The Time I met Dr. Ubelaker and ate Thai Food at a Pub

Hi everyone! Today's post will be short and sweet, because it's late and tomorrow is about to be a BIG day. More on that tomorrow. Here's the nerdy part of my post: Dr. Ubelaker lectured at Regents today!!!!!!!! <--- (This many exclamation points are necessary to convey how exciting this was to me.) Dr. Ubelaker, a forensic anthropologist at the Smithsonian and a consultant to the FBI, spent a good three hours talking to us about past (adjudicated) cases. The lecture was fascinating, and each case demonstrated various key element of forensic anthropology. We learned how x-rays and dental records can be used toidentify unknown remains, how to differentiate between blunt force, sharp force, gunsot and other trauma, about the characteristics of antemortem vs. postmortem vs. perimortem trauma, how forensic anthropology can be applied to living subjects, and much more. I've never seen an entire class so alert or so many pages and pages of notes scribbled in one sitting. After lunch, Dr. Sauer continued his lecture on the properties of bone and talked about differentiating human from animal bone, and modern remains vs. historical. Here's the fun touristy part of my post: After a long day of lectures, we decided to explore Oxford Circus one more time. It's way too fun to people watch and window shop; we just can't help ourselves. Oxford Street is really really really crowded, so unlike our previous accidental trip, we came armed with only small purses instead of giant backpacks. I was glad to have my camera when I stumbled upon some of Selfridge department store's Jubilee-themed window displays. The mannequins were dressed in crazy clothes and positioned into funny scenes satirizing various elements of British culture. For dinner, we decided to try a pub close to home: Windsor Castle. It's a very cute, medium sized pub covered in pictures of famous British celebrities, various teapots and knick knacks, and that serves - wait for it - Thai food. Delicious. I even tricked my not-so-adventurous roommate Holly into trying some of my red curry. She loved it! Tomorrow, we'll be doing big things, starting with the London Zoo. Stay tuned for more updates! Links of the day Selfridge's Jubilee window displays: http://www.vogue.co.uk/spy/street-chic/2012/jubilee-windows/gallery Windsor Castle Pub http://fancyapint.com/Pub/london/windsor-castle/3176

The Time I Made Eton Mess

So after several days of attempting to eat as inexpensively as possible (read: rice cakes, salami and cheese sandwiches, soup, and on sale raspberries) my flatmates and I were craving something sweet. We could have gone to the Ben and Jerry's a block away, but one of the flatmates, Kailey, told us about an awesome dessert her British aunt made for her once. Then it was another field trip to Waitrose, where we bought the ingredients for Eton Mess. What you need: strawberries, whipping cream, meringue "nests" What you do: First, crumble up the meringue nests and place at the bottom of a nice, big bowl. (If you do not have such a bowl, use a giant spaghetti pot.) Next, slice strawberries into thirds and place on top of crushed meringue nests. Third, pour whipping cream into a second big bowl and whisk until fluffy. (If you do not have a second big bowl, do it in two smaller bowls. If you do not have a whisk, poor the whipping cream into an empty bottle and shake for five minutes until fluffy. Proceed to spend the next 10 minutes banging the bottle on the palm of your hand until (almost) all the whipped cream comes out.) Spread the whipped cream on top of the strawberries, chill in refrigerator for an hour, and serve on cute little plates with tiny spoons! (If you don't have cute little plates and tiny spoons, give everyone a spoon and eat directly out of the spaghetti pot.) It was pretty delicious, and the ingredients altogether cost only about 4 pounds. I'm talking monetary, not caloric. Also, it was a nice visual imagining gorgeous Eton boys eating this dessert in their coat tails....

The Time I Went to the Natural History Museum and had a Nerdgasm

So I lied. After (almost) getting lost on the Tube (again, on the way home from the Natural History Museum), spending about 10 minutes just trying to figure out how to flush a toilet, and consistently forgetting that we live in a "flat" and not an "apartment," I've come to the conclusion that I am not yet qualified to offer legitimate advice about living in London. Also, I'm just way too excited about our day at the Natural History Museum to write about groceries and riding the underground. We started off the day with a lecture by forensic entomologist Dr. Martin Hall on the usefulness of blowflies in estimating time and location of death, toxicology, and even in collecting human DNA samples from crime scenes. Because British law prevents scientists from doing post mortem decomposition studies on human subjects, Dr. Hall does most of his work on pig carcasses. However, he has played a role in forensic entomological studies on human remains at - wait for it - the Anthropological Research Facility at UT Knoxville! I was pretty excited about this, since I was there less than a month ago myself. Our next lecture, given by Dr. Louise Humphrey, talked about the famous Christ Church Spitalfields collection. This collection of human remains is important to forensic anthropology and bioarchaeology because it is the first "known" collection of modern individuals. Out of the thousand or so individuals, the age and sex of 386 of them are known by the names, ages, and dates of death inscribed on their lead coffins. This has made it possible for scientists to test out new methods of aging and sexing on this collection. Our third lecture, by taphonomy expert Dr. Silvia Bello, discussed the study of tool marks and its relationship with cannibalism. We learned how different patterns of tool and teeth marks can suggest hunting vs. scavenging (tool marks over teeth marks from carnivorous animals suggest scavenging, while teeth marks over marks made from hunting and killing with tools suggest hunting). We also learned about different cultural examples of cannibalism, early evidence of cannibalism in modern humans, and the use of skull cups (made from human crania) in various cultures. Even after all of that, our last lecture on hominid fossils, given by Natural History Museum curator Robert Kruszynski, might have been the most exciting... because we got to see two extremely famous hominid fossils up close and personal! I don't know if I can stress this enough, but these were the real live actual original fossils, not casts or pictures, although I've seen copies of both in the textbook I used for ANP 440 (Hominid Fossils with Dr. Fenton at MSU). We saw a female Homo neanderthalensis from the Tubun cave near Mt. Carmel, and Broken Hill 1, aka the Kabwe skull, an amazingly complete Homo heidelbergensis cranium from a site in Zambia. If that wasn't enough excitement for the day, we got to see several exhibits in the Natural History Museum, my favorite being the Animals Inside Out exhibit. For those of you who may have seen the body works exhibit that features various layers of the human body, it's similar, but with various animals, including sharks, goats, gorillas, horses, and even an elephant and a giraffe. Whew! Nerdgasm. Here are the links for today... Dr. Hall http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/staff-directory/entomology/m-hall/index.html Dr. Humphrey http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/staff-directory/palaeontology/l-humphrey/index.html Dr. Bello http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/staff-directory/palaeontology/s-bello/index.html Dr. Kruszynski http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/staff-directory/palaeontology/cv-5512.html Tubun Neanderthal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabun_Cave Kabwe skull http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_rhodesiensis Animals Inside Out Exhibit http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-on/temporary-exhibitions/animal-inside-out/index.html Christ Church Spitalfields Collection http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/collections/blurbs/345.cfm

The Time I Moved into a London Flat

Hey there blogosphere! It's the end of day three in London and once again, we're doing big things. Yesterday morning, my favorite travel companions and I successfully squished ourselves and (more surprisingly) our ridiculous amounts of luggage into a classic London black cab and journeyed all the way to Regent's College, where we will be taking classes for the next five weeks. There, we were reunited with our eighteen fellow classmates and our professor, Dr. Sauer, for the first time since April when we last saw each other in East Lansing. Although we were pretty jet lagged, we looked practically chipper compared to some of our classmates who had just arrived that morning. After a brief tour of Regent's College and a peek at our classroom in the Acland building, it was time for us to move into our apartment - excuse me, our flat - in London. Holly, Mal and I got the "penthouse suite" on the 12th floor of the building! We were pretty excited about the fantastic views (our living room has windows on two sides!) but when it came to figuring out how to work basic appliances in our flat, it turned into a comedy of errors. Also fairly frightening was the itty bitty elevator. According to the health code sign, it fits four people, but the three of us were worried we were going to break it when the elevator started to make ominous rickety noises and sudden stops. Since our flat has a pretty well equipped kitchen, our next adventure of the day was grocery shopping. We went to a cute little grocery store called Waitrose about a block from our flat, and spent a good half hour trying to decide the most cost effective food to buy. Fried eggs and sandwiches for dinner, anyone? Today was the first day of class at Regents. The college is about a 20 minute walk from our flat, including a brief walk down two major streets: Baker street (and the statue of Sherlock Holmes!) and Marylebone. The lecture today focused mainly on the properties of bone, its composition, and the biology of its growth and repair. After class, our super trio went on another adventure to Oxford street in search of a ticket office where we could buy tickets to see the Wireless music festival in Hyde Park in July. Even though we looked up walking directions before leaving, the confusing streets meant we probably asked about twenty different people for directions at various points on our journey. As it turns out, Oxford (and the neighboring Market street) comprise a major shopping district. We got distracted by the four-story TopShop clothing store and all its amazing clothes (it's essentially an upscale Forever 21 on steroids). I wanted to own at least 70% of the clothes in that store...guess I'll have to go grab some money off my money tree later. Ha. After another twenty minutes of aimless wandering and some sheer dumb luck (it wouldn't be a day out with us without getting lost), we happened upon our ticket office. We successfully bought tickets to day 1 of the Wireless festival on July 6th. Yay! You can purchase everything from concert tickets to musicals and plays, and now that we know where it is (near the corner of Regent Street and Oxford) we will certainly be going back. Tickets to see Wicked for 15 pounds? Yes please. Our final adventure of the day was using the Tube to get back to our flat from Oxford Circus. In retrospect, 5 pm was probably not a good time to try out the Tube for the first time, because it was packed. Like Tokyo subway packed. Luckily, we had our oyster cards and it wasn't too much of a hassle, although it took a few minutes to figure out exactly where to go and how to swipe our cards. Clearly we ain't from here. Stay tuned for tomorrow when I'll post some advice on how to function in London, with thrilling tips on working English appliances, using the Tube, buying groceries, and much more. Links of the day: Stargreen box office (where we got concert tickets): http://www.stargreen.com/about/contact London Tube map: http://www.tubemaplondon.org/ Regents College: http://www.regents.ac.uk/

The Time I Started My London Blog

Today's the day! By some miracle, I made it all the way from from Detroit, Michigan to London, England safe and sound with all my luggage and without getting (terribly) lost. From now until the end of July, I will be living here in London as I participate in a study abroad program through Michigan State University. I couldn't be more excited about being here this summer, and I can't wait for classes to start on Tuesday. Although I've been in London less than eight hours, I've already talked to my parents on the phone, been tweeted at by my mother, and received Facebook messages from both my mom and dad (yeah, I friended my parents on the 'book) as well as many of my friends. I am completely overwhelmed by all the love, concern, and well wishes my friends and family have sent me. Everyone wants to know, how are you? what have you been doing? are you having fun? have you seen this or that landmark yet? Sidenote: in case you're wondering, I'm wonderful but exhausted. Currently, I am laying in bed at the hotel watching 27 Dresses with my two friends and travel mates Holly and Mallory. We're pretty worn out after an international flight, navigating London's public transportation, dragging our luggage around (we have an embarrassing amount of stuff), and exploring London. It doesn't help that we're all in food comas after eating massive amounts of comfort food at a cute little pub called The Larrik. I'm having a great time that I'm sure will only get better. And to answer that last question, the only landmark I am interested in seeing at this moment is my hotel bed. Anyway, since I'll be away from home for almost six weeks (and more frightening, away from text messaging for almost six weeks), I've decided to start a blog to share with everyone the story of my London adventure 2012. While I'm fairly certain my avid reader base will consist primarily of my mother (hi, Mom), allow me to introduce myself for those of you who might not know me or what exactly I'm doing here in London: I am currently a junior at Michigan State majoring in human biology and anthropology. I am particularly interested in forensic anthropology. Earlier this summer I got the chance to participate in a short course on Field Methods in Forensic Anthropology at the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility in Knoxville. I learned a lot about recovery and mapping techniques in a very hands-on setting. Starting Tuesday, however, I will be stepping out of my Tyvek suit and back into the classroom as classes begin at Regent's College for MSU's Human Identification and Osteology study abroad program. This summer, I'm hoping to learn a lot, have fun, and experience as much of London as I can! Just bear with me for these first few posts; I'm sure I will be all kinds of jet lagged for a few more days to come. Love from London, Mari Links of the Day: Follow me on Twitter @maridoeslondon Want to know more about forensic anthropology? http://archaeology.about.com/od/fterms/qt/forensic_anthro.htm This is the program I attended at UT Knoxville: http://fac.utk.edu/courses.html Here's a link to my study abroad program: https://osa.isp.msu.edu/Programs/program/index/104967 Here's where we ate dinner today. Highly recommend!: http://www.thelarrik.com/