Brighton, Cambridge, and London (Week 3).

Punting in Cambridge

Wow, its just now past the midway point of my program in London.  I cannot believe how fast the program went by.

I have been quite busy with work for my class for the first session.  This is all the readings we had for the first session, although to be fair some of it is suggested/recommended rather than required, so it isn't quite so much.  I also had a presentation on the last Monday and a paper due Thursday that I worked a lot on.  The paper was just about 8 pages, so it was quite fun to work on.  So, I'm sorry I haven't been the best at updating my blog.

Readings

On one of the Fridays I was here some friends and I went to Brighton, which is a "beach" pretty much due south of London.  It is a nice town, but coming originally from Florida it is a bit weird to be at a beach with large stones and pretty cold water.  Regardless we had a good time in Brighton and enjoyed the visit. 

British beach

Brighton

Street running towards the ocean

Stony beach

Band performing near the beach

Brighton again

My tutor for my first course is getting his Ph.D at Cambridge and he invited our class to visit Cambridge and go punting over the weekend.  The weather started out bad in London with a rainy forecast for Cambridge, so only 4 of us actually went, but we had a really good time.  We toured the city some, and having a university student helped get us into some of the nice colleges which could have been hard to get into otherwise.  Some of them are very, very nice with giant courtyards, dining halls, and cathedrals.  After touring the city some we went punting, which is using a pole to propel and steer the punt (the type of boat) around these canals around the city.  I got a chance to punt for a little bit and it was nice and pretty fun.

King's College Chapel

Gigantic courtyard (and there is at least one more) of one of the colleges

Dining hall of a college

Punting

More punting

 On Friday I went to Camden Town with some friends.  Camden Town is in kind of the Northern part of central London and has some canals and is well-known for its markets.  It has a food market with all sorts of ethnic foods and there is a large market with all sorts of clothing and other miscellaneous items.  So I ate a great Turkish wrap there for lunch and then we walked around the area a bit.

Waiting at the tube station

Camden Town

Camden Town again

Turkish wrap

Group around the piano

Sign on the tube

Phone booth picture, of course

So, this weekend was in between the first and the second session of Summer School here at Kings and so a lot of people left.  I stayed up pretty late both Friday and Saturday nights hanging out and saying bye to some of the departing people.

It has just been amazing how in only 3 weeks I have made so many great friends here, and unfortunately too many of them only stayed for one session.  I have made awesome friends from all over the world especially Russia, Bulgaria, Brazil, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, India, Tanzania, and Singapore, and many other places as well.  My class had some really awesome people and I think that we became pretty close in a short period. So its been a bit sad seeing a lot of these friends go as it seems as the first three weeks just totally flew past.  I really hope to stay in touch with all of these friends and hopefully see them all again sometime.

So Sunday a lot of the new people came in and some friends from first session and I ran into a lot of the new students so many of us went to a market by the apartments to get some food and then went to the Victoria Tower Gardens, which is a park just north of the Thames and just to the side of the Palace of Westminster.  So it was nice to meet some of the new people and just spend some time outside hanging out in one of the little green areas in London.

Spanish paella

So, again, I am now past the midway point of my time here in London and there is still so much I need to do.  I need to see a few plays, go on the London Eye, visit Scotland, visit a few more museums/spend more time at the Imperial War Museum, go inside St. Paul's, have a picnic at Hyde Park, and many more things.  My new class doesn't seem as intensive, so hopefully I will have some more time to explore the city and do some fun things.

Brussels

Our Class at SHAPE

My first out of two courses is titled "Managing International Conflicts: Institutions and Practice of International Security".  Because of this, our class took a trip to Brussels since there are a good amount of international institutions which work there. 

We had a very early train to Brussels from London, so I had to get up around I think 4:20-4:25 in order to get outside to the taxi to take us to the train station. So, it was quite an early morning for me.  I actually didn't sleep at all on the train, but preferred to read and look out at the countryside (especially in England before the Chunnel).

First we went to NATO's SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe), which is located just a bit outside of Brussels.  Basically the name describes what the institution is and does, being in charge of the allied operations worldwide.  We weren't really able to spend much time here or do too much.  We pretty much arrived there and picked up our host at the gate who escorted us in front of the building where we took a picture (the one above).  So I think they wanted us to think it was just as a memento, but I actually believe they just wanted a photo record of all the people going into the headquarters... Regardless, we then went into a room and had a presentation by our host on just kind of the basics of NATO and SHAPE. 

Pend and Strategic Concept from SHAPE

Flags and plaque in the lobby

More flags including the US

 From SHAPE we went back to Brussels and to the European Commission.  Here we had three speakers.  One talked about the Cooperation with international partners, one about the EU's Humanitarian aid policy and one about the institutions of the EU.  We got a fair amount of handouts at the European Commission, including a 2GB flash drive and a vast assortment of other things.

Class at the European Commission

Inside the European Commission

Flags of the EU

Goodies from the European Commission

The EU

One of the other EU buildings

After the European Commission we went to the main square in Brussels, but we were only there for like 40 minutes so we could only just walk around.  I was only just able to get a waffle and go to a pub before having to take a taxi to the train station where everyone made it just in time to make the train.

Some of the class in Brussels

Belgian Waffle!

St. Pancras Station.

I will put up a new post soon with more stuff from the last week and a half hopefully in the next day or so.