Well, we had a great time in Paris. The train ride from Durham to London took about 3.5 hours and then the trip from London to Paris was only about 2 hours and 20 minutes. The weather there was a bit chilly and rainy at times, but we didn’t let that stop us from seeing several significant sites. We went up to the second level of the the Eiffel Tower and had a great view of the city. The same day we also visited the Cathedral of Notre Dame and were amazed by the beauty of the building. That night we went back out to see the Eiffel Tower light up, which happens for the first ten minutes or so of every hour. Then, the next day we visited the Louvre, which is the most visited museum in the world. There we saw lots of things: the Mona Lisa (of course!), an ancient Code of Hammurabi, a bust of Emperor Trajan, a pillar from the palace of Darius I, ancient Egyptian artefacts, and even a few Syriac  texts. We went straight from the Louvre back to Gare du Nord (the train station), from there to London, and from there to Durham. It was an enjoyable trip, but it’s good to be back home now. Also, we were able to get our visa situation straightened out on the way back into the country. Click here to see our pictures from the trip. And below are a couple of videos I took of the girls playing outside the Arc du Carrousel (built by Napoleon) which sits right outside the Louvre (which was formerly a palace).

A few weeks ago, a couple of new friends from church invited us to go to the beach, and offered to drive us there. We had thought about going a while before that, but realized it was going to be difficult getting there without a car. Our friends offered to drive us there, so we decided to go along for the ride. It was only about a 20 minute ride to Seaham, which is a small town right on the North Sea. The beach was both sandy and rocky, and had some nice cliffs as well. We had a great time, except that it was quite blustery, and the girls got a little wet from the surf! Here’s a few pictures from the beach.

On Monday we leave for Paris and will be there until Wednesday. We can’t wait to go, even if we don’t really have a choice not to go!

See my post here on this topic.

Brandy has been trying to introduce the girls to different kinds of music. Here is their response to Blue Suede Shoes by Elvis:

See my new post here about Cyril of Alexandria, the theologian I’ll be studying for the next three years.

Well, we thought we were doing a good thing by flying into Dublin. True, we did save a lot of money, and we got to see our friends in Belfast, but now we learned that there are unforeseen consequences. The problem all is traced back to the fact that Dublin is in the Republic of Ireland (which is not a part of the UK), and the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland (which is a part of the UK) is an unprotected border. What that means is that in our travel to Durham we never actually went through a UK immigration point. We simply drove from Ireland into the UK and honestly didn’t even notice when we crossed the border.

I didn’t think this would be a problem until I called the UK Border Agency to make sure we had everything squared away. Now, to begin with, calling the help line of the Border Agency is no small task. The line is only available for 3 hours Monday through Friday, and they apparently have a miniscule number of operators in proportion to the number of calls they receive. I say this because the first 67 times I tried to call them the line was busy. Finally, on the 68th attempt I got through. I actually spoke with three different people from the BA on three separate occasions, and, surprise, surprise, I got three separate answers to my query. The most alarming answer went something like this:

It is not enough to have a valid visa that grants you permission to live in this country (which we paid a lot of money for prior to moving over). A visa must also be ’stamped’ upon entering the UK in order for it to be ‘activated.’ That sounds like it shouldn’t be a problem. Just go and get a stamp, right? Well, it’s not that simple, since it is literally impossible to get a stamp after you have entered the country. The only time you can get a stamp is when you are entering into the UK. That all sounds like mere meaningless formalities that could be ignored with impunity, except that the BA official told me that, if we don’t get our visas ’stamped’ to ‘activate’ them, then we could be denied re-entry if we ever did try to leave the country and come back (say to visit the states next summer, for example). What all that boils down to is that we have 90 days from our date of entry to leave the UK, travel to the continent, and re-enter in order to have our visas properly ’stamped’ upon re-entry.

Now the other two officials I spoke with gave less alarming advice. One even said that we wouldn’t have to leave at all and that it really didn’t matter that much. In fact, the reason I called on three separate occasions was because I wanted to confirm how serious of a problem this was. We considered just taking our chances and trying to get back into the country when we did take a trip back to the states next summer (especially since two other American families we know of were able to do so), but finally decided against it, largely because the government has been significantly tightening the restrictions on immigration this year, and we didn’t want to risk something so serious.

That put us on the search for an easy and inexpensive way to get out of the UK and come back in. We considered flying taking a ferry to Amsterdam, flying to German, flying to Barcelona, but the cheapest and probably most exciting option was to take the train to Paris (through the Chunnel) which was cheaper than flying. So next month we are going to spend three days in Paris, taking in the sites, and when we enter you better believe that we are not going to step foot back into the country until we get four stamps for our visas! The best part about this whole ordeal (which has been quite stressful at times), is that we found a friend of a friend who has a flat in the heart of Paris who is going to be out of town for a few days next month. So we will be staying in her flat for free! We will be sure to take plenty of pictures and videos so that you all can enjoy the experience with us.

So if you’re reading this and you’re in the process of moving to the UK on a visa status, beware of flying into Dublin. It saves you money, but you should plan on a trip out of the country during your first 90 days. Nevertheless, we’re still glad that we came into the country the way that we did, and it does give us a good excuse to go and see Paris!

See my new post on this topic.

This week we had our biggest adventure since arriving in the UK. My supervisor, Professor Lewis Ayres, was invited to present a paper to the theology seminar at the University of St. Andrews in St. Andrews, Scotland, and invited all of his new students to go along with him. When I checked the prices for train tickets to St. Andrews, the cost was basically the same for Brandy and the girls to go, as it would have been for me to go by myself, so we decided to all go on the trip. We left early on Wednesday morning (6:30 am) and met the rest of the crew at the train station. We first rode a train for about two hours to Edinburgh, and then got on another train for another one hour ride to Leuchars (the station nearest to St. Andrews). The train ride up was very smooth and comfortable, and we were able to enjoy lots of great views of the English countryside and coastline. We had about a 30 minute stop in Edinburgh, so we had just enough time to get out of the train station and see the city. Here’s a picture of Edinburgh castle. It sits on a prominent peak in the center of the city.

This is another picture of Edinburgh. The twin towers on the right side of the image are the location of the faculty of divinity at the university.

Once we arrived at Leuchars we took a taxi to St. Andrews (another 5 miles), and quickly ran to the theology seminar, arriving just in time for the presentation. While all of us students were intently listening to our learned master, Brandy and the girls wandered around the town with the company of the wife of another student, also from the states. The took lots of pictures that you can see at the link below. After the seminar was over, we all joined back up and walked around the town a bit more. Here’s a few choice pictures from our trip:

This is a picture of the cathedral at St. Andrews. As you will no doubt notice, it is in ruins. At one time the cathedral was the largest one in all of Scotland. It took 150 years to complete and consecrated in 1318 in the presence of Robert the Bruce (whom you may remember from the movie Braveheart). However, in 1559, in the midst of the Protestant Reformation, John Knox preached a fiery sermon that roused his congregation to attack and damage the cathedral, stripping it of its Roman Catholic trappings. The cathedral was eventually abandoned and allowed to fall into ruin.

Near the cathedral is the castle, as you see above. It was built in the 1100s, but has also turned into rubble over the years.

Here’s a couple of pictures of the beach just beneath the castle. The rocks jutting out into the ocean are significant, because it was there that I took a tumble. Trying to be cool, I walked out on the rocks, only to find that they were covered with wet seaweed, and so were very slippery. I quickly lost my footing and ended up on the ground, getting my trousers (= pants) and shirt wet and smeared with seaweed.

This is a picture of the 18th hole of the old golf course at St. Andrews, believed to be the oldest golf course in the world (600 years old).

Finally, here’s a picture of another beach in the town called the West Sands. Besides being a beautiful beach, it is significant because this is where the famous opening scene from Chariots of Fire was filmed.

That’s about it. It was a long day for us, but we loved it. The city was charming, and it was wonderful to get to know everyone who went along.

Oh, a couple of other things. If you want to see the whole set of pictures from the trip, you can click here. And if you want to hear a sound clip of Camille snoring on the train ride back home, you can click here.

Yesterday we were down in the city centre for some errands, so we decided to stop by the Cathedral (it’s only a short walk away from the marketplace). I have mentioned the Cathedral before on the blog, but I don’t think I have said much in detail about it, so for those who are interested, here’s more info.

Shortly after the Norman conquest of 1066, a group of Benedictine monks established a community on a peninsula in the River Wear in 1083. Ten years later in 1093, building on the Cathedral began, and the project took about 40 years to complete. Part of the impetus to build the Cathedral at this location was the fact that the relics of St. Cuthbert were already housed at the site in an earlier Cathedral. In fact, St. Cuthbert’s tomb still lies in the Cathedral to this day, along with the remains of another saint, named Bede, who wrote an important history of the early church on the English Isles. Thus, the Cathedral was built as an act of devotion to God, a massive reminder of the reality of the spiritual realm, but it also had a more earthly significance as well. The Normans (a group of people from modern-day France) who ruled England at that time, and who built the Cathedral wanted to send a clear message of political strength to the peoples of the north (Saxons and Scots) who might have been tempted to invade the Norman-controlled south. In fact, a bridge nearby the Cathedral is engraved with the following description of the dominating Cathedral: “Half church of God, half castle ‘gainst the Scot.”

The Cathedral is still used as an Anglican Church to this day, with services being held in it several times a day. Since the university is so closely located to the Cathedral, it has many of its functions there as well. For example, we had our matriculation in the Cathedral last week (matriculation is when everyone dresses up in their graduation gowns and you officially become a student at the university).

The size of the Cathedral is amazing, and its architectural beauty is stunning. Unfortunately, visitors are not permitted to take pictures inside the building, but there are plenty of pictures on the Cathedral’s wikipedia page, if you are interested in seeing some. If you watch many movies, you might have already seen the Cathedral and not realized it. The Cathedral forms part external shot of the Hogwarts School in the Harry Potter films, and quite a few interior shots are used in the 1998 film Elizabeth.

While we were in the Cathedral yesterday, we were fortunate enough to have been there during a choir practice. Here is an audio clip I took of the choir singing. What do you think?

Here’s another couple of videos from the last week. We had a pretty uneventful week, other than orientation (“induction”) activities beginning at the university. The only other major happening was receiving our first online grocery order delivered to our front door (from Tesco). Home grocery delivery is such a useful and inexpensive service that it’s hard to believe it hasn’t arrived in the states yet. Oh, and we also were finally able to get our mobile (i.e., cell) phones set up. It took several trips back and forth to the O2 store, but by the end of the day on Friday I finally walked out of the store as the proud owner of two new phones. Enjoy the videos!