Monday, February 18th

It's a gorgeous sunny day here in S Kensington, London. Erik, the boys and I took a 5 mile walk down to the Thames, crossing over 2 bridges and enjoying the weather. We also stopped at a fun restaurant "The Old Dutch Pancake", which sells huge crepe-like pancakes for 5 pounds, on Monday! Tonight, Erik is roasting a chicken for dinner, it's nice that he's got more time to enjoy cooking. Makes my life pretty easy! Then this evening, we will go to "Showstoppers", an improvisational musical. I guess they take ideas from the audience and create the musical on the spot! It's at the Royal Albert Hall, which is a gorgeous building.

I'm quite a bit behind, so I'll try to catch up. On Sunday, February 3rd, Kari, Jared and I attended Evensong at Westminster Abbey. Then for supper, we went to Churchill Arms for Thai food. Erik was back from France in time to join us.

Over the next few days we went to the Museum of Science, The British Museum and The Natural History Museum. They are incredible museums and all free! I think I like the Natural History Museum the best, but it's really cool seeing the Rosetta Stone and the very old things in the British Museum. Tuesday night, Erik and the kids went to Spamalot and I went to Billy Elliot. I loved the musical, such amazing talent, lots of singing and dancing and humor. On Wed we had 6 LC students here for pizza and had fun squishing into our living room and playing Salad Bowl. Thursday we all joined in with the students on their Food Walking Tour. It was quite chilly, but was an interesting tour of Boroughs Market and surrounding area. The guide talked about fishing over the years in the Thames, it's a very clean river now. She also told how the railway completely changed how people ate, especially the milk trains. That evening, Ryan,Erik, Kari and I got to learn about change ringing. One of my fellow sopranos in Gospel choir is a bell ringer and she invited us to her rehearsal. The bell master took us up to the belfry and showed us the bells. This tower, St Olaves, has 8 bells. There are about 5000 bell towers in the UK, 50 in the US and 7000 in the world. So it is definitely a culturally British thing. Then we even got to ring the bells, with individual supervision, so we didn't damage the bells. It was very fun. We stayed and listened to several of their methods (songs).

Friday we attended a 2 hour tour of the Houses of Parliament, the palace of Westminster. We even got to go into the House of Commons and the House of Lords, (but we couldn't sit on the seats!) The House of Lords contained a big red wool sack, kind of like a huge bean bag, which contained wool from each of the countries in the British commonwealth and the justices sit on it-it was so interesting!! I wish I could remember all that our guide said, but I do remember there is lots of ceremony associated with the building, which is huge. There were several amazingly gorgeous rooms that are used exclusively for the queen to walk thru when she opens parliament. It is almost all rebuilt after the fire of 1834, except for the Great Hall. There are over 1100 rooms, 4 post offices and numerous employees on eight acres. Quite an impressive place.

Friday evening was especially fun. Kari and Jared went to a Scottish Ceilidh. They ended up walking extra to get there, but had fun once in. It was sold out, but there were 90 tickets available at the door. Kari and Jared were right after the last ones were sold, yikes, but thankfully someone had two tickets they didn't need, so they bought those. It was very packed and Jared said he hadn't frolicked so much in his life, but they had fun. Good exercise too. Bryn, Ryan, Erik and I went to Chalk Farm and met Joe Berry and his fiancé Chloe at an amazing Italian Restaurant. Joe was a UK soccer coach and had stayed with us for a week 5 years ago. We'd kept in touch via Facebook and it was awesome to see him again. He was surprised at how grown the boys were and was happy for us to meet Chloe. We really enjoyed visiting with them and they bought our meals too, what a nice surprise.

Saturday, Erik, Kari, Ryan and I headed to Cambridge. It's about an hour via train. We went to the Wesley Methodist church, who are celebrating their 100th birthday and hosted a workshop, "Come and Sing with John Rutter". We've all sang many songs written by him and really enjoyed our day. There were about 350 people there to sing, mostly all amateurs like us. We sang thru several songs John had written and before each song he'd talk about it. He also talked about what it is like to be a composer, he said writing music doesn't get easier as he gets older. We sang music by other composers too. What a fun day!!!

After the workshop we joined with Jared and Bryn, ate at Nando's-a chicken place Bryn and Ryan love and headed to a rugby game. We had some trouble finding it. There was engineering work taking place on the tube lines we were supposed to take so we took a train. It was quite far away from SW London, many of the students had trouble getting there, what a bummer. We really enjoyed the game tho.

On Sunday, Erik and I headed to Enfield to attend the Community of Christ service. We took the tube and then a train. The rails were being worked on, so we had to catch a replacement bus. Unfortunately, the bus driver didn't stop for the 6 of us waiting in the rain, so we took a taxi. It took us 2 1/2 hours to get there and we missed half of the service. But it was very nice to meet everyone. We ate lunch with Keith McMillan, who is a good friend of Roger and Patty's and worked in Cordova with Dave Allison in 1985. Apostle Richard James also joined us for lunch. At 1 p.m. we attended the Congolese service, which is also Community of Christ. We enjoyed it very much, lots of singing and praising. All in all, it was an 8 hour day, but well worth it.

As I mentioned in the Feb 15th post, the kids flew to Ireland for 3 days. While they were gone, Erik and I went to the Musical Mamma Mia, which was funny, and included ABBA's music. Erik has had a bad cold for a week now, so we took it easy. We did go to a Pancake flipping race on Tuesday for Shrove Tuesday. Quite a funny tradition. I guess traditionally people couldn't eat sugar, flour and fat during lent so on Shrove Tuesday they would clean out their cupboards by making pancakes. Lots of pancakes are still eaten in London on Shrove Tuesday and there were several races around the city! We also went to Southwark cathedral, pronounced Suh-thark, and saw a new art exhibit there and the famous Shakespeare stained glass window.

On Valentines day we went downtown to do a laser obstacle course race. (Except Jared, whose back was bothering him) Ryan won, with Kari in 2nd. Then Kari and Ryan got their feet nibbled on by fish, it's a thing they do in Turkey. It tickled them quite a lot at first, was funny to watch them. We did a little souvenir shopping and then Erik and Ryan came home and we went to the British museum. Erik cooked an amazing Valentines dinner, we had a yummy meringue cake to top it off. Then Kari, Jared and I spent time packing-they took some of our souvenirs, etc home with them. Thanks.

It was so very wonderful to spend the week and a bit with Kari and Jared, such wonderful people whom we all love! I'm sure they are having a wonderful week in Illinois right now. They will be home to Portland on the 21st.

I'll write about Oxford in my next post, it's time for dinner.