Wednesday, Jan 23rd

Friday, at our LC group meeting we served Scones and Squash (cordial). Yum. We all shared highs and lows from the week. Many of us couldn't think of any lows!

The play "39 Steps" was entertaining and held in a unique theatre, The Criterion. There were only 4 actors/actress and they played over 100 roles. It reminded me of a melodrama from Virginia City, but with British accents and punch lines!

Saturday we got up early, met at Metrogate at 8 a.m., loaded onto 3 coaches and headed to Bath. We were supposed to also go to Stonehenge, but there was about 4-5" of snow and the roads around Stonehenge weren't good so it was closed. We were bummed, but it did give us more time to enjoy Bath. They don't often get much snow around here, so as is in Portland, they close schools and cancel flights, etc for just a little snow. I really enjoyed it tho.

Bath is a unique town. It has the only hot springs in all of England. It probably was used over 3000 years ago by the Celtic tribes. The Romans started using it in AD 75 and built a massive complex around the spring. It continues to bubble forth at 116 degrees F at a rate of about 240,000 gallons a day. By 500 AD the Romans had left and their buildings crumbled. In 1100 AD the spring becomes used for healing again, but it wasn't until 1880 that the Roman Baths were discovered. Over years it had been overgrown and covered and other buildings built on top of it. It was discovered because water began to seep into their hall that was right on top of the Roman Bath!!!Quite a discovery and what an awesome museum.

We also saw the gorgeous Bath Abbey. Begun in 1499, Bath Abbey is the last of the great medieval churches of England. Over the past twelve and a half centuries, three different churches have occupied the site of today’s Abbey; an Anglo-Saxon Abbey Church dating from 757, a massive Norman cathedral begun about 1090, and the present Abbey church. In 973, the first English king, Edgar, was crowned here. I loved all the stained glass windows, the front one had 56 depictions of Jesus' life.

We had several hours on our own to eat lunch and look around. As we were hiking around looking for a restaurant the students started throwing snowballs at each other. Then from across the road, a random British guy got in on it. So there were about 12 of LC ers against him. It was fun. After a while, several of our guys went over to help him.

The first restaurant we went to was too spendy, but on the way back down the hill we found an awesome Indian restaurant, lots of yummy food for 6.75 GBP. 18 of us ate there and loved it.

Sunday we tried to find our church in Enfield, but ended up at the right address, but south of town. We were supposed to be North of town. I guess there are lots of Lancaster roads around here. Well, I was bummed since Carla Long was here as a guest speaker and she's great, but we had a nice walk in the snow. We'll try again this weekend.

Sunday afternoon we enjoyed an open house with the other faculty members living in our flat.

The student's internships started on Monday and we had choir practice. We also went to the British Museum, which is huge and free. We only saw about 1/4 of it. We got to see the Rosetta stone and lots of old Egyptian and Assyrian statues and sphinxes etc. Very interesting.

Last night we had Noelle, Lame and Erika over for pizza, we played Bananagrams, including Erik's creative version. It was hilarious. Tonight we have 6 other students
coming over for pizza.

I'm excited for tomorrow and Friday, we have tix for 2 concerts for the London A cappella festival, will hear the Magnets, Rajaton (from Finland) and All the King's Men, plus a bunch of other groups who sing for free in the foyer at King's Place.

All for now, we're heading to Brixton Market to get some fruit and veggies for dinner tonight.