Settled

First, I must apologize for not posting for over a week. We are now completely settled in London and we have been busy attending lectures, visiting sites around the city, discovering the nightlife, and mastering The Tube.

I’ve seen many things so far:
St. Joan at the National Theater
The Merchant of Venice at The Globe
John Wesley’s House and museum of Methodist History
Buckingham Palace
Parliament
The Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum
The National Gallery

Basically each day we have lectures for a couple hours in the morning and then we are off to explore the city for the rest of the day. It is a pretty good arrangement. The weather was great the first few days but lately it has been rainy London as expected. The weather held out for our weekend trip to Eastbourne where we saw the chalk cliffs on the coast, quite beautiful. I have noticed lately after browsing through art galleries and taking photos on my own that I love landscape photography. Luckily for me there was an exhibit at the National Theater of the UK’s best landscape photos. If you want to be inspired go here (http://www.take-a-view.co.uk/2007_winners.htm).

One of the main highlights of the week was finding a church community to become involved in. A few us have been going to the College Ministry and worship at Holy Trinity Brompton, an evangelical Anglican Church right down from Harrod’s. Holy Trinity created the Alpha Course which I know many of you have done or heard about it. All of the students there have been very accepting of us and we have met a lot of great people. It is a very international group and it is amazing to worship with people from all over the globe.

I had the exciting opportunity to photograph some monks from Burma the other day protesting in front of the foreign affairs office (pictures will be up soon) and while I was doing so a local man asked me if I knew who was responsible for the current conflict in Burma. I knew what he was going to say before he opened his mouth and I proved correct - it was George Bush’s fault. I asked him how so and he went into a diatribe about Iraq, the Chinese Olympics, Sudan, and brought all of these points together and ultimately told me that the only way the conflict would be solved is by the USA intervening and putting troops over there. I stood there perplexed by his logic and arguments as he quickly moved on. I really was happy he stopped and talked to me. It was a nice change from people avoiding eye contact at all costs while walking on the street or on the train. Sometimes I try to make eye contact with people just so they don’t forget what it is like.

The latest observation Keith and I have had is that bread molds a lot faster over here. After about 4 days (sealed) mold begins to form and we can’t figure out why. All of the loaves were labeled no preservatives but I think we need them in our bread. Is this normal?