Snow Snow Snow.

This was the view outside my window this morning when I woke up.

This was the first real snow of the season. It did snow on Sunday but it melted as soon as it hit the ground. Not good for a proper snowman. Just to give you an idea, this is what my view was in October.

This is our dorm in Darwin College.

Everyone on campus was so excited. Spontaneous snow ball fights were everywhere. 

See the snow-covered cathedral in the background.

It is cold, very cold; its in the low thirties so were wearing practically all the clothes I have. But I am thankful for the snow. Snow is pure, clean and white. It is a great reminder of how God has washed our sins away. Thank you God!

A pazookie in Shelty's Honour.

This week with Shelty has flown by. I can't believe it was only a week ago when we picked her up at the airport in London. We had such a great time in England this week from exploring Canterbury, traveling to France and seeing London in one day. It was so great to catch up with her and see how God is working in her life and in her sorority. I'm glad that she was able to meet some of our English friends as well. 

Anyways, we left this morning at around 7am to bring her back to the airport; it was still dark at that time. We walked with her luggage down to the bus station with five layers on. After taking the bus whose heater had broken, we took the tube to Heathrow. Normally, it's about 45 minutes and a direct route but once again, there was a tube strike so we had an indirect route but it still worked out well and Shelty made it to her gate with loads of time to spare. We were sad to see her go but it will only be about three weeks until Kevin and I have to make the same trek ourselves.

Then Kevin and I walked around London a little. We saw one of Jamie Oliver's butcher shops and St. Paul's Cathedral. I know they shouldn't be compared but I was excited to see both.

Then we returned on the coach back to Canterbury at 3:30...which is the same time when it starts to get dark. Oh good.  

Oh, I forgot to mention that we had the first of the season here in Canterbury. During church yesterday, the white flakes started to fall and then it started to get cold, really cold. 

We had Josh, Doug, Sarah and Jodie over for dinner. We made spaghetti and brussels sprouts with pancetta. Notice that we had to use three pots to boil the pasta because we don't have a big one. 

We also had a pizookie in Shelty's honour. I reckon we had a lot less cookie dough than before...I think Shelty left her mark before leaving the country.

It was another great day with great friends. I'm starting to value the time I have with them more and more as we start to get ready to leave the country. I am excited to see family and friends for Christmas and the holidays but I want to make the most of my time here. 

By the way, it's snowing right now. PTL.

The Amazing Blean Woods with even more Amazing Friends.

Yesterday we went to the Blean Woods with our friends Josh, Dave and Sarah. It has been one of the highlights of my time here. We had some great talks, and great laughs. Our conversations ranged from what God is doing in our lives to mocking the American and English accents. I'm really going to miss them a lot.

 

 

 

We came back from the literal freezing forest and made some mac and cheese for lunch. As we entered our building, we saw a single snow flake, a sign that winter is upon us.

 

This was an incredible day. God has really blessed him so much with amazing friends. This makes leaving here so much harder. Hopefully, they will all decide to move to California.

Happy (English) Thanksgiving!

It's Thanksgiving today? I can't believe that this feasting holiday is here already. It's also really strange to be away from home and my family. I just got off skype with them; they're about to start their feasting. I can't wait to see everyone again at Christmas. 

We did have a great time with Thanksgiving in England. We decided to have it Thanksgiving with our church small group and we would do it potluck style. Unfortunately, our dorm ovens were too small for a turkey. So I decided to make sage and sausage stuffing, yams and homemade pumpkin pie.

After our two classes (can you believe we had class today?), I got to work on prepping the dishes. Another issue was that we don't have a huge pot where I could boil the yams. So I tried to cook them in a bowl of hot water...that didn't work. Then I resorted to roasting them in the oven. Success.

 I peeled these guys and got them prepped for butter and brown sugar.

The stuffing was made with Lincolnshire sausages...one of our newfound favorite meats. Along with the sausages, there was celery, onions, shallots, sage, country bread, and chicken broth.

They don't sell canned pumpkin in the English stores. I had Chelsea bring some all the way from America. Her bag was checked; I guess that pumpkin cans don't show up well in the FAA scanners. 

It was also one of our friend's birthdays. Happy Birthday Lavinia! This feast was a joint Thanksgiving and Birthday celebration. A Multi-tasking holiday. We all went to her huge kitchen on campus. Our friends brought stuffed mushrooms, yorkshire pudding, gravy, and quiche. So good. 

This was the first Thanksgiving for a lot of our English friends. Many of them were hesitant to try pumpkin bite. It was like it was going to bite back at them or something.

For dessert, we had the pumpkin pie, apple crumble with custard, maltensian slices (crushed crackers, melted chocolate and candies like whoppers. amazing.) and lemon cheesecake. Needless to say we were stuff and ready for a nap after this feast. We thought it was about 10pm....it was only 6:30. 

This day is a day of thanks. I am so thankful to God for having this opportunity to experience another culture and gain amazing new friends. I am thankful for a loving family and caring friends who I miss a lot and can't wait to see at Christmas. Most of all, I am thankful for a God who is so rich in grace and love that he sacrificed His son so that we could have a relationship with Him. Thanks God!

White Cliffs of Dover and France for the Day.

This morning, we all woke up around 6:30 and headed down to the bus station to make our way to Dover and then to France. We were all really tired but after a chocolate croissant for breakfast, we were wide awake. Another pro is that we missed the demonic fire alarm test every Wednesday morning. 


We took the Canterbury bus to Dover which about 20 minutes away. It was a beautiful, sunny day; perfect for our day trip to France. We arrived to the Dover Eastern docks and checked into our ferry. The total cost of getting to Calais, France via ferry was about £12, which is about the same price as a movie. So either see a movie or go to France for the day...hard decision. From the ferry, we had a brilliant view of the world famous white cliffs of Dover. 

The ferry was only about an hour and a half and then we arrived into Calais, France. Calais is a smallish port city directly across the English Channel. We went to eat at a local Brasserie. I was quite content with my steak frites. Needless to say, it was delish. 

After that, we walked around the town seeing the town center, town hall, a bunker created in WWII when the German occupied the area, and many of the old streets.

Of course, we stopped to get almond croissants, chocolate bread and a giant chocolate butter cream meringue.

As many of the English do, we stopped by a store and picked up a bottle of wine and some cheese to bring home. We concluded our day trip by sitting in a cafe with hot chocolate. 

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving! There are so many things to be thankful for. I have been truly blessed by God with this experience, a loving family, and great friends. I will miss being at home with my dad's turkey, my auntie's sticky rice stuffing and my mom's yams. I hope you guys have a great time! Kevin, Chelsea and I will be making stuffing, pumpkin pie and yams as a part of our church's small group potluck dinner. I'm looking forward to it!

Shelty visits Canterbury

Today, Kevin and I were able to show Chelsea (Shelty) the city of Canterbury, the best town in Europe. We started out with the Cathedral, one of the best in England. It is the cathedral for the archbishop and leader of the Church of England. 

Our friend, Esther, works at the Cathedral and told us about the rare secret wall paintings from the 1100's and the columns from the original cathedral from the 600's which we haven't seen before. Then we walked outside to the cloister and saw the backside of the King's School, the oldest school still running. It was founded in 597 by St. Augustine.

For lunch, we ate at The Old Weavers Restaurant. The building itself dates from 1500.

Shelty in front of the Weavers' House

Chili con carne for Shelty and leek and potato for Kevin.

After lunch, we walked around town seeing all the Christmas stands that are starting to pop up around town. By this time, our feet were getting a little tired so we decided to stop at our favorite Starbucks right next to the Cathedral. We watched the sunset over the cathedral as we sipped our hazelnut hot chocolate.

After this we went to Sainsbury to get groceries for this week and for our Thanksgiving potluck. We're going to make yams, stuffing and pumpkin pie. No turkey because our dorm ovens are too small. Thank you to Chelsea who flew 2 cans of pumpkin over from Nebraska because they don't have pumpkin here in England. 

Tomorrow we are going to Calais, France for the day. It should be a great day. Time to get some rest.

London with friends from all over the world.

On Saturday, we (as in Janice, Lisa, Doug, Kevin and I) took the morning coach to London. Lisa and Janice have never been to England before, Kevin and I spent almost a week sight seeing and Doug, well, he lives about an hour away.


Straight away we went to St. Pancras, not St. pancreas, to see platform 9 3/4 from Harry Potter at King's Cross station. 

Then we went to the world's first official 2012 London Olympic Shop.

We walked to the British library where the original hand written Alice in Wonderland, Guttenburg Bible, Jane Austen's writing desk and the Canterbury Tales are displayed. Last time, the Beowulf and Sir Gwain and the Green knight were on display but Kevin and I were really excited to see that Chaucer's Canterbury Tales had replaced them. I mean, we are living in Canterbury and the name of this blog kinda hints at the 600 year old work too.  Sadly, taking pictures are not allowed in the library.


Then we hit the big four: Big Ben, London Eye, Parliament, and Westminster Abbey which all happen to be right next to each other. Great for us. 

Westminster Abbey

Parliament

In front of Parliament.

Notice the raccoon hat. 

Onto Buckingham Palace where we hunted for the queen. She wasn't in. 


In London's biggest park, Hyde Park, there was a Christmas event called Winter Wonderland. Imagine a country fair except Christmas themed, complete with a santa land, the world's tallest, portable free falling tower (perhaps the world's most unsafe free falling tower. Drop Zone shouldn't be portable) and Christmas trees all over. 

That's essentially Winter Wonderland. Since, I don't have Thanksgiving this year, this really put me into the holiday spirit. Christmas music, here I come. 

The next morning, we went to the church, Hillsong London. Hillsong is a mega church based in Australia with thousands upon thousands of members. We were so excited to attend their campus in London which meets in the Dominion Theatre. The service was packed with about a hundred greeters and many people singing on stage. Everyone was so friendly; I guess carrying giant backpacks made up stick out as Christian tourists. Oh well. 

Sadly, our friends had to go back to Spain/Canterbury so Kevin and I were able to do some more exploring of this great city. We traveled to the tower bridge and saw it lit up which was pretty amazing.

That night we were able to connect with another UCSD friend, Miles, who is studying at King's college in London. He let us crash in his room that night because we were going to pick up Shelty from the airport the next morning!!!!


Here's some background on Shelty. Her real name is Chelsea. She loves Jesus, chocolate and then friends and family. We've been friends since junior high. She goes to school at Uni of Nebraska Lincoln.


I still am in shock that she is here in England with us. We joked this summer about how fun it would be if she visited but we had to stop ourselves because it sounded so amazing. Then about two months ago, we actually started to talk about it and it became a reality.


She arrived at Heathrow at 7:30am then we had a full, London day planned ahead. She made it all the way through without collapsing from jet lag. We did alot of what we showed Janice and Lisa on Saturday though we did mix up the order. Kevin and I are thinking of being London-in-a-day tour guides someday. 


We started with hearty English breakfast of sausage, egg, bacon, chips, and toast. Breakfast of champions. Then we walked toward Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Parliament, and the London Eye. 

Next was Trafalgar square and the National Gallery. 

Then to St. Pancras to see King's Cross, Olympic store and British Library. Then to the British museum. Keep in mind that she only slept for a couple hours on the plane and we have beein going this whole time. I guess her lack of sleep caught up with where when she said "Where's the Easter eggs and Easter bunny?" when she was talking about the Easter Island statue. I guess it could have been worse. Thai food for lunch: laksa and tom kha soup. Delish.


Then we walked to Oxford street, one of the famous shopping areas in London. Onwards to Buckingham Palace. The queen was in today. Her flag replaced the normal union jack flag.

Finally we walked around Hyde park and the Winter Wonderland before catching the coach to Canterbury.

After showering and a carby meal of pancetta mac 'n' cheese, we hit the hay. After this blog post, of course.