Wednesday, July 4th

Happy Fourth of July!

Well, its another cool and nice day here, though yesterday had the strangest weather: massive thunderstorms and hail, including enough hail to briefly coat the ground here in Oxford and more so in London. Its been working and more work at times, and spending far too much money, though I knew that would happen the first two weeks without access to a kitchen or a way to limit food costs. Besides miscellaneous purchases, I have spent close to 250 dollars in less than a week: a fan, computer repairs, cell phone, etc. I have been keeping a log of expenses, and it all adds up. Dinner last night alone was 16 GBP (which is a good portion of my per diem), though I did manage to go to a wine tasting with experts from London. It seemed a good deal: taste 20 wines, plus tapas, for 10 GBP. The wines were not cheap wines, but decent wines from all over the world and there were about 30 people there for the 2 hour long tasting. I never realized that even sipping and tossing out the extra, that is a lot of wine to taste. I now know why the experts tasted, swirled and spit the wine into a bucket, hardly swallowing anything in their glasses. Besides it was only a few ounces of wine, but I would say there were about 7-8 glasses total if you added up all the sample sizes.

My morning Civ class is continuing well enough, though about half the students did not bring the books they should have brought. So many of them are out and about looking for the books they need for their first assignment due next Friday. The History of Science class spent much of the class period on a field trip to the Science Museum in Oxford. The Science Museum is really like an attic, on three stories of the old Ashmolean Museum. What was neat, from my perspective, was the penicillin exhibit (the drug was tested and partially developed at Oxford!), and a chalk board with Einstein's theory of relativity on it from a lecture he gave in the early 1930s. After the museum closed I went across the street to a huge bookstore, deceptively huge, called Blackwell's. They have this cavernous underground chamber with over 3 miles of shelves, not to mention the three levels of normal space above ground.

Back to college, more work, and then the wine tasting and some dinner afterwards. I made it home by 11, and then worked and read for a few hours. In a lot of ways this is like a working vacation, including attending a conference. Some downtime along with a lot of work time. I met up with the tour coordinator, Heather, for lunch to discuss my role as assistant group leader, and since I am living on campus, what I should and shouldn't do with the students and how to handle problems. We did manage to clear up one thing I didn't know, but I can live with it. Tonight it is dinner in residence, and then I think I am going to try and get some work done. Tomorrow it is off to the Lion King in London. Honestly, I have never seen anything more than the old show at the Magic Kingdom, and have never seen the movie, so this will be an interesting experience. I'll let you know how things turn out...

Off to History of Science and then dinner...