Across the Pond: I fail at keeping on top of this blog

Sorry!!!! I'm over half a month off from my last post. Luckily for you, I have anecdotes and photos to distract you from the recent lack of posts....

As many of you, all over the world, probably know- the beginning of June was the Queen's Jubilee weekend. I went to London that Sunday to watch the Thames Flotilla Pageant. There was a World Food Festival also going on in the South Bank area, so of course I was all over that. The people I went with have better pictures of the actual pageant- we even have pictures of the Queen on her barge! But I'm still waiting for those pictures so I'll have to put them up later. Here is the madness of all the crowds and our view of the river:

I have more pictures of the food festival. The curry in the last picture ended up in my tummy :) :

We also went to a wine bar that was set up like it was in a cave! But, sadly, I don't have any pictures of that.

The Queen's Jubilee gave us Monday and Tuesday off. Wednesday I turned in my first year report!!!!! And was free of that. The next two days, my friend Jonathan came to visit, so I didn't work on those days either!
We didn't have much time to see more than the basics of Brighton, but the visit was still fun and it was nice to reminisce about UC Santa Cruz.

After Jonathan's visit, Euro 2012 started up. For those who don't know, Euro 2012 is a soccer tournament between different European counties' teams. The groups stage just finished last night (with England moving through, which is a rare event). Its been fun watching my favorite teams, England and Germany, but I haven't done anything particularly exciting to watch them. Although, it is nice to talk to Eva (who is my soccer buddy) while the games are going on, even though we are separated by thousands of miles.
Also scattered within the week days were workouts, hanging out with friends, pub quiz (and better than our usual second-to-last-place!), whining about the bad weather, and spending time in the sun while its out.
Work has been weird. I was feeling SUPER guilty about not doing anything the week of the Jubilee weekend. And still have that lingering a bit. I've cracked out some more sample prep and have attempted (but failed) to reproduce my Western results. Luckily though, my supervisors are both happy with my progress and with the report that I turned in. I'm hoping to get a big chunk of my main project done before October so that I have a lot to talk about during the conference. However, with the issues I continue to have with my Western results, I'm not so sure that will happen. But keep your fingers crossed for me! I'm really going to try and get it down. I also need you all to send luck to me for getting an Alumni Travel Grant that I applied for- which would give me 1000 pounds back. Oh please oh please oh please let me get the grant.
Finally, a couple weekends ago I did a mini vacation to the Berkshire area where I visited briefly Reading, Henley-on-Thames, Windsor, and Eton.
Henley: