Some worthwhile stuff going on, I think

Pretty interesting to be plowing my way through this iteration of the GT, worried that I'm forgetting something but basically having some of the routines down. Then something weird comes up as it always does. I'm writing this on the eve of our Oxford field trip, after having successfully crammed in their first-week writing exercise in class, our Globe Theater expedition to see a wackily musical modern-dress postracial genderbending performance of Twelfth Night, and a walk back to the St Pauls tube station.  The weather has heated up, and my room is again a furnace despite my re-installation of cardboard wedges propping open various doors.  It's right at the edge of what I can stand, actually, but I'll just keep taking showers and hoping for a break.

Thought I'd thrown in a couple of funny shots from the past few days.  For some reason the sight of a £300,000 Ferrari in downtown London just epitomizes the craziness of this megalopolis.  Is there a stupider way to spend (and risk) your money?  Dunno.  Of course one of things that I'm noticing around here is that, along with the cigarette smoke that still clings to the gargoyles who hang around just outside buildings, and the clouds emanating from the vape-ers as they ply their trade, there's enough dope being smoked in the nearby parks, mostly by construction workers on their breaks, that you can get a contact high just by walking through Brunswick Square between our dorm and the classroom at the School of Pharmacy.  One wonders what impact this has on the productivity of this cohort of workers...

For some reason I was stoked to see how game these kids were with navigating the Tube on their second day here--this was on Monday after we went to see Wicked, the show tickets arranged for us by our London vendor.  This shot is blurred because I was walking backward, but it somehow captures some good energy.

Dana-the-onsite-coordinator took this one yesterday I think--they are taking responsibility for arranging their own outings, and they are apparently honoring my exhortation to avoid letting cliques or in-group-out-group distinctions poison the collective vibe.

The production at the Globe was a great example of good attitude: I hadn't experienced being a groundling in a long time, but since I hadn't been able to splurge on seats for everyone, I had to count on a handful of folks being willing to join me in the courtyard.  It was wonderful to be so close to the actors, the music was a trip, and even with some loss of subtlety on the wordplay aspect...  The students that I talked to were blown away and surprised at how much fun they had at a Shakespeare play--let's hope the trip to Oxford goes as well.

They've all arrived, and we're off

In an hour and a half I will go downstairs and gather people up for their "Welcome dinner" a few blocks away at a none-too-fancy eatery, figuring that spending a ton of money on a nice dinner in London is a waste, especially for a bunch of jet-lagged students who have been staggering around on the "Hop-On-Hop-Off" Bus as much of the day as they could stand.  For me that was about four hours' worth: a remarkable percentage took me up on my "Meet me at 9 AM for a 9:15 departure, meet Dana at 10" offer, and we enjoyed a picture-perfect sunny-but-not-too-hot morning on the top deck, eventually ending up on the included Thames cruise from Westminster Pier down to Tower Bridge just after midday.  In between, some unthinkably crowded conditions around Buckingham Palace, where roads are blocked off (presumably to protect crowds from attacks) and the police presence is extremely high.

Yesterday was largely devoted to checking students in all afternoon, taking the load off the front hall staff here and repeating our spiel about not losing the door key or the turnstile key, not losing the Oyster Card (for the Tube and buses), and comporting themselves in a non-obnoxious manner.  They were supposed to be arriving between 2 and 5, but we had a bunch of students waiting to check in by 1:30 (thankfully our block of rooms was ready), several students pinging us by text with stories of lost luggage and delayed flights in Newark and Shannon, and fairly manageable chaos.  However, by the time we finished the short On-Site Orientation downstairs in the early evening, all but one--a fellow flying in from Sydney who had warned us a month ago that his exam schedule had been changed--had safely arrived.

Meeting all these students and trying to learn names is always a challenge for me, and I know it tires me out.  As usual some names come easily and I associate the faces immediately; alas, there are always a few for whom I have to resort to guessing or finesse to avoid busting myself admitting I don't know them.  Hard to get a read on the group.  There are some loud kids, but they are fairly nice so far.  There's a couple of the keep-an-eye-on-this-one variety, including a frat boy (probably econ or poli sci major, a type I know well from all my years teaching writing for future / wannabe lawyers) who has a strange oily demeanor that mixes a little too much praise than is comfortable.  The gender balance, as usual, skews to daughters, whose parents don't want to send their children off to Europe unsupervised, to the tune of 23 to 6.  I've already made an effort to continue my strategy of hopping determinedly from group to group, not only to avoid the appearance of having "teacher's pets" but also simply to try to get to know as many people as I can.  There are some thoughtful kids here, though who knows what lurks for me.

Tomorrow is our first class session, at 10 (I am experimenting with starting a bit later, since apparently the London weather forecast is for not too hot weather, meaning a later start is probably OK), and in the evening we will head down to Victoria and take in Wicked, the live-theater piece of our London vendor's offering (these tickets, along with the bus tickets, were some of the items passed along to me in St Pancras on Thursday afternoon post-Eurostar).  One of the tasks I have to execute between now and then is to compile an updated first week plan, as the pieces seem to have fallen into place (Tuesday, British Museum in the afternoon; Thursday, Globe theater Twelfth Night in the afternoon; Friday, Oxford excursion; weekend, open until a Sunday evening orientation before the Paris leg begins with a Eurostar trip).

The reality of this job is a strange mix of anxiety and pre-planning, and relief when a transition or an outing goes well.  Yes, I am already trying to sort out exactly which evening to try to slot in our fancier dinner in Paris: it can't be too close to Bastille Day (which is a Friday), but if it's the same day as the Versailles field trip, I dunno.  Might not be a good idea to put it the night before Versailles (though there won't be any of wine paid for by Uncle Charles, they may elect to cap the night with more lubricated pursuits as in past years, since they are dressed up for it), and the restaurants aren't super happy to accommodate a huge group on the weekend.

Realizing I haven't included any pictures yet.  I decided not to carry my camera, so everything is iPhone this year.  Yesterday morning I snapped a couple of shots that show some of the peculiar character of this place:

 This is the view out through the conservatory from the dining room in the basement.  Wonderful fresh air actually--but in good British style note the signage everywhere: No Smoking (that's a plus) but also the smaller signs all read, "Strictly No Food Allowed In The Courtyard Thank You."  Let's call those un-picnic tables....

And just to give a nice sense of the monkish digs:

Grand Tour 2017 Begins

Looking back I don't see any entries from my wonderful experience doing the Grand Tour two years ago.  Not exactly clear why I feel motivated to re-start the blog this year, but here goes.

I'm ensconced in a micro-"studio" up on the top floor of the International Hall residence-annex at  University College, London, having EuroStar'd under the Channel from Brussels, where I'd gotten over my jet lag with my brother Julius.  Though the time is nearly 10PM the sky is still light--no matter how many times I experience this strange phenomenon of far-Northern life, it still takes me by surprise. There's an ever-present hum emanating from my tiny bathroom, because the exhaust fan is on constantly--supposedly to guard against condensation--and I have already done some prospecting with my Swiss Army knife phillips-head for ways to disable it temporarily, as even with the door closed it is almost as loud as the jets passing in the distance.

I put "studio" in quotation marks because there is a galley-style kitchen along one wall, but there is no cutlery, no nothing anywhere, and the tiny fridge was off when I got here.  If the heatwave of last week had not broken, I probably would be slitting my wrists right now, because I'm sure the place was a sauna; the weather is cool now and for the foreseeable future, but if it warms up I'll probably ditch the fridge because of the heat it throws out.  Compounding the problem of southern exposure is the lack of air circulation: in the wake of the Grenfell Towers inferno, propping doors open is frowned upon, but according to a longer-term resident, the powers downstairs (like Norby the Hungarian chap who remembered me from two years back) have relented rather than face a revolution...  I've placed the (single) bed against the wall instead of where it was, dominating the entire room, so now at least there is a feeling of more space (e.g. for stretching or push-ups), and I suppose it's my way of making the place more "mine."

My students arrive on Saturday afternoon, and I have some logistical details to work out before then, even as I have already arranged most things (or verified that my Davis program coordinator arranged them).  It's a big group--29, plus an onsite coordinator--and I have only the slightest clue what sort of group it will turn out to be: I have met about half of them at info sessions and at the pre-departure orientation in May, but as I know from skinned-knuckle experiences, there is no foretelling whether there will be psychos or troublemakers or drama addicts who will spoil the entire experience.  One of my chores is to make some notes for my on-site orientation, in hopes of instilling a sense of cameraderie or discouraging the toxic back-channel talking that ruined several of my SA teaching experiences in the past.

That right there is a source of anxiety, as this year with all the stuff that has been happening back home, I feel as if I have less of a good-energy reserve to tap into, compared to past years where things were more stable on the homefront.  Some of these things were family related, some were just screw-ups and hoop-jumpings that emerged in the run-up to my departure.  If stress is like allergies, I had had a whole series of insults, and the threshold for resistance to future ones is thereby diminished.

That said, I enjoyed my leisurely mosey down from St Pancras International, where the Eurostar dumps you, not quite remembering the right combination of streets but not really caring, as I had no schedule and the weather was neither oppressively hot nor uncomfortably cold.  After dropping my stuff (and verifying that the exhaust fan was indeed supposed to run constantly, and was not defective) I elected to walk unencumbered over to the British Museum just because I could--no entrance fee, only a cursory weapons check to get in an hour and a half before closing.  Might as well practice what I preach to my students--that getting a little lost is fine, and that going into a museum and watching people / aimlessly wandering around is a great way to pass some time, an insightful alternative to the ultra-determined blasts through museums that so many tourists indulge...