British Museum and HMA; plus special bonus, The Beard Chronicles Part III: Experimentation

Last week Chelsea and I had a little adventure to Covent Gardens and the British Museum. Covent Gardens just a cool little pedestrian area with a bunch of cafes and shops (there really aren't any gardens). Aside from a little Christmas shopping, which is top secret and thus I am forbidden from discussing on the blog, there's not much to say about that. We did see a ridiculous string quartet there busking at one of the cafes. They were quite extroverted, dancing around and being dramatic. They were also fond of harassing passerbys, getting right in people's faces whenever they walked past and even sitting down with people eating at the cafe. They also sent a separate, 5th person around with a basket to collect money. They were basically the most aggressive street buskers ever.

After that, we walked up to the British Museum, our first time visiting there. We mostly saw a bunch of old Egyptian and Greek artifacts. There was also a pretty large collection of statues from the Parthenon, which was pretty cool. Apparently, the Greek government wants the statues back, and they're pretty angry about it, but the British government doesn't really care at all. We only saw about half the museum, but it's free admission, so we can go back as many times as we want and take our time.

We've also both started volunteering at Harlesden Money Advice (HMA), a debt counseling charity run by our church. Basically, all sorts of government agencies refer people who have major debt problems to the charity, and members of the church who have gotten trained to be a debt counselor go and basically just help them organize all of their finances and help them prioritize them and what they need to pay off first, and then talk to all of their creditors to see if they will accept lower monthly payments. The thing is, whenever they meet with a client, there has to be at least two people from the charity at the meeting, for liability reasons and whatnot. So, obviously, in a charity like that, demand will always outstrip supply, so Chelsea and I have been helping by going along as the second person, with the other person being an actual trained advisor. I'm planning on getting trained in January so that I can help out more as well. So we've only just gotten our feet wet there, but hopefully there will be more to come.

I lead worship again at church this past Sunday, which was nice. Chelsea didn't play bongos this time, but helped with the singing, since I can stay on tune pretty well if I can hear someone else, but struggle a little bit when I have to lead it by myself. So that was really fun.

We're also having church tonight at Westbourne Grove, a church that's also part of the organization of churches we're a part of, called Salt & Light, and also the place where our friend Owen held his photography exhibition a couple of weeks ago. So we'll be in a real church building tonight, with access to a real sound system and stuff, so we're going all out with a full worship band. I'm borrowing our friend Andy's bass to play, while he's playing acoustic guitar, J is playing keyboard, J's wife Chrissy is singing, and Chelsea is playing bongos. So that should be really fun tonight. For me at least, it's been really awesome getting to play bass again.

We're also having Thanksgiving dinner Thursday! Woo! Christin, from Idaho, is heading it up. She's been in the UK a while now, and held a similar Thanksgiving for the church last year. The Brits are all quite excited about it, and I think we're even going to watch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving to give them a bit of Thanksgiving history. Still, per my general policy on life, I don't think anyone can say it better than Jim Gaffigan.

So we'll let you know soon how the worship tonight at Westbourne Grove and the Thanksgiving dinner go. Then I'll be flying back to Atlanta on Monday, and Chelsea will have to brave the London winter alone for two and a half weeks (though she's already been invited to dinner by two different people in the church after I'm gone, so I don't think she'll be too lonely). Until then, here's your special bonus, as promised: