• London: the one day tour guide

    This is my “tour guide” of how to see the best touristy things in London in only one busy day. As this is my opinion, the list is not all-inclusive but represents what I think are the most fantastic tourist things to do and see in London. I would recommend this for those who do not…

  • Learning English

    The more time I spend at work, the more [British] words and phrases I learn. Here is a collection (part 1 of many, I hope) of new-to-me words and phrases I have learned while living in England. I have provided the American word(s) that are the equivalent. AA: the Automobile Association (equivalent to the US…

  • BRCA2 Cycle Path

    I love solving mysteries and problems, which is how I would describe what I do for a living. Technically speaking, I am a biochemist – a structural biologist. I like looking at the 3-dimensional structure of proteins and understanding how other things (other proteins, DNA, small molecules, etc) fit into those proteins. And while I have…

  • Our Year Five Began in Paris

    Before we moved across the pond, my friend Mary Anne suggested that we should celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary by being in Paris and in the Eiffel Tower. I become fixated on doing this because I thought it would be a very romantic way to celebrate. I was envisioning eating chocolate and drinking champagne at…

  • Remember, Remember

    Today is the 5th of November. And to Americans, this is just another day. In England, today is a day to celebrate! And to light bonfires and fireworks! And for remembrance. Today’s post is about history of today and the history leading up to today. First, let’s first go through some historical perspective on monarchies and…

  • Slight differences

    As Americans look forward to an extra hour of sleep this weekend, we “fell back an hour” last weekend. I put together a list of things that we’ve noticed so far that are completely different between the two countries. It is a US versus UK showdown! 1. Doors For fire safety reasons (correct me if…

  • Holiday versus vacation

    In the US, I never really thought much about the meaning of the words I used on a regular basis. However, nearly every day I’m learning gobs of new words and phrases. Or I am learning alternative meanings for words and phrases (for example, pants aren’t the same thing as trousers). One thing I recently learned was what the…

  • First Trip Through London

    We are new to traveling in Europe. We expect (hope) to do a lot of it over the next few years (specifically out of London to the continental Europe), so we need to become professionals at it. When booking our trip to France, we didn’t know that there is a direct train to London Stansted…

  • Pumpkin Spice Lattes

    In the US, I didn’t drink coffee like I drink it here in England. Most weekdays, I would drink a cup or two of tea. When we found out that we were moving here, I upped my tea intake thinking it would help me fit in. I couldn’t have been more wrong. For being known…

  • English muffins

    I first need to distract you from this post. While writing it up, I couldn’t help but think about a scene in the movie Shrek, in which Gingy (the gingerbread man) is being interrogated by one of the villains, Lord Farquaad (NOT MY GUMDROP BUTTONS!) This leads to further distraction (at least for me) to find the…

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