August 31, 2008

G and I had a great time in the Peak District, enjoying 2 nights away and some peace and quiet. if you know where to go the Peak District can be wonderfully quiet and "unspoilt" as they like to say here in Britain. :) Peaceful quiet farming villages, streams, forests, hills, and friendly people with local specialty foods. I was sad to miss Eyam, which is famously known as The Plague Village because in August 1665 the plague arrived in their village and instead of all running off they decided to contain the spread of the outbreak by not leaving the village. 246 people from 76 families died- it wiped out entire families. But because of their bravery they spared northern England from the plague. Those sorts of incidents remind me of the willingness to sacrifice and the forethought they had in acting so quickly. Today is the celebration of that event, and in Eyam they are having memorial services to remember those families from 334 years ago who died saving so many others.

The sun has started setting so early here- it's 7:30pm and it'll be dark in half an hour. The leaves are changing colors too, and it feels like summer skipped us entirely. At least the winters are mild here. :) I'll be getting some photos up from the trip here soon. I finished my promotional materials for the business luncheon on Wednesday, and I hope I will generate some new clients from all this hard work! :)

August 28, 2008

This week has flown by- we went punting to Grantchester (which turned out to be a 2 hours there, 1.5 hrs back affair) with Kazuko and Takashi on Monday, and then took a lot of their cooking supplies and things since they are all in Japanese and Kazuko has taught me how to use them. We had dinner with them as well, and were sad to see them off on Tuesday. But they've arrived safely.

I have been working like mad on a promotional postcard for my photography website, which I plan to give out at the Cambridge Businesswomen's Luncheon on Wednesday. I'll let you know how the event goes- it should be good for generating business. Today I finished the postcard, and started updating the website again. The website should be in a more final form by Wednesday, since I want to be able to direct business from the luncheon to my site. It's been a lot of hard work, and my eyes are tired today from slaving away at it, but it should generate some business for me.

Tonight we're driving up to the Peak District to spend 2 nights in a Bed and Breakfast, and enjoy the Chatsworth County Fair tomorrow. We have a busy weekend though with a friend's housewarming party Saturday evening, G helping a friend move, and Sunday a going away party for a woman in our ladies' group. It's that time of year in Cambridge, when many internationals return home, and in 2 weeks new people will be arriving. It's a bit like Ann Arbor in that way, except we lose most people in May, and gain most people in September. We're trying to squeeze in dinners and get togethers with people before the term starts in 2 weeks, because it'll get busy then.

Pr for some relationships with American women that I'm pursuing- we're connecting next week with a couple from the IMB who just moved here to work with Polish immigrants, and I'm trying to get to know the wife of that couple. I'm also trying to get to know the wife of one of G's pr square men- they got married a year ago (he's British and she's American) and moved to Cambridge, and I hope that she and I can be good friends. She works part time like I do, and I hope she might like to do some day trips with me- it's a bit lonely traveling by myself.

Have a good Labor Day weekend all! There's no Labor Day here, so for most Brits it's just another weekend. :)

August 24, 2008

We've been busy these past few days spending time with our friends Kazuko and Takashi, who are leaving the 26th going back to Japan. We're really going to miss them, and be pring for them to good connected with a local ch there in their city. Yesterday we went punting, and G fell in again. :) He was trying to get one last stroke in with the punt pole before we went under this bridge, and just didn't make it in time so the pole got caught and he went in with it. :) Here are a few photos from our trip.

It was crowded on the river because it's a Bank Holiday weekend

Some folks dressed up like Star Wars characters went punting, and
Chewbacca got left behind I guess. :)

Boys are the same the world over- this punt of only
girls got stuck, and these boys were calling to them in French.

G looking just a bit wet. :)

This is Kano, she's 3 and a half, and very smart.

I also went out to see an English Civil War reenactment today, which was awesome- war was so different back then, so formal, with rules and formal policies. It was a bit like chess. Not many people died during wars- not soldiers at least, although the local townspeople might be starved because the army took their supplies! And people did die as a result of poor sanitation, and infections. The Civil War here is like our civil war- everyone knows who were the major players, what happened, and who won, and they study individual battles etc in school. Alas I didn't study the English Civil War in that level of depth. :) So to give you a brief overview- it happened between 1642 and 1651, and was between the Parliamentarians and the Royalists. It was over who had the right to govern, with the King saying he should have 100% right to rule, and the Parliament saying they should have some say. That's pretty oversimplified, but if you want details you can look it up on wikipedia (or consult my knowledgeable friend Thomas Gwaltney who I'm sure knows all the details as well!)

The first of the cannons firing.

Pikemen on the march.

This is what the pikemen do if there aren't any horses around to fend off with the pikes. They basically get in really close and try to push the other group farther down the field.

Pikes are pretty scary if you're a cavalryman though- look at those things!
The battlefield was very smoky, and very noisy. It was so realistic.

The cavalry fighting each other, which is apparently what they did

most of the time instead of fighting the enemy infantry. :)

August 21, 2008

Well I survived my solo venture into London yesterday, although things didn't quite go as planned. "Flexibility is a Focus value" I always remind myself. :) Some things turned out much better than expected, and some just not as interesting as I'd hoped. My plan was to go to the Aquarium first thing, but I passed by the Graffiti Row on the way and decided to see if it felt safer during the day- that place is packed in the daytime! Tons of business people walk through on their way to lunch and back, and there were loads of photographers in there. What a difference the time of day can make in London. In the UK places close up at 5pm everywhere, even in the cities (except restaurants, clubs, and pubs) so you get a different kind of crowd out past then. London overall is pretty quiet between 5 and 6 because everyone goes home, and then goes to the gym or the park or something. They tend to have dinner with friends at like 7:30 or 8, and since there's not much else to do going out to eat is what people do for fun in the evenings all over the UK. We see it in Cambridge all the time. Once it starts getting dark at 4pm your options are basically go out to eat, or go to Tesco which is open 24hrs. Oh the excitement. :)

Barbed wire flowers

Sadly, a form of torture used at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq

Someone's car as graffiti

Anyway I didn't make it inside the Aquarium- I spent an hour photographing the new graffit art, then walked over to the Aquarium where there was a Disneyland-esq line! For an aquarium! I never thought it would be crowded. The London Eye line was horrible- I recommend going to the Eye after 7pm. Anyway I skipped the aquarium but did take some photos of people doing touristy type things just for the fun of it. :)

My next stop was the Florence Nightingale Museum, which took me half an hour to find due to bad signage and it's location being right next to where the ambulances all come in at the hospital. Weird. :) Florence Nightingale is a real inspiration to me- she had an analytical mind, an eye for efficiency, and the drive and passion to reject her societal role as a wealthy woman who should have married a wealthy man and lived her life in a huge house. She hated that life, and eventually was able to become a nurse. As a young woman she spent her evenings compiling data on hospitals, death rates, etc, and ended up in the Crimea to run the hospital there. Now, I am not a feminist due to the prevailing trend of feminism, but I owe a lot to the women before me from the feminist movement and way before it, who had the courage to step out of their societal roles and push for women's rights to education and employment. Florence's sister was quite happy in her role, and it was a reminder to me that simply because we can have careers and whatnot now doesn't mean that we HAVE to. Women who are happy in their roles as housewives, mothers, etc should NOT be pressured to do something else if they are happy there! That is not what these women were about- they were about the right to do something else if you wanted it- if you had an analytical mind, an engineering mind, a bent for politics or a desire for glory in war or career, you could not pursue those routes. Now women can. But there were plenty of women who were happy engaging their minds in studying drawing, needlework, etc, and we shouldn't look down on them either. I am happy that I was able to study engineering, as I recognized a lot of myself in Florence Nightingale and would have likely been equally suffocated by that societal role. But looking down on women who want to be homemakers, housewives, and mothers is just the same thing as what women like Florence went through! I wish society would simply let women be women, in whatever way is most healthy and appropriate for them. Ok that's the end of my rant- back to London. :)

After the museum I checked back at the Aquarium where the line was still way too long for me. By this time I had pretty much had it with the crowds of tourists, bumping into people, and the horrible dodging the vile smoke people were blowing out of their own lungs which was polluting my air. It's so disgusting- people here want to smoke away from buildings which is great, but I simply could not avoid the smokers if I was outside any building at all. Besides smoke being not good for you, the mere concept of breathing in that air which someone else had in the lungs with all it's germs etc is disgusting to me. :) The air in London isn't very fresh as it is. :)

I decided to go to Soho, which is one of the villages that got swallowed up by London's expansion. It used to be the fashionable part of London (that rotates around the city- the fashionable districts move) back in the 1600s. I encountered some very interesting artwork at Charing Cross station in the Underground, and spent about 20 minutes photographing it. It was a highlight of my day. :)

Artwork depicting the building of the first Charing Cross,
a monument to a king's wife.

I'm feeling very confident on the Tube trains now, and I understand them well enough to navigate very proficiently, so at least that was one less stress. It wasn't too busy on the lines I took, so I didn't have any more accidents where I grabbed someone inappropriately- another good point. :) I made it safely to Chinatown which is on the edge of Soho, and went straight for my favorite hole in the wall Chinese restaurant, which serves bubble tea. Bubble tea always makes me feel happy. :) The guide book said Old Compton Street, which is the high street (Main street) of Soho was an interesting place to go, so I went there- but you know, it wasn't as interesting as I thought it'd be- it looked just like the rest of London. Oh well, at least I was able to go there myself and find that out. :)

My purpose in going to Soho was to get a feel for that part of London. So I walked around some of the other streets, and discovered that Soho is a bit racy- it's packed full of porn shops, adult stores, "free peep shows" and strip tease places, as well as sex shops. Needless to say I didn't go into any of those places. :) After all that I'm glad to be home and resting in a quiet village, surrounded by bird song and solitude.

Not sure if you can see the "Free Peep Show" sign or not, but it's there. :)

August 19, 2008

I've been mentioning this mysterious website that I'm working on, and I thought I'd put up a sample of one of the images that I've been working on as a sample, as well as a bit of history with it. My family is full of oral historians, which is the way it pretty much is if your family is from the South.

This is a photo of my great aunt Joyce. She was 15 or 16 when it was taken. As you can see it has some pretty serious mold (that's what the orange blotches are) as well as some ink bleed through (you might not be able to see the blue blobs, but they're there.) The image is discolored, and there's some damage in the left hand corner.


Here is the restored version. It took me about 45 minutes to do this, with a break or 2. It's pretty amazing what photoshop can do.


If you have a discerning eye, you might have noticed that she has on a wedding ring. Some of you may have heard this story and can predict it coming. :) Aunt Joyce got married when she was 13. That's right, 13! In America even! :) She must be about 71 now, I think she was born in 1937. So that would put her getting married in 1950. She was from Michigan, and her mom ran a boarding house in Adrian.

A young man named Otis came to stay at Joyce's mom's boarding house. He was 16, from Alabama, and he came there because he ran away from home. His father, who was half Native American and a chronic alcoholic (he even ran a still) was beating his mom, and Otis whacked his dad with a chair. Needless to say, his mother encouraged him to run away so that his dad didn't kill him when he came to. Their family were migrant workers in the summer who came north to places like Michigan and Minnesota to pick fruit in the summer. So Otis ran north, I think hoping to get a factory job in Michigan. Joyce fell in love with Otis and was determined to marry him- it was pretty much a "if you don't sign the papers that say I can I'll run away with him" sort of situation. So her parents signed off, they got married, and they're married still.

I wish I could say that they're happily married, but that is not so much the case. They tolerate living in each other's presence at least though. Otis, like his dad, became an alcoholic (no surprise there since Native Americans don't have the enzyme in their bodies to be able to process alcohol, and that's a genetic condition), and when they moved back South he ran his own still and taught his son (who is in his 50s now) to run it with him. I think the county finally shut his still down, but I heard tales of it being in the back woods behind their house somewhere not that long ago. :)

Here is where it gets even more interesting. Joyce has 2 younger brothers, Glenn (my grandpa) and Gary. Glenn (at 18) married one of Otis's sisters, Hazel (who was 15) and stayed in Michigan all his life working in a factory. Gary (at 18) married one of Otis's other sisters, Alice (who might have been 17 at the time) and he also stayed in Michigan and worked in the same factory his whole life. We occasionally joke that our family tree is missing some branches- 3 siblings from one family marrying 3 siblings from another family is not all that common these days, and it also means there is a lot of strong family resemblance between all the children of those couples. :)

So that is the story of my mom's family (my family too) and how I was able to get ahold of that original damaged photograph for restoration. Joyce sent that photograph to Otis' mom (my great-grandma who died 2 years ago at the age of 97), who was pretty much like a mom to her. As many of you know I didn't get married until the ripe old age of 24 (I was a month shy of 25) so I was definitely an old spinster by then compared to others in my extended family! :D

If you have an old photo you'd like restored let me know- I have a good scanner and am always looking for more photos to work on as samples for my website.

August 18, 2008

Despite my dislike of cities, as a photographer I just can't pass up the opportunities to photograph in London. Efficiency is very high on my list of values, and while I don't mind wandering aimlessly if I'm with someone and enjoying their company, I don't like walking around if there's no purpose. :) So I'm trying to make a rough outline of some "days out" (day trips) in London so I can get to know the city better and find cool stuff to photograph. There's this great site that I'm a member of called Trek Earth, where people put up photos of places they've been. I've been sorting through the London photos by borough, looking for cool places to photograph. That's been really helpful, and I highly recommend it if you're traveling somewhere. People all over the world, even in the teeniest villages, put photos up, so you can see what it's like where they live. I love it. And if you have photos from some far away places you might consider joining and putting them up. Or even from your own hometown- people around the world are more interested in the area where you live than you can imagine.

Can I just say that although London is a very diverse place, if you live near Ann Arbor you have access to a similar level of diversity. They aren't kidding when they call U of M a world microcosm. In the engineering department alone there are people from all over the world whom I encountered and got to know on a regular basis. I think you can take advantage of the diversity right in Ann Arbor if you have the inclination to. There are large communities of people from China, Japan, Korea, India, the Middle East,Somalia, Eastern Europe, all over Latin and South America, various places in Africa....the list goes on. There are wonderful specialty groceries all over town, and even the Krogers have a great selection of diverse world foods. And in Ann Arbor you stand a very good chance of actually getting to know some of those people because you work with them, have classes with them, they're your neighbors, etc. A trip to the North Campus Kroger will put you with tons of Muslim women from the mosque down the street, people from India, Asia...you name it. If you are at all interested in international work, or just want to have an international friend, take advantage of what Ann Arbor has to offer. People talk about London being diverse, which it is, and having a lot of people, which it has, but I honestly think the access to individual people of other cultures is greater in A2. That's the end of my soapbox rant about Ann Arbor. :)

My plan is to go into London a few times over the next 2 weeks, before the fall activities get started. I'm getting a pretty good list of interesting photo opps, and actually some part of me feels like if I conquer London's sprawling madness and try to enjoy it (hard call for a country girl) then I'll be more successful at tackling the other big cities around the world. After I get London firmly in hand, I'd like to aim for some weekend trips to cities in Europe. :) Anyway, things will be getting busy in 3 weeks. The international ladies study will be starting September 11th it looks like, and Bounce a Round (the outreach for moms of preschoolers that I'll be attending to try and meet international moms) is starting up September 2nd. We have a training day for the international team Sept 6th, and I have a friend coming into town Sept 11-16th. We don't know exactly when, but iBASE (the group we'll be leading for 18-20s language students) will also be starting up probably the week of the 11th. Right now I have all day everyday free to photograph, work on projects, etc. But when things get busy I'll have Mondays and Fridays, as well as having bbl studies to write, meeting with international moms during the daytime, and other stuff. It won't be overwhelmingly busy (I'm trying to be careful not to overbook) but still.

Chances are if you want to get to know London without going there you'll have some reasonable photos to look at after I'm done with all this. :) I'm putting my photos onto facebook, but a more thorough place to look is www.gkdunlap.phanfare.com, which is almost a photo blog of our life. :) I'll also try to put a London map up so you can make sense out of all the crazy places I'm going to around the city. :)

August 17, 2008

These days I hear from more and more of my friends who have a friend that has tried or even succeeded in committing suicide. As you know our friend E tried 2 months back, and although she's out of the hospital now, she is still very depressed and doesn't really want to see people. She will be going back to Poland for a visit at the end of the month, but I think really it would be better if she stayed there where her community could help her. Anyway if you could lift up the many friends in my friend web who are dealing with a friend's depression or suicide attempts I'd greatly appreciate it. Except for pr we are quite helpless in these situations- we can't force a person to get care, we can't be there with them 24-7, we can't make them take their medicine, we can't make the medicine work.... sometimes they don't even want to see us anymore. But our father above has all these things in hand, and has an eternal perspective that we can't see. All we can do is trust in him and do what we can to help our friends. Thanks for lifting this up for us!

August 14, 2008

Thank you all for lifting up our Japanese friends here and the issue of helping them to find a ch in their city- Gd has provided some incredible connections in unusual ways, and I now know at least 4 people working with Japanese followers of JC in Hitachi-shi! :) I even found a family from Canada who lives there working with followers of JC by searching on Google, which brought up their update letter with their information on it! It's amazing- 2 days later we have many contacts there. Thanks for pr-ing for that. Our friends feel very relieved to know that there are some C's in their town, and are excited to meet them when they return home.

We've also been blessed with some sunshine today- the weather has been feeling very fall-like here, although it's only August. It's been cold, in addition to rainy and cloudy- it just doesn't feel right to me. I've discovered that I am a very sensory person- my life is punctuated by smells, sights, sounds, and tastes. Part of that comes from working outside- like many farmers and others who work outside you get a feel for the seasons, and you feel an intimate connection with the natural world around you, and a sort of natural intuition. Well moving to the UK has been hard in that regard because I feel completely disconnected from the natural world here. Imagine those times where your intuition feels completely thrown off- that's sort of the perpetual state for me here. :) Instead of feeling that connection with the natural world as soon as I walk out the door, I feel like everyday I'm walking into alien territory. I feel all out of whack and unconnected to the natural world around me. It's definitely a challenge, and something that wears on me over time. Just one of the things people don't think about when they move to a new place.

August 13, 2008

In international work you sometimes come across a person who is on a mission to discover the truth. These folks are the ones who are chasing after you, seeking you out to study the bbl with them, reading the bbl on their own, asking questions, and generally just after the real truth. We met 2 Japanese folks, a married couple, who are like that. 3 months ago the wife, K, was very keen to take the CE course, and her husband was reading the CE course book after each class and asking her questions about it! After the course ended G and I started meeting with both of them, and they have both decided that they would like to follow JC. They came to that conclusion entirely on their own after seeking for themselves and studying the bbl, and honestly we feel like we had very little part to play except just being around to answer questions. Anyway, in the process we've gotten to be good friends with them over the course of this last month, and will be very sad when they return to Japan next Tuesday. But we're excited for them and the decision they've made, and are trying to help them to find some other C's in their home city. Please be lifting that up if you would- there are not many C's in Japan, but there are a vast number of cults, and they are worried (us too) about finding some people there. I know Gd will provide, but still I've seen people who go back to their home country and can't find any other followers who simply give up. So please pr for K and T.

Besides that exciting news I've been continuing to work on my website, and also doing volunteer freelance work for some friends here. Yesterday I took photos at a 4th birthday party, and on Sunday I took some portraits for a friend who is publishing her first book and needs an author photo for the back. Good stuff. I'm also still working on making groups of 10-15 images for various locations we've traveled. It's harder than it sounds to make a cohesive unit of images that tells the story of the place you visited. I've also been looking into cheaper ways to get into London so I can do more extensive photography there, and managed to find a cheaper train route plus a discount railcard which round trip costs $18. That sounds like a lot, but the usual cost is $48 (for a 45 min train ride!), so it's a pretty significant savings. And honestly I don't like London that much that I'd want to go in more than twice a year if I'm paying $48 to do it. :) No matter what people tell you, the UK public transit is very expensive and not as economical as simply driving. :) London is in fact the 3rd most expensive city in the world to live in- #1 is Moscow, #2 I forgot, #3 is London. It is much more expensive to live in London than New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington DC....any city anywhere in the US is cheaper than London.

Speaking of London, I decided to email the organization that runs that graffiti wall near the Waterloo station, the one I put photos of on the blog. I'm hoping they'll tell me some other locations where I can take photographs. I also offered to send them digital copies of the art that I've taken photos of if they'd like them. No pressure really, I'm just hoping to create a portfolio of street art, and London is a good place to do it. And if I know there are sanctioned areas that have been approved, where this organization has assigned a certain artist to paint, then I can be safer about photographing graffiti areas and get more variety of shots. I'll let you know how it goes. :)

The weather has been dreadful here- it's rained most of the day every day for weeks, and although we do get a few hours of sun, it's never over 70F. I love hot weather, so I'm not really enjoying the cold "summer" here. I hope you're enjoying the warm weather there, and not being roasted alive. :)

August 10, 2008

We had an interesting experience at ch today. Have you ever heard of the banns being read? Believe it or not, they still do that here! It's not just for movies- just today at ch they read out "Bob Smith, bachelor of St Someone's parish to Susie Jones, spinster of St Someone else's parish..." About 5 couples are getting married, and they are legally required to read that information out. After they list all the names they say "If any of you has any reason that they not be married you must come forward with that information." They have to read that out like 3 times according to the law. My favorite part was "spinster." These girls are not THAT old- but they're older than 25, so maybe that's considered being a spinster? I have no idea. :)

Our trip to Norwich yesterday was good- it rained all day, but we had fun anyway. I haven't processed my photos yet but I'll get to them soon. I hope you're enjoying your weekend wherever you are!

August 8, 2008

Things have been very rainy in Swavesey and the Cambridge area for the past 8 days or so. It's been solid rain all day most of the time, which is unusual here. Plus since water and cameras don't mix, I haven't been taking many pictures either. :) The rain has kept us from biking much too, so the most exciting thing going on most days is the latest spider sighting, and watching G's willow twigs growing a little bigger everyday. Because of the weather we've been doing loads of reading, and most recently we've been reading up on stress inoculation, which is what the military, police, airplane pilots, firemen, and others who have to perform well in high stress situations use to train their people. We also use it in a small way to train students who will be going overseas on the summer trips to the 3rd world. I've also been doing some cross stitch, which is nice.

Our new mattress is wonderful- all 3 of us (me, G and Nelly) are sleeping better every night, and although we sometimes can't find each other because the bed feels so big (we went from a Full to a Queen) one of us isn't getting an elbow in the face, a foot put on top of us, or a paw in the eye each night. :) G got the bedframe sorted out before I got back, and now we're working on rearranging the spareroom to make it more useful, and getting rid of all the suitcases we've been holding onto. Realistically we are not going to move our stuff back by suitcase, so out they go. It's cheaper in fact at this point to just get a container and have it sent by ship. Also cheap and high quality furniture is plentiful here second hand, so we might bring some back with us. Anyway we never plan that far in advance, so we'll know when it happens. :)

We've continued to meet with K and T, our Japanese friends, and they've been watching the Hope video. They are the most determined people I've ever met- they read the bbl constantly and are trying to decide now if they want to completely follow JC or not. We've been really blessed by them- they're leaving for Japan August 26th, and we're hoping that in the course of the next year we'll be able to visit them at their house near Tokyo and see how they are doing.

Thank you all for the birthday wishes on G's birthday- neither of us can believe that he's 32! But can I just say that we Americans have a distorted view of our life timelines? In Europe as well as most of Asia it is unusual for a person to get married before 30, and if they start having kids around 32 that's about the norm. My friends here always express surprise when we tell them how old we were when we got married. By getting married early we're ahead of the curve here. :)

July 31, 2008

We went into London today to meet up with some old friends of G's from undergrad, and had an interesting adventure in the midst of it. We gained a new level of appreciate for the Tube trains (the Underground=subway=Tube train) and rode on at least 3 new lines. We also enjoyed some fab food in Chinatown. London is a crazy place, as you'll see from the photos. :)

We decided to checkout a part of London known as Camden Town. At one point I expect Camden Town was it's own town, outside of the city of London, but as London has grown ever outward from it's starting point on the Thames, many places that are mentioned as villages in Jane Austen's books, as being 16 miles from London, now ARE London. I think Camden Town was one of those places. Anyway it's a very strange place- cool, but strange. :) There are tons of great little open air markets (which score very highly in my book of "is this a cool place or not") and loads of interesting shops. Tatoo parlors, Chinese restaurants, a million shops selling hats, Doc Martens, Goth clothing, girly clothing, and who knows what else. There's also a lock there for boats which are travelling up and down the Thames- it's only big enough for riverboats really. My favorite thing about Camden Town is the strange artlike sculptures on the buildings...everything from giant tarantulas, goldfish, and dragons to playing cards and clothing. Camden Town is a photographer's paradise- strangely dressed people of all cultures mingled together with strange buildings, tourists, police officers, and who knows what else. It's a real cornucopia. :)

Camden Town's "downtown" area.

Full of little market stalls like this one- anyone for a pink hat?

Where scorpions hold shoes and dragons perch on the wall about to eat you. :)

This is a Chinese restaurant, and the dragon's head has glowing eyes, and it moves from side to side like it's about to eat you- as if it was a human restaurant for dragons. :)

These ladies must get stared at all the time- they were chatting away on their cellphones, shopping for lingerie and clothes, and doing the same sorts of things as everyone else. Except they also wore burkhas. I'd have thought if you could wear a burkha anywhere and not get stared at it'd have been Camden Town. But apparently not.

I'm calling this photo "We're normal women with normal lives"

Every single store down here claims to have the Original Dr. Martens. In addition this store caters to the Goth and Sexy crowds apparently. :)

This is my personal favorite- Punkyfish. I think it must be selling piercing jewelry, but Punkyfish doesn't seem too happy about living on the side of the building, and definitely is not approving of the directions these 2 policemen are giving that lady in the front. :)

G's friends have 4 children, and are on their way to Tanzania where they will be doing IT work with Wycliffe. They had a 12 hour layover in London, and decided to get one of those little rooms that you can rent at the airport (they're called Yotels, as in Yo-tells) and try to get some sleep. Well they ended up oversleeping, leaving them scrambling to try to get into London, and us wondering what happened to them, but eventually with some dvine intervention we managed to find them. :) We rode back to Heathrow with them as well, to give them a hand with their luggage and stuff. Given that there are 6 of them, and they're moving to Tanzania where they expect to be for 3-4 years, they had more than the usual amount of luggage. :) And kudos to G for fast thinking when his friend realized his wallet had fallen out on the Tube train out to Heathrow- G ran all the way back to our train car and found it! Fortunately we didn't have to stop the train, which I was preparing to do by standing in the doorway of the nearest train car. :)

After seeing them off we went to Chinatown for some wonderful jaotse (Chinese dumplings) and then we went to the London Eye, the HUGE ferris wheel (500ft high!) right on the river Thames that was built in celebration of the millenium. The view is amazing from up there. On our way to get to the Eye we had a little excitement, in that we followed the proper signs to leave the train station, they just took us all the way around the building first. Things were fine until we started heading toward what they call here a "subway" which means a walking path under a highway. My "is this a good idea?" alarm went off the closer we got, but we decided we'd just poke our heads in a bit, and if it was dodgy we'd go back the other way. The graffiti on the sign pointing into the walkway was NOT encouraging. :) Anyway it was a pretty much deserted road/walkway under the train station, but it was covered in the most amazing graffiti- it seemed safe, and we decided to maintain our vigilance and keep the cameras hidden just in case. Well it turns out that it's actually a designated graffiti area for graffiti artists- there's nothing dodgy about it at all! But you can never be too careful from my point of view. :) In any case when we got to the end and it was clearly signed as a special graffiti project we were like "Oh! Couldn't you have marked that way back at the beginning?!" So we took some photos of the graffiti, and I may go back again on my own to photograph some more- I wish I could get some photographs of them actually painting, but that's not likely because there is no way I am going there at night alone. :) I'm thinking of contacting the organization that runs the wall to see if any of the graffiti folks might like some nice photos of their artwork.

Have you ever seen Anime graffiti before? This guy is really good! Or it could be a girl for all I know. :)

You can see why we might feel a little creepy walking into a street like this. But still, quite amazing skill levels these people have I think.

Anyway after the graffiti row we made it to the London Eye- it is impossible to describe just how big this thing is. You can see if from all over the city, but until you're standing right under it you just don't know how huge it is. It's a bit expensive to ride, but well worth it- it's a 30 min ride, and you can see 26 miles on a clear day from the very top. We didn't have very sunny weather but we did end up with a great sunset that evening.

The famous Houses of Parliament. That's a very teeny looking
red doubledecker bus on the bridge as well.
The river is the Thames (pronounced mysteriously as Temms)
and I don't recommend swimming in it- it's pretty disgusting. :P

A random view of the skyline of London. The building that
looks like a missile is called The Gherkin because
it supposedly looks like a giant pickle.
I feel like it looks like a missile launch site. :)

There are lots of interesting architectural styles on the riverside.

These are the glass pods you ride in. They have a bench and will
fit about 20 people comfortably.

It looks just like a gigantic bicycle wheel actually. :)

All in all our time in London was good. We loved spending time with G's friends, and I particularly enjoyed the photography to be had in such an urban environment. I'm not a city person, and I really can't imagine what would possess a person to want to live forever in a place like this, but I can appreciate that it's very interesting for a short time. If you really want to see London I recommend staying in London for about a week.

The London Eye looking out over the Thames at sunset.

The Clock Tower (mistakenly called Big Ben by everyone around the world)
in which the bell called Big Ben resides.