August 1 and Done

Left: back in June, I got to show Olga Alexeeva, an Emory SURE grad from my lab last summer, and friends around Oxford. This is us in front of the historic Sheldonian Theatre, where I saw my PI (Robin Dunbar) give a talk at a Veritas Forum on social networks when I first got here.








Below: Luke Reimer, another rising Emory senior, is preparing his thesis at the Wellcome Trust this summer and showed me around London for a few days. Here we are at the gate of Buckingham Palace. I have been back on other trips for:
1) week-long conference at University of Greenwich on Social Network Analysis.
2) the unveiling of the 2012 Olympic medals by the Royal Princess at the "One Year to Go" ceremony. Afterwards, I went to the local pub with an Ernst & Young investment banker who just moved here from Canada. Lovely chap looking forward to enjoying the UK culture as much as I have!



Immediate Left: Me, also in London, out in front of an old library @ the School for Oriental & African Studies. I've been extremely impressed by all the libraries in Oxford as well. Underground tunnels connect the tourist-magnet Bodleian Library in Radcliffe Camera to some of the others. I've spent most of my time at the Social Science Library, but have also been to the Missions & Union library.




Left: At a proper British Bar-Be-Que, eating Bangers & Mash followed by chocolate digestives w/ marshmallows (instead of a s'more). All the parties in England I've gone to in England, especially with church folk, are better than any I've ever been too - the quick flow from everyone chatting to organizing a game of "spin-around-fifty-times-then-stand-on-a-chair-without-using-your-hands-and-without-falling-off," to eating dessert and singing happy birthday or congratulating friends on an engagement, then dancing, and back to chatting away... is incredible.





Left: def my best night of the summer (though many others have come close). It's hard to compare to the honor of sitting at the High Table in Magdalen College with Professor Dunbar and colleague Cathal Power (Irish postdoc), enjoying a lovely dinner, retiring to another room for dessert & port/madeira, soaking in history of former fellows in the common room, then walking beautiful grounds - deer park.