Week three: One final student dinner, a fabulous play, and weekend adventures

Updates for the week (this seems to be the pattern these busy days):

Cryptography class: We talked about how to breaking Vigenere ciphers. Tricky stuff, but the students are doing great. The other day I heard one saying how annoyed they were spending so much time on these homework questions, but when they figured it out it was so rewarding. YES! Mathematicians in training! On Friday, we played with turning grilles which I made out out of graph paper using a little x-acto knife at 6AM (think a square with random holes cut in it placed over another square with scrambled letters on it) and we also discussed other transposition ciphers.

Stats: I can't figure this class out. It's 3 hours. I try to make it fun, but I feel like it's boring. We got to draw graphs in R this week, which I thought was fascinating! We do an hour of lecture/review. They work on homework for an hour or so, then it turns into lab time where they're working on R and I'm helping with any issues. Blah. I need to spice this class up some.

Tuesday: We had our last dinner for the students on Tuesday. I made some stuffed chicken breasts (okay...they were already stuffed by Tesco, but that saved me time), honey glazed carrots, a pear/blue cheese salad, and some tiny apple pies. It was a fun group. Ed even pulled out some kind of party trick involving silverware and the oven rack and shoelaces. Insane!

Wednesday: I spent most of the day working and I took a quick trip to the grocery store. I survived. Just bought a few things. Nothing too heavy. Only two bags worth. That's the way to go.

Thursday: Ed and I went to Chinatown for a great Sichuan pre-theater meal at Barshu and then met up w/ Zosia and John (the people in charge of the program over here) for bubble tea at Chew. I got a sesame bubble tea which had a bit of a weird texture, but it was still tasty. My favorite was still that random store in Chinatown. Then, it was time for Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The book is fabulous and is a must read. It has some great math in it and I was excited to see what made it into the play. Holy fright! It was amazing! The stage was amazing! The acting was amazing! The math they did put in was perfect including a post curtain call proof that appears in the appendix of the book. They even had a little prime numbers puzzle placed on random prime numbered seats in the theater. I stole one even though I wasn't in a prime number seat. Great play and the students also seemed to love it!

Friday: After class and some work, I headed out to Greenwich to meet up w/ the students who were doing a field trip there for Ed's classes. Greenwich is home to many things including the Prime Meridian and the Greenwich Mean Time Clock. They also have some pretty stellar/old telescopes and a camera obscura. It's a beautiful place w/ great views of the city. I might go back some time for a run. That night, my parents returned from Ireland and we had a nice dinner at The Founders Arms, overlooking the water. Mom had some mushroom and cheddar cobbler that was ridiculous!!

Saturday: Started my day w/ a nice run in Regent's Park. Saw some new parts of the park I hadn't seen before and continue to be impressed w/ that place. The parents were off to Paris today, so I went on a field trip w/ the students to Hampton Court Palace. This was home to Henry the VIII and William and Mary and a few other royals from back in the day. The palace was less cool than I imagined, but the gardens were fantastic! They had a cool maze (that apparently is in one of the Harry Potter movies) and the oldest/longest grape vine in the world planted back in the 1600s or something! Ridiculous stuff! Had some time Saturday to relax and catch up on work. Not a bad day.

More Regents Park

See the tiny H and A intertwined? They missed this one after Anne Bolyen was beheaded.

First tennis court

Sunday: Did a bus tour w/ the parents today to the Cotswolds. We had a hilarious tour guide that happen to also teach mathematics. Fascinating guy. It was quite fun to see some of the UK countryside. We learned many things including that there are 3 different 1 pound coins, the initials on post boxes tell you when the box was built (under what queen/king), and all sorts of political things. I enjoyed doing some shopping in the small towns. Bought some local sheep's cheese and a lightweight jacket/windbreaker and some Downton Abbey wine for next week's premiere episode. We didn't see any Downton stuff, but we did drive by the road you'd turn on to see the castle and such.  We even had some local trout for lunch. I wasn't a huge fan, but the dessert of apple/blackberry cobbler made up for it.

Cream tea with red fruit tea

Our lunch spot