Mom's Visit

I was so excited that my mom decided to attend an Education conference in Amsterdam, and after the conference she came to visit me in London last weekend! We had a great time exploring the city!

One of the days mom was here, we explored the area around the Tower of London and the south bank of the Thames. Here we are with the Tower Bridge!

The next day we visited the government buildings and Trafalgar Square. Here we are at the official "centre" of London


(You can barely see us in the picture though...!)

This is mom at a fountain at Trafalgar Square. It got really windy right before the picture so everyone else ran away from the water, but mom took one for the team and got sprinkled on so we could get this great picture!

Here we are at Big Ben, the clock tower at the Houses of Parliament. Apparently the clock face is over 25 feet wide!

And on the last morning mom was here, we went to a service at Westminster Abbey!

Also, work has been going really well and one neat thing we did was go see two hearings at the House of Lords Judicial Committee, the current equivalent of the US Supreme Court (actually, the House of Lords Judicial Committee is about to be renamed to the UK Supreme Court in a few weeks). One of the cases is particularly interesting and it surrounds the fate of the people of the Chagos Islands, who were exiled when the UK gave the islands to the US for a military base.

Here I am with my coworker, Vesna (also a Stanford grad, 2003) inside the Houses of Parliament, the building where the Judicial Committee hears cases.

The Parliament building is really pretty on the inside, too. Here we are (you can barely see us) with a pretty stained glass window.

And here we are outside the building. That's the view of the Houses of Parliament we all know and love! :)

And today, for the 4th of July, we celebrated by eating at a great American BBQ restaurant. It's kind of weird celebrating Independence Day in England - the country we are celebrating our independence FROM! There weren't a lot of festivities, but it was nice to spend part of the day with Americans: my classmate Jordan and the other law students on his fellowship.

Here I am with Jordan. We were all missing the US and sending the good thoughts homeward on Independence Day!

Next stop: Luxembourg (Monday-Wednesday)!