a little break from school...

In the early part of last week we studied all the causes of diarrhea - and let me tell you there are a lot.
From norovirus, rotovirus, shigella, typhoid, malaria, campylobacter, nasty amoebic dysentery that can dissolve your insides, worms, protozoa, giardia,
etc. etc. etc.

Because of this theme it seemed like perfect timing for the gastroenterologist to arrive.

Steve flew over on Wednesday night - landing Thursday am.  Clay's wife Jinny flew over as well - but I'll let him tell you about why he needed a pediatrician (?).    We let them have a brief nap and then went out to dinner and a fantastic play in the West End - Richard III.  The acting and staging was stellar, and it was done as it might have been performed in Shakespeare's time with real candles on the chandeliers, actors putting on costumes on stage before the performance, and men playing women's roles as well.

You might have heard about the DNA confirmation of Richard's body recently found in an unmarked grave under a parking lot.   Amazing to find a skeleton over 500 years old and be able to identify it from mitochondrial DNA.  We saw the brilliant actor, Mark Rylance, limp as he might with a "hunchback" - which was likely scoliosis in the real Richard... and low and behold, the skeleton shows it.  Cool stuff.

Friday Steve came to class so that he could appreciate ALL the things I was learning, and I could prove that I was working hard.  Actually, it was a lot of fun, and as I suspected Steve kind of wished it was him in class.  He has his college degree in Medical Microbiology and probably deserves to be here more than me, but I signed up.  :)

We took a fun bus tour of London on  Friday afternoon and then hit a wonderful London restaurant, Newman Street Tavern.  On Saturday morning we took the bus to Oxford to see Rachel and have a whirlwind tour of the city and a few of the many "colleges".  Our evening tour of various little pubs was especially fun for Steve as he got to sample some of the many beer offerings.  (Rachel gave advice :)

Here is a pic of them in front of the Bodleian Library's "Radcliffe Camera"  a beautiful reading room that is only open to official "readers" at Oxford.  This library is one of the oldest in Europe with a huge collection - second only to the British Museum.  Rachel's Bodleian library card is one of her proudest and most necessary possessions as she studies here.  All in all a great trip for Steve who kept saying - "wow, I really love London"  and seemed truly surprised he liked it.  (I kept telling him the city had changed a lot since Dickens time, but he hadn't believed me.)  Now back to studying....