Week 9: New Sights and New Brothers

This week has been a little longer thanks to a very busy and exciting weekend. My apologies for being later than normal with this update.

Even the front half of the week was busy, from belting Christmas carols through the toilet block while cleaning (and serenading others unintentionally) to leading the Bible study, Monday and Tuesday were jam packed. On Tuesdays we try and visit people on the estate, we did not make that goal as we had a couple of projects we needed to do at Andrew's and at the community centre. An older Welsh man joins us every Tuesday, so he and I worked at the community centre sorting good chairs and tables from the rubbish ones. He is a pleasure to be around and talk with.

Thursday through the weekend were full of activity as well. From another adventure in finding a craft to do with the kids, to spiritual talks which has since lead to spiritual growth and commitment (yay!). God is working here, and the joy I have in knowing He has allowed me to be in this work is incredible. In the midst of that we watched the latest Thor in the cinema. Thor was quite good, and was filmed in England (everyone likes London). Also, popcorn at the cinema here is slightly cheaper (although there is a significant need for melted butter over here).

London Skyline from the London Eye. Note St. Paul's just right of center

Saturday, as a team we took the train down to London! With vouchers from Tesco (a grocery store over here), we got onto the London Eye at a discounted price. We explored more of London, including 10 Downing Street (the British version of The White House, where the PM lives), Trafalgar Square, The Royal Mall up to Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park AND Harrod's.

Charis was being silly, hence my looking down.
The London Eye. 

Elizabeth Tower in foreground.
Westminster Abbey in background.

Trafalgar Square and Nelson's Column.

The National Gallery.

Harrod's. Poshest place in the world.

I had always thought of Harrod's as just the British version of Macy's Department Store in New York City. It's not. From the outside I thought it was very festive for Christmas. Then I got inside. The place is posh. By posh, I mean Victoria Beckham posh (She was Posh Spice of the Spice Girls). I do not think you can get any more posh than someone who's nickname is Posh.  The place was ridiculous. While strolling along, we found a watch that was worth £11500. Yes, you read that right. Eleven thousand five hundred pounds. Currently, that is $18,532.14. FOR A WATCH. I paid less than half of that for my current car in America. We also saw one for £88000. But really, at that point I was still in sticker shock from the first watch, and anything beyond that was incomprehensible. Part of our reason for visiting Harrod's was to find the toilets, or as the uber-posh call it, the washroom. We needed this because we had a 3 year old and a 9 month old who desperately needed a nappy change. We had a look around near where the washroom is located (the basement), so we looked around the wine cellar and the cigar room. Cigars are at least £41 PER CIGAR. A pipe is would fleece the lining of my jeans at £300. The price of a simple bottle of Coke would quench your thirst without even purchasing the drink. It costs over 4 quid(pound, to be proper), so the next time you go to a restaurant and you have sticker shock at a $3.00 drink, just remember a single bottle of Coke would be more like $7.00 in Harrod's.

Big Ben is such a pleasure to listen to.
Parliament is just to the right of Elizabeth Tower here.

Buckingham Palace.

After that eventful trip to London, which was truly quite enjoyable, I went online to book my train ticket back to London for when I leave in December. I booked the latest train that night from Grantham. Big Mistake. This train would be leaving around 10:30 at night. Arriving at midnight. Beautiful, that would give me 3 hours to get to Heathrow from King's Cross. No biggie right? Wrong. As it will be a Sunday night, and apparently London officials do not think that anyone would care to travel at midnight from the BIGGEST TRAIN STATION IN THE UK to the BIGGEST AIRPORT IN THE UK, for an international flight that leaves at dawn (which is fairly common). The Underground quits running at 11:30. Thankfully we caught this last night. Otherwise, I would have been stuck in Central London with all my luggage needing to get to Heathrow, and really the only option that I could rely on then would be a taxi. Which could be the most expensive mode of transportation invented by mankind.









Well, we avoided that big obstacle by moving my train, where the change of my reservation only cost 5/6 of the price of the ticket itself. Sigh. Live and learn. Do not ever expect the biggest underground system of trains to run at midnight on a Sunday night.

Hyde Park and The Serpentine. These swans are property of Queen Elizabeth II herself. As are all the swans in England.