Bus Tour with our Students

Sean and I met up with our students yesterday, and before our bus tour we chatted about what they had been doing so far. They had quite an adventure the day before (Saturday). There was a pro-Palestine protest about of all of the violence in Gaza and it happened right in front of their flat! They said it was pretty surreal. Police in riot gear pushing back the protesters who were starting to get violent. Lots of anti-American sentiment too, so the students were really smart about dealing with that (leaving the pub where it wasn't feeling safe, not talking very much, staying inside the flat and watching the action from the window, ec). I was proud of how they handled the situation - no freaking out or anything!

After that, we went on a bus tour of all the famous sites of London. The gates and the guard in the pictures above are at Buckingham Palace (the Queen was not in residence), and then the other picture is of Sean and I near Tower Bridge. We saw lots of things: Tower of London, House of Parliment/Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, The City, the London Eye, etc. Unfortunately, Sean started to get "car" sick after about 2 hours (of the 3 hour tour), so he and I got off the bus after the Tower Bridge and don't know what else they saw. We took the Tube home, which made me realize he really wasn't feeling well because Sean was SO excited to play football (soccer) with our students after the bus tour... But he bounced back quickly and is now planning a football tournament with the students! They have been so good to him - again, they are a great bunch so far! They start classes today, and Mike's class begins Wed morning. Not sure how much class work they'll do this week...but they'll be ok with a slow week for his class as they adjust to the English system in their other classes.

I forgot to mention that we had a small-world experience when we visited the Tate Modern Museum. We ran into a CSB/SJU retired faculty member and his wife who used to work there too! They were over here visiting their son and his family. Wild!