Something we will miss from our old house

We’re moving to a new flat tomorrow, the same day we fly out to INDIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And we are very excited about our new place. Peter and I will have a converted garage to ourselves, it has a bedroom and bathroom totally separate from the house, with our own entrance, so it will be our little sanctuary and we’ll share the kitchen and living area of the main house with Walls. It will be nice for all of us to have a bit more space and privacy. 

We have been slowly getting things for our new kitchen as it isn’t furnished, so I found a tea set at a thrift shop for a steal.  Now we can have proper tea time in proper tea cups:)    

part of our new tea set

What we'll miss most from our old place is the artwork

...in the shower!

 

Thanksgiving

We had a really fun Thanksgiving celebration with our potluck gang on Thursday–we were 18 in all, including some of their British neighbors, and a few other students.  We had turkey and duck, prepared by the men of the house that hosted and all of the usual sides.  Peter and I biked over with sweet potatoes in his backpack and the pumpkin pie and cranberry applesauce balanced in my basket.  We stopped several times, but pumpkin pie travels better by bike better than creme brulee, which I had made for potluck a month or so ago.  We managed to get dishes from various cooks all warmed up between their two ovens and the neighbors and had our meal around 2:30.  (Most of us had prepared our dishes the day before in our own kitchens)  We spent a lot of the day visiting, the guys played touch football in the street and then we had pie and cleaned up–we didn’t get home til nearly 11!  It was a really fun day, and while we missed being with family on Thanksgiving, we are very thankful for the good friends God has provided us here (and all the good cooks included:)

I am officially THE worst judge of amounts of food–I was sure we would never have enough food for 18 people (only about half of us brought food), but sure enough we had leftovers of everything–except turkey, which is the most important leftover!  Fortunately, we had another Thanksgiving celebration on Sunday that we were invited to by an American we met at Tuesday teas and all we had to bring was a side and the hosts provided the turkey–there was also a fiddle player at the end and dancing, but Peter and I left about then:)

Here are some pictures of our day, once again, thanks to Andrea!

We made it safely with the pie!

The pumpkin pie is in the tin foil, held in place by pyrex serving dishes wrapped in a table cloth:)

Kevin preparing the turkey that he brined the day before and made at the neighbors!

Preparing the pumpkin pie I made

The duck–isn’t it a beautiful presentation?

The spread, which I was sure wasn’t enough:) I also encouraged Andrea to make 2 extra pots of noodles on the night she made spaghetti, so no one will ever listen to me about food quanitities again:)

Kevin explained to our British guests the significance of Thanksgiving and prayed before the meal

Are we holding our bellies because we’re full?….

or pregnant:)

Thanksgiving Day

The Summa Wives and babies:)

Our friend Dee and her son, Cormac (he was born here a month ago!)

Peter and me at our second Thanksgiving on Sunday

The fiddler and his wife

Brought home with love

Peter found a rocking chair for free on the ‘freecycle’ page in Cambridge-its much like Craig’s List but everything is free. He went to pick it up after his seminar tonight and brought it home like this…

the bottom of the rocker looks like a sword:) and Peter looks like the guy in Nepal who delivered our refrigerator on his back!

that is quite the load for a 30 minute bike ride!

he looks a bit tired:)

such self sacrificing love--he'll be a great father!

Good Idea from Modern Decor

Also while in London we saw a store promoting this brilliant idea:

  

In case it’s not clear, all the books are put on the shelves backwards

a day trip to London

Peter and I had to go to London today because we are going to India for Christmas with our friends Siju and Jenny Varghese (yay!) and my Indian visa is in my old passport which is lost for the moment so I needed a new Indian visa.  They kindly charged me nearly twice what they would a UK citizen because I’m an American having my visa processed in the UK, so Peter says that will be my Christmas present this year:)  We are fortunate to be able to get it since we already have our tickets to India, and since it will guarantee our entry into the country, I won’t complain.

Plus it allowed us to spend the day in London.  After getting up at 4:22 we caught the bus at 5:30 and were waiting in line for the visa office to open by 7:45.  An Indian man in line with us said that before the Indian embassy delgated the visa services to separate visa application centers, people would start lining up for visa the night before and there would be many-block long lines by morning, so we are glad things were different.  By 9 we had the visa taken care of and happened upon Buckingham Palace–we also happened upon Trafalgar Square as we  only picked a general direction to walk and then found what we found.  It was a fun day of discovery.  We went to the British Museum (that was our general direction) after passing through Green Park.  Some of the highlights of the Museum were a little clip about the beginnings of Christianity in Japan, seeing the Rosetta Stone, and some Inuit clothing–pictured below is a ‘gut coat’ which is made from, sure enough, the gut, or intestines of a seal–apparently quite water proof.

We spent the afternoon browsing through old book stores and antique shops–we bought several old prints of Jack and the Bean Stalk for our child which was very fun.  The woman in the store gave us a free print for the baby when she found out we are expecting under the condition that we come back when the baby is born to show her, which we’ll gladly do.  She has a whole store full of prints taken out of old books, ranging from £4 to £4000!  She had a really fun selection of prints from old children’s books, focusing on giants from various stories.  I also got a print from an old Jane Austen book. 

We then meandered back to the bus, which is when we happened upon Trafalgar Square.  We were home a bit before 9 and so thankful on the ride home to be off of our feet and to not have Peter have to drive but to both relax!  The bus stops about a half mile from our house, so the whole thing was very slick!

Buckingham Palace

Beginning our day, just after the rain cleared up–the rest of the day was beautiful, albeit a bit chilly

We stopped for a bit of banana bread at the park and enjoyed the scenery

The thing we have consistently heard about London is how expensive it is, so we brought our own soup for the day, here we are having luke-warm soup in front of the British Museum

The gut coat

The upper left describes the notice, which we did not take a picture of, and the bottom gives the translation of the notice. Apparently the going rates for various Christians was higher than for Christ himself!

Trafalgar square!

We think this tree was transplanted from China and was confused about which way to grow

The Queen came to Visit

Unfortunately she didn’t come to our house as we’ve been requesting, but she had lunch today at King’s College and we managed to see her 3 times!    She was all decked out in a peach suit with a matching hat.  Andrea said ‘She’s so cute’ after we saw her and was reprimanded by a french friend of ours from knitting class for using the word ‘cute’ to describe the Queen!

Queen Elizabeth has been Queen since February 1952 (57 years and 286 days)–if she remains on the throne through 2015, she will become the longest reigning queen–Queen Victoria reigned for 63 years!   Her husband is the Duke of Edinburgh.  A man who marries a queen does not become king, but a woman who marries a king becomes queen, from what I understand.  He is also the Vice Chancellor of Cambridge.

The Queen exited King’s College after lunch, got in her Bentley, was driven about 50 feet where she got back out and went into some tents to give a speech to the higher ups of the University.  Andrea and I went around a side street to see if we could catch a glimpse and sure enough we saw the Queen again–we were some of the only people back there!  Then we saw her again as she got back into her car to be driven away.

The Queen leaving King’s College

The Queen getting into the car to ride 50 feet before getting out again!

Seeing the Queen and the Duke (whose gown is being held up) from the side street

We really were there!

You might be able to see the Queen better through the camera of the person in front of us!

The Queen waving to the crowds

The Queen and the Duke

And then, for some icing on the cake, after the Queen had left we spotted this person coming out of King’s–Stephen Hawking!  No one paid much attention to him, but we were pretty sure it was him, and looked up a picture after we got home and it was indeed.

Walking Tour

Today I went on my second blue badge guided tour. A blue badge is the triple black belt of tour guiding.   June is incredibly knowledgeable and is so gracious to do the tours free of charge.  Today was the largest group and when we are stopped by a street to hear what she has to say, I often miss part of it as it is hard to hear, but I’ll pass on what I remember of what I learned today.  And while we have mainly been using Andrea’s photos on our blog, I took my very own today!  You can usually tell the difference by the tiny black dots which appear in many of our pictures.  That, and if you think ‘what an amazing picture’ you can guess it’s Andrea’s:)

There is a very interesting clock that was unveiled 10 months ago by Professor Stephen Hawking, author of ‘A Brief History of Time’.  It is in the first two pictures.  The grasshopper, or chronophage (time eater), keeps the clock moving and was designed by John Taylor who said, “I also wanted to depict that time is a destroyer – once a minute is gone you can’t get it back.”  The £1 million pound clock was paid for by Taylor, the creator of the clock who made his money from electric tea kettles. 

Next on our stop was St. Benet’s church next to Corpus Christi college which boasts of a tower that was built in 1030.  Inside the tower are bells–English bells.  The English bells differ from others in that the bell hits a clapper that is mounted above the bell rather than the ‘hammer’ be inside the bell, so there is more control of the sound.  Each bell has its own person to pull the rope and ring the bell.  June’s husband is a bell ringer and she says it is quite the job–often bell ringers are ringing for several hours.  June told us that there is another ringer ‘at the ready’ by each bell in case the current ringer tires out so that the ringing doesn’t stop!  

We visited Clare College today, one of Cambridge’s 31 colleges, which is right next to King’s College.  It was founded because of an endowment from Elizabeth de Clare, a very wealthy woman who had been widowed 3 times by the time she reached her twenties.  One of her husbands left her an incredible sum of money and she decided to fund 10 poor boys’ education, which June said was an incredible investment in the 14th century.  The gate which is pictured below has a coat of arms with gold tears around it, representing her lost husbands.  We walked through Clare College to the bridge behind it which gives a beautiful view of the ‘Backs’ (the backsides of King’s and Queens’ Colleges which border the River Cam).

Today was an exceptionally beautiful day with brilliant blue skies and fast moving clouds.  I’m looking forward to next week’s tour!

This building houses the cricket/grasshopper clock

The clock that was unveiled by Stephen Hawking at Corpus Christi College

This tower was built in 1030, before William the Conqueror came to England

The circle windows were said to be built for owls to eat the rats that were running wild in Cambridge at the time

The entrance of the church that the tower is a part of

The bells that are rung inside the 1000 year old tower

Stained glass windows inside the tower

King’s College on a beautiful day–blue skies and clouds

The gate to Clare College which was refounded in 1338 by Elizabeth de Clare who had been widowed 3 times by the time she was in her twenties and donated her fortune to 10 poor boys’ education

King’s College towering behind the courtyard of Clare College

All the grass in the college courtyards is this well kept!

King’s College by the Cam river

On the 1640 Clare College bridge looking toward Queens’ College along the River Cam

Looking back on Clare College from the bridge

June, the amazing Blue Badge Guide, telling us about why a section is missing from this globe on the bridge

The River Cam

King’s college

King’s College

Evensong

We went to the Evensong Service at King’s College tonight.   An evensong service is a kind of liturgical service with a lot of choir (at least if a choir is present) singing but also reponsive reading and so forth.   Responsive in theory at least, everyone around us seemed to view the service as a curiousity/entertainment and didn’t sing or speak.  Though since it was things like the Nicene creed and the Our Father, maybe it was a principled silence, but it didn’t seem so.  King’s College has a boys choir that is quite famous and listening to them is great.  They sang the whole of psalm 94 and many other shorter pieces.  The first picture is of the best seats in the chapel which I think are reserved for college members and alumni, and the latter is the green in the middle of King’s College.

Click here for a youtube of the chapel and choir.  We went to another evensong at the local church in Trumpington two weeks ago, and it was about eight very old ladies and one old man and us.  Unfortunately, among about 300 seats we chose the seat in front of the old man who enjoyed singing both very loudly and very off-tune, so Jill and I couldn’t pick out the melody of any of the hymns.  But it was nice to meet some locals, they were very nice.  And the vicar has only been there a few weeks and seems quite creative and energetic.  The normal Sunday services are very full, but I guess the evensong is not a big deal at that church.

The Anglican hymnal that we use on Sunday’s at Little St. Mary’s is also used at the King’s Chapel, so the hymn that I noticed last Sunday I snapped a shot of tonight.  Note the author of the hymn–one of my favorites writers/thinkers and quite the pleasant surprise one of his poems is in the Hymnal.

Our Most Important Guest to Date

We had our neighbor Marian over tonight, who is our most important guest to date.  Sadly for her, it was an easy title to win, since we have not had any others yet.  But she will likely remain the most important for a while, until the Queen gives in to our insistent invitations.

She was friends with famous French philosopher Jaques Derrida and will spend time with his wife over Christmas, has sat in a taxi with Noam Chomsky, was the first female Fellow at Trinity College (where Isaac Newton did a lot of his work and discovery–she might take us on a tour), knows Nobel Prize winners, and, most importantly, is generous with her apples and plums.

Marian definitely has many an interesting story.  She told us about her remembrances of going into bomb shelters in WWII.  She also enjoys forthrightly stating her political views before knowing what ours are, including stating the Bushes (“Father Bush” and George W.) were idiots, and the younger Bush especially was an idiot “intellectually” as well. But this is more honest than avoiding the subject or being timid about it, so I appreciate it very much.

She knows someone who is interested in the pedagogy of language education, who may want to use some of the students in the Summa Project for an experiment about how to adapt teaching a language to a specific purpose–for future studies, we may need to learn to read French literature about Thomas Aquinas and related philosophy.  So we will have to see how that pans out.  It would be nice to get free guidance and teaching in learning another language if I decide I need to do that.

The first picture is of the fudge we made for dessert.  Jill found a “healthy fudge” recipe so made that but it needed some more sweetness so she added more sugar, but then it was grainy. So I mounted the rescue operation and heated it up, but then the butter separated, so I had to keep stirring vigorously while it cooled.  It turned out great.  We will see how long the left-overs last with a certain someone frequently in the kitchen.   For the main dish, Jill made Tuscan Chicken soup which got rave reviews from all in attendance.

The following are the pictures that were created as Jill was trying to be clever and take discreet pictures from the kitchen using the self-timer.  She ended up taking about 10 (with flashes) and noticeably distracting Marian:)

Guy Fawkes Night

Tonight was the night for a strange celebration in England called Guy Fawkes Night.

Apparently a man named Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the parliament building (including the King) for its Protestantism, but he was found out beforehand, then eventually hung, quartered, and displayed around London.  This was in 1605, but the celebration of this whole fiasco was not instituted until 1859.

I heard the parliament does a checking of the parliament basement for gunpowder ritual annually in memorial of the event.

But to celebrate they have fireworks, and then a huge bonfire over which an effigy of the Guy is burned.  Kids also make their own little dolls of him for others to burn and somehow the kids make money from this for buying fireworks.  I didn’t know that dressing up little children as corpses and devils on Halloween had another celebration in the world to rival it in morbidity!

There were 25,000 people at the Cambridge celebration in 2006 according to the internet, and there certainly were a bunch there tonight.  In seeing so many people all together, Jill and I, noticed the Englanders (and a lot of other Euros, here for the University, I suspect) have a much more refreshing variety of hair styles than I have ever noticed at home.  It seems like the trend here is actually not having a trend, as opposed to just pretending you are not really following a trend but really following a trend, though maybe there is a trend we just haven’t been able to see yet. 

Note the 10-foot high chainlink fence around the fire for scale.