Unlike France and Italy, England is not really known for its cuisine. If anyone talks about it at all, it is in negative terms. I've been in England for close to three weeks now, and I thought I'd give my impressions of the food here, as well as advice for anyone who ends up coming here. I'll try to be brief.

The bad reputation English food gets is somewhat deserved. There is not a very strong culinary culture here, and most pubs will have only a handful of dishes to choose from (mostly sausages, potatoes, and various pies). If you go to England for the food, you're an idiot. Wine aficionados might be justified traveling to Burgundy or Tuscany, but no one has ever gone to Yorkshire to check out all the various methods of mashing potatoes.

With that in mind, if you are going to England, do eat the food! Go to pubs and get traditional English dishes. In any of the big cities, you will see plenty of American, Italian, and French restaurants, and one might easily avoid eating any real English food at all. This is a mistake. For one thing, most any place that serves food in England will color all its food with a distinctly English flavor. Mayonnaise and cheeses, less flavor and, if you're in London, higher prices. It's possible to get food sans Englishness, but it limits your choices a great deal.

For another thing, the food here is actually pretty good. It will be easiest if I just list some bright spots:

- Breakfast. If you like eggs, rolls, and sausages, then traditional breakfasts here are hard to beat. There isn't a lot of variety, but you shouldn't really want it.

- Breads. Plenty of places do bread better than England, but that doesn't mean England is bad at it. I love bread very much, and being here has only bolstered my affection for wheat and flour. There is bread everywhere, and you should eat it as often as possible.

- Desserts. Since coming here, I've actually found that all the ice cream I've had has been wonderful. Besides that, the English do a lot of good things with pastries and honey and jam and syrup and all that good stuff. It's worth the extra course.

- Sausage. The English make great sausage. Bangers n' mash is actually one of the best meals I've ever had. It's so simple, and so beautiful.

- Street vendors. It's a city thing, but I've seen it a lot more over here. Almost all of them make great food for cheap. It's not unique to England, but, in my opinion, the street chefs here have proven themselves just as worthy as anyone else.

- Sandwiches. This goes with bread, but the sandwich shops are everywhere, and most of them make a pretty good little meal. It's also the fastest meal you can get here.

All this to say, English cuisine may not be the best, but it isn't the worst either. There's nothing to be afraid of.

I re-read John Updike's September 11 reflection today, and was reminded both of that day and of how incredible John Updike could be. An excerpt:

The nightmare is still on. The bodies are beneath the rubble, the last-minute cell-phone calls—remarkably calm and loving, many of them—are still being reported, the sound of an airplane overhead still bears an unfamiliar menace, the thought of boarding an airplane with our old blasé blitheness keeps receding into the past. Determined men who have transposed their own lives to a martyr's afterlife can still inflict an amount of destruction that defies belief. War is conducted with a fury that requires abstraction—that turns a planeful of peaceful passengers, children included, into a missile the faceless enemy deserves. The other side has the abstractions; we have only the mundane duties of survivors—to pick up the pieces, to bury the dead, to take more precautions, to go on living.

American freedom of motion, one of our prides, has taken a hit. Can we afford the openness that lets future kamikaze pilots, say, enroll in Florida flying schools? A Florida neighbor of one of the suspects remembers him saying he didn't like the United States: "He said it was too lax. He said, 'I can go anywhere I want to, and they can't stop me.' " It is a weird complaint, a begging perhaps to be stopped. Weird, too, the silence of the heavens these days, as flying has ceased across America. But fly again we must; risk is a price of freedom, and walking around Brooklyn Heights that afternoon, as ash drifted in the air and cars were few and open-air lunches continued as usual on Montague Street, renewed the impression that, with all its failings, this is a country worth fighting for. Freedom, reflected in the street's diversity and daily ease, felt palpable. It is mankind's elixir, even if a few turn it to poison.

The next morning, I went back to the open vantage from which we had watched the tower so dreadfully slip from sight. The fresh sun shone on the eastward façades, a few boats tentatively moved in the river, the ruins were still sending out smoke, but New York looked glorious.

I've been in Oxford for a little over a week now, and I am loving it. It's nice to actually settle in somewhere, and feel kind of local. Christ Church, and the whole string of Oxford campuses are stunning. I wish I could stay, and live in this town that sleeps often and well. I do miss the states, though. I miss my family and some friends. Oddly, I miss Baylor, though I'm nowhere near prepared to go back to it. My goal for the next 17 days is to enjoy this time. I don't know if or when I'll be able to come back, but I'm here now. I'd love to slow down.

Several people have asked me how the classes are. To answer: they're great. When the weather is right, we have been meeting in a private garden. The classes are low-key and discussion based. I've written a few short papers, but I haven't been overwhelmed by any of it.

We read Tolkien, and I was reminded, as I often am, of what an incredible man he must have been. Traveling by train across the English countryside, with its lush, rolling hills and sun yellow fields, I felt like I was looking at the Shire. Hearing passages from Return of the King read aloud reminded me of how lyrical Tolkien could be. His work needs to be read that way, surrounded by nature. That an Englishman, a veteran of the First World War, and a man who was, by all accounts, stoic and dignified in person could write so beautifully about friendship and love will never cease to astound me.

My new friend Alyssa and I found a dance club a few days ago, and we spent two long evenings dancing our cares away. Anyone who knows me at all knows how excited I am about dancing, so I won't bore you with that tangent here.

Sorry for the grapeshot style post, but I'm surprisingly tired for 2 in the afternoon. I'll post on English food later.

41 years ago today, man walked on the moon.

If you want to laugh, cry, and genuinely be moved, go read this book.

Note: The content in this book is pretty PG-13. It isn't gratuitous, but some are more equipped to deal with it than others.

My dad posted this story the other day on Thinklings.

Katie is a 21 year old young woman living in Uganda as the adopted mother of fourteen little girls. She runs a non-profit organization called Amazima that provides free education, school supplies, food, and medical care, as well as love, fellowship and shelter. You can read her blog here. She has been updating since she left for Uganda in 2007, and the archives are filled with stories, pictures, and reflections that are simultaneously humbling and inspiring, heartbreaking and brimming with joy.

Even if you are not a Christian - even if you don't believe in any sort of God - this story is amazing. It's not about Katie - though she is very impressive - but it's about love being given to those who have known nothing but death and poverty and sorrow.

I read through a great deal of her blog today, and I couldn't help but feel inadequate and spoiled. It's not guilt. I didn't choose where I was born, or the family I was born into. But I'm sitting in a dorm at the most prestigious university in the world, getting a wonderful education, and I haven't really done anything to make the world a better place. I've argued about politics, books, music and history, but it's been so long since I did anything that was at all selfless.

It's not guilt. It's sobering.

I'm sitting in Oxford right now with a free afternoon, and I thought it was about time to make good on my promise to give occasional UK updates. So, here you go.

International flights are, as a rule, nightmarish, and the trip from Dallas to Chicago, and then from Chicago to Dublin wasn't much different. Lots of delays, holding patterns, alternate routes, screaming babies, turbulence, sleep deprivation... you get it. But we arrived safely, with all our baggage, and in relatively good spirits.

Dublin was absolutely wonderful. I don't like cities generally. I don't like tall buildings, crowds, or traffic, and am perfectly content to do without the unique urban culture that goes with pretty much any metroplex you visit. But I really enjoyed Dublin, and I hate that I only had three days there.

What struck me the most about Dublin was the preservation of the culture. The entire city was seemingly built around commemorating the Easter Rebellion in 1916 and the subsequent achievement of independence. The outward reverence the Irish have for their revolutionaries, their saints, their writers, and their artists is astounding to me. Virtually every street contained a statue of an Irish hero. How much of this is in the consciousness of an average Dubliner, I can't say, but at least externally, the city was draped in quiet gratitude.

Most of our time in Dublin was spent doing whatever we wanted. I probably walked the length of Dublin three or four times (it really isn't that big). At night, groups would go to pubs or shops, or just simply wander the streets looking for something to do. And there was always something to do. I'll list off a the highlights:

- We saw Riverdance, which was making the final stop on its 25 year world tour. I never saw the show anywhere else, so it's hard to tell, but I got the feeling that the Dublin shows were really special, to both the audience and the performers. The Celtic music and step dancing are, as far as I know, uniquely Irish, and there was a sense of pride covering the whole show. The performers and the audience had a lot of fun with each other. Someone in the audience would give a yelp during a dance, and one of the performers would yawp back. On the occasional number where the musicians would take center stage, they would stamp their feet until the audience began to clap along. It was playful and beautiful, and I had a blast. I loved the music, of course, but more than that I just had fun. I had fun watching the performers have fun and watching the people next to me have fun. I'm sad that I'll never get to see it again.

- One night, four of us went to see Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia. One of my friends here is a theater fanatic, and this happens to be her favorite play. It was fairly spontaneous. I decided to go about two hours before the show started. It was a truly fantastic play. I thought it was even better than Stoppard's early masterpiece Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Like that play, this one had a great sense of humor and also delves into some very interesting philosophical questions. It's about love and jealousy, obsession and genius, chaos and order, determinism and freedom. I was very taken in by all of it. Go see it, if you can, or get your hands on a copy and read it.

- I went to the Writer's Museum with my friend Brittany. They had a very thorough and interesting history of literature in Ireland, with an audio tour. I was especially delighted by the exhibits dedicated to Oscar Wilde, Yeats, James Joyce, Flann O'Brien, and Samuel Beckett. After we made our way through the museum, Brittany and I sat down and talked for a while, which is always a pleasure. After about an hour, we went our seperate ways, and I went to the James Joyce museum by myself, which was great. I love paying my respects to writers!

Sunday morning, we rode to the airport and flew to London. Once we arrived in London, we took a bus to Imperial College and got set up in the dorms there. I wasn't too crazy about London. It's so big and so crowded, and so stressful to try and get around. Everything we did was interesting, but it was just too much.

On the other hand, there were some bright spots:

- Seeing Henry IV: Part I at the Globe. I didn't know anything about Henry IV other than it's Shakespeare and that it is considered one of his best histories by Shakespeare fanatics. It was a brilliant performance. It was amazing how well-preserved the Globe is. Much of it has been redone, and I doubt there is much original left, but the performance itself was very faithful to the way Shakespeare's plays were originally performed. Other than electric lighting, there was no technology aiding the performance. The seats were crude wooden benches (though I purchased a cushion for a pound). The play had an opening act - an absurdly filthy little scene done by actors in wild masks. Scene changes were done by actors in the open and often covered by an actor singing a short song. At times, the play was bawdy and lewd, and the actors reveled in it, knowing that those lines would get the most enthusiastic responses from the crowd. There was a great deal of interplay between the audience and the performers, as there would have been in Elizabethan England. One thing that's interesting about the Globe, and about Shakespeare is how they were meant for the more common elements of London. Shakespeare certainly had a following with the nobility, but he wasn't a snob. In his time, Shakespeare was something of a populist, and that spirit is preserved to this day.

Anyways, the play itself was wonderful. Very, very funny, which I wasn't expecting. If I had to pick one thing to do in London, I would go see a Shakespeare play at the Globe.

- Poet's Corner at Westminster Abbey was the place I wanted most to see in London. It didn't disappoint. I love how the English truly venerate their poets. The fact that authors' memorials and graves are in the same place as kings and queens is astounding to me, and it's as it should be. We don't do that in America. I mean, can you imagine Robert Frost having a memorial in the Washington Mall? The closest we get to the kind of noble respect we generally reserve for Presidents may be with old baseball players (I'm thinking Ruth, Dimaggio, Gehrig) and a select few musicians (Elvis and Dylan come to mind). Maybe it hasn't been long enough. For some reason, though, England loves its poets in a way America never will.

- Evensong at St. Paul's Cathedral. St. Paul's is a work of art. It may be the single greatest feat of architecture I've ever seen. I attended a short evening service there. It was a beautiful service.

- Leicester Square. This was maybe the only place in London where I felt the city was alive. It was the only place where I felt like I was in London. I went there at night with a few friends. It was vibrant and loud and very bright, and I was enthralled. Go there, if you can.

- The Prince Albert Monument. It's a beautiful monument right outside the Royal Albert Hall. In addition to being a memorial to Victoria's beloved husband, it is a statement of purpose for the British Empire. It's large and gaudy, but at the same time pristine. Absolutely fascinating.

After five days in London, we finally drove to Oxford. The University is beautiful, of course. The town is wonderful. I can't get enough of this place. I will blog about Oxford more later. I'm trying to let it sink in.

Anyways, feel free to ask me any questions in the comments!

NY Magazine has a very interesting, very thorough profile of David Brooks. An excerpt:

"Every column is a failure,” says Brooks. “I always wish I did something different.” Part of the problem is the format. There’s only so much you can do with 800 words. “I’m a 3,000-word person,” he says.

Deadline days end with fourteen piles of paper stacked around his office—printouts, notes, index cards, photocopies—one for each paragraph of the story. If the column doesn’t come together, he resorts to the laundry list, beginning each paragraph with “First,” “Second,” etc. “Usually when I do that, I’ve written another version of the column and it sucked,” he says, “so those are usually acts of sheer desperation.”

Plus Brooks just isn’t that opinionated. “I look at Andrew Sullivan or Jonathan Chait, churning out opinions,” he says. “I don’t have that many.” Brooks’s goal isn’t to change minds, he says. “Do I expect someone with View X on a policy, and I argue View Anti-X, that somehow they’re gonna totally change their mind? I don’t think I’ve ever had that effect on anybody.” He can “strengthen and highlight certain feelings,” he says. But that’s about it.

In about 36 hours, I'll be walking the streets of Dublin. I'll be fully internet capable while there, so I plan on blogging some.

For now, pray that I don't die of anxiety.