Times Higher Education

Not this summer but the last I worked at Van Pelt Library and every morning I was charge of collecting the periodicals that needed to be cataloged for the library. One of these magazines was Times Higher Education. Anyway, one day, I decided to look up the magazine since we got often and wanted to see what they are all about. So I looked them up online and noticed that they ranked the best universities in the world. Currently, the University of Pennsylvania is #11, but the school that I am at as I type this (University College of London) is #7. However, the school that I visited Monday (Cambridge) is #3, right behind Harvard then Yale.

Getting to the main topic of the post, Cambridge was pretty cool. I enjoyed it a lot. The previous week and up to that point (and even a little now) I was coming over a cold and pretty nasty cough. I decided to go anyway, especially since I had nothing better to do and I just finished up with classes the week before. Here are some of the pictures from the trip:

All the bikes at the train station, it definitely rivals Amsterdam for bike capital of the world.

I went Vincent, better known as Tiger. Another Penn person. Here he is here holding the nose of a bear that we found.

King's College.

The inside.

Trinity College.

Trinity College's chapel. It should be noted that every college there had its own chapel. Trinity College is where Newton did his thing.

Cambridge was a pretty quant town.

Well those were the pictures from my Cambridge trip. I hoped you enjoyed. Coming up next: Paris, Round 2.

An American Thanksgiving in London & Winter Wonderland

Luckily there was good food and no werewolves.

For the most holiest of holy food days, a bunch of us from UCL went over to Goldsmith's College to eat a lovely meal. Although no turkey, the day was still a blast, especially because of the corn. The day was not the same without the family and the fact that I had class earlier in the day was quite odd.

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Another large ferris wheel in London, man try a new idea....

That weekend, a bunch of us went to Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park. It was reminscint of Oktoberfest (German Beer & Sausage, roller coasters and cheap souvenirs, less drunk people though), but it had its own twist; in the fact there was a ice rink! We went skating (11 pounds! for the hour) in the great weather of London (on-n-off showers/drizzle).

Here is the rink (with blue lights, obviously).

The group who went from left to right: Rachel, Me, Laura (Rachel's friend from home who is studying in Paris), Sami, and Dale.

Its harder than it looks to take a picture when you are skating.

Sami and I were the expert skaters of the group (we both play hockey). Here is us showing off our "skills."

The Haunted House of Christmas.

Sami posing in front of the Haunted House of Christmas with Scrooge.

Rachel with Frosty.

So this will be my last post until I do something really exciting. Unfortunately, I am not really traveling after classes are done (December 12), except for a few day trips and two days in Paris. So expect a post within the coming weeks.