This is Mia going to find the ever important W.C.
Once we arrived, we met up with Ben and Kate. (Ben and I went to high school together.) They have lived in London now for about 4 years. It was really great to see them and catch up with old friends. We took a cab to their place, a very cool cab. Much roomier than those in the US and much more friendly. That night we went out for burgers! In Belgium the only burger you can buy at a restaurant is a "Bicky Burger". They are as bad as they sound. Turns out, the bicky is only about 15% meat and the rest is wheat gluten, and other unknown substance to just make the burger hold it's shape. Then they deep fat fry it. The real burger we had at a GBK was fan-freakin'-tastic! Another thankful moment occured here as we realized how fortunate people are who live in the States. Everything is truly double the cost in England. Our burgers were $15 US dollars each. That included nothing else. Fries (chips) and drinks were all extra. But I will add that in England you can get tap water with ice for free everywhere and that is very nice.
Poor little Mia could just not keep her eyes open much longer that night.
The next day we spent some time playing around in London. Here is the Big Ben
Westminster Abby
The ceremonial changing of the horse guards. This started out very exciting as the men in Black came out and the men in Red came in from the streets apparently done with their duty of protecting the city. Then they stood there looking at one another like this for 5 . . . . .10 . . . .. .15 . . . .. 20 . . . . . minutes. We were then bored and left. So, we don't know how it ends. We were hoping for a jousting match or something, but no, just staring at one another. Mia was very bothered that no one was picking up the horse poop.
Then the National Gallery with lots of beautiful art. London museums are free by the way. There were TONS of pigeons outside and Mia loved to chase them around. She tried desperately to catch one, but no luck.
That evening we took a bus up to Oxford where our other friends Tim and Candace live. They were fellow Champaign folk who are now doing a post-doc and studying there. Thanksgiving with friends, family and food is a big thing for us. We are very thankful for the wide variety of people that we have crossed paths with, and still have the capacity to keep in close contact with. With that said, we bought our turkey (equivalent to $50 US dollars) and had a wonderful thanksgiving meal with them. It was a fun adventure making a big dinner in our small European kitchens, but that was half the fun.
The next day, we were off to explore Oxford and meet up with some new friends. We spent the morning viewing the other Tim's lab and going to the Museum of Natural History. Very cool museum. It had a fantastic display of the time line of the world. The fossils of the trilibites were very cool and here are Mia and Mindy by a dinosaur.
That afternoon we met up with Trent and Shelby, two students from Tabor College. We had lunch with them and talked for a couple of hours. We were very impressed with these two as we had some wonderful conversation. They gave us a very good feeling for our move to Hillsboro this coming summer. As we talked, I became very excited to join the Tabor community and we look forward to meeting and sharing life with a whole new group of people.
We spent saturday hanging out in Oxford again and then took the Eurostar back home last night. It was a really great trip, overall, and while Belgium is still more expensive than the US, we are grateful to be paying somewhat normal prices again! I mean, a Pepsi is only about the equivalent of $3 US dollars :) But now we will be staying home for a few months as we await the arrival of little Carmen. She should keep us busy for a few months, but this spring, we hope to get to a couple more places before we come back to the US.
An online photo album is set up with lots more pictures of our London trip.
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