Rainy Days and Tube Rides in Londontown

Although it has been a while since either of us last written, a surprisingly small amount of exciting new things has occurred. Actually, I take that back. Things have been exciting, with new experiences around every corner; however, in comparison to the honeymoon life we had been living - a new place to sleep every night, meeting new people every day, a new mountain to climb and so on, our life has been relatively normal. I have started school at King's College as of last week, and I absolutely love it already. I know that it is going to be a lot of work, a lot of reading, but I am ready for the challenge! Maybe you'll want to ask me that question again at the end of this year...

My courses are amazing though. Last week, we had our first classes, one being at King's College and one at the British Library. The British Library session was particularly awesome, as we got to hold some of John Donne's manuscripts. Maybe I'm a nerd...okay...definitely I'm a nerd because of how much this excited me. Oh well. It's the little things in life that make us happy, I suppose.

We've also been enjoying the (occasionally) nice weather by spending some time outdoors. As we've mentioned before, there's a beautiful park just a few minutes walk from our apartment, called Roundwood Park. We've really enjoyed going for walks there and even having some picnics there for lunch. Seth has finally caught up on some of his pictures, so you can actually see a few of his photos now!

It has some really nice gardens.

It also has a neat little aviary with a bunch of pet birds.

There's a big hill in the middle of the park, with a really cool view of Wembley Stadium (it's so close!)



We also took a day trip via tube to Hampstead Heath, which is this massive park area with meadows and trees and even some ponds that can be used for swimming. We walked right past it about 10 times when we were looking for an apartment to stay in, but never got a chance to visit it. It was pretty nice, but it was pretty cold that day, and we weren't really prepared for it.

We also saw one of the houses Keats lived in during his lifetime, just near the heath, though we didn't go in or anything.

In other news, we have found a church! It is a small community of believers who also live in our area, and they just meet in one another's houses for bible study, fellowship, worship, the sort of things Christian generally enjoying doing while in each other's companies (of course, this includes eating). This church has been absolutely welcoming of us - if there was ever a moment we felt alone in London, that has passed! So many of them have asked to hang out with us, making sure we feel included by them. It's something that really surprised me, as a lot of British folk that we have met have been sort of introverted, even if they were nice people. They have been very open and proactive in getting to know us. Anyway, it has been a genuinely great experience to be around these people and I anticipate a year of excellent worship and growing closer to the Lord through these people.

The church meets for worship and bible study on Tuesday nights, which seems to be the big event of the week. They also meet on Sundays, but this is much more casual and less people are at this. They are also eager to meet up during the week to just chat or hang out, thus the feeling very included and loved. For both Sundays that we have been there, they have had conversations about how to most effectively worship and be a body of believers in Christ. I'm not really sure exactly how to go about this. By trying to figure something like this out via worldly views and ideas that humans have, aren't we being counterproductive? Will it ever work to try to sort these sort of things out by reasoning about them? I'm just not sure about it, but the church seems set on the idea of discussion about theological matters. This is simply something new to me, so I am open to trying it and exploring it, but at the same time, I do want to remain God centered. That said, these people do seem God centered to me. They all seem to have a genuine love of the Lord and a want to serve those around them.

These are really our only pieces of news at this point. Other than that, here's what you need to know:
1. It rains a lot here. Not like Georgia cats-and-dogs, coming-in-through-the-porch-screen rain, but sort of misty and it hangs around for days at a time
2. It can be freezing outside, and you will still sweat on the tube. With hardly any ventilation and loads of people speeding through a dark hole in the ground, there's gonna be some sweat.
3. 50% of people love to walk really slowly and take up the entire minuscule sidewalk. Seriously, I believe this is their profession in life. They have been hired by an Irish evil genius to cause a general malaise to spread about the land. The other 50% enjoy pushing through people and speeding through the slow walkers on their cellphones, looking very important and making money even as they walk by you.

At this point, these are my gems of knowledge. Hope you enjoyed them.