Knaresborough

This will be our last posting before the Calvin students arrive tomorrow. We're excited about having them here, but we know that our daily life will get a good deal busier. Here are some pictures from last weekend’s trip to Knaresborough, a nearby market town perched high above the river Nidd, home to this fine stone bridge, parish church of St John the Baptist (where Thomas befriended this wooden mouse) and a Hobbitesque cliff chapel. It's proving very difficult to post photographs on this blog, so if you want to see some more family pictures, please go to http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30231811&l=4497c&id=1427632733.

A weekend in Bath

This past weekend, we made a trip to Bath to see the Meryons. We took the train on the way to Bath, and returned in the large Volvo that Ros (Kate's first cousin once-removed) and Richard so graciously agreed to lend to us for the half year we're in England.

We had a great weekend, thanks to the Meryon's warm hospitality. Richard took us on a tour of England's Industrial-Revolution era, and showed us the various locks, pumping stations and aqueducts of the Kennet-and-Avon Canal. There was plenty of opportunity to take some good train pictures as well.

After Church on Sunday, time to say goodbye. The picture shows us all in front of Ros and Richard's house, with the Volvo. Back in York, we managed to fit the Volvo through the narrow alley way to the garage in the back of the house, only to find out that there was no way we could get the car into the garage. Ah well. £ 58.00 does not seem too much to pay for a street parking permit, when you weigh it against the risk of scraping the car getting it into the garage...

And did I mention that we had to pass through Pennsylvania on the way from Bath to York?

Exploring York

This week we’ve been busy exploring the city of York. Unfortunately, the weather has been damp and cold. Since "cold" evokes temperatures far below freezing and inches of snow for our friends in Michigan, temperatures only just below freezing and light frost may not sound that bad. But the dampness really gets into your bones. On Tuesday, Kate and I started a guided walking tour of the city. While some brisk walking might have kept us warm, the tour mainly consisted of standing around and listening to the guide. After an hour, we had to bail out, with freezing toes and fingers.

Constantine seems strangely unaffected by the cold...

This past Saturday, we took a tour from Viking to Victorian York. With the boys, we explored the Jorvik Viking Center, Clifford’s tower, and the Castle museum. Clifford’s tower stands on the site of the Norman keep, and the Castle museum houses a great exhibition of life in York in post-medieval times. Climbing the tower was especially cold and windy!




Below: Kees and Thomas testing Viking helmets in Jorvik.

Thomas' landing pictures

I took these pictures from the airplane. We were sitting above the wing, as you can see. When we landed my ears hurt like @#%^&$!?:;{[]}!! (*) It was a boring flight exept the movie.

(*) A very large amount of extreme pain.

Arriving in York.

We arrived in York on Friday and are already happily installed in our great house here. The flight was smooth and uneventful. The first hitch came only when we tried to get through immigration and discovered that we should have obtained a more formal visa in order to stay for seven months; but the very friendly immigration agents finally allowed us to enter once we promised to leave and re-enter the country within six months.

The first two days were mainly spent settling in, setting up phone and computer service, rearranging the furniture (there’s a surplus of child-sized desks in this house, but no decent-sized dining table), and making an expedition to Sainsbury’s to buy food and basic supplies (a family outing involving five backpacks). On Sunday our old friend Mary Garrison came for dinner and very generously lent us her spare bicycle, which Kate put to good use on Monday by stocking up on cheap household supplies, books, puzzles, etc. (Shown above: what £11 bought at the Salvation Army.) The kitchen was pretty well stocked already, but now we now have enough plates to feed all 19 Calvin students when they arrive, and even a few luxuries like a wooden salad bowl. It’s a treat to be in a house full of empty shelves and have an excuse to fill them creatively.

Sunday morning we made our first visit to church. Through the Chuch of England’s website, we found the address of All Saints Pavement, York’s "civic" church, one of the more traditional parish churches in the city. The faithful consisted of dozen or so "Prayer Book devotees", as they described themselves. It reminded of us our beloved St Mark’s Episcopal Church in Charleston, with a median age of about seventy, except that everyone was white. They were delighted to see young new faces, and we were warmly invited to return.

Above: Dinner time at Markham Crescent.

Kees describes his first day at Park Grove School:

It was fun. I made new friends at first recess and at second recess we played a fun game (the details are too complicated to relate). In the middle of second recess we had lunch. After lunch we went back to recess! During math we played games (math-related).We are learning about Ghana. (Today we learned about slavery.) The seating arrangments were confusing.

(Right: Walking to Park Grove School.)