Busy first week of classes!

Hello blog followers! Sorry for the delay in writing. I've been a busy bee. Here's a quick recap:

Sunday: Chocolate tour of London via a Groupon. Great stuff! Had many truffles and some amazing ice cream at Freggo. Malbec and berries. Irish cream. Chocolate and almonds. Yummy! Not as great in terms of variety as the chocolate tour of Austin, but still fun. Thought of my friend Romi a lot. :)

Monday: Bank holiday here. And it rained ALL day. Like poured down rain. This was fine by me because I had all kinds of stuff to do. Did an amazing 2 mile run in the rain at 7am. No one was out along my normal river route so it was so nice. Amazing to run again for the first time in 2 weeks! So, yes the foot is feeling better! I finished class prep for Tuesday, got a math research question figured out finally, watched a few episodes of Scandal on Amazon prime and did a few other things for class. Very productive day. (Amazon prime note: bought a few running gear things on Amazon and got a free 30-day free trial of Amazon prime. BOOM! Found Scandal on there and am loving it.)

Tuesday: First day of class! Walked to IES and got there around 8:30 even though they don't open officially until 9, but that was fine because John was arriving at the same time. Class at 9. Have fun with Skytale ciphers, definitions, and Polybius ciphers. Then, I had the rest of the day free. I did a bit of work on my research again (seriously...this is like a mini-sabbatical!), took a nap, and prepped the house for our first student dinner. We're having the students over in groups of 8-9 so we can get to know them and help them adjust to London. Tuesday night was Ed's cooking night. He made quiche and salad and we had Gu for dessert. He also made cute little menus that the students loved. It was a fun time.

Wednesday: No classes today, so many fun adventures for me. Went to the grocery on the bus so I could get things for my Thursday dinner. Did a new store that was right at a bus stop, but still hated it. Too heavy carrying all that on the bus and from the bus home. Blah! Back to online delivery (especially for these dinners for 10+ people). After that, I did some class prep for Thursday.

Thursday: Class 9-12. Tough to plan for 3 hours. I think I got about 2.5 with a couple of small breaks. Next time I'll plan more. Applied statistics this time. Only 8 students in there, so it's fun. Basically it was a review day and we spent a lot of time talking about their first project. Good stuff. Then, it was home to prep for dinner #2. My turn to cook. I decided to make breakfast tacos, monkey bread, and a fruit salad. Too complicated! It was sooo much work and in a kitchen I didn't know w/ products I didn't know...it wasn't very fun. Whatever. I managed and it was all delicious. Serious work though! After dinner, we headed over to Shakespeare's Globe Theater to see Julius Caesar. The theater itself was amazing and I loved the set up and the vibe, but I am just not a Shakespeare fan and so I left after the first act. Plus, I hadn't slept well the night before and had been busy cooking and everything all day, so I was exhausted. I came home...attempted a FaceTime happy hour w/ Fumiko and Carina (fail...but next time we'll figure it out) and then watched the first half of the Aggie game until 1:30AM. Probably not the best idea, but it was relaxing and fun so worth it.

Friday: Class today. Fun time w/ Caesar ciphers and other monalphabetic substitution ciphers. Walked through the Covent Garden area on my way home and stopped at The Tea House to buy some tea for a colleague. Great place. I bought two other teas for myself and a tea infuser since I couldn't find one in this house! But, it's super cute. The infuser is shaped like a house and has the word TEA on it. Super cute!!

Tonight, we'll have dinner w/ Reggie and Steve from Austin. Reggie was one of the faculty doing the London program last semester and is on sabbatical this semester and has returned to London to do some research. Awesome.

Students!

I've spent the last three days hanging out with our students! Most of them arrived Wednesday and the last one yesterday (as planned). Thursday we had a little orientation and tour of their living space. It was nice to see where they are living and to see that they had all arrived, although they did look a bit tired.

Friday it was a full day of orientation at a college near the IES center. The students seemed to manage pretty well after only one full day in the city.

After orientation, I had my own fun that night and went to see The Bodyguard. On my way into the office that morning, I stopped at the day seats line and waited about 45 minutes until they opened at 10. I scored a front row seat for the show for 25 pounds and it was amazing! The acting wasn't always great, but the signing was awesome and it was all Whitney Houston songs. The lead was apparently the winner of the 5th season of Britain's X-Factor. Loved it.

Saturday was a bus tour of the city which was really fun. Took some pics of the kids enjoying the sites.

Apparently they use this house in Downton Abbey. I don't recognize it, so I'll need to pay closer attention this season.

We followed the band back. Fun times.

Then, Ed and I had lunch at Honest Burger (we were starving as it was almost 1:30). Then, we took a nice long walk to the Wallace Collection where we had tea with the students. We passed by lots of cool things on the way there including The British Library with this great statue of Issac Newton and a beautiful pub with all these hanging flowers.

Tea was great. I had yummy fresh mint tea. At least 3 cups of it. And many treasures. I think the students enjoyed it as well, but maybe weren't prepared to eat that much. :)

Last night was the Doctor Who premiere. It's the first episode I've ever seen of a show that has apparently been on for like 50 years. Fascinating. 

The students are coming! The students are coming!

Today, the students are arriving/have arrived! Crazy! We'll see them tomorrow morning for some of their first orientation sessions. Exciting!

But, this means my time for class prep is ticking away. I was a busy bee Monday and Tuesday and barely left the house (Monday-to take Jodi to the tube stop and Tuesday-to pick up dinner at the grocery store on the corner). Today, I did a bit of work in the AM and decided to go for a walk to test out my foot.

I took the bus out to this little pop-up shop called The Cornershop. It's an art installation that is only here for one month. This lady sewed/knitted/crafted all the items you'd find in a regular corner store and then put them on display! Cigarettes, gum, candy, kitty litter, tampons, newspapers...you name it and she has a felt version of it in the store! Super fun. And you can even buy stuff. :) Super cool.

Then, I took a stroll down Old Street. A new part of town for me. Found a great Vietnamese kitchen and had a yummy pork banh mi sandwich for lunch. Then, I continued my walk home and planned on stopping at the Modern Pantry for some scones to take home. Well, it turns out you can only get the scones in the restaurant with tea. Blah. No thanks, so I kept walking. But, on my walk I found To a Tea. Yes! Got a cup of sparkling fruit tea and two scones (one raisin, one plain) and made my own afternoon tea at home while I worked. Boom! The tea was delicious!

Pics of the students and our fun orientation activities to come soon!

Jodi and Alison eat their way through London!

Over the last two days I've eaten way too much food. Way too much. But it has been delicious. And, since I'm not running now I'm going to need to find some other kind of exercise!! Speaking of running, quick foot update: after a full day of walking with Jodi yesterday it feels MUCH better! SO excited about that. I'll take at least another week off of running and then might try out a couple of miles here and there. But, I'll be careful.

Back to Jodi and Alison's London food tour:

Saturday's agenda was full of markets and other deals. Started the day at the TKTS booth. We were in line by 9:15 with our coffee/tea for the 10AM opening. Great move! The line was RIDICULOUS when we left. Jodi's never seen a fancy show before, so we thought this would be fun. It's summer and it was a Saturday so the selection wasn't great. Plus, we wanted a deal. So, after much debate we went with this play "The 39 Steps" that claimed to be the best comedy in London. More on this later, but let's say we were excited that we scored the tickets at a deal and were out of there by 10:30.

Then, it was off to Borough Market. I've talked about this treasure before and knew Jodi had to experience it. She loved it! We got this great box of fresh salads to share. Then, I got a roasted hog sandwich that had some sort of apple sauce on it. Jodi got a duck sandwich that was yummy. Sangria and Prosecco spritzer and a gross cider. Then, Jodi bought some fancy chocolates and I got a giant chocolate cookie that lasted the rest of the day. It was my snack food to keep me from getting angry and it was perfect in every way.

Then, it was off to Alfies Antique Market. Not as cool as the other markets and more like an antique mall and not stuff we could really buy and take home to Texas. Blah. But, we took lots of buses to get there and back into town, so that was fun. And we were near Baker Street, so we saw the Sherlock statue. Next, we stopped at Covet Garden because I wanted to pick up some tea and have Jodi see another market. This place was great. Small. More crafty. We took a break at Punch and Judy's, a nice little pub. I had a toffee cider that was decent.

Then, it was off to the river. We walked by Tower of London which has this amazing art exhibit happening right now on the outside of the walls. We took lots of pics and then it was off to the water.

The plan was to take the City Cruises boat to Greenwich and then down to Westminster, but I guess we bought the wrong ticket and we ended up going just to Westminster and then to the London Eye, which was fine. We got off there and we walked home to drop off some goods.

Then, it was off to dinner. We knew we needed a snack, so we decided to pick up food at the little food stands along the river. We started w/ chips and guac to get our Tex-Mex fix. Decent. Then, we had a plan to get some Lobster Mac and Cheese we'd seen on our way home, but it was sold out by then. Total bust! So, we just started walking towards the theater. At the last minute, we found a pizza place that could get us in and out in 30 minutes, so we did that. Then, it was off to the theater.

It was great to sit and do nothing. But this play was really strange. I've now heard from multiple sources you have to know some things about Hitchcock to really get it, but we didn't and that must make it worse. The comedy was more like slap-stick comedy. Just a total bust. Thankfully it was a little under 2 hours. We couldn't have taken much more. But, if that was the worst of our day we can't complain.

We had a bit of a crazy incident in the night, but all is good and we were ready for our second day in London.

Headed out around 10:30AM to the Foodie Festival I had purchased tickets for. The festival was in Battersea park, a lovely park I ran through last week. It was sunny and beautiful outside. We walked around and saw all the vendors trying to make a decision on what we were going to eat. I went with a lamb gyro and a sweet potato sushi wrap. Jodi went with lamb burger and Vietnamese spring rolls and a giant fruit filled crepe. I tasted the crepe, but was focused on trying another cider (This one was a raspberry one...gross again) and a blackberry and elderflower Pimm's cup which was delicious.  Then, we bought all kinds of yummy treasures for dinner (olives, sausage, bread, cheese).

Then, we walked/took buses towards our next food adventure--high tea. I had a Groupon for tea at The Royal Trafalgar Hotel. It was decent. Sparkling wine, cranberry and raspberry tea, finger sandwiches (which we mostly skipped because we were too full), yummy scones, brownies, lemon cupcake, and a cup of strawberry cheesecake treasure. It was fine for the price we paid, but some time I need to do like legit high tea.

Then, we went to Oxford Street to do a bit of shopping. We stopped in H&M and Topshop. Just for Jodi to do some big city shopping.

Home. Last night was a work night for Jodi. I was working on figuring out a Fall Break plan. Then, it was snack time/wine time. Jodi headed out this morning and I went back to work. But, we stopped at the grass covered furniture before she left.