I thought I had covered all the basic British holiday features in my recent post- wrong! I went out to Christmas dinner with the lacrosse team (we're number one in the league!) today and learned a few new things. For example, this is a Christmas cracker: And for Christmas dessert,…

I went to the Natural History Museum and was reminded of a widely recognized fact: mini and giant versions of animals are way cooler than the regular sized versions. The natural history museum has the bodies of pygmy: shrews, bats, and marmosets,giant: sloths and armadillos (5 feet tall!), and the…

This weekend was my second to last in London and it was one I was particularly looking forward to because I saved a most special treat. I saved, you guessed it, THE DOCTOR WHO EXPERIENCE. For those of you who have not had the great honor of watching Doctor Who…

My class was cancelled on Friday, so I jetted (actually, trained) off to the beautiful city of Bath. When I was doing my pre-trip research I was surprised to find that the whole city is classified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, but once I got there I was…

As an individual with perfectly adequate vision, I've been fascinated with the idea of how people with astigmatism, long- and short-sightedness, and color-blindness view the world. This fascination is by no means unique, in fact it's almost cliché. Many of the people in my class 'Structure and Function of the…

While at UCL I've been doing a lot more walking than I ever do at Caltech. To keep myself entertained on these walks I listen to music and people watch, but my favorite pass time is to spot graffiti. Frequently it's very obvious (like in the picture below), but there…

On a short fall break from class those of us from Caltech studying at UCL (Megan, Annie, Lei, and I) spent a few days in Paris! It was simply too temptingly close to London to pass up the opportunity! Getting to Paris was simply a matter of a couple hour…

Lucky for this biology major, on my walk to class everyday I pass the Grant Museum of Zoology, home to 67,000 animal specimens. It's a curious, curious place. I popped in the other day and this is what I saw: I've learned so much about these animals while at Tech.…

For those of you curious about the academic experience of UCL, this entry will compare and contrast work at UCL with work at Caltech. While schoolwork should add up to the same number of hours (roughly, each class should require nine hours of work per week), the way those hours…

I'm taking "Ancient Egypt in London" as a course this term. It is certainly a class I wouldn't be able to take at Caltech. It is a reading intensive course that aims to strip away long held misconceptions about Egypt. Amazingly, lecture is in the British Museum! The opportunity to…

Then, on the train back to London, I learned of a few more UCL traditions. For each game, the team votes a "man" and a "wanker." The man is essentially the game's MVP, while the wanker is either the clumsiest, ditzy-est or LeastVP. It seemed too mean to vote someone…

If you were to throw a party and you could only invite people from one major, which major would you pick? Correct answer: biology. Biology majors are chock-full of weird animal facts! This term I am taking a course on Primate Behavior and Ecology (aka primatology). While there is a…

(https://www.lunch.com/reviews/product/UserReview-The_Lion_King_musical_-1394517-11121-The_Lion_Roars_On_Broadway.html) Those giraffes are men with stilts on both their hands and feet! The musical was a lighthearted outing, a fun experience, and I've been humming the music since. The student union here is a formidable six-person team. These students, once elected, take a year off from their studies to…

Classes at UCL begin in earnest on Monday. Before then my fellow study abroad students and I have been doing seriously fun sightseeing around London! Thus far, the biggest perk of living in London, a city with amazing public transportation, is the ability to quickly and easily travel all around!…

Traveling the world is so important to me that as a high school senior I applied only to colleges with study abroad programs. Four years later, I'm finally taking advantage of Caltech's awesome study abroad opportunities! I'm spending this term at University College London (UCL), "London's Global University." I've been…