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Published: November 8th 2006
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Us at Westminster
This is Gretchen and I in front of Westminster Abbey. A lot has happened in this past week or so, but it feels like it’s been a slow week. So this will probably be a short entry. One of the more exciting events has been that Gretchen’s sister, Heidi, and Heidi’s husband, John, have come to visit us. Really, we know that they’re not here to visit
us, but to check out the sights here, but we’ll take what we can get.
I mentioned in the last blog that Gretchen had planned a Halloween party at our flat for Halloween night. It turned into a bigger event than we had expected, but it turned out really well, and we had lots of fun. We had been told that trick-or-treating was all but nonexistent here in the UK, so we were really surprised to see how many trick-or-treaters rang our doorbell. We live in
Leighton House
This is another picture for our cute little neice, Leighton. Along with last week's picture of Leighton Road, she's gonna get a big head. a pretty “American” area of London, so I think that’s why we had so many trick-or-treaters. Because we live on the third floor of an old Victorian house, every time the doorbell would ring that evening, I had to run down two flights of stairs and answer the door to see if it was friends coming to our party or just kids trick-or-treating. Thankfully Gretchen had bought a big bag of Starburst earlier that day, so I was at least able to hand out candy to the kids who were just trick-or-treating. During our little party, a couple of the little kids who had come with their parents decided that they wanted to go try trick-or-treating to see if they could get some free candy. So they went out with one of the moms to trick-or-treat. When they came back about 20 minutes later, they only had about 3 individual M&M’s each! That was pretty sad. So, I guess trick-or-treating is a mixed bag here.
Later in the week, Gretchen and I went to the Science Museum. I had already been there, but Gretchen hadn’t. One of the exhibits that we saw was about historic technological advances in the
Houses of Parliament
Here the British flag is unfurled above the Houses of Parliament. home. It displayed things such as the first radio made for home use, a first generation microwave, a TV from the 1960s, and an old ice box. As we were looking at this
ancient stuff, we noticed an elderly gentleman who was near us looking at some of this stuff. As we watched him, we figured that he was probably reminiscing about some of these things that he remembered as big deals from his childhood. So I asked Gretchen, “How long do you think it will be before we come to museums and see things from our childhood days listed as artifacts?” Well, it wasn’t 2 minutes after that when I looked into one of the display cases and saw a display featuring a first generation GameBoy and a Super Nintendo. I couldn’t believe it!
Those aren’t artifacts! And then I realized that some of those things are coming up on 20 years old. Wow.
As I mentioned in the last blog, this past Sunday was Guy Fawkes Day. On Saturday night Gretchen and I walked to the grocery store with Heidi and felt like we were walking through Baghdad during Shock and Awe! There were fireworks lighting up
Bubbles!
At Trafalgar Square, out in front of the National Gallery, there were a couple of people making HUGE bubbles. These bubbles were seriously about 3-4 feet in diameter. I think that was Gretchen's favorite part of the day. the sky and LOUD explosions all over the place. The fireworks went on for hours and hours on Saturday night and Sunday night. From our sitting room window, we had an amazing view of fireworks all over London. On Saturday and Sunday evening there was seriously a constant barrage of pyrotechnics for about 4 straight hours. It was really cool.
Since Heidi and John have been here, we’ve been doing more “touristy” things. We went with them to Westminster Abbey (our first time there as well); to the National Gallery (our third or fourth time there); the Tate Britain (also our first time to that art museum); Trafalgar Square; and some other places. Westminster Abbey has beautiful architecture from the 13th Century, including a room covered with original medieval ceramic floor tiles from about AD 1280. In addition to that, we saw the burial sites there of people such as Sir Isaac Newton, Rudyard Kipling, Charles Darwin, Geoffrey Chaucer, Charles Dickens, and a number of England’s past Kings and Queens.
The last thing that I’ll mention in this week’s entry is something really cool that we saw on TV last night after we got back from the Tate
Land of Lincoln
Here I am standing in front of a monument to one of Great Britain's great patriots. Britain. They had an awards ceremony—similar in feel to the Oscars or Emmys—called the
Pride of Britain Awards. The awards are presented to “ordinary” individuals who have performed exemplary acts of public service or heroism. For example, there was an award given to a man who risked his life pulling two strangers out of a burning car (which exploded seconds after her pulled them out); an award for a woman who took the initiative to help troubled youth on the streets in her neighborhood; an award for a young girl who after being cured from cancer, turned around and started raising money for the hospital that treated her (eventually to the tune of millions of Pounds!); etc, etc. The awards are really well done. Celebrities and stars such as Tony Blair, Kylie Minogue, David Beckham are in attendance and present the awards to these individuals. It was really a cool thing to watch. It was nice to see some of these stars and celebrities recognizing other people instead of the other way around. I really think we should do something like this on a large scale in the States. We put so much emphasis on recognizing the celebrities—and dedicate so
Lighthouse
Gretchen is standing in front of a lighthouse "bulb" at the Science Museum. To concentrate the light into beams, they surrounded the actual bulb with concentric glass prisms. Like you cared, right?!? many resources to that—and I think it would be neat to hold something like that to recognize some of the many “ordinary” individuals who perform amazing feats for society.
Well, that’s a summary of this past week. Tomorrow we are heading back to Paris for about 5 days, so I’m sure we’ll have more exciting things to report next week. Until then…
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Mark Killingbeck
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Real Men DO Cry
Buy plenty of Man-Sized tissues. I know you'll cry sooner or later. :)