The Sun Reaches England!

Since last writing, we've had two interesting experiences with our British friends. I did my best to document these while still actually partaking of the events...

1. Creative Explosion Day

We were invited to breakfast with two friends of ours in the church. The day began in a normal fashion, with a fushion of British and American breakfast foods, and a sweet tea so sweet I believe it made our English friend, Mary, gag! At the least, she was certainly taken by surprise. Joel, an American from Massachusetts, loves sweet tea but even he could not roll with the intense sugar high that I had created. Breakfast was a delightful affair, but afterwards we got to talking which spiraled into a plethora of ideas as to what we could do involving Joel's sheepskins.

Okay, let me backtrack a bit. A few months back, whilst Joel was wondering the streets of Harlesden, he came across a man selling these large boxes of skeepskins for extremely cheap. He really had no purpose for them at the time, but it was apparently such a great deal he could not pass them by. In his defense, they are very nice. ANYWAY, back to the original story...

So we had been scheming for some time as to what to do with the sheepskins. Perhaps making satchel bags to sell out of them, or something, since it is a high quality leather. Mary mentioned that she had a chair which needed re-upholstering, and Joel and Seth believed they were up to the task. We were to reconvene later in the day for the project.

Later in the evening, we met together for the chair events. Top Gear (click the link if you don't know what it is) began to play over the projector, and the men were in their creative/masculine element ripping the old seat off of the chair.



Mary and I were planning on helping, but there really was no room for us in the procedure. Mary had also been wanting to make some pillow cases out of this nice fabric she bought during her trip to Kyrgystan (you can read more about her interests in this area here, at her blog - which is an interesting blend of cake and political/social awareness).


I helped her out with the cutting and measuring. Afterwards, her housemate, Keren (from Canada) brought us a sewing machine that had been left at the house long ago by an unknown source. Keren deemed machine "user friendly," and it was my job to teach Mary the mechanics of it so she could sew up the pillow cases. Keren then joined up to make some decorations for a baby shower she was going to, and thus the room became a Creative Explosion of different projects.

Keren making decorations

Mary and I working hard as well:

Joel and Seth's valiant (and succesful) effort(which, as it turned out, did not involve the skins at all, but some fabric Mary had):

But were Mary's pillow cases meant to be? The sewing machine certainly did not think so. We had to fight with it, as the thread continually kept breaking or getting caught it various parts of the machine. However, they were to be! Mary successfully finished them late in the night! Triumphant!

All in all, it was a great night with some friends, and an overall burst of creative juices for all.

2. New Forest Biking Adventure

Our second adventure was a trip to New Forest for a day of biking with church friends J and Chrissy. New Forest is ironically the oldest established forest in England, here since William the Conqueror! There are indigenous horses and ponies there as well, which were extremely comfortable around us humans. J and Chrissy were nice enough to drive us down in their car. We rented bikes (save Spike, who of course made the trip and did his best to keep up with the other bikes) and took off through the trails.

It was absolutely beautiful. We stopped by a river bank, and I got a few pics there to show the beauty of it. Because otherwise, I was obviously on the bike, and couldn't really take pictures...sorry everyone...

The oldest tree in the forest (which means it is super old):


Spike didn't have a kickstand...and thus struggled amongst his peers.


Ponies! They were completely comfortable with us...

It was really great to get out of the city. I hadn't realized how much I missed wide open spaces (cue Dixie Chicks) until we were back in them. The forest was so vast and huge, and there were stretches where we wouldn't see another human at all, just trees or green fields, or ponies. The quiet of the forest became a chorus of birds and branches swinging in the wind. Also, did I mention that the sun came out??

Riding along, I realized it was so beautiful to see God's creation untouched by man's hand. In a city, it's so easy to see the wonders of man's mind - the architecture, the works of art, theatre - it bombards me in such an obvious way, grabbing for my attention. But God does it in such a different way - it's quiet, and doesn't flash itself about. The more I looked, the more everything appeared completely beautiful - the clunky, twisted trees creaking in the wind, the sun sprinkling down to us from the shade, the open moors with ponies in the mellow light. It doesn't boast, it just is what it is. There's something beautiful about it.

J and Chrissy also treated us to immense (meaning yummy) cake and treats. Again, they were amazing...we've definitely been under a bout of hospitality!

On the way home, we got stuck in a little traffic, but it didn't matter, because they had The Hobbit audio version. Although this was great, I do have to say that Ian McKellan makes Gandalf as cool as he is. Cause this guy...struggled a little bit.

So those are our adventures for now...I'm sure there will be more! There's no real news on the job or grad school front, but if there is, we'll be sure to post it!

P.S. - We just received a coffee maker in the mail from Jason!! I have a feeling Ashley Roden or Amanda Crowe might have also been involved, but either way THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH! WE'RE PUMPED TO HAVE CAFFEINE!

Valentine's Festivities

So I don't have anything deep or insightful to say this time around. Just a basic retelling of the events of the past week and a half or so.

Saturday, the church hosted a Valentine's Day party at the Mason's Arms, a pub about a mile down the road from us. It was originally supposed to be a Christmas party, but had to be rescheduled because of the insane snow storms. There was live music, with the grand finale consisting of an awesome band made up completely of our very own church members. The music and dancing was really fun. There was a raffle giving away prizes, and in the end we raised about 600 GBP for the Winter Night Shelter charity.

Sunday morning, I played ultimate frisbee with the church for the first time. It'd kind of becoming a tradition for the sports-y people in the church to play it every Sunday morning now, and they've been trying to get me to play for a while now. Frisbee has never been my thing though. Frisbees somehow always manage to magically morph into a boomerang every time they leave my hand. But I finally caved an joined in, and it actually turned out to be pretty fun. I still can't really throw one though...I inevitably turn into the "run down the field and try to catch a Hail Mary" guy. Maybe some day.

As fun as it was, I'm still a bit disappointed that frisbee has kind of replaced our Sunday football (soccer) sessions with the church. I kinda miss that, and hope we can bring it back soon. But I understand the reasoning anyway; frisbee is more inviting (to normal people, no me), and it's thus easier to include the girls that way. So next week, Chelsea's going to play with us too, hopefully (she was supposed to play Sunday, but was basically too worn out from all the dancing at the Valentine's Day party...what can I say? I've got moves).

Monday Chelsea didn't have class because it's reading week, so we got to spend Valentine's Day together all day. So that was really nice. We took a trip to Richmond Park, which was really nice. We walked through the little area of Richmond on the way there, which was really nice, with a nice garden.

The park itself was really cool too, and has some interesting history if you're interested (I won't type it all here...read the wikipedia if you care that much).

We did indeed see a pond, and I'm sure there were many we didn't see...

And...hey...what's that there in the distance?

What could it be?

Deer?

DEEEEERRRRR!!!!! THERE'S THOUSANDS OF THEM!

Okay, so there weren't really thousands of them. There's about 600 in the whole park. We saw about 30 or so. And we weren't really THAT surprised to see them...we knew they were there in the park, because we had dutifully read the aforementioned wikipedia page. Actually, the deer were the whole reason we chose that park. But the park is 2300 acres, so there was no guarantee that we would see them, so it was still pretty exciting that we found some, without too much trouble. The website said not to try to pet or feed the deer, but we still wanted to see how close we could get...at first I think that kinda made the deer mad...they had all been laying down, and when we approached they all stood up and stared at us. So we calmly shifted directions and tried to pretend like we were merely walking past the deer, not directly at them, when really, we were still coming ever closer. Finally, we decided it was close enough, and had ourselves a little picnic (is wine and cheese enough to be considered a picnic?)

So that was pretty much our Valentine's Day (not including massive amounts of sleeping in). We treated ourselves to a nice traditional southern dinner...breaded chicken legs with spinach and black eyed peas, and finished it all off with homemade apple crisp (basically British apple pie) with ice cream, while watching the mother of all Valentine's movies, Pride and Prejudice.

In other news, I've still been out on the job hunt. I am a bit encouraged though, as it seems a lot of places plan on hiring extra help for the summer months, starting at the end of March, so maybe there's a bit of daylight there. Also, the guy at the rock climbing wall called me this morning and invited me to come to a training session to become a climbing instructor. So that's pretty promising too...I really have no idea what that entails, but it's the closest I've gotten so far. I'm still waiting on an email with him for further details. He did say he wanted me to come in and brush up on my climbing skills before the training session, so if nothing else, I'll get to go climbing for free which is pretty cool (and he said Chelsea could come too!) It will be pretty ironic if I end up getting the very first job I applied for in London, especially after the now countless rest that I haven't heard back from, but if that ends up being the case, I'll gladly take it.

Grilling in the Dark

Although our traveling has significantly decreased with our settling into London, we got the opportunity to travel to see some fellow Americans who live outside of Manchester - the Austins! You may remember them from our honeymoon - how kind they were to take us in, as well as allow us to ship our belongings to their house. So, yeah, they are pretty much awesome.

On our way to see the Austins, we traveled through Manchester. We had been through it before, but never had the chance to explore. Although we only had about an hour and a half, I managed to get a few pics:


The city is pretty industrious as far as we could tell, but added a nice blend of architecture old and new to still make it pleasing to the eye. The Wheel of Manchester is sort of like the Eye in London:



Me being artsy with the eye...I don't think it worked.

Something about Seth standing there with a bookbag and a little plastic grocery bag makes me think of our honeymoon...strange thing to remind me of it..


Strange random water pipes which this lady used to very THOROUGHLY clean her son's scooter. I was going to wait until she finished, and then realized it was way more interesting to take a picture of her doing this:

Yes I realize I look ridiculous with all the layers:

Cool old pub:

Manchester Cathdral:

Seth creeping by the elderly citizens van at the church:

Cool architecture:

And the niblet of the cool architecture:

Printworks?

Creeper bird lady statue:

The mall:

They also had their own tram system through the city, which was pretty cool:
The "garden" was really just a mud pit:


City at night, walking through Piccadilly Gardens:

Of course we absorbed some art...for about 30 mins...



Okay, so that culminates about two hours of an entire weekend. Whew. After that, there are less pictures, but more human interaction which I feel is a little more important. The Austins, which consisted of Jack, Sunday, lil'Jack (to make his little cooler), and Tom, now has a fifth member. His name is Taco, and he's a dwarf hamster. Needless to say, he was very cute!


We had a great weekend with the Austins, just being Americans. We watched some American television, made fun of the British thing we saw on TV, and of course enjoyed the delicacies of American food! Sunday had made a delicious pot of chili to greet us as we came in the door. She even had hot sauce to accompany it! Amazing! I should have taken a picture of it, but I guess I got a little too excited...

The Friday and Saturday we spent with them were filled with rough weather - high winds, rain, and then a little more rain. But it was lovely just cozying up on their couch and doing a bit of reading while being surrounded by Southern accents! Their hospitality once again amazed us - we felt so welcome and loved in their home. They even treated us to our first Indian cuisine (thanks again Jack and Sunday!) Going to be with them just reminded me all over again of our love for Georgia and our friends back home. Ofcourse, it's excellent being here, but some things are just too good not to miss!

On Saturday night, they did have some friends over from church. Maggie, who is from Ireland, remarked on how I sounded British! Oh no! I'm not sure which way I should take this. On one hand, I'm apparently blending in. On the other, I don't want to lose my southern-ness! Although, in my defense, when I'm speaking with Brits, I try to use their terminology (crisps instead of chips, film instead of movie...the list goes on) as a way of being polite. I wonder if this is the best approach?

Anyway, here's a depiction of how ridiculous the weather was:


That's right. Grilling in the dark, with a raincoat on to fight off the wind, under the awning of the house to fight off the rain. In about 30 degree weather. That's how it's done, son! UK style!

So this post wasn't exactly philosophical like Seth's...oh well, you know you still love my picture galleries! :)