Would you like a bit of tea with your croissant?

JANUARY 24
So Sunday morning’s excursion to find a church was not very fruitful. We attended an Anglican mass at a beautiful building with people who were nice enough, but whose emphasis on some issues didn’t exactly mesh with our own – you’ll have to ask for details in person.

We returned to Flat 2C to make turkey and cheese croissants followed by a much too long nap.We tried again to find a place of worship Sunday night – walking 25 minutes to the southeast, probably through some less than prime neighborhoods, only to find that the address was just that of an empty flat. Oh well.

An unexpected benefit of the trip was finding postings of flats for let in realtor windows. Thus began our search for a new home. We walked for over an hour and returned by passing the Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. We did our first Marks and Spencer shopping trip and made noodles for dinner.

The highlight of the night was our first telephone conversations with our parents, after we deciphered the phone card issues. It is much cheaper, both in sum and especially for us for them to call here. Some lame movie Simply Irresistable was the nightcap.

JANUARY 25
Monday was the busiest day yet by far. In the morning, we walked several blocks to locate a dry cleaner, also purchasing a wallet that can hold the oversize British notes, of which we have a few but hope for more.

We also logged on at an Internet café – finding only slight keyboard differences. After another sandwich lunch, this time complemented with cottage cheese with pineapple and celery sticks with sour cream and chives, we set out to find new arrivals – Melanie and Katherine who will be working with Bree. We found them in the subway, which is merely an underground passageway, not to be confused with The Tube. It was our first time to see friends in a nine-day span with the brief exception in Hollywood. We enjoyed catching up with them and talking about College Stationites. Of course we took them on the daily outing to the grocery store and we just might have made enough purchases to skip Tuesday! We also had our daily nap.

Matt then spent some time doing research at an Internet café, as Bree prepared our first dinner with protein – noodles with meat sauce. She didn’t even have to ask how to brown the meat! We watched yet another sub-par movie Deep Blue Sea and tried to go to bed early enough to get back on schedule.