December 8, 2008

One of my excellent friends from college got engaged yesterday! We were so blessed- her fiance asked us to do a photo with the word "Will" in it for his proposal, and he had her parents, his parents, and some other very good friends do the other words. So we knew it was coming and are so very happy for them both!

I think I've mentioned this, but I am off to Madrid this weekend. I can't believe it- my friend S and I have been planning this trip since she came to visit in September (well, if you can call intending to do it and buying tickets a few weeks back planning- we're not uberplanners I have to say) and I'm going a day earlier and staying a day later than she is. I wasn't so sure about doing that at first, but G encouraged me to take advantage of being in Madrid to see some other things around Spain, and I am intending to take a trip out to Toledo, Segovia, and maybe one other place. Madrid is considered a megacity now, and will soon overtake Shanghai in it's "megacityness" according to the guide book. :) The advantage of this is that there are fast trains going from Madrid, which is the capital of Spain, to many of the other major cities. Spain isn't a huge country, but it's slightly bigger than the UK I think. Anyway our trains here can't compare to the fast trains there- you can be on the other side of Spain in 2 hours by train, which would simply never happen here. I'm looking forward to taking advantage of their fast trains while I'm there, and if I enjoy the visit G and I might come again some weekend since it's so close.

I haven't gone travelling by myself in quite a long time- completely by myself that is. I travelled around some in Cambodia while I was there, and at least in Spain I can read the signs and understand something of what they are saying (the Spanish lisp is quite difficult for me to understand, so I hope to be able to get by). I've been polishing up the Spanish part of my brain these days with practice, but I can't keep the Cambodian words out and my brain has been suggesting sentences such as "Ot bahn ir al Sevilla" as good things to say, which any Spanish speaker would see is only half Spanish. :) I ought to be thinking "No puedo ir al Sevilla" instead. Ah the joys of being multilingual. :) Once this Spain trip is behind me I'll set to Chinese in more earnest- I just couldn't deal with 3 languages in my head before this trip. :)

So the upcoming trip to Madrid is taking up a bit of my time- being alone for parts of it means I need to plan a bit more so that I can be careful not to be out on the streets of a foreign city at night alone, or be travelling to my hostel at the wrong time of day.

Please pr for my friend "Mar" who I've been getting to know here. She's heading back to her home country next week, and we're hoping to plan a day trip to Oxford together. It looks like Wednesday might be the day. Long trips are a good way to chat with people about the good news, and since she's a photographer we share a common interest already. She is from east Berlin, and I am hoping to take a weekend to visit her in April when she's free from her studies there. I love that we can hop around Europe for $40 round trip on a plane- who could ever have imagined?

Our Christmas tree is up finally, which is exciting. We're feeling excited to visit home and see everyone! We'll be back the 27th of December. Sorry I'm a bit scatterbrained today- this week is looking a bit crazy with iBASE tomorrow night (the last one of the year), Wednesday all day in Oxford for me, Thursday a wreath making outreach of our iLadies (the international ladies study group) in which I am teaching them all how to make a Christmas wreath (which entails my collecting materials Tuesday), Thursday night last Camera club of the year, and early Friday morning I'm off to Madrid! Whew!

Please pr for G next weekend- he's planning some men's outreaches while I'm gone, and hoping to take a group of guys from work out to Wimpole, and a few guys from iBASE as well that he's been forming closer friendships with.

Let me finish this blog with an excerpt from a book that we just picked up at a thrift store called The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names. I know some of you linguophiles (I think that's a word) and would find the history of some of our town names here interesting:

Cambridge:
-Grantacaestir c 730 Bede,
-Grantacester c 890 OE Bede
-Grontabricc c 745 Felix
-Grantebrycg c 875
-Cantebruge c 1125
-Cambrugge (Chaucer)

Originally 'Roman fort on the Granta,' later 'bridge over the Granta.' The loss of the first r and the change of G to C are due to Norman influence. Cambridgeshire is Grantabrycgscir c 1010, Cantebruggescir 1142, Cambruggeschire c 1400.

Swavesey:
-Suauesheda c 1080
-Suaveshide 1203

'Swaef's landing-place.' Swaef occurs in Swaefsheale c762 and is a normal short form of names in Swaef-. In Old English ae (long a) often appears in East Saxon as 'a' (long a).

Now it makes sense why locals pronounce it SWA-ves-see instead of Sw-AH-vsy which we thought as Americans.