This amused me

Outside the Tower of London.

(And I almost got run over trying to take a picture of it.)

The Tower of London: it's not made of plastic

I didn't take this picture.
Pete loves the Tower of London, and I'd never been. So one of his birthday presents (admittedly more exciting than the ironing board) was tickets for us to go.

I'm still getting used to the idea of all this really old stuff, and that it's real. I feel like I'm in some Olde Englande theme park instead.

But sure enough, this bell tower for instance is from 1190.

It's a very cool place. We had a 60 minute tour, which is given by one of the "Yeoman Warders" (aka Beefeaters), and then went to see the Crown Jewels, the interactive exhibits, and walked along the castle walls.










The famous and beautiful Tower Bridge behind us, which people often assume is London Bridge. London Bridge is nothing to look at.

They keep ravens at the Tower, because of some old superstition. Pete has a thing for them and crows (I have no idea) so I bought him this stuffed animal raven in the gift shop. If you look past the weirdo and his stuffed raven, in the background you might be able to see the real thing.

London is cheap

People seem to think London is expensive, but there's absolutely nothing you can buy in America that costs the equivalent of 9 pence.

These shortbread biscuits are really good, by the way.

New Year's social

Last weekend our church had a new year's social event and Pete and I helped out a little. It was a really fun night, with lots of games and crafts and quizzes and food.




We had a quiz where people had to guess who the babies were, and the organizers asked Pete and I to be in it, only he told me we had to bring kids pictures, not babies. You can probably tell in one second who each of us is. (So could everyone else, but hey, we're cute).












They asked "international people" to bring a dessert from home. My dear boyfriend thought of s'mores, which I had to improvise on, in light of no campfire and nobody in the UK having ever heard of graham crackers. But with the help of digestive biscuits and a microwave, it went ok!

Old

Pete's birthday was Tuesday and now he's the same age as Jesus.

I ordered this cake for him to take to work, and now I'm a big hit at his office (which is of course why I did it).

Avenue Q

A Christmas present for Pete from me. I wouldn't recommend it for children, parents, daughters, sons, neighbors, females, males, or people who have sinks in their house.
(But it is hysterical).

Old friends

I've known Charis and Seulgi since freshman year at Gordon College, and Charis and I were RDs together for 4 years. The year before I moved to England, they moved here so Seulgi can work on his PhD at Cambridge, and Charis's family is actually English and she was born here.


She got in touch with me before the holidays though because they were going to be in London and we met up with them at Canary Wharf one afternoon over the holiday break.

It was a GREAT visit. They have 3 kids now (they had 2 last time I saw them!) and their oldest, Noah (5), has an English accent. Hysterical! Pete loved them and keeps asking me when we can go to Cambridge to see them. Soon honey, I promise.




We made a must-have stop at a rare Krispy Kreme!

Christmas 09

This was my first Christmas away from my family. Don't tell them, but I hardly noticed. (Mostly kidding) My own family had a non-traditional year because of my sister-in-law being almost due with "our" first baby so they all went to Philly to be with Joel and Cynthia.


Christmas morning. Pete and I somehow found ourselves surrounded with presents, which of course was a lot of fun! I'll spare you the pictures of me in my pajamas and glasses.





















We went to church in the morning and then to Pete's parents house for the day.







His mum set a beautiful table - I think maybe partly because of the "guest" they had this year (me!)
Delicious food. English Christmas dinner is pretty similar to what we eat for Thanksgiving - apart from the Christmas pudding, which I still don't understand.
It was great to experience a traditional English Christmas, with real live English people. And English dogs. We had a GREAT day and really enjoyed it.

Southwark Cathedral

Southwark Cathedral was built between 1220 and 1420. And I see it every day on my way to work. Tonite I went to one of their Christmas "Lessons and Carols" services which was really lovely.



This is what it would look like inside without a million people.



In addition to being lovely, it was the most stressful 75 minutes I've experienced in a long time. It was packed - there were like a million people in there, and we each held a lit candle for the entire time. It dripped on my hand, I dropped my brochure, I kept needing to scratch things, every time the woman in front of me was slow in standing up I was sure I was going to burn her head, and I could hardly focus on the service for all the worry that even if I didn't start the inevitable fire, there was no way all million of us were leaving that place unscathed. Amazingly, we seemed to (although I have no idea why we're allowed to have the candles).


I discreetly took this at my seat, before we were handed the sticks of destruction.

The other parts of London are beautiful

I went to Harrods the other night, via an area called Sloane Square in Chelsea. It's very upscale South West London (to my "downscale" East London) and it's just so beautiful. The pictures I snapped on my phone didn't really come out so I found these online which much better capture what it looks like down there right now.



Incidentally, Leytonstone does decorate for Christmas, and even uses the popular blue lights as well, but it looks more like a neon blue Six Flags than anything.