A day of silence

I held a day of silence today in honor of Bree's travels back to the US. From 7:30 in the morning when she left until I went to bed, I said less than 50 words all day - to checkers at the store. It was the first quiet day I've had in awhile!

As I washed the dishes, my mouth watered as I washed the pan that Sarah cooked delectable banana bread in - perhaps someday I will attempt to match her feat.

I was glad to find a 24 recap on SkyMix, which showed three straight episodes of 24, one and a half of which I had missed.

London weather is bizarre - it was 90 degrees on Friday and now it's probably 55 or so. We've realized that it could get quite hot, so we invested in a fan, which unfortunately does not have a freezer or compressor of any kind attached to it.

Today I followed in my sister's footsteps, which I'm sure she'll be glad to know, and ran the powerpoint at church. Sometimes a little effort can go a long way - you would have thought I'd given a million dollars the way some of those people ogled at a formatted slide.

My Journeyman friend from Amarillo now North London came down and went to church with me and then became my latest guinea pig for nominal cooking efforts - meatballs and noodles. We swapped experiences with internationals, and he recounted his recent adventures in the Arabian peninsula, including a stop in Yemen.

Today I will probably plough a little deeper through The Scramble for Africa.

In a discussion that we had this week, Bree and I attempted to decide which foreign language that we'd like to learn; perhaps you have some suggestions for us.

Languages Most Likely to be an Asset:
1. Chinese
2. Spanish
3. Arabic

Languages Most Possible to Learn:
1. Spanish
2. French

Languages Most Most Likely to be used:
1. Spanish
2. Spanish
3. Arabic
100. Chinese

With that rough assessment, we're pretty much leaning towards Spanish. We might have our friend Francisco the Columbian help us out, but my Journeyman friend did suggest that he would help us line up an Arabic tutor, so we'll just have to see.

With those ramblings, I'm off to take a kipp.

The Futon store

With the steady stream of couch surfers we've had, we decided to explore sleeping alternatives for our floor space. Just down the street from us is a futon store. After I laid on every futon mattress in the store, we decided that it was kind of a waste of time, because there was only one bed product that was small enough to fit in our living room/kitchen/guest bedroom/office/tv room/game room. Enter - THE CUBE. THE CUBE sits very quietly in the corner of our multipurpose room camoflauged as a footrest and just when a guest least suspects it: Voila - a single bed appears.

If this is not equally as exciting to you, consider one of two things:
1) You never know the day that you may end up sleeping on our floor. Hostel Josefy does recommend however making reservations at least 2 months in advance to ensure availability.
2) This was our first furniture purchase - in fact one of the most majorest purchases we've ever made as a couple, besides my flight home and our television.

But alas, we are not in need of the futon chair this weekend - we can't even keep our own bed occupied: Bree is ready for her outing to the US, where she will lolligag around while I go to work all day everyday. Actually that's not true - she's sitting for a CPA exam. And, Monday is a bank holiday for us, not because of the American soliders that have died of course, but to officially welcome Spring to our midst. But it is true that in a 30 day period, Bree and I will have only seen each other for 11 of them. We trust that our marriage is strong enough to withstand this second week of separation.

It's much less of a formal reason to celebrate than some holidays in Hong Kong, where I was informed today that there is a national holiday where they feed the wild animals and the fishies as a way to keep these mongers away from the body of a mystical national hero who lies in the bottom of a riverbed somewhere because he was courageous enough to commit suicide to avoid giving away government secrets. If you have a more accurate and complete version of this fable, feel free to post it. And thanks to my Hong Kong source, who I will have to apologize to if I tangled up the details.

British Humour

British Humour out of the mouth of Bethan

Sunday afternoon we continued to celebrate our longest streak ever with people sleeping in our home by hosting lunch.

Our guests met our friend Bethan, who explained to them her philosophy of Henry VIII during our discussion of the creation of the Church of England. "He kept killing his wives because they wouldn't have a son for him. If he was alive now, he would know that it's the male who makes a baby a boy or a girl. He should have killed himself!"

In words, it's hard to capture the abruptness of her statement, but I guess you can't argue with its point. Although I doubt, being the madman that he was, even if a doctor had explained this point to him that he would have ceased from his behavior. And now he goes down in history as one of the best known kings - explain that!

Matrimonia!

Or something like that. We went to a wedding on Saturday that was conducted entirely in Spanish, except for a few songs and when the preacher looked at us and said one sentence in English like "You can sit down now."

Fortunately, we had a translator for the best man's speech, which was pretty good. But not as good as the food that he, serving double-duty as the caterer, prepared.

It was a Columbian wedding, complete with a full lunch. And run on international time.

When we rushed into the church at 10:29, not wanting to be late, knowing how taboo it is to follow the bride down the aisle... well, we were a little surprised to find that we were the first people there. And no, we didn't get the time wrong. I think people trickled in and the ceremony eventually started at 11:35 or so. But that was only because the musician had somewhere to go.

So many things for us to learn and experience!

Learn a lanaguage

Training is not as fun as being at home with my wife.

I did learn today though, reading The Economist (which by the way is a terrific magazine first introduced to me by, you guessed it, my economics teacher in high school) that the BBC has free langauge lessons on the web - check out www.bbc.co.uk/languages if you're interested in starting from scratch or perhaps brushing up on a language you've already had a taste of.

English word of the day for you: SLAG, as in the verb "put down." Usage: You really have to slag the Americans when you get a chance, because they think they're right all the time.

So there you have it - posts two days in a row.

Don't you hate...

Don't you hate checking a blog and it not having a new post for you to read? I know I sure do. And I can go days coming to this blog and see nothing new.

Sorry is all I have to say. I'm glad that the blogs I read are much more consistent with their posts.

But at least it lets you know that our life isn't any more grand and exciting than yours is. Wouldn't you start to get jealous if every single day of the week we were over here in London having some awesome adventure and you were still in ________ going to ______ everyday.

That's not to say that we're not having an awesome adventure - it's just that not all of our life makes great blog posts.

Anyway, post rambling, in case you do wonder what we're up to, we were finally reunited after nine nights of separation, only to have me leave again for three days of training.

We've had and continue to have a good time with current houseguest Sarah J. who unfortunately has discovered that there appears to be some sort of slow leak in our air mattress. Don't worry those of you who have a reservation at the Josefy Wandsworth Hostel - we'll get it fixed as soon as possible.

Bree & Sarah got to see the Queen - Bree'll have to tell you about it sometime. And all of us got to see The Lion King. It's not in my list of top three musicals we've seen, but it was definitely enjoyable.

The trip to the states was wonderful, full of surprises, including my first trip to a professional golf tournament (the Byron Nelson) and my first time to sit on the front row at a Ranger's game, my first time to attend someone else's National Honor Society Induction, my first time to see somebody named Josefy bat clean up, my first time since being married to eat spinach shells, my first time to see a sibling graduate from college a year early, my first time to be in a wedding as a married man and many more things. Congrats is certainly due to all of the people referenced this paragraph - bravo, bravo, and more bravo. I lift the water glass that I have in my hand to you right now.

Yay for learning about Sarbanes-Oxley and I hope all of you are having a great week.

A Week of Separation

So we haven't posted recently - sorry about that everyone.
It's been quite a while since we had to spend our first night apart. We are currently at 5 nights apart! Let me tell you, it's no fun being an ocean away from your spouse.

But here's a recap of the past few weeks:

April 23 - London Muster. I'm sure Matt will want to tell more about this event but for now let's just say that anytime you have a group of Aggies, some good barbecue and 42, you know it will be a great time.

Later that night we went with Melanie to see "Mary Poppins". No, not on video, a real live production of the movie that I love soo much! As we waited in line for tickets, we watched as car after car pulled up and dropped off all these little girls with their best pink fufu dresses. Didn't notice very many boys, but don't worry - Matt wasn't self-conscious.

So Mary Poppins was great - dancing statues, singing chimney sweeps, and Mary Poppins flew right into our seats. Well, not our seats exactly but into the audience. And of course, my favorite - Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

So after that excitment we had to venture to Chinatown, which is really just one big street brightly lit with Chinese decorations. Here some other friends met up with us. Matt and I ordered crispy aromatic duck, which is delicious! If any of you are reading this blog and come visit us - make us take you to Chinatown for some crispy aromatic duck. It's worth the trip.


Sunday was church and our friend Bethan was leading worship. She is wonderfully talented and needed as the church had been praying for 15 years for someone musically adept to help lead the worship.


The week that followed was more work...slightly less for both of us as we were able to make it home before dark every night!

The next weekend was our first young adults meeting at the church. Matt and I had volunteered to make dinner on Saturday for everyone, so at 8am (Texas time) I phone my mom for a recipe. We made Mexican lasagne and it was rather tasty. We also made a small portion vegetarian style for one of the ladies which turned out okay as well. Matt led some games and there was singing and a bible study. We stayed to clean up afterwards and were dead tired afterwards. I didn't realize how much work goes into having church meetings!

Monday was a bank holiday, but we ended up spending all most of the day cleaning and shopping for a fan - apparently we will need one during the summer as our flat does not have airconditioning...

Matt had a three day work week this week - Tues through Thursday. He left on Friday. I'll let him catch you up on his adventures in Texas. Meanwhile, in London, I got a British cold. It's no fun being sick and alone!

Alright - so hopefully that will catch you all up to date. I'm sure Matt will add more when he gets a chance. But for now - CPA studying...