Leicester!

Last weekend, most of the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholars studying in the U.K. met up for a weekend conference in Leicester (pronounced 'Lester'...yes, I butchered it until I heard the British say it). There were about 87 students there, representing countries from every corner of the globe. The U.S. and Japan had the most students, but I met people from New Zealand, Germany, Italy, Nigeria, Malta, and many others. Each scholar paired up with one or two others and spent Friday night with a local Rotarian. In the picture below are Nora, Tomoya, and Keith.

I had a great time with my hosts. After we put away our bags, they showed us their house and took us for a walk along the canal behind their property. Nora and Keith live in a small village close to Leicester so they are a short drive from restaurants and entertainment, but are also removed from the hustle and bustle of what was once the second richest city in the world. The canal and open fields were terrific. A few railroad tracks ran parallel to the canal in a shallow depression, but the commuter trains taking people to and from London were so fast and quiet they were barely perceptable. After the walk, we went outside to wait for the fish and chips van, a 34-year-old family business that visits five or six towns each night. It was about 45 minutes late, but I had such a good time talking with everyone else in the queue, that it was worth it. The fish and chips (battered fish and French fries) were great. I had not brought my camera when we went out in the evening, so I went out the next morning to snap a few pictures of the countryside.

On Saturday, we went to the space museum to meet all the other scholars. It was a lot of fun getting to know the other scholars, but I also enjoyed seeing a few other guys I knew from the States. Andrew Hill and I (below) were engineers together at West Point, so we had to take a picture with the giant fly wheels in the Abbey pumping station.

This is my room! It's pretty big and very comfortable. The rest of the house has a lot of Hertford grad students in their second or third years. Most of the other 'freshers' live in the graduate center on the other side of town.