The Holiday Lowdown -- Part II (be warned this blog will contain partial nudity)

This is Chris. Decided it was my turn to add something to the running snapshot of our time here in Cambridge. So Melissa left off Part I just returning from Germany, and I am going to continue in the chronology with Christmas and New Years, but I need to update you on a few main happenings during my week of solitude and indulgence as a bachelor. And just to warn you (in case you missed the subject of the blog), I have a scandalous picture to accompany my story...

So Mel left me lonesome, neck deep in readings, essays, and other expected to-do's during the end of term. I was busy, and it was actually good to have some solo time to bust out the work without the endearing distractions of Meltrissa. One evening (about two days into my bachelorhood relapse), I was working late at the computer lab in the business school, a short 10 minute bike ride from home, when I realized that Handel's Messiah was being performed in a halfhour at the Trinity College Chapel - a ridiculously old and wealthy college straight out of harry potter. This was not something to be missed. So I cut the work short, and hopped on my bike headed for home to put on a sport's coat and wax my brows before the big evening. I was running late and the roads were a bit slick, and given the fact that I'm accident prone, I was unable to avoid a sizeable spill on my bicycle (slick roads + wet leaves + skinny bike tires + excessive speeds + idiot rider = inevitable wreck). My front tire slipped on the stone walkway and my rear tire caught, effectively stopping the bike, and launching me over the handle bars and into the busy road. Luckily, sort of, my soft juicy buttocks made good friends with the curb, saving my helmet-less head. Cars screeched to a halt and this lady jumped out of her car and came running towards me. I got up, unsure of my status, and humbly hobbled off the road. As the lady came up to me, she insisted that I take some bandages - which led me to believe I had marred my beautiful complection and was bleeding profusely. Still in shock and trying preserve my manliness, I told her I was fine and didn't think I was bleeding. By this time, traffic had resumed and I started to head home (turns out the lady was really nice, but strange, because I didn't have any real cuts and wasn't bleeding - I'm still not sure why she freaked out on me). So I made it home, and my butt was KILLING ME. After serious inspection and no visible damage, I decided it wasn't enough to keep me from the concert. So I got back on the horse and peddled my way to Trinity College. The concert was amazing, but I was sweating the entire time because I had to keep shifting my weight from cheek to cheek to avoid pain. After Messiah, I went home and was SO SO SO thankful that I didn't hit my head on the curb and vowed to buy a helmet (which Mel and I have both subsequently done).

Long story short, I was really dissapointed that I didn't have anything to show for my accident...until 3 days later. I think the picture speaks for itself, but the purple turned black, the black turned blue, the blue into green, green into yellow, and now you'll all be glad to know my rear-end looks amazing again. Suffice it to say that I really really needed a nurse and my resident medic was no where to be found! (really, I just needed some sympathy).

Family Arrives!
OK, I'm sure I've lost 80% of you by now, so for the faithful remaining few, I'll go into our Christmas and New Year's. After thanksgiving, we were both really homesick. We are completely enjoying our time over here and are ever grateful to be immersed in such a unique place with some of the most incredible people, but there are certain comforts/needs that new places and temporary homes are unable to provide. We just really miss most of you. There are a few of you that we are really really glad to be away from, and school is a perfect excuse to escape your presence. But for the rest of you -- you are certainly missed. So, the arrival of Melissa's family in Cambridge was the perfect mid-december treat! With 209452832948754 pounds of luggage, it was soo soo fun to have Joey, Tommy, Mom, and Dad in our new little city. We spent three days together here roaming around the historic colleges, eating delicious pub food, walking along the famous old walks, and catching up on missed time. We were also able to attend a candlelight service at Great St. Mary's church, which is the grand old University Church where all the students, until a few years ago, graduated and received their diplomas. Check out the pic, it was pretty stunning.

After exhausting all that Cambridge has to offer, we packed up and headed down to London for a few days to enjoy the big city during the holidays. London was great. It is really an amazing city with endless personality. We all used the 3 days in London to take care of any last minute christmas shopping before taking the train up to Scotland to meet up with Matt/Julie and the little kiddos.

Highland-bound
We left London early on the nine-hour train bound for the northern Scottish town of Inverness (which happens to be the home of the Loch Ness Monster, Nessie...). We packed good bread, cheese, meat and wine for our journey which took us through the English countryside and into Scotland along the coast (check out the view from our window!). It was a great trip through picturesque little villages and beautiful stretches of rugged coast. At last, we arrived to the Inverness train station and were warmly greeted by Matt who loaded us up into their sweet new mini-van and hauled us all to a quaint lodge on the Black Isle (about 30 minutes from the city). We were so incredibly fortunate to stay at the home of one of Matt/Julie's friends - it was perfect. The home was right on a river and near the edge of this amazing forest with old estate ruins and perfect walking paths. We basically spent the next 6 days together tucked in this ridiculous country home going for walks, playing with the kids (on the rope swing!), cooking/cuddling next to the Aga stove, exploring the forest, and engaging in relational conversation (is it possible to avoid the latter with the Clifton clan?!). One definite highlight was to be able to roadtrip one day down to Matt and Julie's new parish in the tiny tiny tiny town of Methlick (population: 300 people, 8000 sheep). It was really meaningful to be able to see their new home and the beautiful old church where Matt will begin his first position as head minister. We can't wait to go back for a visit!

Christmas was just great. We had a long drawn-out morning of opening gifts and lounging around with coffee and the kids, then took a fabulous 3-hour walk in the surrounding countryside, and then rallied for a great home-cooked Christmas feast at night! (including a tasting of 3 delicious whiskeys, compliments of Matt.) Despite having a perfect time with Mel's family, I couldn't help but miss my mom, pops, maggie, the fish, Jamal the cat, our two christmas trees in Bellevue, gus the hamster, morning stalkings, and... my sister katey I guess (goodnight mom, goodnight dad, etc..... some payback kt). That was an inside joke that applies to only 20% of our 5 readers.

The trip in Scotland with Melissa's family was a much needed time for us. We felt so rejeuvenated to be around our family, and really could not have asked for a better holiday. Lucky for us, though, Scotland was not the end of our journey. After saying goodbye to the family, Mel and I bussed down to Glasgow (through the most unbelievable Highland scenery) and jumped on a quick 45 minute flight to Belfast in Northern Ireland to be with our good friend Krista for New Years!

New Years in Belfast
Krista worked at a church in Ireland all last year and was back visiting old friends, so we decided to join up with her and check out Belfast and the Irish coast. Given the history of Belfast and the terrorism, it was really interesting to wander the city and see the remnants of conflict. We ventured into some really cool pubs, had a delicious Sunday roast, and got meet some of Krista's friends from last year. It's always really good to discover the context of people's experiences, and we are now able to place Krista's last year abroad. A real treat. We spent our new year's at one of Krista's friends house for a charity bash supporting Habitat for Humanity or something wierd in Madagascar, I forget. Regardless, it was an african costume party, which really meant that all the girls got dressed up in elaborate african garb and the guys showed up in jeans and shirts. I stuck out and wore a jacket (I looked fantastic). Mel and Krista wore matching tiger stripped shoulder shirt things, which were very festive! I managed to get a girafe neck/head on me by the end of the night, check it out.

The highlight of our Ireland trip, though, was a venture up to the northern coast. We rented a car, and drove on the left side of the road for the first time. It scared the crap out of me at first, but after I was able to get used to changing gears with my left hand, we survived without any major problems. The northern coast of Ireland is phenomenal, seriously gorgeous. It just made the top ten places to see before you die, so I only have nine left. The windy roads obey the amazing coastal landscape and tiny villages adorn the rocky green beaches. We stopped a few times to just get out, and soak in the beauty. The pictures do not do it justice. Our final destination was the Giant's Causeway, which is this crazy part of the coast with hexagonal pillars of stone strewn along the waterfront. The video at the visitor's center explained the origin of the bizzare stones - allegedly, ancient volcanic lava cooled really quickly and somehow formed these crazy, perfectly geometric-shaped rocks. I don't get it. The video gave an alternate explanation which makes much more sense -- a big, bully of a Scottish giant built a causeway (roadway) with the hexagonal stones in order to connect Scotland to Ireland so that he could challenge his Irish rival to a brawl. But when the Scottish giant actually made it over to Ireland for the fight, the Irish giant realized that he was going to get owned by the humongous Scot. So, the Irish giant pretended to be a sleeping baby and when the Scottish giant saw the huge "baby," he decided he didn't want to be around to meet the baby's father, and thus he fled back to Scotland. After the Scot ran back across the hexagonal-rock bridge, the Irish giant destroyed most of it so that the Scot couldn't ever return. Turns out that there are some of this amazing stones on the Scottish coast too... definitely beats the BS volcanic explanation.

As all good things come to an end, Mel and I eventually made our way back here to the comfort of our Cambridge home. Although we were stoked to get out of Cambridge at the beginning of the holiday, we were delighted when our train finally stopped at the Cambridge station. A fine ending to a really great holiday.

We got back on Friday, I had a 3,000 word essay due Monday morning, and I've been trying to stay afloat in school ever since. We just started a cool project with a company in London to find creative ways to integrate carbon offsetting into their exisiting work, and am beginning to have to think about my disseration (yikes). Any ideas? Please float them my way. Its difficult to save the world in 15,000 words or less and I'd love to know if any of you have already figured it out. It might save me some stress.

Mel is back at work as the incredible breadwinner that she is, supporting my worthless self. She decided not to do choir this term in order to concentrate more seriously on her spanish, and we've both decided to do yoga. Should be cool.

All the best to you all, and thanks for sticking with this marathon posting...


~Christ of the pilgrim path,
and of every pilgrim heart,
thank you for revealing yourself
in situations we would prefer
to pass by.
(- Iona prayer book)

We dearly miss all of you!
Love,
Melissa and Chris

The Holiday Lowdown -- Part I (by the way, Happy New Year to you all!)

Hello beloved family and friends!! First off, we must sincerely apologize for being such absolute slackers with our blog. It seems as if Thanksgiving started this rollercoaster of events that catapulted us straight into 2007! So, we will do our best to give a brief update on the past six weeks... including our English Thanksgiving celebration, my trip to Berlin, the arrival of our family to Cambridge, Christmas in Scotland, and lastly New Years in Belfast, Ireland! (but... because this has the great potential to be a HUGE posting, we'll break it up into Part I and Part II :)

Thanksgiving
When we wrote our last blog entry, we had no idea how we were going to celebrate Thanksgiving. However, a few days before the actual holiday, we bumped in to one of our only American friends named Tom. He suggested that we refugee Americans at Wolfson College band together (all six of us) and have a potluck Thanksgiving meal. I offered to do the yams, and after a few trips to the grocery store, a phone call to mom for Auntie Anna's renowned recipe, another phone call to mom for emergency advice due to some unexpected yam behavior, we finally arrived to the celebration with our (most impressive) yams in hand. It turns out that our friend Tom decided to invite almost everyone he bumped into over the few days preceeding Thanksgiving, so we ended up with quite a large crowd including us token Americans (about five in all), several Brits, a Ghanan, some Malaysians, a Greek, a few Chinese, a Saudi Arabian, and a few others we can't remember now. Our friend Tom (pictured) took on the turkey job, and it was fabulous! We also had stuffing, our yams (which were a huge hit), mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberries, homemade pumpkin pie (from real pumpkins!), and then some very bizarre additions like fries, greek pancakes, vegan cooked spinach, and chocolate cake. Although we would have of course loved to be home with our family, our makeshift Thanksgiving dinner brought us some comfort :)

Berlin
Just a few days after Thanksgiving, I hopped on a plane headed for Berlin! I had been quite homesick a few weeks prior, and so Chris encouraged me to take a trip to see my good friend Annika who lives in Berlin. It was also good timing for Chris because he had loads of work to complete before the term ended, and I can occasionally be a distraction :) Berlin is a fascinating city, with much of it restored and rebuilt after the air raids of WWII but also plenty of evidence from its tumultuous place in the 20th century. Pictured here is the view from Annika's art studio (click on the picture to see it more detail)... a neighboring building riddled with bullet holes from the Battle of Berlin, a week-long standoff between Soviet and Nazi forces that resulted in Hitler's suicide and Nazi Germany's surrender in May, 1945. A major highlight of the trip was visiting the Holocaust Memorial Museum in the heart of the city. Above ground, hundreds of grave-like cement blocks stretch across a vast open area, a haunting representation of the millions of Jews and minorities who who were murdered. In the middle of the expanse of 'graves,' an almost imperceptable stone staircase led to the underground exhibit. This memorial was one of the most moving exhibits I have ever seen. Dimly lit, noiseless except for a few whispers mingled together with the quiet weeping of some, we moved slowly and reflectively through each room. The purpose of this particular exhibit was to chronicle the devastating events that led to the Holocaust, but far more importantly, to share the letters, stories, and pictures of many who suffered and died. One room (pictured) was completely dark except for the eerie greenish lighting that illuminated exerpts of letters and diaries from those in the concentration camps. After I left the memorial, it took a while to recover from the shock and emotion of what I had just experienced. As if WWII and the Holocaust weren't enough of a devastation on Berlin, evidence of the Cold War's effect is a strong presence as well. In addition to a few small remnants of the actual Berlin Wall, a stone strip traces the actual location of the wall throughout the city as a remembrance to the terror and control that Berlin and all of Germany suffered at the hands of the Soviet regime. See the inscription, "Berliner Mauer, 1961-1989." ... But in case you think that I didn't have any fun or light-hearted adventures in Berlin, think again! One of the best things to do in Germany around christmas-time is go to the famous Christmas markets! Hundreds of these markets spring up all over the country, with stalls selling all sorts of knick-knacks such as nutcrackers, christmas ornaments, wooly hats and gloves, jewelry, and of course delicious treats such as candied nuts, mulled wine, crepes, cotton candy, caramel apples, and authentic German weiners! Most importantly, I was able to spend some quality time with my dear friend Annika (and her hubby Marty!)... and thus, I returned to Cambridge refreshed and recharged.

... Stay tuned for Part II!