London

 I traveled to London from October 24-29 to work on my HPV costing-related project with Mark Jit and to check out the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), where I might possibly get a PhD one day. I stayed with our family friend from UT, Robert "Bobby" Sanchez, and his wife, Antoinette, in Wimbledon. I was a bit focused on work and LSHTM-related activities, so I took very few pictures. I also got very sick my last day in London and have missed a few days of work this week, so this blog post may be brief, but I wanted to get it up before too much more time passed.

When I arrived on Wednesday evening, Bobby took me straight to the Sloane Square area of central London to go to the Affordable Art Fair where Antoinette, an artist, was one of the selected artists showing their works. Here's a view of the inside of the art fair:

 Apparently, it's okay to walk your dog inside an art fair in London:

 On Thursday, October 25, I spent all day at LSHTM working on my HPV costing work with Mark Jit. I met several nice individuals who work and/or study in the infectious disease epidemiology department, where Mark is based --- but it was honestly one of my busiest work days so far while abroad, so nothing much to report on the day's activities. In the evening, however, I took advantage of being so close to the theater district of London and went down to Piccadilly Circus where I managed to find a £48 ticket to see Wicked at the Apollo Victoria Theatre near Victoria Station. I have only seen Wicked once --- in San Francisco in 2008 (or was it 2009?) --- and it was wonderful to see it again, especially from such an amazing seat:

 Friday was another work day, but I was also able to meet with a professor in the public health policy department and meet with a research degree coordinator to discuss PhD options. I still have a few more questions to answer to see which department might be the better fit, but I really liked what LSHTM has to offer overall. Here's the entrance:

On Friday evening after work, I went out with a few other LSHTM faculty, post-docs, and PhD students at a local pub and was invited to a join a few of them for a walk in Finsbury Park the next day, which I decided to do. After visiting with LSHTM folks, I went back to Sloane Square and went out with Bobby and Antoinette to catch up. It was really nice to visit with them and I am very thankful to have had such gracious hosts during my trip. Antoinette took this lovely photo while we were out:

On Saturday morning, I trekked back into London to Sloane Square (luckily, both Wimbledon and Sloane Square are on the District line --- I was commuting between the two regularly) to check in with Bobby and Antoinette. Bobby took me to this great street market, where I got gluten free falafel and chocolate cake (from different stands, of course) for lunch:

 I was supposed to meet up with the LSHTM crew at 1pm in Finsbury Park in NE London, but I had a little time to kill so I wandered around Harrod's for a bit first. I managed last weekend to ruin my sunglasses in Gruyeres, so I ended up splurging on a pair of Oakley's at Harrod's. I will definitely be taking much better care of these (at least they came in a really nice case), but I was totally overwhelmed by the amazing customer service at Harrod's --- it was hard to say no to the price when they went to so much trouble to find me exactly what I wanted. They are lovely sunglasses, though.

Then I took the tube from Knightsbridge to Finsbury Park (the Piccadilly line) and met up with Ken, Esther, and Yulka from LSHTM for a walk through the park. We ended up at the Alexandra Palace at the end of the walk --- "Ally Pally" is a venue for big concerts and events, and has an ice rink (although we didn't check that out this time around). Here's a view from there: 

After resting for a bit, we headed back over to the East Finchley area where we met up with John Edmunds, the head of the infectious disease epidemiology department, who had just returned from the zoo with his daughter (I wanted to check out the London Zoo myself that day but decided hanging out with people was better than doing something solo). He suggested that we meet at the Clissold Arms. We walk in, sit down, and I realize that we are surrounded by Kinks memorabilia. I start to mention this to the group and then notice this sign on the wall:

Without knowing it, I was in a classic rock landmark! Dad's response to my text about where I was at this point was "Kinky," for those of you who enjoy Steve Portnoy's famous punny humor. Two other LSHTM folks, Andrea (boy) and Raphaelle (girl), joined us at this pub for a bit. Then, the original group (Ken, Esther, Yulka, and myself) set off with Andrea to his apartment for an Italian dinner cooked by a real Italian (as in, Andrea). We stopped by a grocery store and picked up some gluten free pasta for me so I could also enjoy the real Italian pesto. Dinner was wonderful, and the LSHTM folks were all great. It was great to get to know them and made me even more excited about the possibility of living in London at some point.

Sunday was unfortunately not the world's best day --- I woke up feeling under the weather with a sore throat and felt progressively worse throughout the day. Bobby and I went to the Tower Hill area to watch a recording of the UT-Kansas football with some Texas Exes at a barbeque joint --- and we had planned to do the Tower of London after that, but I just didn't feel up to it. I ended up back in Wimbledon and watched the new James Bond flick, Skyfall. It was a little bit of a pitiful end to the trip but considering how sickly I have been all week --- I am glad that I didn't push myself more. It just so happens that my WHO supervisor Raymond is out all week this week (well, he is back tomorrow afternoon), so I am doing some work from home today now that I am feeling slightly better, although not good enough to be around people today, and I plan to go into the office tomorrow. I will probably need to stay in the office longer in the upcoming weeks to catch up to where I want to be on my work timeline, but it shouldn't be too much effort. The second term of classes at Johns Hopkins also started on Monday, so at least I have taken the opportunity while I am at home this week to listen to some lectures for the two online classes that I am taking --- Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases and Global Disease Control Programs and Policies.

But for now --- I am going to get back to doing some actual work for my actual WHO research! Love to everyone.