Testing, Testing... 1, 2, 3...

Is this thing on??

I'm thinking about restarting this blog. I was good at keeping it up in Britain (ahem... sort of) and then promptly got lazy when we got back to Kansas.

Two and a half years later, it occurs to me that maybe some friends and family are interested in some of the daily happenings around here. And maybe not, but sometimes I feel like I have things to say that are too short for Facebook and Twitter, so here we are.

This first post is admittedly very boring because I just want to see if I set up the Networked Blogs correctly. Excitement to come, I promise!

Happy Saturday. :)

Ok, I know...

I am the worst at blogging, ever.

I still have two weeks worth of our Britain trip to post here!!

Sorry for the serious major slacking.

Posts coming very soon!

Loooooooong Weekend!

The weekend of July 16-18 was the long weekend for this program, which means that Jeremy and the students had Friday off so they could travel further afield.

On Thursday, we all went down to London to take a tour of the Middle Temple and the Old Bailey. You may remember that this is a History/Pre-Law program, so that explains the legal theme for the day. We went to the Middle Temple last year but this year's tour guide was much better.

Before we start the tour, here's our group of students plus Sheyda. Jeremy's behind the camera so he's not pictured. Notice the small number of girls again this year - where are all the girl lawyers-to-be, seriously?




For this one, Sheyda directed them to make a face (i.e. act like they do in class, haha!).

Last year, our tour took us by the Temple Church but we didn't actually go inside. Those who have seen the Da Vinci Code (or read the book and skipped the movie, like me) may remember that this is where the Holy Grail is supposedly hidden.

This year, we actually got to go inside and see the beauty of this church. It is shared by members of the Middle Temple and the Inner Temple, which are essentially training grounds for England's barristers. As an aside, if you're curious about how all of that process works, go here for more info: http://www.middletemple.org.uk/

The doors of this church. You may have noticed that I have a thing for taking pictures of cool old doors....

The organ

Beautiful stained glass and the altar

This drawing shows what the Temple Church looked like before the Great Fire of 1666. They obviously didn't rebuild the dome, but otherwise it looks much the same.

The grave with no effigy, or where Dan Brown says the Holy Grail is. The guide assures us it is not there, but didn't tell us how he knew that, so draw your own conclusions...

Looking back through the gorgeous church. Fun fact: The Middle Temple members sit on one side and the Inner Temple members sit on the other. This is true all of the time, even when one is buried. Talk about a rivalry!

Then we went into the Middle Temple. It's hard to describe just how cool this place is, and of course, the pictures don't do any justice to it. We got to eat lunch here again this year and it was so scrumptious!!

Jeremy modeled a barrister's wig during part of the presentation. It's interesting how different he looks, isn't it?

After the Middle Temple, we went over to the Old Bailey, which is a famous courthouse and jail. It is a really cool building, but since it's still in use you can't take any pictures. I wasn't really keen on checking out the jail experience firsthand, so just imagine an awesome building. The tour here was a special private tour led by a judge who came to KU as an exchange student in the 1960's.

After the tour, we said goodbye to the students and headed out for a long weekend on our own.

Walking in London, we came across this sign. It turns out that we were at the spot where John Wesley, founder of Methodism, experienced his conversion. Very, very cool.

This was another monument to his conversion experience, right outside the Museum of London.

The Museum of London was our first stop for the afternoon. Jeremy and I tend to take forever in museums because we actually look at and read everything, so we only had time on this first visit to see things up through the Middle Ages. There was a lot of really neat things in there that related to the history of the city, like:

Viking armor

A piece of painted Roman wall that somehow survived in one intact piece until it was discovered in the 1980's

A mock Roman kitchen

A view of the original London City Wall, right outside the Museum's window

That night it turns out our hotel was overbooked (thanks for nothing, Orbitz) so we found our way to a hostel. We figured we just needed a shower and sleep before boarding our train the next morning. It was actually quite nice and we got a private room... with bunk beds. I called the top bunk, of course! So if you're ever needing a place to stay in London that's cheap, and you don't mind bunk beds and a community shower room, the Ace Hotel out in Kensington was a good deal.

The next morning we headed out on a train to Manchester. We had a very nice conversation the whole way up with a couple who lives in Manchester and gave us some great local recommendations. Molly and Duncan were just headed home from their three week holiday in Morocco - long holidays and central location just another two of those great advantages of living in the UK that Americans don't get. Super nice people and it made for a great ride.

Two and a half hours later, we were in Manchester. Our first stop there was the Urbis. Our guidebook had listed this as having a museum exhibition inside but Duncan had texted a friend who works there and found out the exhibition was no longer on. However, they did have a great restaurant at the top of the building so we went to check it out anyway.

I took this picture in one of the rail stations, because this map was made entirely of tile.

Friday afternoon we went to the Museum of Science and Industry. They also have exhibits there on the history of Manchester as a city. Manchester is definitely a working-class town and big pieces of the Industrial Revolution happened right here. The museum itself was in an old train station complex, so that was neat in and of itself. A few things we saw:

An early time clock. This still makes a "ding" noise when you stamp it, which every kid in the museum (including me) had to try.

Manchester also has been a target in the past because of its importance to England's industry. They were also targeted during the Blitz in World War II, and more recently have been bombed by the IRA. This stop light was from the IRA bombing in 1996.

Another part had a zillion old planes. Here is Jeremy with an RAF plane.

Later that evening, we wandered around the Manchester City Center. This is the cathedral.

The cathedral with the Ferris wheel in the background

We happened upon these pubs which were founded in the 1600's. They actually survived both the Blitz and the IRA bombing, and were taken apart and re-pieced together as the City Center was rebuilt.

It was a requirement, then, that we had to eat at one of these fantastically old pubs.

The beams upstairs were a little low!

This is the John Rylands Library. We didn't have time to go inside as it's only open a few hours a day, but it was gorgeous to take in from the outside. Our guidebook said (basically) Mrs. Rylands loved her husband who died and they both really loved books, so she had this built in his memory. It's now part of the University of Manchester.

Super cute shrub at the library

As we continued our walk, we came across this statue of Abraham Lincoln. What? I know! It turned out that he had written to the people of Manchester thanking them for their support despite the hardships that it caused them. Manchester was home to a thriving textiles industry, which needs cotton to survive. Generally people don't take actions that can make their suppliers angry, so it is interesting that they were supporters of the Union rather than the Confederacy. It might also have a tiny bit to do with Liverpool, a nearby rival, being such key players in the slave trade... but who knows for sure. This monument was a gift to the city in the 1980's.

Manchester City Hall is quite beautiful as well.

The next morning, we took a train over to the city of Liverpool for the day. Liverpool is important because 1) it has a big port that played key roles in the slave trade and immigration to the New World and 2) because it was the home of the Beatles. Some would say maybe I should reverse those two... which we did at least for tourism purposes while we were there.

You can spend as much time and money as you want with the Beatles while you're in Liverpool - they have everything from basic introductions to huge, 10 hour tours. We went with just the middle of the road typical attractions.

First stop was the Beatles Story. Fantastic museum! It houses a ton of Beatles memoribilia and also serves as the departure point for the Beatles tours that go around town to various places.

The Casbah Coffee Club where some of the Beatles appeared as "The Quarrymen".

The Cavern, where the Beatles first played

An actual recording device used at Abbey Road studios

Jeremy succumbs to Beatlemania!

Keri at the Yellow Submarine

Imagine memorial

Appropriate, no?

Our next stop was the nearby Merseyside Maritime Museum. We saw great exhibits on the Battle of the Atlantic, the development of shipping industries, the Titanic, and the history of the slave trade.

German U-boat bomb

Implements used in the slave trade

Replica of an immigrant ship... not comfy!

This was the Chinese gate at the entrance to Liverpool's Chinatown.

Liverpool Cathedral. This is the largest church in England and the largest Anglican church in the world. It's also fairly new - built in 1902.

The Jesus Welcoming Statue and HUGE doors - see tiny Jeremy for perspective!

This is also a very large, very gorgeous organ. We happened to enter the Cathedral during Evensong and heard it in action. AWESOME stuff.

Modern art depiction of the Good Samaritan story

We then headed to Cavern Quarters, the area of town where the Cavern club was. You may remember from earlier that the Cavern was where the Beatles first played. It actually has closed, but there is now a Cavern Club in its place to honor the Beatles.

This is the pub where the Beatles often ate in between performances. Unfortunately they no longer serve food, so we didn't get to eat there.

John Lennon art made out of pennies

John

Paul

George

and Ringo

For our final part of our weekend, we took in the other reason Manchester is famous: Manchester United. I must confess here that I'm not a huge "football" (soccer) fan. I keep trying to make my brain work around the game like American (real) football and it just doesn't compute in the same way. I just wanted that disclaimer out there in case I mess up some important ManU facts - don't be mad at me, diehard fans!

Old Trafford is quite large by European standards. It holds about 76,000 fans for a game. It felt about the size of Texas Stadium but apparently that only held 66,000. Arrowhead Stadium holds 77,000 so it's a fair comparison (even though Old Trafford felt smaller). We toured the stadium but did not see a game because Man U happened to be playing in the USA - in fact, they were in Kansas City just a few days after our visit.

Here are some shots from around the stadium:

This board had a list of all players who had played for Man U and also played representing their country in competition. Here you can see that Tim Howard played 14 games for the US while playing at Man U. The second column is blank because he's still representing the US in competitions.

Jeremy sitting at Rooney's spot in the player's dressing area

Jeremy showing the team what the next play should be. "See, guys, you should go here and then kick the ball this way towards this goal."

Now the more typical American approach to soccer... hm, you can't use your hands?

Don't I look like a reserve?

The museum was set up very nicely and described all of the highlights of Man U's history. We thought it was a little like it would be if the Yankees had a museum - tons of greats have played for them and there's a lot of sports history there.

I think they might be pretty good....

The remainder of our afternoon we spent at the Imperial War Museum North. This is part of the same system as the Imperial War Museum in London as well as the Churchill War Rooms, and like its sister museums, it is amazingly well done. One of the really neat things about this one in particular was "The Big Experience" - every hour they would dim all of the lights in the room and project images on the walls with accompanying audio. All of it was from primary sources relating to war. One related what it was like to live in Britain during WW2, and one related what it is like to be a child during war. It's impossible to capture an experience like this museum in a few pictures, but here's a couple of neat things we saw while we were there.

Anti-war posters from the 1960's.

A searchlight that was used at the Berlin Wall, believed to be one of only two still in existence

The deck of cards used in the War on Terror that we all heard so much about on the news

Another neat thing about the Imperial War Museum North was its modern architecture. You could ride in a small, shaky elevator to the top to check out the view. By the way, this is a "nice" day by Manchester standards, as it had only rained once.

And this is what the building looked like from the outside. Beautiful!

The remainder of the weekend involved a lot of trains and a return to Cambridge.

Coming soon: Cambridge, week 3!