Tours and Protests

I gave my last set of finals this morning and Keri conducted the final program evaluation. Now all that is left for me to do is grade. I have been cramming every empty minute with grading papers (not that it has interrupted any of our sightseeing). I always think that I will never collect large written projects in my classes and then I find myself surrounded by a huge stack requiring hours of reading. My goal in both the Bible class and the Humanities class involved experiences and the paperwork was designed to document said experiences. I have a time-line assignment designed to help the students see all the sites we have visited in the perspective of English history. After reading the suggestions for my classes, I have discovered that many of them saw the assignments as busy work. That makes me sad since I have never knowingly assigned busy work in my life. Oh well, live and learn.

Da'Lynn and Greg gave us a couple of tickets for the Original Bus Tour of London and we headed to Marble Arch to get on board. As we left the building, there was a protest across the street and the Labour Congress building and you can imagine my surprise to look up and see a number of our students carrying placards in support of the American Screen Writers Guild. I had to get some photos of the event. Back to the bus, it was a wonderful drive around London to all the major sites with the option to get on and off. We have meant to do it since we arrived but have not had a space to do it. We will go back and finish tomorrow. I certainly recommend anyone coming to London to do this first. It is fairly expensive, but it is certainly a great way to see the sites and then to know where you need to go back to at a later time.

I needed to give an independent study exam at 17:00 (5:00 pm for those you on regular time), so we headed back home. I certainly needed to be grading papers anyway. Our time here is rapidly ending and I am not ready to leave. Of course, we am ready to see our family and friends. We are also ready to go to bed without the party on the floor above and the forever climb up the stairs to get to the flat. I'm afraid we don't know the students like we have in the past. Our greatest disappointment about our London 2007 experience is that we are so far removed from the students. Case in point - there is a ring ceremony in one of the women's flats tonight and we overheard the students talking about it. As I said earlier, live and learn. We are sad to see them go and really wish we had gotten to know them better.