Sunday was a day with a considerable amount of free time due to individual group meetings. Since my meeting time wasn’t until the end of the day, I called up an Alma alum from 2006, Julie Bolitho, and her husband and we spent some time together in Wroxton and then in Oxford. It was great to see Julie since I hadn’t seen her since her wedding reception in January. We compared differences between the American and English life, shared lunch on the street in Oxford and in the short time left, walked around the city with their 11 week old puppy.
Alma College
London
Today was our free day in London, which was quite an intense day. The bus dropped us off in the center of London in Trafalger Square in front of the National Gallery at 9am and then it was a great day of just walking around the city exploring the non-touristy sites, such as Portobello Market in Notting Hill, walking through Hyde Park, a quick stop to the department store of department stores – Harrods – a nice walk along the Thames and a lunch a cool little place called Eat (www.eat.co.uk). My friend Rachel and I gave in and jumped on a random red double-decker bus and rode around for a half hour into nowhere – just to explore the city, and indulged in her Harry Potter love by visiting Platform 9 3/4 at the King’s Cross train station. The day ended at 9:30, when the entire group of 44 students and 10 professors/staff met for dinner. It was another long day, but well worth the trip.
CRL goes to England
We’re two days into Alma’s Center for Responsible Leadership and Wroxton College, in Wroxton England and they are keeping us wickedly busy. We literally begin every morning around 9am and have conference-like sessions until 9pm. Of course we stop for meals and the obligatory morning coffee break and afternoon tea break – both of which I have a glass of English water. Sorry, I will not be coming back a tea drinker.
Besides the super long days, everything has been interesting. Some of the sessions, like “Negotiating Industrial Relations” with representatives from the Trade Union and Employers Federation or the UK Chemical Industry panel haven’t been quite interesting as others that have dealt with peacebuilding after conflict, globalization impacts on the local world, agriculture – small farming, or immigration of Muslim people to the UK, but for the most part they have been somewhat informative and valuable. I guess the not-so-interesting sessions are good for practicing my English accent. 😉
As for now, it’s just a few more days here in England (with another trip to Oxford) and then off to Spain before a quick return to Alma on the 16th.
Oh and by the way, the address to the school and homes in the tiny village of Wroxton goes as follows:
“Wroxton College, Wroxton, Near Banbury, Oxfordshire” and then a string of letters & numbers for the zip code. How funny. I would never think to write on my address Dearborn, Near Detroit. 😉