LATEST UPDATES
For all students coming to the UK in the autumn, the first proper email from the Cornell/Brown/Penn UK Centre
Dear students: As I promised in my first ‘test’ email, I plan to send you several emails over the summer, probably one a month until you arrive. First of all, can I ask again that if you are getting this email in error, because you have recently decided not to study in the UK starting in the fall, please let me know. We try to keep our lists up-to-date but sometime we miss messages! (By the way, if you have made a decision to withdraw, remember it’s not enough to just withdraw from your US university’s on-line system – you must let your study abroad advisor know, and your UK university or programme, as they won’t be aware automatically what you’ve decided).
*Job opportunities at the Cornell/Brown/Penn UK Centre*
This message will likely to posted on our website www.cornell-brown-penn.ac.uk before our current ‘webmaster’ finishes for the year which reminds me that the first thing I want to do is ask if any of you would like to help us in the Centre in 2011/2012. We are able to recruit two ‘helpers’ each semester, one to act as ‘web-master’ and one to give us general assistance in the office. We don’t offer payment here in the UK, but you will get a credit of $500 each semester on your US university accounts. We ask each helper to come into the office once a week, at a mutually convenient day/time, for about 2 and a half to three hours a session. The webmaster keeps our website up-to-date and posts emails; we use ‘Dream-weaver’ software and previous web-masters tell me it’s very easy to get the hang of, and I know that this semester’s webmaster will help out if you need to ask questions. The other helper works on info sheets and research, does errands, goes to the Post Office – anything we need doing, to be honest. Both helpers should be available to start as soon as they arrive in London, and help out at the ‘welcome meeting’ on 1 October too. To apply – just send me a copy of your CV and tell me which ‘job’ you’re interested in. Also, please let me know whether you will have a visa that enables you to work in the UK. (I’m sorry, but these jobs are really only practical if you are studying in London, as we don’t pay travel expenses).
*Welcome Meetings*
Look at the website www.cornell-brown-penn.ac.uk (‘Information for New Students’ and ‘Emails from Us’) for information about our meetings at the start of the semester: 14/15 September in Edinburgh, 1 October in London and 15 October in Oxford. You must make every effort to attend these meetings – they are very important!
I thought that in rest of this message I’d mention a few basic points about immigration, to get that out of the way! Cornell, Brown and UPenn will have provided much more detailed information for you, and each of the universities and programmes in the UK make it a point to have their own information easily accessible and up-to-date. Each university has staff whose primary responsibility is dealing with immigration information and so should be able to deal with detailed questions – they are very busy at this time of the year though!
First of all - who needs a visa?
(1) If you have a UK or EU* passport – use that to come into the UK, then you won’t need to worry about a visa at all!
(2) If you are travelling on a US, Canadian, Australian or NZ passport, and are coming to study in the UK for a semester only (that’s August/September to December) you do not have to apply in advance for a visa, but will be admitted to the UK at your ‘port-of-entry’ as a ‘student visitor’. You must apply for a Tier 4 visa if you are doing a programme which involves a work placement or internship (for example the parliamentary internship programmes run by the Hansard Society in London, or Edinburgh University, or one of the internship programmes some UK or US universities offer here). If you want to try and find a part-time job or internship, then you can also do that with a Tier 4 visa; but consider this very carefully as you will only be here for 3-4 months and the current economic situation has definitely reduced the number of opportunities for overseas students.
(3) If you are a ‘visa national’ coming here for a semester then you have a choice: you can apply in advance to enter the UK as a ‘student visitor’ (bearing in mind the restrictions above) or you can apply for a Tier 4 visa – incidentally, this is more expensive! You will not be admitted to the UK without one of these forms of prior entry clearance.
(4) Anyone who is coming to the UK for a full academic year – that’s mainly (though not exclusively!) students coming to Oxford, Cambridge and the LSE this year – must apply for a full Tier 4 visa. This will also allow you to work or intern part-time during term-time, if your hosting university approves, and full-time during the holidays. Of course, if you have a UK or EU* passport, you don’t have to apply for a visa.
* There are still a couple of extra restrictions applying to citizens of Bulgaria and Romania
Next …
If you are applying for a full Tier 4 visa – and your university will likely contact you in some way to ask if you do intend to apply – you cannot do so until three months before the start of your programme, and until your hosting university has issued you with a unique CAS (‘confirmation of acceptance for studies’) number which you quote as part of your application. Don’t confuse this with any application or I/D number you might have been allocated when you originally applied for a place. Don’t waste your time and money applying too early or before you have your CAS number. And please don’t worry if your number seems a long time in coming – apparently Cambridge plans to issue theirs in August for example, but the academic year doesn’t start there until October so you see it’s not too late.
Applying for a visa is partly an online process, but there is also a form to download, and original documents about your finances and your passport that all have to be sent in by post. You also have to make an appointment to give biometric data (fingerprints and a scanned photograph) at one of many centres in the US. If you do find you are running out of time then there are companies that can offer expedited visa services, but the NY Consulate (which handles all applications except those from California) usually only takes 2-3 weeks to process visas.
Important …
We are finding that the UK government is regularly changing details about visas for students and other temporary visitors, and we will try to keep you informed about the changes that affect you – as will your US and UK universities. And if you do not have prior permission to be in the UK (eg a Tier 4 visa or prior entry clearance as a student visitor please DO NOT book a flight to the UK via the Republic of Ireland, even if it looks to be a bargain, as you will not get the correct stamp in your passport when you enter the UK. There is no immigration control between the UK and Ireland so you will be stamped into Ireland as a visitor, but not into the UK as a ‘student visitor’. This means your hosting university may not enroll you and we have to ask you to leave the UK for a quick visit to France or Belgium so you can re-enter the UK and get a correct stamp in your passport!
Use these websites …
www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk
www.ukcisa.org.uk – click on ‘advice for international students’
www.britishcouncil.org/usa - click on ‘study in the UK’
You’ll find as we send more emails and UK universities send out more information as well, that it’s impossible to generalise about systems in the UK (and that’s before you get here – when you get here you’ll find that one department in a university rarely does what other departments do!). I have noticed that some universities are much better at sending out information regularly to prospective students than others - they may not copy us into the information, but that’s another matter! It’s invidious to draw comparisons, but there are definite variations. So you must be very sure to check your email accounts regularly for information from your universities and from us. Some universities still send out important information – like housing contracts – by mail so I do hope that the correspondence address you have given is one that functions over the summer. If you’re going to be away from the address then be sure to ask a family member to deal with your mail for you, else you might miss deadlines.
If this does prompt questions that you can’t answer from the websites or university information, then feel free to get back to me. You may have other questions too, so do get in touch. Over the next couple of months I’ll send out another couple of messages to you and in the meantime, my colleague Sue Welsford and I hope you’re looking forward to a great summer!
From the Cornell/Brown/Penn Centre - begun on the 4th of July!
Dear students: As promised, this is my second email to you, and it’s
begun on the 4th of July, so I hope that by the time you read this you’ll
have enjoyed your holiday week-end.
I’m going to revisit a couple of points from my June email and add
a few details to help you in your preparations for study here in the UK
in 2011/2012. Don’t forget, you can email me at any time in you
have questions!
Student helpers for the Centre: First of all, a reminder that if anyone
wants to help us out in the Centre next semester, then you can still send
me an email with your resume. Several students have already done so (thank
you!) but there’s still time as I’m going to set a preliminary
deadline of 24 July for applications. We are allowed to have two students
helping us in the Centre, one to look after the website mainly –
it’s very simple – and one to do general duties in the office.
We ask for a commitment of about two and a half to three hours, once a
week, so it’s not much of a time commitment, and won’t interfere
with your academics. You won’t be paid here in the UK but you will
receive a credit of 500 dollars a semester on your home university account.
This is really only practical for students in London as we don’t
pay travelling expenses. When you email, let me know if you’re applying
for a Tier 4 visa, or entering the UK as a student visitor.
Next – our ‘Welcome Meetings’ which we hold at the start
of the semester. As we’ve already written, we’ve noted the
dates and locations on our website under ‘Events’ and ‘Information
for new students’ but here they are again. I will be in Edinburgh
on Wednesday 14 September and we have Room 8.13 in the David Hume tower
on George Square (very close to the International Office at number 57)
for a meeting from 3.30pm to 4.30pm. I expect that all Edinburgh students
will be able to make that day and time as it’s your ‘orientation
and registration’ week, but if you can’t make it for some
reason you can come and meet me at my hotel at 9am before I leave Edinburgh
on Thursday 15 September. I’ll expect to be staying at the Barcelo-Carlton
Hotel on North Bridge but will let you know if this changes. If students
going to St Andrews arrive in Scotland before the start of their term,
try and come to the meeting – otherwise we’ll see you later
in the semester.
Our big London ‘welcome meeting’ is intended for everybody
in a London university or programme plus students at universities within
easy travelling distance like Oxford Brookes and Sussex. For this meeting
we are joined by other work colleagues and sometimes we are lucky enough
to have post-graduate students who have experiences of studying abroad
joining us as well. We have booked one of the downstairs lecture rooms
in Birkbeck College on Torrington Place WC1, just a few minutes away from
our office on Gower Street, on Saturday 1 October. Starting at 1.30pm,
we’ll be finished by 4pm. And this will give you plenty of time
to get ready for our first arts event of the semester – the last
performance this season of ‘Much Ado About Nothing at the Globe
Theatre on the South Bank of the Thames (we’ll tell you about booking
one of the 40 tickets that we have already bought for this show later
in the summer).
Then, finally, on Saturday 15 October we move to Oxford for our first
meeting with students starting at Oxford colleges (and the two students
coming to Cambridge are very welcome too!). We’ll be at St Peter’s
College, New Inn Hall Street at 2.30pm for a meeting which should finish
with tea around 4pm … see you there!
And as I’ve written before, I think it’s essential that you
make every effort to come to these meetings as there is plenty of important
stuff we want to go over with you – the Centre and its activities,
academic matters (including grades and credit), safety and security, health
and cultural adjustments, travel and work … so we want as many of
you as possible to attend these meetings and not to go away travelling.
If you have religious reasons for not joining us on a Saturday, we do
appreciate that of course. Sadly, we don’t have staff or time available
to repeat the meetings, but we will mail out the Centre-produced information
booklets to anyone who is not able to join us in Edinburgh, London or
Oxford.
By the way – I should warn you that the Centre’s is fairly
low-tech compared with what you’re probably used to. Our website
is pretty simple and text-based (no video links there) but I hope you’ll
find it useful; you can have a look now by going to www.cornell-brown-penn.ac.uk
. Here you’ll find details of our Events Programme, and all the
emails I send out to you for reference; our new ‘web-master’
will post them as soon as possible after the start of the semester. There
are other links for info on living in the UK, travel, and contacts back
in the US and with UK-based universities. And as you’ve realised,
I’m using a basic email to make my regular contacts with you. These
will be sent out roughly once a week once we are settled into the new
academic year, using the US university email addresses from your applications.
You’ll need to make sure you can access these accounts while you
are in the UK, and remember to set up and regularly check your UK university
accounts too – you’ll get plenty of official stuff coming
into those in-boxes.
Stop Press! New events booked for fall 2011: Since we posted our final
emails at the end of last semester, we have added events to our schedule
for fall 2012. Full details will be included in your information books
when the programme schedule is complete but we already have tickets for
a concert at the Royal Albert Hall on 1 November, for the opera ‘The
Marriage of Figaro’ on 26 October and for the traditional Christmas
ballet ‘The Nutcracker’ on 13 December. You can also make
a note in your diary that the UK Cornell alumni club will host its annual
Thanksgiving Dinner for alumni , friends and students from all three universities
at the East India Club on Saturday 26 November.
Visas – those of you who must apply for Tier 4 visas because you
are studying in the UK for a year, or are taking a programme that includes
an internship, can now apply for your visas as soon as you get your CAS
number from your hosting university or programme. It’s now less
than three months until you enter the UK. But please do not ‘jump
the gun’ as we say, and start your application until you have your
CAS number. Some of you (basically anyone travelling on a US, Canadian,
Australian or New Zealand passport – plus a few other countries
that are not represented in our student body) can now take advantage of
the change in regulations that became operative on 4 July. As you come
from ‘low risk’ countries you do not have to send in financial
documents to prove you have enough money to support yourself while studying
when you apply for your visa. There’s a box you check on your VAF9
form. But the immigration authorities could ask for the detailed information
at any time when processing your visa so it’s a good idea to have
the documents to hand if needed.
As I wrote at the top of this message, I started it on 4 July. It’s
now the 5th so I’m signing off and getting the message out to you.
Please don’t hesitate to email me with any questions but please
note that I’m on holiday from 13 July to 21 July inclusive, and
will not be accessing email then. Enjoy your own July - and look out for
another group message in August. Cheers, Liz Simpson
From the Cornell/Brown/Penn Centre in London - a special message for students coming to Scotland re Liz's visit 14-15 September
Dear ‘students-coming-to-Scotland’! Although you will be
getting another general email from me shortly (written to all the students
coming to the UK) this is especially for students coming to Scotland,
as I have arranged our meeting in Edinburgh as the first in our cycle
of autumn ‘welcome meetings’ and I wanted to be sure that
you all have the details clear in your minds.
This year we are welcoming a large group to Edinburgh and St Andrews in
the autumn, as we have 13 Brown sophomore transfer students as well as
our usual group of juniors from Cornell, Brown and UPenn. It’s going
to be a packed meeting on the 14th, but I’m looking forward to it!
Just in case you haven’t all picked up on the details of my visit
from earlier emails, I am booked to come up to Edinburgh on Wednesday
14 September, stay overnight and return to London before lunch on Thursday
15 September. My apologies to any students studying at St Andrews who
will not have arrived in Scotland by that date, but I’m afraid it’s
impossible to schedule a meeting later in September – read on and
you’ll see what arrangements we make for you …
First of all, I have booked a room for us to meet in Edinburgh on Wednesday
at 3.30pm. We will be in Room 8.13 of the David Hume Tower on George Square.
George Square is centrally located in the university area, and the International
Office is very close, at number 57. This should be a convenient time for
all of you, as classes will not have started, and anyway, Wednesday afternoons
are traditionally less booked up. I want as many of you as possible to
come to this meeting as it’s the best way for you to meet together
and I can speak to you as a group about your time in the UK and the things
it’s important for you to know – especially those sophomore
students who have not been able to join in any pre-departure briefing
meetings on the Brown campus. However, should anyone be unable to attend
this meeting, you can come to my hotel on Thursday morning. I’m
staying at the Barcelo-Carlton Hotel on North Bridge, and I will meet
you in the upstairs lounge at 9am-9.30am. Go up the main staircase in
the foyer, to the first floor. (Remember, in the UK street level is the
‘ground floor’ not the first floor!).
I would like you all to let me know by the end of the day on Monday 12
September when you plan on meeting me, just so I don’t miss out
on anybody. Please also make a note of my mobile phone number, 07813 205787,
should you need to contact me on 14/15 September. Clare Swindells in Edinburgh’s
International Office is also a good contact.
St Andrews students only: Unless you are planning on arriving early in
Scotland you will most likely miss this meeting – again, my apologies
for this. I will post you the information booklets we prepare for you
all, from London, once you are settled in to St Andrews and have given
me your full mailing address, including flat/room number. It’s essential
you do this, as St Andrews does not normally share your accommodation
addresses with us! Then if there’s anything that you are unclear
about, you can email me and check – and we will meet you personally
in St Andrews itself when we visit Scotland towards the end of the semester.
Don’t forget – feel free to get in touch if you have any questions
about your upcoming travel to Scotland and your studies in Edinburgh and
St Andrews! Cheers, Liz Simpson
A 'Holiday' message from the Cornell/Brown/Penn UK Centre
Dear new ‘study abroad’ students: I has planned to bring
forward my September email to the UK holiday weekend ( 27/28 August) as
several students wrote that they were heading off travelling and wanted
to be sure that they had covered all their bases before leaving the US.
But I have had major computer issues this week and now it’s your
holiday weekend instead! So, here goes - I’ll write a bit about
packing, arriving in the UK, onward travel to your hosting universities,
meetings etc – and open our first ‘event’ of the semester
for booking. It’s going to be a long email so please read on!
Packing: The best bit of advice I can give you is not to bring too much
luggage with you – my own rule of thumb is to put out everything
you think you’re going to need … and then halve it. The corollary
is that you should work out your budget and double it, and then you’ll
be fine! Seriously, do not burden yourself with unnecessary things like
bed linen (I have seen students drag over their duvets!) because if it’s
not provided for free, your universities usually offer bedding packs that
you can buy. Don’t bring small electrical items like hairdryers
– we have a different voltage here anyway. Don’t bring huge,
heavy bottles of shampoo or stuff like that – there are plenty of
shops where you can buy what you need. I’m sure you’ll want
to buy a few clothing items here, so be rational about what you carry
with you. I do recommend that you all have a reasonably smart outfit (men,
this means a jacket and tie) as you may be going to events where this
is a requirement – the Cornell Club’s Thanksgiving Dinner
is an example. It is important to bring any medications you might need
– clearly marked as prescription drugs, and your prescriptions themselves,
with generic names for the drugs. If you plan on having anything shipped
to you in the UK, schedule this so that you have arrived in your residences
already; if boxes or cases arrive before you do, your name will not be
familiar to residence staff and they could be returned. And if you have
having stuff shipped do make sure it’s clearly marked as personal
used items so that you don’t end up with customs duties or VAT to
pay. See … it’s all common sense really! Check again –
have you got all your paperwork ready and will you pack it in your carry-on
bag? What about health insurance and insurance for your valuables? Have
you made sure your friends and family know where you’re living –
and do you have the address and contact details to hand (and ours too)
in case you are delayed?
Arriving in the UK and onward travel: I’m sure many of you are
familiar with arriving at overseas airports so I won’t go on too
much about this, but again – a few practical hints. Going through
immigration: as I wrote above, be sure that you have all your paperwork
accessible in your hand-luggage (carry-on). Even if you have been granted
a visa in advance you should keep these documents safe – and if
you are entering as a ‘student visitor’ it’s essential
that you can get at them so that the immigration officer can see you are
coming in as a bona fide student at a recognised British university. Once
you have your passport stamped, have a quick check to see that everything
is OK and you have permission to enter as a student and not an ordinary
holiday-maker, as it’s easier to sort out a mistake right away,
before leaving the airport. If you are going to be studying in Scotland
I hope you’ve been able to book direct flights to Edinburgh or Glasgow.
If not, you’ll likely either be transferring flights at Gatwick
or Heathrow, or making your way to a railway station. For both Edinburgh
and St Andrews (Leuchars) your train north will leave from London Kings
Cross. It is possible to buy train tickets online and collect them at
the station – buying tickets in advance is much cheaper than getting
one at the station. If you can also get a ‘16-25 Railcard’
online, you’ll immediately get a discount. Everyone else will arrive
at Gatwick or Heathrow airports, and will need to make their way to their
universities. You’ll find that all your universities advise you
of the best way to do this, if you search their websites – and many
of them operate a ‘meet and greet’ service. I’m afraid
I cannot meet students at airports as there are so many of you, arriving
at different times – but if you look at our website www.cornell-brown-penn.ac.uk
under ‘Information for New Students’ you will find basic stuff
on onward travel connections. I’m always happy to make suggestions
as to the best way to travel …
When you arrive it’s useful to have some cash in UK currency with
you, it case you want to get a reviving cup of coffee, or buy your coach
or train or bus ticket. And please do remember that at airports, travellers
like you are very vulnerable to opportunistic criminals – so keep
an eye on your possessions at all times, and keep your money, credit cards
and passports safe.
And when you arrive – please be sure to let your family know you have arrived safely. You may have to use an internet café to do this if you don’t have access to your new university email system yet. If you’re in London, feel free to drop by the office to make a quick call to the US from our phone. When you contact home be sure to tell them that you’re likely to be pretty busy for a day or so, so you may not be available if they try to reach you. And it’s very helpful to us if you could phone or email when you have arrived. That way we know what to tell your family if we get a panicked parent whose son or daughter hasn’t checked in!
University meetings – and ours too!: It is essential that you attend
the orientation meetings that your hosting universities set up. Even if
you are thinking ‘this is just for freshers and I’m not a
fresher any more’ go to them. Often they will be the only time you’ll
be briefed on health services, libraries, IT facilities etc and even more
importantly – it’ll be when some of you register for courses.
And our meetings are just as essential – largely because we don’t
have the resources to tell you individually what you need to know about
studying here from our perspective, and the Centre’s services. It’s
also the chance for you to meet other students who are studying at different
universities, and catch up with friends you may not have known were studying
abroad.
I have already written direct to all the students coming to Scotland so
they know the details of our own ‘welcome meeting’ there on
14/15 September. For most of the rest of you – that’s students
in London or Sussex or at Oxford Brookes – then your ‘welcome
meeting’ is in London on Saturday afternoon, 1 October. This is
when all the London university colleges and programmes have finally started.
We won’t take up more that a couple of hours of your time, but we’ll
have a lot to go through. We will be in lecture room B36, downstairs in
the main building of Birkbeck College, Torrington Square London WC1. Go
to Birkbeck’s website www.bbk.ac.uk/maps and you’ll see where
to go. We start promptly at 1.30pm and I want all of you to let me know
that you have got this message and are planning on coming. You really
should not make travel plans that clash with this commitment - but if
illness or religious observances mean you cannot attend on a Saturday
then we fully appreciate that and will send you the information you miss.
Your deadline for letting us know that you are coming is 29 September.
Finally, for students at the colleges of Oxford University, your ‘welcome
meeting’ is on Saturday 15 October at St Peter’s College,
New Inn Hall Street starting at 2.30pm. You may find this is when your
colleges take their annual photographs, just come along afterwards if
there’s a clash – you are not involved in the formal matriculation
ceremonies as visiting students. You need to confirm that you are coming
to meet us by 12 October so we can book the right numbers of teas!
Booking your ticket for our first ‘event’: To coincide with
our first meeting in London, we have pre-booked tickets for the last performance
this summer season of Shakespeare’s comedy ‘Much Ado About
Nothing’ at the Globe Theatre on the south bank of the Thames. This
is the theatre that is an accurate representation of a 16th century theatre
so it’s partly open to the elements – and our tickets at 5
pounds each are for standing places. We have 40 tickets available and
I’ll allocate them strictly to the first people who reply to this
email and request one. We will give out the tickets at the meeting, so
you do need to be around to collect them in the afternoon as the performance
is on the Saturday evening, after the meeting. (Sue and I went to see
it yesterday – it’s great!).
I’m sure that enough for you to read through this time! Don’t
forget about our meetings – and booking your theatre tickets. And
bear with me as I wade through the accumulation of messages in my inbox.
I will reply to you as soon as possible if you’ve emailed us with
questions. Cheers, Liz Simpson
From the Cornell/Brown/Penn UK Centre - your August email
Dear new ‘study abroad’ students: I’m glad I waited
until this week to send out my August email because it’s giving
me the chance to write a few lines on the current news about London and
other cities in England that seems to be monopolising the media these
days. I think it’s unlikely that you – or your families –
can have missed the media coverage of the major disturbances which started
over the weekend so here’s my take on it. Whilst these events have
been serious, and unprecedented in the way they spread from one area of
London to another, and then were mirrored in other cities like Manchester,
Birmingham and Liverpool, they have not been widespread street riots.
There is no political or racial background to the disturbances, and actually
relatively small numbers of people – largely young people –
have been involved. What their motives are for breaking into shops, arson
and generally trashing their own neighbourhoods, I can only speculate.
But the main things to bear in mind are that these events have been extremely
localized, limited to shopping streets and similar areas, and since the
first night, have been dealt with pretty efficiently by the police. Communities
have started their own clean-ups, shops have re-opened and in the few
cases where people have had to leave their homes, their local councils
are rehousing them. There was nothing reported last night (Wednesday)
and things do seem to be calming down while the ‘powers-that-be’
try to analyse the reasons behind these events. To add a more personal
note, I live in the borough, Hackney, where everything kicked off and
we have not been affected at all – we have gone to work, travelled
and shopped as usual. Please rest assured that none of our universities
and their residences have been affected, and the academic year in London
and other cities will start as usual. One of the advantages of Cornell,
Brown and UPenn having an office in London is that we can keep you informed
about what it’s really like when we have incidents of any kind in
London or elsewhere in the UK, and our universities will do the same.
If you or your families are concerned at all, don’t hesitate to
contact me; I’ll be away for a long weekend 12-15 August, but otherwise
I’ll be in town.
The centre – and our meeting etc: I’m going to save my hints
on packing, onward travel to your universities etc to my final, September
email but I’m going to concentrate on telling you a little bit about
the office and its services now. I was able to meet some of you when I
visited your universities in the spring, so I shall be a familiar face
when we meet together soon. The office in London is staffed Monday to
Friday by me and my colleague Sue Welsford, except when we are visiting
other university sites. You are welcome to call in any time during our
drop-in hours (8.30am to 4.30pm) and I’m usually in the office past
4.30pm if you need to visit later. We will be in contact with you weekly
with regular emails, so hopefully you’ll join in our visits to the
theatre, opera, ballet etc or use your ‘cultural bonus’ for
things you book yourself. I have already told you a couple of times about
the ‘welcome meetings’ we have arranged for the beginning
of the semester and I’d like to remind you that we do expect you
to come to the meeting that is appropriate for you: so that’s 14/15
September in Edinburgh for students in Scotland, 1 October for students
in London or within easy travelling distance (like Brighton), and 15 October
for students starting at Oxford University. You have all the details in
previous emails and on our website www.cornell-brown-penn.ac.uk under
‘Information for New Students’ and ‘Events’. I’m
emphasizing the need to come to these meetings (unless you have not started
at university yet, like the St Andrews students) because we don’t
have the resources to hold make-up meetings and there are things that
we want to be sure to tell you all, as a group. Also, you’ll see
that our first theatre visit is on the evening of October 1, when we have
tickets booked for the last performance of Shakespeare’s comedy
‘Much Ado About Nothing’ at the Globe Theatre on the South
Bank. We have booked several other events for our fall programme since
our last ‘web-master’ updated our site, and these will be
listed in the information booklet you will each receive at our welcome
meetings.
Housing: By now, I expect that most of your hosting universities have
been in contact with you about your housing this year; as so many of them
do this by email you really must keep checking your accounts. UCL has
changed its system this year, and instead of sending out contracts by
post, they have moved onto notifying students by email. It always seems
to be the case that major changes mean glitches in the system and sure
enough, this has meant that there have been delays this year. I know that
our colleagues were hoping to let everyone know about their allocation
this week, but I’m afraid they most likely won’t be able to.
We will be informed when you all have your places settled, so if you haven’t
heard yet please be patient for a little longer. Can I please ask that
any other students who have already had their housing allocations for
the semester or year let us know where they are living … we aren’t
automatically told by each university, I’m afraid. (KCL students
– we have your housing assignments already). If you are opting to
find private accommodation yourself then it’s especially important
that you tell us where you’re living.
Visas: If you are applying for a Tier 4 visa, you should be well on your
way with this process now. If you have had a draft CAS document sent to
you by your university or college for you to check – do it now!
They can’t issue a CAS without your confirmation of these details.
If your visa has been granted let me know – you have no idea how
pleased we are to hear about each successful application! Dancing in the
streets ….
That’s it for August, so enjoy the rest of the month. I think that
there are one or two students who will be arriving at the end of the month
to start their programmes so do let me know if there’s anything
that’s still puzzling you – and get in touch as soon as you
arrive so we can say hello. More next month … Cheers, Liz Simpson
To all new students …
In Scotland …! A reminder as Edinburgh students will be arriving
this weekend … our ‘welcome’ meeting next week is in
Room 8.13, in the David Hume Tower, George Square on Wednesday 14 September.
It’ll be a bit of a squeeze as we weren’t expecting such a
large group when we booked the room so let’s start promptly at 3.30pm
if we can. If you miss this meeting you can catch me at my hotel, the
Barcelo Carlton on North Bridge on Thursday 15 September between 9am and
9.30am. I’ll be in the lounge area upstairs. If you need to contact
me on 14-15/9, leave a message on my mobile 07813 205787.
For all students in Scotland – check out www.doorsopendays.org.uk
for a special programme of places to visit over the four weekends of September.
Different parts of the country are featured each weekend, so with a bit
of luck, there will be events near you soon eg Edinburgh is 24/25 September,
Glasgow and Dundee on 17/18 September.
In London and the S/E …! You’re just in time for two great
weekends in London. This weekend, 10/11 September, is the ‘Mayors
Thames Festival’ with a full programme of events each day. They
range from free concerts to an archaeological fore-shore walk, from dances
and open air gigs to picnics on Southwark Bridge, food and craft stalls
along the Thames and a fleet of historic boats – and it culminates
in a firework display on the Sunday evening. Go to www.thamesfestival.org
to check out the whole programme. Then next weekend, 17/18 September,
is ‘Open House Weekend’ when many interesting buildings that
are usually not accessible to the public, open up so we can all visit
and have a look! It’s a great way to find out more about London
if you’re here early for the start of the semester. www.openhouselondon.org.uk
is the website to check out and though you have to book ahead at some
places, others are open to everyone. You’ll recognize who is taking
part in the event by their comfortable shoes, maps and green information
booklets – we have one in the office if you’d like a look.
And … we still have 15 or so tickets left out of our booking for
‘Much Ado About Nothing’ on 1 October, after our London meeting,
so if you’re interested, it would be a good idea to get in touch
now. I shall do a reminder of the details of the actual meeting later
this month, but we do expect you all to attend if you’re within
our area, unless you have a very good reason for missing it. The exceptions
are students in Scotland, Oxford University students who have their own
meeting on 15 October and anyone who cannot travel to meetings on a Saturday.
We’re looking forward to seeing you very soon! Liz Simpson and Sue
Welsford
From the Cornell/Brown/Penn Centre ... from Liz back in London on 16/9
Dear Edinburgh students: An email to thank you all very much for coming
along together on Wednesday afternoon; the downside for you was it was
such a squeeze, the upside for me was that I had time on Thursday morning
to pop into Jenners and buy oatcakes before getting my train back to London!
Speaking of Jenners (the department store on Princes Street): in their
food store on the 2nd floor they now have a small American food section,
just in case you get a bit homesick after the haggis and Irn-Bru!
A couple of things I wanted to email about, following our meeting. First
of all, several of you said that you were having difficulties scheduling
a programme for the fall that was a full load of 60 Edinburgh credits.
There is the chance that you won’t be able to transfer back a full
semester’s credits to your home university if you don’t complete
a full Edinburgh load so please do your best to re-arrange courses. It
might mean, for example, that you have to drop a 10-credit course and
replace it with a 20-credit course from another department. If you are
in this situation please let me know by email (I did take down a couple
of names at the meeting but I’m not sure whether I caught everybody).
You should also contact your study abroad adviser in the US if this is
a situation that really can’t be sorted out here in Scotland.
We talked a little about seeing as much of Scotland as you can while you
are here, taking advantage of events offered by the International Office
or planning your own travel. If you go to our own website www.cornell-brown-penn.ac.uk
and look under ‘Travel’ you’ll see links to several
companies that offer mini-bus tours of Scotland. I visited the Tourist
Information Centre on Princes Street Edinburgh yesterday morning (it’s
right by Waverley Station) and made a note of all these companies, check
them out, I’m sure you’ll find something that interests you:
www.heartofscotlandtours.co.uk, www.realscottishjourneys.com (a new one
for me, tours to Skye and the Highland, up to October), www.graylinescotland.com,
www.haggisadventures.com, www.highlandexplorertours.com, www.scotlinetours.co.uk,
www.rabbies.com, www.timberbushtours.com, www.highlandexperience.com
Someone also asked me about sight-seeing tours of Edinburgh on Wednesday
– these all start from the front of Waverley Station by Princes
Gardens and the Scott Monument – you can’t miss the buses
as there are usually 4 or 5 waiting, from different companies. Remember
to keep your tickets or receipts for this kind of thing and you can claim
it back on your bonus in November!
If you missed getting one or other of the information sheets I brought
up with me on Wednesday (one is a list of events in Edinburgh theatres
that you might enjoy and the other is a page of useful websites where
you can find out what’s happening in Scotland) just let me know
and I can send them to you as an attachment for you to print out yourself.
As you’ll have gathered, nothing is very high-tech with me! You’ll
get regular emails from the Centre, roughly one a week once we are all
settled in, with the odd special email about things in Scotland if I see
anything I think you should know about. And don’t forget, we’re
only a phone-call or email away if there is anything that is worrying
you, or if you have any questions at all. I hope you enjoy the next couple
of weeks, and the weather stays good for you for a little bit longer!
Cheers, Liz
From the Cornell/Brown/Penn UK Centre - a message for Oxford-bound students!
Dear students: With your departure for Oxford imminent, I thought we’d
send you your own email from the Centre! Apart from the general information
we gave you in the last email to the whole mailing list, here are a few
points that are essential for you:
Visas and immigration: As you are all studying in the UK for a year, you
must apply for a Tier 4 visa (unless you are travelling on a UK or other
EU passport). By now, I hope that you have all got your passports back,
with your visas stamped in them. Please let me know if any of you are
still waiting for your visas to come through. On arrival at Heathrow or
Gatwick airport, you will be expected to show your visa and have the other
documentation provided for you by Cornell, Brown or UPenn to hand, in
your carry-on luggage, just in case you are also asked to show it. Your
documentation from Oxford should be top of the pile, as that’s the
place you emphasise as your base for studying this year – Cornell,
Brown and UPenn are not registered as sponsors of students in the UK.
Onward travel to Oxford: The easiest way to get to Oxford from either
airport is by the regular coach (bus) services. Go to www.oxfordbus.co.uk
and use the link ‘The Airline’ on the right of the home page.
This bus brings you to the Gloucester Green Bus Station in Oxford (you’ll
get very familiar with this bus-station as the regular services between
Oxford and the centre of London also run from here 24/7). There is a taxi
rank near to the bus station. If you are aiming for St Peter’s College
it will be quicker to walk to New Inn Hall Street – about 2 minutes.
St Edmund Hall students should ask to get off the bus in The High rather
than go into the bus-station, as SEH is on Queen’s Lane which runs
off The High. For everyone else, a taxi is probably a necessity for this
journey, with luggage! If you are travelling from London, then you can
take the regular coach to Oxford or take the train from London’s
Paddington Station. The train journey takes just about an hour on a fast
train – the coach is longer. There is a taxi rank outside Oxford
train station.
Your first few days: You’ll all be checking into your colleges around
1-3 October, and your first week will be taken up with sessions arranged
by the university for new international students, and things that your
college organizes. This week is known as ‘0 week’; the next
week is the first week of term. If your tutor or director of studies hasn’t
been in touch with you yet, you will meet him or her in ‘0 week’
and will plan your tutorials for the first term. Please give everybody
enough time to settle in (new freshers are also arriving when you do)
but I would expect that you will all have made progress with your study
programme by the end of week 1. If you are having problems, let me know
and we will try to help you sort them out. Don’t forget that one
of the best ways to really get involved with university or college life
is to join a sports club or team (almost everyone tries rowing!), or a
theatre group, or choir/orchestra, volunteering or mentoring group –
there will be plenty of opportunities to do this during freshers’
week when everyone will try to sign you up! You can claim back membership
dues etc on your cultural bonus – which we’ll explain in the
15th!
Our ‘welcome meeting’: Our meeting, so we can get together
at the beginning of your Oxford adventure, is on Saturday 15 October,
starting at 2.30pm. We are meeting at St Peter’s College, New Inn
Hall Street, in the Miles/Theberge rooms. St Peter’s students should
be able to find their way; ask for directions at the Porters’ Lodge
if you come from another college. I do hope you can all coming along but
I want you to RSVP by 10 October so I can book the right number of teas
after the meeting. If you are involved in a college photograph that afternoon,
just come along as soon as you can. We’ll finish about 4pm. Note:
visiting students do not ‘matriculate’ at Oxford, so you do
not need to get involved with matriculation ceremonies if they are taking
place on the 15th.
If there is anything you’d like to follow up on from this email,
let me know. If not, we wish you a stress-free journey to Oxford and look
forward to seeing you soon! Cheers, Liz Simpson and Sue Welsford
A Cornell/Brown/Penn UK Centre email to the full mailing list - on 22 September
Dear students: This email will end up (I hope) in the accounts of all
students either arrived and settling into UK universities, or making final
preparations for travel, so apologies to students who aren’t able
to take advantage of the events I’m emailing about, there will be
lots more in the weeks to come …
I thought I’d highlight a couple of events in London this coming
weekend, and an opening date for pre-booking for an October event …
here goes …
.
This weekend, the organization ‘Walk London’ is arranging
its ‘Autumn Ambles’ programme, an annual event which offers
free guided walks all over Greater London. If the weather stays like today,
this is going to be a marvelous opportunity for you to discover London,
off the beaten tourist track, with a qualified ‘blue badge guide’
– and for free too! If you go to www.walklondon.org.uk you can find
the full list of walks on both Saturday and Sunday. Last year I did a
walk that went through the smaller streets and hidden courtyards from
St Paul’s to Holborn and learnt things I never knew about my own
city. When you look at the website you’ll see that you can explore
different parts of London, or follow various historic themes. I hope some
of you take up this opportunity (and take plenty of photos – all
our universities have photography competitions!)
At the Southbank Centre (that’s between Hungerford and Waterloo
bridges, on the south bank of the Thames, there’s another free event,
the Real Food Harvest Festival, with more that 120 of the UK’s best
food and drink producers, live music, street food, chef’s demonstrations
– and sheep! I’m going on Sunday if only to see the sheep!
It’s open 11am to 9pm on Friday (tomorrow) and Saturday, then 11am
to 6pm on Sunday.
And now for something completely different – 12-27 October 2011
is the date of the London Film Festival, an unrivalled opportunity to
see films from all over the world, with premieres, interviews, feature
and documentary films … everything for the film buff or casual viewer
to enjoy. The showings are in several venues in London, from the National
Film Theatre on the South Bank to Leicester Square and take place throughout
the day. Booking has been open to priority members for a couple of weeks,
but it opens to the public (like us) on Monday 26/9. If you enjoy film,
I really would encourage you to explore the site www.bfi.org.uk/lff and
book your tickets. Don’t forget, there’s always your cultural
bonus to claim them from (for most of you).
So this is a good time to remind you that our ‘London welcome meeting’
is on 1 October, at Birkbeck College, starting at 1.30pm. I just walked
by there today and I see that they are refurbishing the Torrington Square
entrance so you will probably have to go in through the Malet Street doors
instead. We have used up all our allocation of tickets for ‘Much
Ado About Nothing’ now, for the students who replied early. But
we hope you will all come to the meeting anyway (unless you have already
notified me of your absence due to a religious holiday) and you might
find that there are still a few tickets on the day. We’re looking
forward to seeing you all.
Lastly – this is my first request to you all to complete out ‘Personal
data Forms’ as soon as you have completed your course selection
for the semester. You can find it by going to our website www.cornell-brown-penn.ac.uk
and using the link ‘Personal Data Form’. You may think this
duplicates information you have given your home university, or even us,
in a different format, but we do still need this form from all of you.
It is only shared with your home campus and is essential for us so that
we know how to contact you in an emergency, and – just as important
– we have up-to-date details of the courses you are doing so we
can check your transcripts here before sending them on to the US at the
end of the semester/year.
And I thought this was just going to be a short email – sorry! We
hope to see lots of you on the 1st of October (or the 15th, Oxford University
students). Cheers, from Liz Simpson and Sue Welsford
From the Centre - ready for 1 October?
Dear students: I’ve headed this email with the reminder about our
1 October ‘welcome meeting’ so that you are all clear about
venue, times etc so read on:
Venue: Lecture Room B36 (downstairs) in Birkbeck College, Torrington Square,
WC1 (go to www.bbk.ac.uk/maps and look at the ‘central London map’).
You should be able to go in by the main entrance on Torrington Square
as refurbishments have been finished. Look for our signs or ask at the
enquiries desk for our meeting ‘Cornell-Brown-Penn’.
Time: I want to start promptly at 1.30pm if I can. There are various admin
things to do when you arrive so please try to be on-time – or even
early! We’ll finish about 3.30pm.
Refreshments: Birkbeck has a café, and vending machines where you
can get drinks.
Theatre tickets: Sue will give out the theatre tickets and maps at the
end of the meeting. There may be one or two spares if you are prepared
to wait until all tickets have been given out the students who have requested
them in advance. Please note – unless you collect your ticket at
the meeting or ask some-one else to do so for you, you will not be able
to see the play as we have no opportunity to get unclaimed tickets to
the box-office. I will also charge you for the ticket! (UPenn ‘theatre
course’ students are reminded t bring their 5 pound cash payments).
Travel: Please check www.tfl.gov.uk in advance of travel as tube lines
are regularly closed for engineering works at weekends and you may need
to travel on a different line or to a different station. (Goodge Street,
Euston Square and Russell Square are all just a few minutes’ walk
away from Birkbeck College).
A familiar face (for some of you!): Dr Sarah Kagan from UPenn’s
Nursing School will be joining us towards the end of the meeting to meet
‘her nurses’!
A reminder for everyone as you get your courses settled – be sure
to go to www.cornell-brown-penn.ac.uk and fill in the ‘personal
data form’ and send it to Sue. And if you’re from Cornell
and expecting our office to settle your accommodation fees on you behalf
– get those bills to me asap!
What’s on this weekend?
Best wishes to everyone celebrating the Jewish New Year; I hope to see
you soon at the Centre, where your information booklets will be ready
for collection.
Look out for 'Late Nights' at museums and galleries in London: every Friday
at the National Gallery at Trafalgar Square www.nationalgallery.org.uk
for details of exhibitions, talks films etc (if you want to see the Leonardo
da Vinco exhibitoin later this autumn, they are booknig tickets already!);
this Friday at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington where
the theme this month is new technologies and modern crafts www.vam.ac.uk/fridaylate
; every Friday at the British Museum - Grayson Perry's new show will be
opening soon!
I can't offer you a foodie-feast like last weekend ... but there is a
new Farmers' Market opening today (Thursday 29/9) on Torrington Square,
by Waterstones. Apparently it's going to be each Thursday, from 9am to
2pm. UCL students should have a look, it could be a new place to get your
lunch on Thursdays!
This is your last chance to visit Buckingham Palace during its summer
opening, and see THAT dress- the special openings finish this weekend
www.royalcollection.org.uk
So - I hope you are all enjoying this unseasonably fine weather (in the
SE anyway!) The Globe Theatre is going to be magical on Saturday eveninig
if it stays like this. Please don't hesitate to get in touch if there's
anything you need to ask in these first couple of weeks of the semester,
we're only an email or phone-call away! More next week in our regular
emails ... Cheers, Liz Simpson
From the Centre on 4/10 - getting into the routine for weekly emails!
Dear students! As those of you who were at Saturday’s London meeting,
or met me in Scotland last month, know, my basic way of keeping in touch
with you this semester (and year for full-year students) will be by a
series of emails, roughly once a week. I’m sending them to the addresses
your US universities provided so be sure to check those accounts regularly
else you will miss out on important stuff from the US and from me. And
now that students have arrived in Oxford and Cambridge, I can write ‘Dear
students!’ and know that you are all in the UK at last, after the
staggered starting dates of UK universities and US programmes.
I have a few admin notices to start off with … all these dates,
sorry!
The Centre will be closed all day this coming Friday, 7 October as Sue
and I are attending the annual general meeting of an association we belong
to. So please don’t drop by the office, and I won’t be dealing
with any emails you send on Friday until Monday. By the way, do please
note that if you ever need to reach me in an emergency, it’s best
to call my home land-line 020 7249 9393 and if you have to leave a message
because I’m out, be sure to leave your name and return phone number
clearly on the answerphone.
This Wednesday, 5 October, I’m going to keep my afternoon clear
of other work so that students who missed Saturday’s meeting can
come in and collect their information booklets etc. I’ve said I’ll
be free 2pm-4pm, but I am aware that students taking the Penn Theatre
course will be coming along after their class so I will wait for you if
you’re later than this. As Wednesday is normally free of classes,
do make every effort to come on Wednesday if you missed the 1 October
session.
Finally, Oxford students need to reply to me by Monday about our meeting
on Saturday 15 October so I can make catering arrangements. It’s
should be a priority for you to meet Sue and I on the 15th as we are coming
out to Oxford especially to meet your group. We’re looking forward
to it, of course.
At Saturday’s meeting I talked a bit about safety and security and
referred to US State Department Travel warnings and alerts. It’s
worth repeating this as we’ve just had one of their general updates
following the recent death of Anwar al-Awlaki. It really is a good idea
for US citizens to enroll in STEP – the ‘Smart Traveler Enrollment
Program’ – as we suggest in our information handbook (gold
page) http://travelregistration.state.gov . Use their travel tips, and
those issued by our government too. We have also been informed of one
student who has already lost a bag/wallet, so do please be careful of
your possessions as you travel around. It’s a good idea to have
copies of your passport especially the visa pages and we can make copies
for you, or you can scan them yourself. In the case of lost/stolen credit
cards, we’re also able to make small emergency loans to tide you
over.
What’s on?
First off – Cornell and other students missed a lovely session yesterday
evening at the East India Club with young alumna Elizabeth Bard. She read
from her book and talked about cooking and food, living in France, and
her career as a journalist and published author. Elizabeth studied abroad
with us in St Andrews and then took a post graduate degree in London.
She had several useful suggestions for would-be writers too …
So I hope UPenn students (and others as well) with an interest in archaeology
and early civilisations won’t miss the opportunity to hear Jean
MacIntosh Turfa from the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology give the
annual Eva Lorant Memorial Lecture at the British Museum on Friday 14
October. We are promised ‘tales of a supernatural prophet, cosmic
rays, Mesopotamian astrology, epidemics, serpents and snide remarks by
Cicero’. It’s at 6.30pm in the BP Lecture theatre and it’s
free, but you do have to book ahead. Go to www.britishmuseum.org and click
on the full calendar under ‘Events’ on the home page and you’ll
see details of the lecture and how you can get a free ticket. You’ll
see many other things going on at the Museum, including the opening of
artist Grayson Perry’s exhibition there. That’s guaranteed
to attract a completely different audience, I’d guess!
If you want to explore a different venue for concerts (I don’t usually
book them here as we don’t get good group discounts!) try St Martin
in the Fields church on Trafalgar Square. There a free lunchtime concerts,
and ticketed evening events – some by candlelight. This month you
can choose a range of concerts from George Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody
in Blue’ on 11 October to Haydn’s ‘Nelson Mass’
for Trafalgar Day on 22 October – it’s a pretty eclectic programming!
Good café too! www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org – click on
‘concerts’ and sign up for their free email alerts if you’re
interested.
I know that at least a couple of you took an ‘Autumn Amble’
as I suggested, so if you’re interested in more walks exploring
parts of south London around Southwark then I can also recommend ‘Southwark
Mysteries’, a series of walks led by local writer John Constable.
On a good day he’s really entertaining! His walks in October are
on Monday evenings, meeting at 6.45pm Tabard Piazza by St George the Martyr
Church, Borough High Street (Borough tube) There’s a charge for
these walks – 7pounds a head or 5 pounds concessions. Pay in cash
in the day. On 10/10 it’s ‘The outlaw borough’, on 17/10
‘Charles Dickens’, on 24/10 ‘The Ghost Walk’ –
not long to Hallow-e’en! His website is given as www.southwarkmysteries.co.uk
but it’s completely out of date!
And what have we got coming up in Scotland? Glasgow’s nine-day celebration
of cabaret runs 8-16 October, www.glasgowcabaretfestival.com; Scotland’s
LGBT celebration ‘Glasgay’ is 15 Oct – 12 Nov www.glasgay.co.uk;
then from 10 Nov to 1 Dec look out for a huge programme of French cinema
in Glasgow and Edinburgh venues www.frenchfilmfestival.org.uk, even if
you can’t make it to London for the London Film Festival later this
month!
I think that’s it for the week. Next week I’ll open booking
for the next event on our schedule, the opera on 26 October. Now our ‘web-master’
is here you should find that these emails are posted on our website so
you can refer back to them, and we’ll get our ‘Events Programme’
up in full on the Centre’s website too. Don’t forget, let
me know if you are finding anything particularly challenging in these
early weeks, and if you’d appreciate a little ‘interpretation’
or intervention. It’s usually quicker to get in touch with us, rather
than US-based friends or family if you’ve got any problems –
trust us on that! Cheers, Liz and Sue
Final reminder: Oxford meeting 15/10/11
Dear ‘Oxford students’: Just a last reminder that I expect to see all of you – even those who have not replied yet! – at our short meeting on Saturday afternoon. We will meet together in the Miles Room, St Peter’s College, New Inn Hall Street to start at 2.30pm. I have ordered tea and biscuits for the end of the meeting and expect that we’ll be finished by 4pm. As well as students starting a Oxford colleges this year, we expect, as guest, a St Peter’s student, Gemma Hallat, who was at Cornell this summer. UPenn’s nursing students who are at Oxford Brookes University are also going to come along too if they can! See you all on Saturday, Liz
From the Centre on 11/10 - book for the opera and lots of other stuff too!
Good morning to you all (assuming I finish writing this in the morning
– if not, good afternoon!):
Opera visit on 26/10 – apply for your ticket now! The first thing
I want to do with this email is open up our booking for our visit to the
opera this semester. We have a pre-booked block of seats for Mozart’s
‘Marriage of Figaro’ in a new production for English National
Opera on Wednesday 26 October, starting at 7.30pm. All ENO’s opera’s
are sung in English, with sur-titles too, so there’s no difficulty
in following the action even if you aren’t familiar with the story,
and the music is lovely. The performance is at the Coliseum theatre, which
is on St Martin’s Lane, just off Trafalgar Square. Our tickets are
12 pounds and 35p each as ENO gives pretty good group discounts. The seats
are in the top circle, centrally located so you get a good view of the
stage. If you would like a ticket, reply to this email and I’ll
allocate the tickets in the order I get your emails and let you know if
you are successful. If you are eligible for the cultural bonus the cost
will just be deducted from your ‘account’; if you don’t,
we shall want you to pay cash for your ticket before the performance.
I would prefer it if you could all collect your ticket rather than rely
on the post (if you are outside London, and we have your address, we will
post your ticket to you). Tickets will be available for collection from
Monday 17 October.
You can find out more about the opera by going to the ENO website, www.eno.org
If you enjoy this performance we hope you’ll visit ENO again or
try the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, for opera and ballet. Stand-by
tickets are usually offered each evening at pretty good prices!
Don’t forget, all our scheduled events for this semester are listed
in your information booklet and will shortly go up on our website too.
Whether you are in London, Cambridge, Oxford or Brighton – and Scotland
too! - you all have an equal chance of getting one of our pre-booked tickets
if you regularly check our emails!
The next thing is a reminder about a bit of Centre admin: When we’ve
met you we’ve explained how important it is for you to go onto our
website www.cornell-brown-penn.ac.uk and fill in the ‘personal data
form’ and send it to Sue. This way we have all your contact details
(here, and at home in case of an emergency) and – very important
– we have the titles of the courses you are doing this semester.
Even if you provide that information to your home campuses we need it
here too. Your transcripts at the end of the semester/year come to us
at the Centre and we forward them to your home universities. It’s
easier to rectify errors here before we send them off, and we need your
course details to do that. It only takes a few minutes for you to send
us the forms - it saves us ages at the end of the semester!
Oxford meeting – final reminder! Sue and I will be at St Peter’s
College Oxford at about 2.15pm on Saturday so that our meeting can start
at 2.30pm sharp. We’re looking forward to seeing all new Oxford-based
students there.
What’s on – and where!
I’ve discovered a few more things you might enjoy in the next couple
of weeks – and if any of you spot things you think might interest
fellow students please let me know and I can put them on this email. I
usually write my emails on Mondays or Tuesdays.
This weekend – 14-16 October - sees the ‘Wine and Cheese Festival’
at the South Bank Centre. It’ll be free, in Festival Square, behind
the Royal Festival Hall. There are more details on www.cheesewinefestival.com
but I do hope there are lots of opportunities for tasting! The following
week, the Real Food Market returns to the same space, from Friday to Sunday.
Try it out to buy a lunch or early supper with a difference (I recommend
the harissa chicken on flat bread – or do I prefer the Ghanaian
veggie stews with fired plantain?!).
Which reminds me, if you check out the South Bank Centre’s website
www.southbankcentre.co.uk, as well as the concerts and other ticketed
performances in the Royal Festival Hall (RFH), the Queen Elizabeth Hall
(QEH) and the Purcell Room, you’ll see there are plenty of free
events you can join in – for when the budget starts getting a bit
tight! You can just grab a coffee and sit and use the free WiFi in the
RFH – or check out one of the armchairs in the QEH foyer when it’s
open. If the Barbican Centre, in the City of London, is more convenient
for you, it is also open all day and there is a good library, cafes, the
concert hall and theatre and a cinema. All cinema tickets for first run
films and special seasons are only 5 pounds online on Mondays –
it’s known as ‘Monday Madness’!
Coming soon – The ‘Bloomsbury Festival’ on 21-23 October.
Starting with a lantern parade on Friday evening in Russell Square (6.30pm
to 8pm), for the rest of the weekend there’s a full programme of
events in the area around our centre – Bloomsbury. There are hard-copy
programmes available (we have one in the office) and all the details are
on www.bloomsburyfestival.org.uk . It’s all free!! Some events are
ticketed, for others you just turn up.
Also – if you are interested in world music, SOAS have a year-long
programme of concerts (usually one a month) in the Brunei Gallery lecture
theatre. That’s opposite the Russell Square building. You can find
the full schedule of concerts on www.soas.ac.uk/concerts - again there
is no charge, so do take advantage of this.
Last minute booking – Syracuse University is inviting interested
students and staff to a panel discussion: ‘Neither moguls nor pirates
– grey area music distribution’ (a panel discussion reprised
from SXSW Interactive, March 2011). It’ll be at Faraday House, 48-51
Old Gloucester Street, WC2, Syracuse’s London campus, tomorrow (12
October) starting at 7.30pm. You do have to RSVP as there is security
at the entrance and if you’re not on the list I doubt you’ll
get in. If you’re interested in thinking ‘outside the box’
on future scenarios for music production and distribution email Lisa Wilkinson
(l.wilkinson@syracuse-u.ac.uk) straight away as today’s the closing
date. Tell her I have passed on the info to you.
And for students in Scotland – I have been forwarding you the emails
I get from The List (I hope they reach you) but I also noticed something
else for sports fans. There’s a scheme for 10 pound tickets for
students to go to rugby matches to watch Edinburgh’s team at Murrayfield
– not the internationals but professional rugby. You can find out
all the details on www.edinburghrugby.org It’s a bit like American
football (a bit!) but the players tend not to be so well-protected by
helmets and padding.
That’s it everybody. Have a good week, Liz & Sue
From the C/B/P Centre on 18 October - another newsletter email! (includes concert booking)
Dear students: Another email with the sun shining outside, but it’s
very chilly in the office as the heating’s packed up again. Time
to make a hot drink to warm my hands before I do much more typing!
First of all: Please note that the Centre will be closed to visitors on
Thursday this week as I’m in Cambridge to meet the students who
have just started there. So our hours this week are as follows. I’m
here til 4.30pm today (Tuesday), til 5.30pm on Wednesday and til 4.30pm
again on Friday. As you know, I do get into the office by 8.30am most
days!
‘Marriage of Figaro’ on Wednesday 26 October: we have now
sold all our tickets from our booking for this event. You can collect
your tickets from the Centre this week (unless I have agreed to post them
to you). The cost of the ticket will be deducted from your bonus except
for the ‘Penn theatre’ students who must bring us the cash
first. Sue and I will not be at this event so you must pay for your tickets
before the show. The curtain goes up at 7pm, not 7.30pm as I put in one
of my emails by mistake.
Booking is open now for our next event – which is on Tuesday 1 November.
This is our classical music choice for the semester, the Royal Philharmonic
Orchestra playing at the Royal Albert Hall in South Kensington. These
tickets are an incredible bargain as they have saved us seats towards
the front of the stalls for only 5 pounds. The RPO describes the programme
as ‘English Masterpieces’ – Elgar’s ‘Enigma
Variations’ and Vaughan Williams ‘A Sea Symphony’. Brian
Wright conducts the orchestra, the soloists are Emma Bell (soprano) and
Jacques Imbrailo (baritone), with Goldsmiths Choral Union and massed choirs.
Let me know straight away if you want to go to this event. If you want
to bring a friend from another university, you can ask for a second ticket
and I’ll do what I can but it will save time if you let me know
whether you are happy to have just one ticket if there isn’t a second
available.
Reminder: As you must all have finalised your courses and tutorials now
– please be sure to fill in the ‘personal data form’
on our website www.cornell-brown-penn.ac.uk As I said before this serves
two purposes, we have your full contact details which we need for emergency
use, and we have your academic programme details so we can check on your
transcripts when we get them at the end of your semester/year here. This
way we can at least make sure you’re being given grades for courses
that you did and pick up on obvious errors before we forward them to the
US. This only takes a couple of minutes of your time at most – and
the info only goes to Sue, and saves us considerable time and effort.
While you are checking the website, you’ll see that our ‘web-master’
is now putting up each week’s emails, including come of the special
ones to Oxford, Cambridge and Scotland. This means if you delete anything
that’s important, we can refer you back to past emails from the
centre. We now have the full events programme up too.
Want to see Michael Sheen in Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’
at the Young Vic, on 31 October? Don’t forget we’ve been offered
ten tix by another college – and I still have some left. They will
cost about 17 pounds each (my friend is still awaiting confirmation from
the theatre!) but do let me know asap if you’re keen to see this
play. We don’t have another opportunity to see a Shakespeare play
in our programme this semester!
And do you want to see a couple more good plays while you’re in
the UK? We have one play on our scheduled events (‘One Man, Two
Guv’nors’ later in November) but there are some other excellent
plays you can look out for. Some of you have already been lucky enough
to catch Ralph Fiennes in ‘The Tempest’ at the Haymarket already,
but there are still a couple of weeks til the run ends on 29 October.
Then at the Duchess Theatre, look out for the National Theatre’s
production of ‘The Pitmen Painters’ which is back it town
after a national tour and a stint on Broadway. It’s a true story
about a group of miners in the NE of England who turned to painting and
art appreciation in the 1930s. We included it in our ‘Events programme’
in 2009. Mark Rylance is back in ‘Jerusalem’ at The Apollo
Shaftesbury after wowing audiences when the play transferred to Broadway
this past spring. And at the Old Vic, J M Synge’s ‘The Playboy
of the Western World’ is on until 26 November. The Old Vic has a
special scheme of 12 pound tickets for under-25s. 100 are available for
booking each day. You call 0844 871 7628, and bring ID to the theatre
when you collect your ticket. We don’t do group visits to the Old
Vic anymore, since this scheme was introduced for you.
And last but not least, I’d like to point out a couple of ‘block-buster’
art exhibitions in London this autumn. First of all, at the Royal Academy
of Arts on Piccadilly, ‘Degas and the ballet: picturing movement’
is open now until 11 December. This show is packing in audiences, so you
really must book ahead. Go to www.royalacademy.org.uk - there are student
discount prices. The RA stays open until 10pm on Fridays – that
might be a good time to visit. One of the highlights of this autumn is
bound to be the opening of ‘Leonardo da Vinci: painter at the court
of Milan’ at the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square. It opens
on 9 November but tickets have been on sale for months already –
go to www.nationalgallery.org.uk for all you need to know. Both the RA
and the NG have good programmes of talks, tours, films and other events
associated with their shows – so they are worth checking out too.
That’s it til next week! Cheers, Liz Simpson
From the C/B/P Centre - Are you interested in the 2012 Olympics?!(Full-year students only)
Dear ‘full-year students’: I’m sending this to you as you are going to be here for the full academic year. You may have thought that you would miss out on the 2012 London Olympic Games as even though you’re here for the year, the main programme of Olympic and Paralympic sports events will be taking place after you have left the UK. However, there are a number of events taking place before the start of the Games so that they can test the venues and tickets are available for sale for these. If you go to www.londonpreparesseries.com you can see what’s happening and when the tickets go on sale. Also, it’s possible to apply for a summer job – and you have the visa that allows you to work! http://summerjobs.jobsforthegames.co.uk for more information. Cheers, Liz
From the C/B/P Centre a message on Wednesday 26/10
Good morning one and all! I’m not offering any of our own events
for booking this week so I’ll concentrate on admin stuff and alerts
for things to do – please read on!
Our ‘personal data forms’: I’ve already asked you a
couple of times to complete this form through the link on our website,
and Sue has given me the following tally of replies received. Twenty-six
of the 46 Cornell students in the UK have completed their forms –
so could the other 20 get on with it please! Similarly we only have 23
forms of the 50 Brown students in the UK – and 38 of the possible
86 UPenn submissions. It takes a few minutes to do – and even though
we may have your UK addresses by now, it’s *essential that you give
us the information about your courses*.
Pre-registration for spring 2012 courses: It seems impossible to believe,
but many of the fall semester students will shortly have to deal with
pre-registration for courses back on campus next semester. By the time
you read this, we should have updated the info on our website on dates
etc. Obviously, full-year students don’t need to do anything this
semester – and the group of Brown transfer students in Edinburgh
and London will be informed direct from Brown about their own arrangements.
‘Hamlet’ at the Young Vic on 31/10 – if anyone else
wants a ticket for this play I might be able to get one for you if you
get back to me *immediately*. Special arrangements for paying (17 pounds
50p) apply as it’s not one of our events.
British Summer Time ends this weekend, clocks go back an hour on Saturday/Sunday
night. Don’t forget, or you’ll be arriving early for your
classes on Monday. You’ll also note that it will be getting dark
much earlier in the evenings – something to be taken into consideration
when you make your travel plans.
It’s Hallowe’en on 31 October … and children in the
UK seem to have taken up the US idea of ‘trick or treat’ with
a vengeance. You’ll also find themed events over the weekend –
including a programme of horror films at the National Film Theatre! How
about a tour of Nunhead Cemetery, London SE15 to put you in the mood?!
www.fonc.org.uk for details – it starts at 2.15pm. In Scotland,
Edinburgh will see the annual Samhuinn Fire Festival, marking the end
of summer. On 31/10 it will kick off at 9pm along the Royal Mile between
the Castle and Holyrood so be prepared for something a bit different –
www.beltane.org for full information. There’s a traditional British
event is next week – Guy Fawkes Night on November 5. It marks the
unsuccessful attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605 (though
I doubt very much that this is remembered these days. When I was a kid
(many moons ago!) it was all ‘Remember, remember, the fifth of November,
gunpowder, treason and plot’!) Where-ever you’re based you
should find firework displays and bonfires and I’ll list some in
next week’s email!
Any jazz fans out there? The London Jazz Festival runs for 11 to 20 November
in venues all over town. I’m giving you advance warning as some
of the venues are small, and if you want to get tickets in advance you
need this notice. www.londonjazzfestival.org.uk for details – and
according to the website, some events are already sold out!
Foodies! I picked up on one food review recently that I thought might
interest you – as it’s in Brixton, a part of London you may
not have visited yet! ‘Brixton Village’, Atlantic Road, SW9
sounds like an interesting place to go to for about a dozen small local
restaurants offering everything from great burgers, through Portugese
piri-piri, and Chinese dumplings to Caribbean sea-food. There are a couple
of bakeries and coffee places too. It’s open 10am to 6pm Mons-Weds,
10am to 10pm Thurs–Sats, 12pm-5pm on Sundays. If anyone does visit
this part of south London, I’d be interested to hear whether the
glowing review was based on fact! On your first visit, can I recommend
exploring in the day-time, for a lunch or a Sunday brunch … as it’s
not Mayfair!
It’s ‘Friday Late’ at the V&A Museum this Friday,
6.30pm to 10pm – it’s the ‘Post-Modern Look’ if
you’re into it! And the ‘Affordable Art Fair’ which
will be on Hampstead Heath (the lower fairground site) this w/end. This
is a show you have to pay for but student concessions are available –
www.affordableartfair.co.uk for all you need to know.
Note – if you have a ‘reading week’ at your college
and are planning any travel outside the UK, you must take your admission
documents from your hosting university with you, just in case you need
them for immigration control. It’s a good idea to refresh your memory
on safety and security aspects of travelling and it really is advisable
to check on the FCO travel site to see if there are any strikes or other
disruptions planned in countries you might visit. Greece and Italy are
particularly prone to this.
I’ll be around for the rest of the week (no visits planned) and
next week too if you need anything. Cheers, Liz Simpson
PS Students with tickets for the concert (1/11) and ‘Hamlet’
(31/10) – be sure to come and collect/pay for them.
From the C/B/P Centre ... It's the beginning of November already!
Well, I hope you all remembered the adjust your clocks at the weekend
and didn’t waste the pleasure of an extra hour in bed: in this week’s
email I’m opening our next event up for booking, and again, will
let you know about a few things to look out for this week and at the weekend.
Early registration for spring 2012: First of all though, if you haven’t
already heard, you will shortly be getting emails direct from Cornell,
Brown and UPenn about registering for spring semester courses if you are
only here for the fall semester. We’ve updated our website to give
the relevant dates. There’s an obvious exception – if you’re
studying here for a full academic year there’s no need to worry
about this until you get emails about registering for fall 2012 semester
courses. The other exception is the group of sophomore transfer students
from Brown who are studying in Edinburgh or at SOAS this semester as you’ll
get different information. If anyone needs to use the facilities of the
Centre either to register, or deal with housing for the spring (eg faxing
through contracts) then just call by when we’re open.
Event booking: The next event on our programme for this semester is ‘One
Man, Two Guv’nors’ at the Adelphi Theatre on the Strand, on
Tuesday 15 November at 7.30pm. This proved to be a very popular show when
the National Theatre played it on the South Bank. It’s now back
for a West End run after a successful national tour. Our tickets cost
12 pounds each, and we’ve got 20 in the Upper Circle. So if you
want to come, now’s the time to let me know. (If you don’t
get the ‘cultural bonus’ or have already used yours up, you
can still have a ticket by paying for it). As usual tickets go to the
first people who reply to this email, and I’d prefer you to collect
them from me in person – but I can post them if necessary. The usual
conditions about ‘guests’ apply: if you’d like a ticket
for a friend we can sometimes fit them in, but I do need to know when
you book whether you’re happy to come on your own if there are no
spare tix for this show.
Now that Hallowe’en is over, we come to a traditional British celebration
– November 5, Guy Fawkes or Bonfire Night. This marks the failure
of an attempt by a group of Catholic sympathisers, on 5 November 1605,
to blow up Parliament and King James I, who was in Parliament on that
day. Typically, there are organized firework displays to mark the occasion
now, and I’ll give you a few to look out for ... Battersea Park
www.wandsworth.gov.uk/fireworks; Brockwell Park, Lambeth www.lambeth.gov.uk
– this one’s free; Wanstead Flats www.newham.gov.uk - you’ll
find a full list in www.timeout.com/london with timings, travel, whether
the displays are free or not. Up in Scotland there’s a big event
at the Meadowbank Stadium which starts at 6pm and cost 6 pounds entrance
fee. You may have heard about or read about the Bonfire Night events in
Lewes, near Brighton, which is famous (or possibly notorious) for its
celebrations on 5 November as they have been markedly more anti-Catholic
than anywhere else. Thankfully this has been toned down in recent years
but both the ‘Bonfire Societies’ and Lewes Council recommend
that this events is primarily for townspeople only rather than for visitors
from outside the area – they emphasis how crowded it gets and how
transport is difficult.
If you didn’t get enough of being spooky on 31/10 – you can
go to the Wellcome Collection galleries on Saturday to celebrate Mexico’s
‘Day of the Dead’ beginning at 12 noon. ‘A festival
of colour, food, fun, music and craft’ or so it says on the advert
– go to www.wellcomecollection.org to find out more about the event
– and more about this fascinating venue (apart from anything else,
it’s quite a quiet place for a coffee on Euston Road!). This Thursday,
3 November (and on the first Thursday of every month) is ‘First
Thursday’ when East London hosts a series of art events www.firstthursdays.co.uk
– the monthly programme includes a bus tour which leaves from outside
the Whitechapel Art Gallery, and visits two or three different galleries
each month.
The Real Food Festival’s back behind the Festival Hall this weekend,
and you could always start off with a free concert in The Front Room in
the QEH – from 5.30pm on Friday, Maia, a Huddersfield-based quartet
will be showcasing their new album of what the South Bank Centre describes
as ‘disco sc-fi folk pop’ (they seemed to have covered all
their bases there!). A date for your diary – the Chocolate Festival
will be at the South Bank Centre 9-11 December, just in time for Christmas
shopping!
Next week, Armistice Day falls on a Friday, and will be marked by a service
on Sunday 13 November at the Cenotaph in Whitehall, and at other locations
all over the UK. This makes for a busy weekend in London, as the Lord
Mayor’s Show will be on Saturday 12 November. Next week’s
email will give you fuller information and I’ll try to make it as
accurate as possible, as the usual route for the Show’s parade takes
it past St Paul’s Cathedral and one can’t be sure what will
be happening there. And this is early warning that the Centre will be
closed on Friday 11 November and on Friday 18 November too. Sorry about
that!
Some students will be lucky enough to enjoy a mid-semester break next
week, so I’d just like to remind you of a few practical things.
Don’t forget to have your original offer letter or other admission
documents with you, especially if you came into the UK as a student visitor.
If you haven’t already done so, be sure to keep details of your
passport, credit cards, emergency numbers safely so you can access them
in an emergency. And I’d recommend an extra bit of research before
you travel. Check out the travel alerts on the UK and US government websites,
and make sure you know where your embassies or consulates are located
in the cities you might be visiting. I’m more concerned about strikes
and other disruptions to your travel plans than anything else, so it’s
well-worth checking (the websites are in your info booklets from the Centre).
If you’re still deciding where you might go, don’t forget
we have a collection of travel guides for the UK and Europe that you can
borrow!
Cheers, Liz
Dear students: I thought I’d do a separate email about Thanksgiving,
so I can go into a bit more detail and make the booking process clearer!
Here goes …
The annual Cornell Club of London-sponsored Thanksgiving Dinner will take
place this year on Saturday 26 November 2011. It will be at the East India
Club, 16 St James’s Square in Mayfair and will start with a cash
bar at 7pm, followed by dinner at 7.30pm.
The East India Club has provided the setting for our dinner for several
years and serves a traditional three-course Thanksgiving menu (a vegetarian
option can be provided on request). The cost of dinner also includes wine
or soft drinks with your meal.
While alumni and other adult guests pay considerably more, the cost for
Cornell, Brown and UPenn students is 20 pounds per head; if you want to
bring another student guest, then they pay 25 pounds. (Brown and UPenn
and the Cornell Club subsidise each student to reduce your costs).
To book your place for dinner please email me. You need to let me know
if you require a special meal rather than the traditional menu. If you
wish to bring a guest, I need the name as there will be a formal seating
plan for this dinner, so that students mix with alumni. If you want to
sit with friends, then let me know. No booking is confirmed without payment
in advance from you. I cannot deduct this from your bonus at this stage,
though you can always use the event in a bonus claim afterwards. I can
accept cash, or sterling cheques or postal orders made payable to ‘The
Cornell Club of London’ (not the Centre).
The closing date for making your bookings and paying for them is Monday
21 November so that the Cornell Club can confirm numbers with the East
India Club.
I look forward to hearing from you with your bookings. Any further questions?
Email me … Cheers, Liz
Note: The East India Club, established in the Victorian era, has a dress
code. We don’t expect evening wear but no denim or leather is acceptable;
ladies are expected to wear dresses or smart trousers/skirts, with tops,
and gentlemen must wear jackets, shirts and ties.
Students in Scotland: From the C/B/P Centre with info re our November visit.
Dear students in Scotland: Some November highlights in Edinburgh theatres – we especially recommend the opera and ballet programmes, in fact Sue and I have already got tix the see ‘Nutcracker!’ when we come up to meet you in November. Don’t forget you should have these dates scheduled in already: we can meet Edinburgh students on Monday 28/11 pm or Wednesday 30/11 am, and St Andrews students at lunchtime on Tuesday 29/11, in St Andrews itself. Cheers, Liz
From the Centre ... on 8 November
Good afternoon! I’m going to start with reminders about booking
two events which I first publicised last week …
‘One Man, Two Guv’nors’ at the Adelphi Theatre, Strand
… we still have tickets left at only 12 pounds each for the National
Theatre’s hit comedy on Tuesday 15 November. I’m going to
put a booking deadline on this now and if we have tickets left I shall
offer them to other programmes. So book your ticket before Wednesday,
else you might be unlucky. If you’ve already booked, you can collect
your tickets from the Centre as soon as you like, except for this Friday.
Cornell Club of London’s Thanksgiving Dinner on Saturday 26 November
at the East India Club, Mayfair. For this event, the deadline for booking
and paying for the dinner is Monday 21 November. The Cornell Club must
have everyone’s names, menu preference and payment by that date
so they can confirm dinner numbers with the East India Club. Sadly, it’s
not like a restaurant where you can just turn up on the day and be served!
As I wrote last week – this coming weekend is a busy one in London
and I’ll give you all the details of the main events. I’m
going into quite a bit of details because even if you’re not going
to watch or join in, both events will affect buses and other traffic in
London, and you may find roads closed, or some areas more busy than you’re
used to, so you have been warned!
On Saturday, it’s the Lord Mayor’s Show in the City of London.
The City elects its own mayor each year, and he takes office after a procession
from the Mansion House, through the City, to the Royal Courts of Justice
on the Strand. If you go to www.lordmayorsshow.org you can find all the
details you need, including a downloadable map and timetable or a free
app for your iphone. The parade starts at 10.45am as the coach leaves
Guildhall, at 11am it passes the Mansion House then the route takes it
along Cheapside, to St Paul’s, down Ludgate Hill and Fleet Street
to the Royal Courts of Justice, arriving there at approx 12.30pm. The
return parade goes along the embankments and Queen Victoria Street back
to the Mansion House for 2.30pm. There will be decorated floats, bands,
carriages with the representatives of the City of London and the Livery
Companies – in all about 6000 people take part! There’s nothing
else really like it each year, and it’s a great favourite with Londoners
and visitors alike. Normally, I recommend that you head for top of Cheapside,
behind St Paul’s for a good view, as the parade slows down for cornering
– and there are handy public loos in Paternoster Square and the
Barbican! With the tented protest in front of St Paul’s, I’m
not sure how this will affect the availability of facilities.
Afterwards, there’s one of the best free firework displays in London
– from a barge moored between Waterloo and Blackfriars bridges.
The fireworks start at 5pm and although it gets really crowded there these
days, I think it’s still fun. If you can, go up to one of the upper
tiers of the South Bank Centre or the National Theatre. As the trees along
the river are still in leaf, the higher up you can get, the better view
you’ll have of the fireworks. The website also recommends a new
activity this year – at 3pm City of London guides are offering free
walking tours of parts of the City. They will start from No 1 Poultry,
near Mansion House.
Sunday is Remembrance Sunday, which is marked in London by a service and
march-past at the Cenotaph in Whitehall and by church services all over
the UK. In Whitehall, there will be a two-minutes’ silence at 11am,
followed by the service, wreath-laying by members of the Royal family,
government representatives and others and the march-past by veterans of
WW II and successive wars. As you can imagine, this is quite a solemn
occasion and on the one year I went, I was amazed by how quiet and subdued
the large crowds were. Anyone can attend, but you might need to get there
early to find a good viewing spot. Don’t take big bags and allow
extra time to go through security checks. www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/honours/3333.aspx
for more information.
I’m going to send this out now so you have the maximum amount of
time to make your theatre bookings and collect your tickets (or get them
posted to you). Remember, the centre is closed on Friday 11 November!
Cheers, Liz
PS If I see anything interesting for the rest of the week in the listing
magazines, on online that you might miss - I’ll do another email!
Students in Scotland: From the C/B/P Centre; Liz and Sue to vsit Scotland, 28-30 November
Dear students-in-Scotland! I am now sending you full details for meeting
me, with my colleague Sue Welsford, later this month. This is probably
your only opportunity for making a cash claim on your ‘cultural
bonus’ and apart from finding out how you’ve been getting
on, we’ll also remind you about transcripts and credit for when
you get back to your home campuses.
Edinburgh students: As there are so many of you, we have booked rooms
for two meetings – it would be very difficult to chat and deal with
everyone’s bonus claims if you all came to the same meeting!
Monday 28 November – we will be in the David Hume Tower, room 8.16
from 4pm to 5pm
Wednesday 30 November – we’ll be in the David Hume Tower,
room 7.01 from 9am to 10.30am
You *must* reply to this email and tell me what meeting you’ll come
to – and stick to the arrangements please.
St Andrews students: Tuesday 29 November - we’ll meet you for lunch
in the Dolls House Restaurant, 3 Church Square, St Andrews at 12.30pm
Please *confirm* that you are coming – and let me know if there
are problems with this time so that we can re-arrange if necessary.
To make your bonus claims at these meetings: bring along a list of what
you are claiming for, headed with your name and US university. Also bring
receipts, tickets, printouts of online bookings – anything to show
what you spent your money on. We keep the lists, you get to keep the receipts.
If anyone has a bank account in the UK, please let us know so we don’t
have to bring up so much cash. And remember, you can only claim for things
you did in the UK (England, Scotland, Wales and N Ireland); a clue - if
you need to work out the exchange rate to sterling from euros, then you
can’t claim for it!
Cheers, Liz Simpson
From the Centre on ... 15 November
I’ll start off this week’s message with information on two
ways to mark the American holiday of Thanksgiving, even though it’s
not a public holiday here (that’s a reminder: university classes,
internship placements and the rest carry on as normal – there is
no long weekend holiday for you this year!).
BOOK NOW! I’ve already told you about the Cornell Club of London’s
Thanksgiving Dinner at the East India Club on Saturday 26 November: full
details were given in last week’s email, which is posted on our
website. To book your place you need to contact me by 21 November, remembering
these few important points. If you are bringing a guest, I need to know
her/his name for the seating plan. I also need to know whether you want
a regular menu or a vegetarian option. If you tell me this stuff when
you make your booking, then I don’t have to get back to you with
questions! To confirm your booking, I must have your full payment before
21 November; the cost is 20 pounds a head for undergraduate students of
Cornell, Brown or UPenn and 25 pounds a head for student guests from other
universities and graduate students. You can bring cash to the office or
send me a sterling cheque or postal order, made payable to the ‘Cornell
Club of London’.
Then you may like to know that a Thanksgiving Day Service will be held
at St Paul’s Cathedral on 24 November, starting at 11am. Ambassador
Susman and his wife will attend, and the service will include a Thanksgiving
message, hymns, presentation of the colours and a reading of President
Obama’s Thanksgiving proclamation. You are all invited. The cathedral
will open its doors at 9.45am and you are asked to be seated by 10.30am.
Don’t take big bags with you as there will be security checks and
you’ll probably have to go through a metal detector. You will all
have seen the protestors camped outside St Paul’s on the news, I’m
sure; it’s not anticipated that they will be a problem at all (the
Lord Mayor’s Show and the Remembrance Day service went ahead OK)
but the letter from the ambassador announcing the service states that
should the situation change, warranting cancellation of the event, a notice
will be placed on the US Embassy website.
Something completely different – for this coming Saturday. On Saturday
19 November there is going to be a post-graduate education fair, organized
by ‘Across the Pond’ (www.studyacrossthepond.com) held at
the Radisson Blue Portman Hotel, 22 Portman Square W1. The event runs
from 11am to 4pm in the hotel’s Bryanston/Seymour/Portman suites
– you’ll see signs directing you on arrival at the hotel.
There will be at least 20 UK universities there so if you are thinking
that returning for post-grad work might be an option for you, go along
for an hour or so and ask questions of the staff there (RSVP to lauren@studyacrossthepond.com).
The hotel is also ideally placed for shopping in the flagship Marks and
Spencer store at Marble Arch, and in Selfridges, and it’s also quite
close to Manchester Square where you’ll find one of London’s
finest small art galleries, the Wallace Collection (www.wallacecollection.org)
– it’s free! Make a day of it!!
Another small gallery that’s worth a visit is the Courtauld Gallery
in Somerset House – and there’s a late night opening on Thursday
17/11 from 6pm to 9pm, themed around their current special exhibition
‘The Spanish line: drawings from Ribera to Picasso’. Although
this is a gallery you have to pay to visit – there’s a concessionary
price for students - it looks like a good evening with music, talks and
Spanish food in the café www.courtauld.ac.uk/lates . The permanent
collection will be open as well, of course.
For south-Londoners (and anybody else who wants to visit Greenwich) don’t
forget that the National Maritime Museum has a programme of special exhibitions
and events and the current one is called ‘Traders unpacked’
focusing on the new gallery which tells the story of Britain’s trade
with Asia. On 17/11 from 6.30pm to 8.30pm you can celebrate ‘Diwali
under the stars’ and on 25/11 starting at 7.30pm ‘Friday Night
curry and a pint’! www.nmm.ac.uk/spice These are both priced events
– but the NMM is free to visit at other times.
Claiming your cultural bonus: I thought I’d just remind you about
this, as we’re half-way through the semester and many of you will
have accumulated receipts and tickets to make a claim on. If you come
to the Centre, we can refund your bonus in cash, but be sure to give me
at least a full working day’s notice so I can go to the bank for
cash for you. Have a look at the page in your information booklets about
the ‘cultural bonus’ and I’m sure you’ll find
you have done things you can list in your claim. If you have opened a
bank account in the UK, then you don’t even have to visit the Centre;
just send your ‘receipts’ and we’ll post you a cheque!
If you’re studying here for a full academic year you’ll have
150 pounds to claim and whatever you don’t claim back this semester
will be carried over to next semester so you won’t lose out. Sue
and I are coming up to Scotland later this month, and this is the opportunity
for students in Scotland to make their claims. We don’t plan to
visit Oxford or Cambridge again this semester, so Oxford Brookes students
should be thinking about how they can organise their bonus claims –
will you be visiting London before the end of the semester? The same goes
for our one student in Brighton …
Next week, we’ll get in the mood for winter proper as outdoor rinks
begin to open all over London and elsewhere is major cities in the UK
and I’ll put together a list of some of them for you. In the meantime,
have a good week, Liz
PS Please don’t forget - the Centre is closed all day this coming
Friday, 18 November
From the Centre - celebrate St Andrews Day and the start of the Christmas season!
We know we’ll be seeing you before the majority of these events
take place but in case you want to plan ahead – here are a few things
that are taking place on and around St Andrews Day (30 November). I’m
afraid I find it easier to track down events in Edinburgh (and Glasgow)
than I do in St Andrews, but please bear with me …
On 26/27 November you can enjoy a free weekend pass to Historic Scotland
attractions all over the country www.ticketgiveaway.co.uk to find out
more – there are 40+ to choose from.
Over the same weekend you can visit Edinburgh Castle for more events –
between 11am and 4pm. On Sunday there’s a firework display starting
at 7pm.
The Scotch Whisky experience is giving free tours on 30/11, 3/12 and 4/12
www.scotchwhiskyexperience.co.uk/vouchers/standrews
The university is organising two ceilighs on 30/11, at 8pm www.eusalive.co.uk
You can even download an app with more stuff! www.scotland.org/st-andrews-app/
Before Sue and I come to visit, the Edinburgh celebration of Christmas
starts on Light Night – 4pm on 24 November, with a live show scheduled
for 6.15pm in St Andrews Square. The lights go up, the Christmas markets
open and you’ll be able to skate the out-door rink www.edinburghschristmas.com
(there’s one in George Square, Glasgow, too!
See you soon – have a Happy Thanksgiving! Liz
From the Centre on 23/11 - Happy Thanksgiving!
Dear students: The main thing I’m going to do in this message is
open up our booking for the last event of the semester, as I won’t
be doing a group email next week ...
Book now for the English National Ballet’s Christmas production
of ‘The Nutcracker’, with choreography by the ENB’s
director, Wayne Eagling, and the familiar Tchaikovsky music. We have tickets
for one of the very first dates of the season, Tuesday 13 December, starting
a 7.30pm. We are back at the Coliseum on St Martin’s Lane and our
tickets, in the balcony again, cost 15 pounds each. We should have a good
central location as we booked them some time ago. So let me know if you
want to join the group, and you can collect your tickets from us from
5 December onwards. As usual, if you want a ticket for some-one who isn’t
from Cornell, Brown or UPenn you can ask – but the ballet is usually
pretty popular so you need to let me know if you’ll be happy with
just one ticket for yourself.
Next week, Sue and I will be in Scotland, meeting our students there so
the Centre will be closed 28 to 30 November inclusive. In other words,
if you need to visit to make a bonus claim, or bring back books, or anything
else – then you can only do so on Thursday or Friday next week.
If you need to reach Sue or I in an emergency while we’re out of
town, use our mobiles, 07813 205 787 or 07813 205 789.
And now for some seasonal suggestions! As we head up to the Christmas
holidays, there are Christmas fairs springing up all over the place: here
are a few (and they’re not all in London!)
Norwich, Norfolk – there’s a fair around the cathedral precinct
on the second w’end of December
Birmingham – England’s second largest city (and best source
of Indian food!) 17/11 to 23/11
Leeds, Yorkshire – 14/11 to 21/12
Rochester, Kent – for a Dickensian Christmas 30/11 to 18/12
Manchester – 17/11 to 21/12
Bury St Edmunds – 25-27/11
Bath – one of the best, I’ll be visiting! 24/11 to 11/12
I got these details from www.enjoyengland.com/Christmas-markets/ so you
can see what’s on offer too!
And on the South Bank the ‘Bavarian market’ has appeared on
the walkway along the Thames in front of the Royal Festival Hall and it’s
be there until you all leave for the holidays’. The food markets
at the back of the RFH carry on as usual. There will be another fair in
the Salvation Army’s Regent Hall on 3 December, where the emphasis
is on ethical trading – a Fair Christmas Fair. And finally, for
this fair-fest, on 8 December the Temple Church (off Fleet Street) is
hosting a Christmas Fair between 12 noon and 8pm. There is an entry fee
of 5 pounds as it’s a fund-raising event – but it is an excuse
to visit the church and see a bit of the Inns of Court!
Something different to check out this weekend and next – Cockpit
Arts Open Studios are scheduled for this weekend 25-27 November in Holborn
(Cockpit Yard, Northington Street, WC1) and next, 2-4 December in Deptford
(18-22 Creekside, SE8). Cockpit Arts are communal studios where 160+ designers
and craftspeople have their working spaces and will be there to talk about
– and sell – their works. If you’re looking for something
different, go along and have a look. There is an entrance fee which goes
the support the studios – and a café!
Also this weekend is the only winter opening of the Chelsea Physic Garden
from 10am to 4pm both days for their Christmas celebration. The Garden
itself is one of the oldest in the UK (established in 1673), located off
the King’s Road in Chelsea. If you didn’t manage one of its
summer openings, have a look now www.chelseaphysicgarden.co.uk
Finally, St Paul’s Cathedral marks the beginning of Advent with
special services on Sunday 27/11 and Monday 28/11 at 6pm. There will be
a candle-light procession and seasonal carols and hymns from the choir.
Don’t forget that St Paul’s is also hosting their annual Thanksgiving
Service tomorrow at 11am (arrive by 10.30 am please).
I’m still not sure it’s cold enough for skating – but
in my next message I plan to give you info on the outdoor winter skating
rinks – I’ve already told our Scottish students about the
main ones in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
I think that’s enough seasonal information for the moment, so it
just remains for Sue and me to wish you a happy Thanksgiving – even
though it’s not a holiday here. I will see some of you during the
drinks reception at the Cornell Club dinner on Saturday (I don’t
plan to stay for the meal) and I hope the rest of you have something arranged
too. More news in the week after next. Cheers, Liz
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to Oxford and Cambridge students
It’s amazing to think that the first term is drawing to a close for you all, and you’ll likely be heading off for your holidays shortly ... so this is to wish you all a very enjoyable Christmas and New Year break from both Sue Welsford and me. If you are combining a visit home with some independent travels, would you be kind enough to use the appropriate link on our website to let us know where you will be. We’d also like to know the tutorial choices you have made for the rest of the year is they are different from the information you gave us in October. We will be visiting you next term to catch up with the news and allow you to make a start with your bonus claims but in the mean time do let me know if you have any questions. Happy holidays, Liz
From the Centre on 6/12 - I think winter has started!
Good afternoon, students! From the news, and the temperatures outside
– I think winter has started! I’m feeling very sorry for the
students we saw in Scotland last week, as you’re experiencing some
Scottish winter weather after all.
My main reason for writing this week is to remind you of some basic preparations
that fall semester students need to bear in mind as we head towards the
end of the semester. (If you’re here for a year you can skip this
bit!).
First of all, a bit about planning when to do those last minute essays.
We really do recommend that you try to finish up all your required work
for assessment before you leave the UK, even if the deadline you have
been given is for early January. Several reasons for this … but
mainly because you’re not going to want to be working on stuff over
the vacation if you can help it. Also, sending papers by post or as email
attachments is not fool-proof and you could end up losing marks because
you’ve not got work in on time. If you do find yourself submitting
work in January and sending papers as hard copy by express mail, make
sure you time the arrival so that there is actually some-one in the appropriate
department to accept and sign for your consignment.
Then, be sure to take back to the US your marked papers or other work,
together with syllabi, book lists, exam papers (if you have them) etc
so that you can show what you have done here when you discuss credit for
this work with your advisers. If you did sit an exam here you will not
have your exam scripts returned to you. But if you have other work that
won’t be marked before you leave, ask for it to be sent to you and
leave a self-addressed envelope with the correct postage on it in your
department office. Or you could ask if the work could be sent back with
your transcript.
All transcripts for our students in the UK should come into our office
first and then we’ll send them on to Cornell, Brown and UPenn. That’s
why we have asked several times for you to tell us the courses you are
taking, so we can pick up any basic errors on the transcript - like listing
a course you didn’t take! If I see a grade that looks really strange
in context with the rest (eg a ‘0’ when the others are all
‘70’s) I’ll check before I forward the transcript. If
you have any questions about the marks then please contact me or your
study abroad offices, not UK staff members direct – they don’t
like it! I expect that we will begin to get transcripts into the office
in late January so you could be back on campus for a couple of weeks before
you know your grades officially. Although you might be able to see your
grades online, you won’t be able to transfer credit until a proper
transcript has been sent. And please make sure you clear any debts outstanding
on your university accounts here – if there’s anything still
owed to the UK universities you will not receive your transcript –
this includes the smallest debts for library fines for example. And while
I’m on the subject – make sure you take all your library books
back and that the fact you’ve returned them is recorded!
What happens with your grades varies between the three universities as
we have said before (it’s in your info booklet too). Cornell and
Brown students maintain the GPAs they came in with; Cornell will post
the overseas university grade on the Cornell transcript, while Brown enters
‘S’ for a passing grade. UPenn does translate overseas university
grades to a US-type mark and factors that into each student’s GPA.
If you have time to pop by the office I can show you what transcripts
look like for the universities where you’ve been based.
On to more entertaining things – literally. I have our tickets here
for the ballet-goers to collect for next Tuesday’s performance of
‘The Nutcracker’ at the Coliseum on St Martin’s Lane.
If you have to pay for the tickets when you collect them, they cost 15
pounds each. I also have a couple of suggestions for students coming back
in January: we already have several events for the spring posted on our
website under ‘Events’ so have a look and see what we can
offer. You might also be interested to know that the ‘Get into London
Theatre’ promotion is running again this year in January and early
February 2012, offering greatly reduced prices on tickets for many West
End shows. Go to www.getintolondontheatre.co.uk and you can book now for
shows in the New Year.
I really feel it’s cold enough to be considering a skate on one
of London’s many temporary out-door ice-rinks; you can choose from
Somerset House, the Tower of London, the Natural History Museum, Hampton
Court, Canary Wharf and several more … going onto www.timeout.com/london
and clicking on the link to ‘Ice skating’ brings up more info
and booking details. I hope your insurance covers you for cannoning into
other unsuspecting skaters! And I know many of you have been saving yourselves
for the special chocolate-themed weekend market behind the Royal Festival
Hall … it’s this w/end so don’t miss it!
Finally, don’t forget to give me notice if you’re planning
on coming in to collect your cultural bonus so I can be sure to have cash
available for you. The office is closed on Thursday morning (I’ll
probably be back by 1pm) so please don’t waste a journey then! Cheers,
Liz
A message from the C/B/P Centre in London for 'January arrivals' ...
Dear ‘new’ students: This is going to be a pretty substantial
email, sent to all the students who we are expecting to arrive in the
UK in January and February. Please read all the way through it as there
will be plenty of stuff that will, we hope, be useful or interesting!
Student helper in the Centre – we are able to recruit a new student
helper to work with us for the spring semester. You will be asked to provide
general assistance with office tasks and new projects, spending between
two-and-a-half to three hours a week on them. We do not offer payment
in the UK, but you will receive a credit on your US university account
of $500. If you are interested in helping us next semester, please send
me a resume and I will contact you after Christmas/the New Year about
selection procedures. This is really only going to be appropriate for
students who are based in London, I’m afraid.
Welcome meetings – these dates shouldn’t be a surprise to
you as they were in the letter from us that your study abroad offices
included in your information packs. The information that follows is also
on our website www.cornell-brown-penn.ac.uk under ‘Information for
New Students’ and ‘Events’.
We arrange two ‘welcome meetings’ at the start of the spring
semester to give you the opportunity to meet us – and your fellow-students.
At these meetings we’ll give out our information booklets and, with
colleagues and continuing students, discuss matters such as studying in
the UK, safety and security, cultural adjustments, travel, the ‘cultural
bonus’ and work.
On Wednesday 18 January/Thursday 19 January (the first week of the semester)
I will be in Edinburgh to meet all the students who have arrived in Scotland
by that date. I have booked ‘Faculty Room North’ in the David
Hume Tower in George Square between 3.30pm and 4.30pm for this meeting.
As I am staying overnight in Edinburgh, you’ll have a chance to
meet me later on the 18th, or in the morning on the 19th before I return
to London if you miss the meeting for any reason – but I do expect
you to make every effort to come to the group session.
On Saturday 21 January, we will hold our large London ‘welcome meeting’,
beginning at 1.30pm. We’ll be in a downstairs lecture room at Birkbeck
College, in Bloomsbury – a few minutes’ away from our office,
UCL and SOAS. We’ve timed the meeting so that almost everyone who
is starting a UK semester will have arrived so I expect to meet loads
of you. With the advance notice we’ve given you, you should not
be planning travel on that weekend (though we do of course appreciate
that some of you may not be able to attend a Saturday meeting for religious
reasons). In January we don’t have a special meeting for students
coming to Oxford or Cambridge so I’d like you to come into London
too and join the rest of the students. We’ll finish at about 3.30/4.00pm,
and can easily give you travel details on request.
For both meetings, I’d like you to confirm by Monday 16 January
that you are planning to attend – so we can make our final arrangements.
Our first ‘cultural event’ of the semester! – we pre-book
a limited number of tickets for several activities in London each semester,
and our first event is on Tuesday 24 January, soon after our meetings.
It’s a visit to the Coliseum theatre in London to hear English National
Opera’s production of Verdi’s opera ‘Tosca’ (go
to our website under ‘Events’ or look at ENO’s website
www.eno.org to find out more about the production. You can reserve a ticket
as soon as you like in the New Year – not yet! - and we’ll
give them out on the 21st. If you get the cultural bonus, the cost of
the ticket (18 pounds) will be deducted from it; it not, you just pay
cash in advance.
Christmas and New Year holidays in the UK – it’s a good idea
to make a note now that this office, and university offices in the UK,
will all be closed for the Christmas and New Year holidays from 24 December
2011 to Monday 2 January 2012 inclusive. In Scotland there is an extra
day’s holiday for Hogmanay (New Year) on Tuesday 3 January. This
will mean that if you need to make contact with us you’ll have to
do so by 23/12 or wait until the New Year. However, I shall be visiting
the Centre at least once during the holidays to check post and email,
and in a real emergency you will be able to reach me on my home phone
number 020 7249 9393 (don’t risk my mobile!). I’m guessing
that the main reason you might need to get in touch is if your arrival
is delayed by bad weather!
Making your final preparations for departure – I hope that by the
time you read this, you have all been made offers of places in the UK
and have accepted them (our data base is really out-of-date if not!).
You should all have received accommodation offers as well; if not, you
can expect them any time now from your hosting universities. Let me know
if you have any problems. I think that every university now makes these
offers by email so it’s essential that you check your accounts regularly;
accommodation offers are usually date-sensitive and places for spring
arrivals are limited so you could lose yours if you don’t reply
straight away. At least it’s so much easier to make deposit payments
using credit cards these days, should you be asked for one.
Visas and immigration … I warned you this was going to be a long
email! read on … I expect that almost all of you are coming into
the UK as ‘student visitors’ as your programmes here are 6
month long or less. If you are traveling on a US or Canadian passport,
you don’t need to apply in advance of travel. As long as you are
carrying with you your offer or admission letter from your hosting university,
the letter your own US university will provide you with about your status/paying
for tuition and information that makes it clear you have enough money
to support yourself while in the UK you will get the student visitor visa
stamped in your passport at immigration control. If you are a visa-national
(with a Chinese or Indian passport for example) you must get ‘pre-entry
clearance’ as a student visitor, as you will not get the visa at
your port of entry. A few of you (especially if you are doing internship
programmes) will have had to apply for a full Tier 4 visa which allows
you to work or take up a formal internship. I shouldn’t have to
write this about flying to the UK as it’s made clear at on-campus
meetings, but you should not be flying here via Dublin, especially as
a student visitor. Ireland and the UK form a common travel area with no
immigration control between the two countries. If you land in an Irish
airport you will be stamped in as a visitor there, and will not get the
correct visa to allow you to study in the UK. You’ll have to leave
to UK for a quick trip to France or Belgium, and get the right stamp in
your passport on your return – which is a waste of both time and
money!
Packing ready for travel – please do not load yourself down with
unnecessary luggage as you’ll have to make your own way from airport
to residence without much assistance. There’s no need to bring bedding
for example, as most universities offer bedding packs to buy ready for
arrival. And you’re bound to shop for some clothes while you’re
here. You don’t need to bring heavy bottles of shampoo and stuff
like that – though you might want to bring the brand of contact
lens solution you favour in case you can’t get exactly what you
want here. If you need prescription medicines try to bring all you need,
but if you have a prescription with you make sure it has the generic drug
name as well as any brand-names. My guide to packing is to put out all
you think you’ll need – and then halve it, while you work
out a budget and then double it! Remember to keep your immigration paperwork
in your carry-on bag – and if anyone is shipping stuff to you, schedule
it for delivery a couple of days after you have arrived so you can be
certain that staff at your residence recognize your name and will accept
a delivery.
Onward travel to your residence – your universities are bound to
give you onward travel information. They may run a ‘meet-and-greet’
service at the major airports, or offer coach connections. That’s
why it’s really important to read the information they send out
(it’s not always copied to us) and follow any links to websites
etc. General information on travelling to and from UK airports can also
be found on our website under ‘Information for New Students’
(again!). If you have any specific questions, feel free to get in touch.
University orientation and registration meetings – your hosting
universities will all be holding meetings of some sort. They may not be
as long as the programmes arranged in the autumn as there aren’t
so many of you starting your studies here in the spring, but it is still
essential that you attend them. Although you may not want to think of
yourself as a ‘fresher again’, you will be new to a British
university environment so you’ll need the information they pass
on. In some universities, this is also when you formally enroll and finalise
course choices so you must not miss the meetings.
Finally – getting in touch with home and our office on arrival -
please do email or phone to let us know that you have arrived in the UK
as soon as you can. Some universities do not provide us with information
about where you are living so we rely on you to tell us! You should also
let them know back home that you have arrived and make sure friends and
family know how to reach you. If you are in the habit of regular daily
phone calls or emails, it would be wise to warn them back home that you
may not be able to do that for the first few days as you may not have
email access sorted out, and you’ll be busy! If you’re in
London and want to use our phone/email for initial contacts, feel free
to come by.
I told you it would be a long email. Even so I’m bound to have forgotten
something so you can expect another message next week! This will get you
in the routine of checking for my regular weekly emails while you are
in the UK … it’s my primary way of keeping in touch with you
all. I’ll sign off with all good wishes from my friend and work-colleague
Sue Welsford and myself;
Cheers, Liz Simpson
From the Centre - our last group email for the semester, sent on 12/12
Dear students: I’m drafting our last group email for the fall semester
so that I can wish you all the compliments of the season – and,
of course, remind you about one or two things!
First of all – if anyone wants to make a bonus claim before we close
for Christmas, be sure to give me a day or so’s notice of when you
are coming in to the office. As I’m sure you realise, we have plenty
of people coming in for last-minute claims and I need to make sure our
petty cash is topped up. This means regular trips to the bank! (Students
returning to the UK in the New Year have no need to panic – any
money you haven’t claimed will be available to you in the spring).
Office hours this week and next: This week I shall be in the office each
day until at least 4.30pm. On Tuesday we have a Christmas lunch booked
so the office will be shut from 12.30pm to 3pm. Next week is the last
week of our semester – the office will be open up til Friday 23/12,
but I know I shall be in later than usual on Thursday morning (22/12).
Along with UK universities we will closed from 24/12 – Christmas
Eve – until Tuesday 3 January 2012.
What’s on over the next week or so? Our last event for the semester
is tomorrow, when I hope to see those of you who took up our tickets at
the Coliseum on St Martin’s Lane for English National Ballet’s
‘The Nutcracker’. It starts at 7.30pm and I think the theatre
is going to be pretty full so get there by 7.15pm to allow time to get
to your seats.
Personally, I think that one of the best things about Christmas is the
opportunity to join in carol concerts and services and I’ve had
a check on some of the churches and cathedrals in our area in case you’d
like to visit. At St Giles in the Fields (behind Centre Point) there’s
a carol service on 14/12 starting at 6.15pm – mulled wine and mince-pies
afterwards! On 20/12 next week, you can choose between St James’
Piccadilly’s ‘Carols for shoppers’ at 6.30pm with mulled
wine and mince pies afterwards too, or a ‘Cathedral Sing-In’
at 12.45pm at Southwark Cathedral, or ‘Community Carols at St Martins-in-the-Fields
at 6.30pm! Southwark’s traditional services of readings and carols
will be on Sunday 18/12 and Thursday 22/12 at 6.30pm. If you’d like
to visit St Paul’s Cathedral the ‘Celebration of Christmas’
with the choir, City of London Sinfonia and celebrity readers will be
on Thursday 15/12 at 6.30pm. This is usually a very popular event so it’s
worth getting there a bit early, to be sure to be seated. There are also
carol services on 23/12 and 24/12 at 4pm, and after Christmas on 26/12
and 27/12 at 5pm. Westminster Abbey’s Christmas services are deservedly
popular, and there are no tickets available now. None of the other concerts
and services I’ve noted require tickets.
I know that some of you will be in the UK over Christmas and/or the New
Year and I advise you to plan ahead as you’ll find that shops, galleries,
museums and the like are either closed or have different opening hours.
There are no buses, tubes or trains on Christmas Day itself – and
services to tend to close quite early on Christmas Eve. New Year’s
Day is also a public holiday, and can I warn you that London and other
city centres get really busy on New Year’s Eve. As the usual way
of celebrating in the UK is, as you know well now, to get pretty drunk,
do be careful in large crowds – and take particular care of your
wallets and credit cards. One exception to the rule about museums closing
over the Christmas holiday is the Dickens Museum at 48 Doughty Street,
WC1. It’s the only London house that Dickens lived in that is still
extant and it’s just reopened after a major refurbishment in time
for the Dickens’ celebrations in 2012. It’s going to be open
from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day from 11am to 6pm, with readings and carols,
mulled wine and mince pies. The museum is normally free but for this special
event there is charge of 15 pounds per person – you do get a gift
pack to take away! Go to www.dickensmuseum.com for information
If you find yourself at a loss what to do, be sure to get the holiday
edition of ‘Time Out’ to see what’s on in London. There’s
a website called www.meetup.com/London-International/events/calendar with
some suggestions of events for international students – and International
Students House, at the top of Greatt Portland Street by Regents Park,
has a full holiday programme – look at www.ishevents.org and click
on ‘Christmas 2011’.
For full-year students: I’ll be emailing you separately with a copy
of our events programme for spring 2012 as an attachment so you can print
it off and see what we have booked for you. Our first events –‘Tosco’
at ENO – will open for booking in the New Year. And don’t
forget to let me know if you are interested in coming to help us in the
office next spring.
For fall semester students: Sue and I hope you have had a great semester
here and will think about coming back to the UK sometime. If anyone is
thinking of working or studying back here, I’m happy to answer any
questions you might have. I hope you will all make yourself available
to the campus study abroad offices to help them with their advice for
new students, and their information meetings. Just offering your email
address to future students who would like to be in touch is a great help,
as is assisting with meetings (I have already recommended some of you!).
When you get home you may well feel some of that feeling of dislocation
that hit you when you first arrived here. I’m sure that for the
first couple of weeks, family and friends will be delighted to hear about
your semester away, but the feeling may well wear off when you still want
to chat about your time abroad! Not only have you lived in and survived
another culture and education system, you’ve had the opportunity
to look at the US from outside – and that can be a salutary experience.
It’s either going to make you a bit more critical or more appreciative
of what it’s like to live, study and work in the US. Any opportunities
to use your new-found talents for living abroad should be capitalised
on – take up any opportunity for joining in sessions for returned
students on campus to help you along.
It just remains for me to wish you all a very happy holiday, on Sue’s
behalf and mine. We’ve enjoyed having you with us in the UK very
much this past semester, and look forward to seeing returning students
again in January 2012 – when we welcome over 100 new arrivals! Cheers,
Liz
From the C/B/P Centre - before we close for the holidays
Dear new students: A second email to you all, in the last week of term
here in the UK. It’s not going to be so long as last week’s
so you can relax! We post all our emails on the Cornell/Brown/UPenn website
anyway, so you can always check back and see what has been written up.
www.cornell-brown-penn.ac.uk
A brief reminder of the dates of our ‘welcome meetings’ which
are 18/19 January in Edinburgh, and then 21 January in London. I do expect
you to try to keep these dates free as we want to meet you all together,
and it’s not likely that I’ll be able to offer ‘make-up’
meetings if you miss them. Also, as I said last week, we’ll give
out tickets that have been booked for our opera visit on the 21st too!
Last minute preparations: I do urge you to let me know if you have any
questions prior to your arrival in the UK as soon a possible. This is
because our office will close between 24 December 2011 and 2 January 2012
inclusive. We will open again on Tuesday 3 January 2012. You will fin
that all UK university offices are also closed over this period, and Scotland
has an extra day’s holiday on 3 January. You will be able to reach
me at home during the holiday if you have a real emergency by calling
my home number 020 7249 9393; if I’m not there when you phone, leave
a message giving your name and a return telephone number clearly. Or you
can email, as I will be checking in the office at least once during the
holiday period. (UK university office and residence office closures mean
that you need to prepare in advance for this as I’m not going to
be able to get information for you from them during the holiday period.)
When you travel to the UK in January, make sure you have all your useful
paperwork with you in your carry-on luggage – and also make sure
that you have the full address of your residence and a contact phone number
or email address with you. Best to be prepared just in case you get delayed
travelling. And when you get to the UK, please remember to email or phone
us so we know you’re safely here.
So it just remains for me to say that my friend and colleague Sue Welford,
and our student-helpers this term, Han and Emily, join me in wishing you’re
a very Merry Christmas and a great start to the New Year. You’ve
got an exciting semester ahead of you and we’ll all try to help
you enjoy it. Cheers, Liz Simpson
From the Cornell/Brown/Penn Centre in London for students in Scotland for the spring semester
Dear students: So, Hogmanay is fully over and Scotland is recovering
from the collective hang-over, and the most tremendous storms yesterday.
I’m sure everything will have calmed down when you arrive in Edinburgh
and St Andrews, though you do need to be prepared for colder weather in
Scotland than the softies down south – it’s very likely that
you’ll see snow before the winter is over. As I’m writing
to both our full year students as well as the ‘new arrivals’,
they may have already had experience of some Scottish winter weather!
This is to make sure you all have the details of when I’m coming
up to see you at the start of term before you leave the US. And right
off, I am aware the St Andrews-bound students are not likely to have arrived
in Scotland when I’m here – I shall make special arrangements
to post you the information I give out at the meeting. If you have planned
to get to Scotland for some travel before the start of the St Andrews
semester, then do try to fit in our meeting in Edinburgh into your travel
schedule.
My ‘welcome meeting’ for new students is scheduled for 3.30pm
to 4.30pm on Wednesday 18 January in Faculty Room North in the David Hume
Tower on George Square. This is the first week of the semester so you
should all be able to meet me then. Full-year students Hilary from Brown
and Samara from Cornell have said they hope to come along too, to meet
you and give you the benefit of their experiences of being new students
in Scotland. I am staying overnight at the Barcelo-Carlton Hotel on North
Bridge so if any-one cannot make that scheduled meeting time, we could
get together briefly at the hotel a bit later on Wednesday (5.30pm) or
after breakfast on Thursday (9am) before I go back to London. On both
occasions, I shall be in the lounge upstairs – you go up the main
flight of stairs in the lobby.
These details are also on our website under ‘Events’ and ‘Information
for new students’ so you shouldn’t have any difficulties meeting
me. I’ll do a brief reminder on Monday 17/1. In the meantime, I
hope your preparations for Scotland are well in-hand. Let me know if you
need anything or have any questions. Cheers, Liz Simpson
... A first proper message from the Cornell/Brown/Penn Centre for 2012!
Dear returning students and ‘new students’! This is the first
of my weekly emails to you (full-year students are used to them by now)
so please remember to look out for them each week as I usually send them
on Monday or Tuesday – most likely to the email address your US
university supplied – and some of them will have date-sensitive
notices, like today’s … please read on …
First of all welcome (back) to the UK if you’re already here, or
good luck with your last minute preparations if you’re still to
arrive. Our office is open to callers if you want to drop by and our core
opening hours are 8.30am to 4.30pm. I’m normally happy to wait in
for a later visitor if necessary, and I’ll always endeavour to let
you know a few days in advance if we close the office for an out-of-town
site visit, or a meeting for example. So please note that when I’m
visiting students in Edinburgh, the Centre is closed on Wednesday 18 and
Thursday 19 January!
Our ‘welcome meetings’:
(1) For students in Scotland only, I’m visiting Edinburgh on Wednesday
18 and Thursday 19 January and we have the Faculty Room North on the ground
floor of the David Hume Tower on George Square reserved for our meeting
from 3.30pm to 4.30pm. Should you miss this time, you can catch me at
my hotel later on Wednesday or early on Thursday but I’d prefer
it if we could all meet at the same time. St Andrews students –
I do know that you probably won’t have arrived in the UK by then,
don’t worry! (I have already sent a separate email to students in
Scotland with a few more details about this).
(2) For all other new students who will be in the UK at the time –
our main ‘welcome meeting’ is in London on Saturday 21 January.
It starts at 1.30pm in lecture room B36 at Birkbeck College, Torrington
Square. (www.bbk.ac.uk/maps for location and travel details). I really
do want everyone who is in the UK by then to come to this meeting –
Oxford and Cambridge students, this does include you as I won’t
be coming to do site visits until February and I want you to meet everyone
at the beginning of the semester. Sue and I will have colleagues joining
us for the afternoon so that you’re not just listening to me –
and we’d really find it useful if any full-year students felt like
coming along and contributing to the session. It’s good to hear
your take on studying and living here. Let me know if you are free and
want to join in. Again, if your programme has not started by 21 January,
we’ll be in contact with you by post with the information we give
out at the meeting.
Our spring semester ‘Events Programme’ – booking open
now for the first event:
I use this weekly email to let you know when booking opens up for the
events for which we have already bought tickets … and so I’m
doing that now for our first group event this semester! Look on our website
under ‘Events’ for the full schedule so far and you’ll
see that we have tickets for the opera at the London Coliseum to see Verdi’s
opera ‘Tosca’ on Tuesday 24 January, starting at 7.30pm. We
got a group rate for tickets – we’ll charge you 18 pounds
each (not 18 pounds 70p as listed) for your seats. English National Opera
sing all their performances in English, surtitles are also provided to
help you follow the story and we’ll give you a synopsis too! BOOK
NOW to get a good chance of a ticket from the 20 or so we have purchased
for you!
A bit of admin … new students might not realise this, but we don’t
automatically hear from your UK universities where all of you are living
in the UK and we need to know, so please give us your full address (with
room or flat number) as soon as you can. We also need your contact phone
number. The easiest way to do this is to go onto the website and use the
link ‘Personal Data Form’; when you send it, it goes straight
to Sue here in the office. You should also use this link to tell us the
courses you are taking (even if you provide this information to your home
campus by another method). Full-year students – you may well need
to use this link again to give us the courses you are taking in the spring/summer
if there are new ones to enter up.
And a reminder about making sure that you get all the emails that will
be sent to you from us, from your home campus and from your US universities.
I’ve set up my distribution list using the addresses I was given
by your home campuses so they tend to be your US university addresses.
I’ve noticed that enrolled students at UCL have had messages telling
them that all UCL emails will go to a UCL address, and I know it’s
the same at KCL and the LSE. So this is just a word to the wise to make
sure you either check all your ‘mailboxes’ regularly, or set
yourself up to make sure messages are forwarded!
And a couple more things … the outdoor ice-rink is still open at
Somerset House on the Strand (next door to KCL) until 22 January –
most of the other winter rinks closed this past weekend. It stays open
until 10pm and it’s quite fun to watch even if you don’t skate
www.somersethouse.org.uk for more information …while at the Courtauld
Gallery in Somerset House it’s late-night viewing on Thursday 12/1
from 6pm to 9pm. The Spanish theme is taken from the current exhibition
there ‘The Spanish line: drawings from Ribera to Picasso’
www.courtauld.ac.uk/lates for more info on music, talks and Spanish food!
Watch out for another email next week. Cheers, from Liz Simpson &
Sue Welsford
From the Centre on 17 January ... read on for meeting reminder/s and new events
Good morning to everybody: Reminders about meetings first of all …
the Centre in London is closed to visitors on Wednesday 18/1 and Thursday
19/1 as I shall be up in Edinburgh meeting new arrivals at that university.
Edinburgh students – your arrangement for Wednesday is to meet me
in Faculty Room North of the David Hume Tower on George Square, starting
at 3.30pm. We have the room until 4.30pm so if you’re a bit late,
do still come along. We’re not going to be so formal that arriving
late is a problem! If you miss me completely, I will be in the lounge
of my hotel, the Barcelo-Carlton on North Bridge for half an hour from
9am on Thursday, before I leave for my return to London. The main stairs
from the hotel foyer lead directly up to the lounge on the first floor.
For all other new students who have arrived by then for the start of the
semester, your priority is to come to the large ‘welcome meeting’
in London on Saturday afternoon, 21 January. We are in lecture room B036
in Birkbeck College, Torrington Square and will start at 1.30pm. There
is a checking in procedure, so do allow time for this. You are also advised
to check with ‘Transport for London’ to make sure what tube
lines are working at the weekend and if there are any station closures
that might delay you. If you’re coming by tube to Birkbeck College,
the nearest stations are Russell Square, Euston Square and Goodge Street.
Use www.bbk.ac.uk/maps for location details and www.tfl.gov.uk for travel
info. See you there!
Events:
We’ve used all our allocation of tix for ‘Tosca’ on
24/1, but I’ll keep a waiting list so if you still want one, let
me know immediately. We shall distribute tickets to the newly arrived
students who have asked for them at Saturday’s meeting, so if anyone
doesn’t turn up to collect their ticket, I’ll re-assign it.
Full year students – your tickets can be collected from the Centre
on 20/1, 23/1 or even 24/1 (early!).
The booking is now open for the next event on the spring schedule –
and it’s a play this time. Oliver Goldsmith’s ‘She Stoops
to Conquer’ is an eighteenth-century comedy classic and with our
group booking we have seats at the front of the circle in the National
Theatre’s Olivier Theatre auditorium for only 15 pounds each on
Thursday 2 February. Just email straight away if you’d like to be
included in the group. We hope you’ll take up the chance to enjoy
a new revival of this play – and visit the National Theatre for
the first time. Go to www.nationaltheatre.org.uk to find out more about
the show before you book/go ... the NT describes ‘She Stoops ….’
as ‘great, generous-hearted and ingenious’ and I reckon I’d
agree from my previous viewings of the play!
What else can you look out for?
It’s Chinese New Year on 23 January – it’s the Year
of the Dragon – and the main celebrations in London will be on Sunday
29 January so you have plenty of time to plan ahead. It’ll kick
off in Trafalgar Square at noon (expect a lion dance there!), and the
nearby areas around China Town and Leicester Square will be packed with
restaurants, stores, music and dancers. It gets very crowded so I’d
recommend that if you go, you keep your possessions to a minimum and keep
a good look out for your friends in the crowds. You should find more info
on www.thelondonchinatown.org.uk website, and I expect that next week’s
Time Out magazine and website will also carry information. You’ll
find that any UK city with a big Chinese community will also have celebrations
– Manchester is a good example, with weekend events, see www.manchester.gov.uk
and follow link to ‘Events’ …
Up in Edinburgh and St Andrews, I suppose you’ll be too busy with
‘Burns Night’ on 25/1, Scotland’s celebration of her
national poet. I’ll have one or two suggestions of things to do
when I meet you this week, but I warn you, if you only eat haggis once
while you’re in Scotland, it had better be tonight!
Also during the weekend of 28/29 January, you can join in a series of
free guided walks to help you explore London, as it’s the ‘Winter
Wander Week-End’ organized by ‘Walk London’. If the
weather is sympathetic, I really do recommend this event. I’ve taken
a couple of these walks in past years, and found out more about my home
city, as they are all themed, and led by experienced guides, and FREE!
There’s also no need to book for most of them, you just turn up
at the advertised spot and time. This year there are several walks on
both days which will take you to the Olympic site in Stratford, so you
can see where the Games will be in the summer. Go to www.walklondon.org.uk
to see details of each walk – and take your pick! I fancy ‘Ghosts
of the Old City’ and ‘Seafaring London’ and ‘City
Hall to Canary Wharf’ and ‘The Amazing History of the Banks
of the Thames’ … there are just too many walks and not enough
time!
I’m sending this off to you now, as we’ll be pretty busy around
the ‘welcome meetings’ and there may not be a chance to do
a long email next week on schedule. And before signing off, can I quickly
apologise to all Cornell students who are expecting the Centre to clear
tuition and accommodation invoices for them at the start of term. There
has been a slight delay with the transfer of funds into my operating account
in London so I’m anticipating that the earliest I shall be dealing
with bills is Friday 20 January. Once again, sorry for this.
Cheers, Liz Simpson
From the Cornell/Brown/Penn Centre on 26/1/2012 ... again!
Dear students: I’m writing quite a short email this week and not
on my usual day – you should normally expect emails on Mondays or
Tuesdays. The first thing I want to do is let you all know that the Centre
will be closed on Monday 30 January as I’m going to be visiting
the newly arrived group of students in Cambridge on that day. Otherwise,
the Centre’s open as usual for the rest of this week and next week.
I’d like to thank everyone who came along to our ‘welcome
meeting’ on Saturday last, it certainly made it easier for us to
see so many of you together and I hope you all got something out of it.
Apart from the Cambridge contingent referred to above, I will be sending
the information booklets and other materials from the meeting to the other
‘out-of-towners’ who were not able to attend. I’ll do
that as soon as you have confirmed your contact details for me! London
students who did not come on 21/1 – please visit the office as soon
as possible to collect your booklets and meet me. If you’re at UCL,
we are only a couple of minutes’ walk down Gower Street so there’s
no excuse! Any students on internship programmes or who have other schedules
that make it difficult to visit Gower Street during the working week,
as soon as you send us your contact details, I’ll post your information
booklet. If you all use the link ‘personal data form’ on our
website www.cornell-brown-penn.ac.uk you’ll be able to send us the
other information we need from you – details of the courses that
you are doing here.
‘She Stoops to Conquer’ – if you have not yet booked
your ticket for this play on 2 February – I have just two tickets
left from our allocation. They are in the front two rows of the circle
in the Olivier Theatre for only 15 pounds each so quite a deal! If you
have confirmed tickets, then please come and collect them from the office
– but not on Monday!
Reading though your info booklet, or going on to our website ‘Events’
list, you’ll see we have scheduled all the pre-booked events for
the semester now. After February’s play we have two very cheap concert
bookings, a dance event at Sadler Wells Theatre – and our regular
May visit to the Globe on the South Bank. I’ll open booking for
the first of the concerts in early February so look out for that …
This weekend – in last weeks’ email I told you about the Chinese
New Year celebrations in Trafalger Square/Soho on Sunday. Even if you
don’t plan to join in, you may find you are faced with some traffic
diversions, with bus routes changed and tube stations being extra busy.
Yesterday’s ‘Standard’ (the free London evening paper)
did also report on the possibility of some anti-capitalism demostrations
in central London over the weekend. These rarely get violent, but they
often result in more police being around, and streets being temporarily
closed. All in all, it’s going to be a busy weekend!
More suggestions … last semester’s hot ticket for a gallery
show was the Leonardo da Vinci at the National Gallery (still open for
a couple of weeks). This semester it looks like it’s the David Hockney
landscapes at the Royal Academy on Piccadilly. Though there’s been
quite a rush on advance tickets, you should still be able to get day-tickets
by queuing and there’s been a very positive response from gallery-goers
– www.royalacademy.org.uk The show I really loved – and it’s
on til the middle of February - is the Grayson Perry show at the British
Museum www.britishmuseum.org You don’t often hear people laughing
out loud in art galleries or museums (for all the right reasons!). And
have you discovered the Wellcome Collection on Euston road yet. Apart
from the fine café where you get good wifi access, the exhibitions
give insights into a blending of science and art – the current show
is on Mexican ‘miracle paintings’ www.wellcomecollection.org
Over in South Kensington, both the Victoria and Albert museums are open
late this coming Friday (27/1) until 10pm. The V&A is focusing on
the visual culture of Brazil www.vam.ac.uk/fridaylate , while at the NHM
they are keeping both the wildlife photography shows and the Scott exhibit
open late – you do have to pay to go to the special shows though
museum entry is free www.nhm.ac.uk . Expect special events, live music,
food and drink!
So if the weather’s not kind this weekend for you to wander London
(go back to last week’s email for the reference!) you have some
suggestions for indoor events – more next week, but not on Monday!
Cheers, Liz
From the C/B/P Centre on Thursday ... late again this week!
Dear students: This week’s email has gone out late again this week
– my excuse is that I was waiting for ‘Time Out’ to
arrive … hmmm! Anyway, let’s go with some news and notes on
things to do …
First of all, it looks as though those of you who are coming to the NT
tonight are in for a great evening’s entertainment. Oliver Goldsmith’s
1773 comedy ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ has got excellent reviews
in the newspapers I’ve read, and on radio’s ‘Front Row’
too. So, don’t forget, the play starts at 7.30pm and if you haven’t
collected your ticket from the Centre before I leave at 5pm, it will be
at the Olivier Theatre box office (part of the National Theatre on the
South Bank) for you to pick up. The cost has already been deducted from
the cultural bonuses of all students who booked tickets.
I’m now opening the booking for our next event, which is one of
our two concerts this season. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted
by Dirk Joeres play the Overture, Nocturne and Scherzo from Mendelssohn’s
‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’, Mozart’s Clarinet concerto
in A major (soloist Julian Bliss) and Dvorak’s Symphony no 8 at
the Cadogan Hall, near Sloane Square. With the RPO’s generous discount
for education groups you only pay 5 pounds for your ticket. As usual,
you can ask for tickets for friends but I can’t guarantee them so
please indicate when you email if you are happy to come on your own with
the group if there are no friends’ tickets!
Here are a few other things I’ve noticed that might interest some
of you …
Tonight, being the first Thursday in February is – February’s
‘First Thursday’! First Thursdays give you the chance to explore
galleries, museums and arts venues in East London, which stay open late
for the evening. There’s even a special coach arranged to take people
on a tour of some of the venues. Go to www.firsthursdays.co.uk for all
you need to know and sign up for regular emails.
Do you fancy a bit of train travel at a bargain price? The London Midland
train network (serving London’s Euston station) is offering a promotion
between 4 and 19 February of a day’s unlimited rail travel for 15
pounds. You can go up to Liverpool, as far west as Shrewsbury and Hereford,
to Lichfield or to Birmingham (which incidentally has great shopping and
– so they say – as many canals as Venice!) www.londonmidland.com
for booking and network information.
A couple of ‘floral’ suggestions – and they couldn’t
more different! The Chelsea Physic Garden is opening up for their winter
‘Snowdrop Days’ for 4-12 February. Normally the garden is
closed during the winter but this gives you a chance to visit before the
official spring re-opening www.chelseaphysicgarden.co.uk The garden was
established by the Society of Apothecaries in 1673 so its apprentices
could learn about the medicinal qualities of plants – hence the
‘physic’ but now it’s a pleasant garden oasis in London,
with a great café too. There is an entry fee of 9 pounds, with
concessions.
If you prefer your plants indoors during the winter, the Royal Botanic
Gardens at Kew’s ‘Tropical Extravanganza’ runs from
4 February to 4 March in the Princess of Wales Conservatory. I think Kew
Gardens is really expensive, but if you can spend a full day there I suppose
it’s not too bad … www.kew.org to find out all about the gardens
and really plan your visit.
To warm you up, and remind you of mediterranean sun, what about the Sadlers’
Wells ‘Flamenco Festival’, running from 7 to 19 February this
year? A season of ‘the world’s greatest flamenco talents in
Islington – and hopefully there are tickets left. This is where
we’ll be seeing our dance event in March, by the way, www.sadlerwells.com
And finally, a couple of money-saving idea for film-going! The Barbican
Art Centre in the City of London has a concert hall, theatre, exhibition
venues and a cinema – and every Monday they have ‘Monday Madness’
when seats are only 6 pounds 50p (which compares very well with West end
prices!) www.barbican.org.uk for cinema programming and other events.
The National film Theatre on the South Bank www.bfi.org.uk has an amazing
range of films each week, with all tickets on Tuesdays priced at 5 pounds.
Or – according to Time Out -there’s a *free* showing of the
1958 film version of Dickens’ ‘Tale of Two Cities’ in
the Birkbeck Cinema at 43 Gordon Square at 2.30pm on 7 February and you
can’t get much cheaper than that!
Cheers, Liz