete with my mom is planned and set. We'll be staying with George, a family friend and local professor in mechanical engineering. It will be a wonderful way to spend the rest of my time between programs.

I am starting to look forward to Cambridge. I found out one of my sorority sisters from Phi Sigma Rho will be studying through the same program, though I haven't found out if she is taking the same classes as I am.

Organizing the trips that I have taken, getting my self from place to place and figuring out where to stay, how to use public transport in a dozen countries in languages I generally don't understand has given me an immense sense of both confidence and humility. I have faith that I can get around on my own. I don't need a trip planner, and organizer or a tour guide. (Just need the internet! Thank God for Google!) I am also humbled. The generosity of the people I have met and the complexity of the world have left me in awe. The world is a very complicated place, yet we all somehow get by. People design public transport to be intuitive - just the fact that it was just as easy to take the Metro in Paris as it was in Barcelona as it was in London - despite the language barrier - speaks to the robust, thoughtful, design of the the system.

The same is true of the rail networks between the countries. I am even more awed that my Eurail guide - presumably printed at the start of 2009 - contains 99% accurate information for hundreds of train routes down to the very minute for trains that run 7 days a week all year round for 21 countries speaking a dozen languages. Hail Technology!

Long time no post!

I haven't posted in quite a while, mostly because I've been traveling. After my exam, my friend Melissa and I flew to Cairo, Egypt (see picture!), then Istanbul Turkey, Paris, France and then I took the train to Nice and Barcelona. 17days in all. I was quite exhausted after all of it and needed pretty much a full week to decompress and process the experience. I can't say I have fully processed the amazing journey yet. Things went wrong (food poisoning, missed trains and lost luggage) but that is all part of the experience I guess! I read "Antony and Cleopatra" a bit trite to read in Egypt perhaps but a classic. I also read "The Alchemist," "Dreams from my Father" and started "Hard Times" by Dickens. I wrote in my journals and took loads of pictures. Melissa and I had a good time until Istanbul when she got sick. I saw the Blue Mosque though, the Aya Sophia and the Topkapi Palace, but Melissa stayed in bed. I checked on her between each. I went on to Paris alone and met up with Jennifer Wilcox, a friend of mine from UM who is studying French there. In Nice I met two really cool girls Lauren and Katie who were staying at the same Hostel. We had the best day just hanging out on the beach and ate some great French food with wine that evening. Then I went on to Barcelona and met just loads of fun people - a group of girls from University of Chicago and Steve from London and Trever the Wolverine Fan from Tennessee . Steve and Trever wandered Barcelona with me on my last day, though we were slow and tired from the infamous Spanish night life that we all partook in the night before- tapas and dancing!

The Blue Mosque - Istanbul, Turkey

Paris, France

Nice, France

Chocolate con Churros - Barcelona, Spain

Back in London and I'm starting to miss science. I've been reading and visiting galleries (I've been to the National Gallery at three times since I got back on the 14th.) seeing shows (Thriller Live with the API group) and watching the BBC (there is quite a scandal over here involving a bunch of MP's claiming expenses that they shouldn't have - it's been going on for a while but has reached boiling point). This is all well and good, but I find myself watching TED talks and reading journal articles...yes reading journal articles in my free time...for fun! I had forgotten that I loved science so much. In engineering at Michigan there was always so much to learn so quickly. It was all so serious and important and stressful. Now, given so much time to just relax and unwind, exams and papers finished, I find myself drawn back to my research and what I plan on studying when I get home. I am grateful for this down time. With nothing to do I have re-centered myself and found myself again. I know what I want to do and why. Truly, I have remembered that I am going to graduate school because I love what I do. I don't love the stress, exams, homework assignments, but I love the science.

At the same time I have on my book shelf: "Hard Times" by Dickens, "The Man Who Would Be King" Rudyard Kipling, "Daisy Miller and Other Stories" by Henry James. I also try to go to one gallery or museum in London every other day (I tried everyothere day but it was too much). The National Gallery is my favorite and I like the Impressionist wing. Today my "assignment" is to find an Opera for my friend Margaret and I to see, and plan the trip for when my mom comes. Melissa and I have also been talking about taking the train to Brighton for a day - sometime before I leave London. Life in London is this wonderful woven tapestry of new and old, beautiful and ugly, serious and sill and I feel like I am a thread being stitched into it, and it is being stitched into me.