Just after Christmas, my parents visited for a couple of weeks, but I have thus far been slow in posting any pictures from their time with us. One of the days they were here we hired (= rented) a car and drove up to Alnwick Castle (pronounced “annik”), about an hour and a half drive north of us in Northumberland County. I was recently told by a local that Northumberland has more castles than any other part of England, partly because the kings in this region had to defend themselves against both the Vikings and the Scots. I’m not sure if that is true or not, but Alnwick Castle looks impressive! Unfortunately, the castle is actually closed this time of year, so we weren’t able to go inside of it. But we enjoyed walking around the little town of Alnwich and we got some pictures of the exterior of the castle. One of the interesting things about this castle is that it is inhabited. In fact, it is the second largest inhabited castle in England and has been continuously occupied by the same family for the last 700 years.

One of the most exciting things about the town aside from the castle (perhaps more than the castle?) was the bookshop there. Barter Books is said to be one of the largest second-hand bookshops in the UK, and the setting couldn’t be more inviting or English – roaring fire, hot tea, plush couches and chairs. We were only able to look around the shop for a few minutes, but we’re hoping to go back sometime without the kids so that we can have a good look around.

And this is an interesting poster that was available for purchase at the bookshop. Apparently this poster was designed during WWII to be used in case of an invasion of the home country by the Germans. The invasion never came and the poster was forgotten until it was discovered a few years ago. The slogan sums up well the  British attitude during the war (and perhaps still today?).

Just this year Durham’s Theology and Religion Department has been given access to several new areas of study space. Previously, first year doctoral students usually were stuck with just studying in the library – not a bad place to study, but impossible to make it your own space. However, since the department now has more rooms in various buildings, they were able to provide many more students with individual desks (called “carrels”). I applied for one of the desks, and was granted one, probably because I put on the application form that I have a family, so having a desk at the university helps with research/writing. Having the carrel helps a lot because I can leave books there and because we have access to a small kitchen where I can make coffee. My carrel is in a building right behind the cathedral, in a place known as “The College” where the dean of the cathedral and other cathedral-related people have their residences. Here is a picture of my carrel, and a picture of the view out the window to my right.

No, it’s not the name of a new theatre production. But during the recent cold snap here in Durham, the temperatures dropped enough that parts of the Wear froze over. Here is a picture of the seagulls standing around looking confused on the ice.

It’s been a while since we last posted anything, partly due to the holidays, partly due to a visit by my parents, partly due to illness, and partly due to my being out of the country for a while (in Nigeria). One significant development in our life of late is that we now have use of a car here. We did not buy a car, but instead joined a car sharing club called Option C.

Here’s how it works: we paid a one-time joining fee of £25 and a £100 security deposit. After that you only pay when you actually use the car. When you use the car you pay £4 per hour and £0.15 per mile. Other than that you don’t pay any insurance, any upkeep on the car, or any petrol costs (that’s covered in the .15 per mile). The club has a couple of cars that are parked within walking distance of our house, and any time we want to use one, we just reserve it online, take it for a spin, and then drop it back off at its parking spot. So far we’ve used the car several times and have enjoyed it. Also, one of the cars close to us is a Mercedes A170 which is a pretty nice ride. I think that if someone is probably going to be regularly using a car, then the car sharing club is probably more expensive than simply owning a car. But if you’re only going to need a car for occasional use, the car sharing club seems like a good way to go. If we find ourselves needing a car more often, we’ll have to break down and buy a car. But for now we’re hoping to get by with Option C.

By the way, driving on the left side of the road has been interesting. Having to shift with the opposite hand adds to the fun! And multiple-lane roundabouts with stoplights in the middle of them are certainly confusing. So far I have only caught myself driving on the right side of the road once. Old habits are hard to break!

Cheers!

There has been snow on the ground for 5 days now, and we are having a ball!  The girls are trying to understand more about what Christmas is this year and they are very excited about all of their presents.  They can sing parts of the first verses of Silent Night and Away in a Manger with me, and I FINALLY found a Nativity scene at a fair trade shop in the city.  Yesterday, I walked down into the city by myself to get Matt’s presents and it was quite treacherous…walking almost straight down, on icy sidewalks!  But God was indeed gracious to me– all my limbs are still intact and I did not maim anyone   I am planning to continue my family’s long standing tradition of eating scrambled eggs, country ham (or something similar to country ham), biscuits and chocolate gravy for supper tonight.  We are really excited about Christmas morning with the girls, but we really miss our family and friends back home.   Christmas movies have been playing for two weeks trying to make it feel more like home (ie  Scrooge, Die Hard, Home Alone, Charlie Brown–I love Linus, Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, we are currently in the middle of A Christmas Story, and I plan to watch It’s a Wonderful Life either tonight or tomorrow afternoon).  I don’t have any fireworks for tonight, but I am pretty sure there will be some close by.  I think I even heard a few last night!  The people in my neighborhood LOVE gunpowder, there were fireworks going off the entire month of October.  I gotta go make sausage balls and more boiled custard.  Merry Christmas Everyone!!!!!!!!!

Click here to see our pictures.

We haven’t posted an update for a while, and one reason for that is that I have been without a computer for a while. Several weeks ago, on the verge of completing my first paper for my supervisor and sending in a dozen or so articles for work, the harddrive on my MacBook crashed. I’m a bit obsessive about backing things up after a very close call with a near harddrive crash on my previous computer, so I didn’t lose any essential documents, just things like emails, to do lists, etc. Furthermore, I was grateful that the crash happened when it did, since I had only one week left on my three-year Apple Care warranty. Nevertheless, the repair process was far from painless. The crash happened in the middle of the night so I called Apple Care US and talked with them for a while. The next day I had more questions so I had to call Apple Care UK. After a failed attempt to reinstall Mac OS X, I knew that the problem was not simply a software issue, but a hardware issue, so the tech support directed me to take computer to a repair facility. Here is where the fun begins . . .

The nearest repair facility is in Ponteland, which is a small village outside of Newcastle, the large city nearest to us. By car it would have been about a 45 minute drive to get there, but without a car and relying on public transportation, the entire roundtrip took more like 4.5 hours. I took a train to Newcastle, which is just a short ride, then took the metro (=subway) to the Newcastle airport, then waited 40 minutes for the bus to come (it was running late), then finally walked from the Main Street bus stop in Ponteland to an industrial park where the repair shop was located. My computer crashed on a Thursday, but I didn’t realize that the problem was a hardware issue until late on Friday which meant that I couldn’t get to the store before they closed on Friday. The shop is closed on the weekends, so I had to wait until the next Monday to take it in. The whole trip was a bit of an adventure, but still was tedious and long. Finally, a week later, on the following Monday I went back to pick up the computer. To my joy, I discovered that Apple had replaced my 80 gigabyte harddrive with a new 160 gig harddrive, and in place of Tiger (a version of Mac OS that is several years outdated), they installed Snow Leopard (the most recent version of Mac OS that was just released last summer). So my faith in Apple Care has been restored, and now I’m hoping to get another year or two of life out of this MacBook. By the way, if you don’t back up your files, I heartily recommend that you do so. I have Time Capsule (an Apple external harddrive) that backs up hourly, as well as Mozy (an online backup service) which backs up daily or so, and Dropbox, software that immediately syncs certain files between my MacBook and my iMac so that I have instant access to an up-to-date version of current documents.

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: