London (at last)
We have finally arrived in London. We have had an absolutely wonderful trip but we are so tired and were glad to pull into London this evening. We are moved into our flats on Great Russell Street and have made a quick trip to Sainsbury's for food.
Unfortunately, the flat is not at all what we expected. It is on the fourth (or fifth, I lost count) floor of a different building (102) than we have used before. That makes it difficult to get to but between 5:00 pm and 9:00 am we cannot use the front door but must go to the ground floor and walk through 101, 100, 99 and 98, then go to the basement of 98 before backtracking to 99 then upstairs and out the door. Can you believe it? Patricia Cox Keri, Ian and I must make this trek to exit and enter our flats between 5:00 pm and 9:00 am. The interesting thing is that the students are in 101 and we can't access them at all without all of the above movement and then walking down the street and entering their building from outside. I hope that are trustworthy because the faculty will certainly never see them, except during classes. That makes me very sad!!!!
We had also planned to have the students in our flat for dinner frequently but can't possible get them in a very small space. (Visitor's can certainly be accommodated, but not 24 students.) Their flats are all large enough but Keri can't carry all of her stuff to their flats because of where we are placed. Oh well, we will make the best of it, but one of the things we do well is to establish a relationship with our students and spend a lot of time interacting. This arrangement will prohibit that.
The internet is working in my flat so I will update frequently. We will head out tomorrow as we attempt to make our flat livable.
Ian found a kilt and all the related items for his stuffed lion, Leo. I'm sure that Leo is now the only bagpipe playing stuffed lion in the world. Ian is so excited to be back in London. He spent hours organizing his room tonight. He already has a list of all the places he wants to go back to while we are here, so I'm sure he will be very busy.
I had planned to link my pictures with my Harding website but seem to be unable to make it work tonight. I may need to get a Flicker account or something. Will keep you posted!
posted by DCT | Thursday, September 27, 2007
5 Comments:
sorry to hear about the awkward arrangements. it sounds weird.
i have been to that scotland/england rock...
i'm so happy that ian is loving london and remembers it well. that's very cool.
stayed at your house last weekend. cats are ok.
Do you have an elevator? I thought that they promised you closer to the students.
We are trying to work through all the difficulties and will come up with some solution. I am discovering that that there are too many "chiefs" and not enough "Indians" and that communication has been lacking. What I was assured of did not make it to the person booking the flats here. Our solution for the dinners in our flat is to serve all students in the kitchen and then they can go to the bedrooms or living room to eat. The movies we usually show in our flat will now be in a classroom next door so we will still have an opportunity to get together, just not under optimal conditions. IT WILL WORK.
Unfortunately there is not an elevator the stairs are narrow and steep. The funny thing is that Keri and I wanted to exercise and lose weight and it is sure going to happen (the exercise but not necessarily the weight).
One more solution!!!! They are going to grant us access to our building through the front door after 5:00. WE ARE THRILLED!!!!!!
As well they should give you access! Hmmm. Too many chiefs. not a good thing.
I was at the Graduate Leaders meeting and telling them about our program. Then I was telling them that we needed Ph.Ds. I looked around the room and there were three parents of some of our best students (stockstill, cole, and murphey) and I told them to call their children and tell them to go get Ph.Ds.
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