COLD!

Well, we've been up to quite a lot in the past few weeks here in lovely, but extremely cold, England. I want to really emphasize the word C-O-L-D! No one told us it was going to be quite so cold, but since we've been here it has barely gotten over 20 degrees Celsius (68 Fahrenheit) and has frequently been down around 8 degrees Celsius (46 Fahrenheit).

This week we've been in Dunstable, a relatively small town about an hour north of London. Dunstable is more of what you might imagine when you think of an English countryside with rolling hills, lots of pasture, etc. Dunstable's population is comparable to Auburn when there are no students in town. We've been working alongside Tim Manson, assistant pastor at West Street Baptist Church, and we've been staying with Tim, his wife Vikki, and their three children Jonathan (5), Rose (3), and Max (2). We've thoroughly enjoyed our time with the Manson family and have lots of fun with them and their children.

Today we went with the Mansons to the Whipsnade Zoo, one of the nicer zoos we've ever been to. It was much more spread out and open-air than we're used to, and the animals seemed to have lots of room to roam. Matt was able to share some of his useless tidbits of knowledge about the Animal Kingdom to impress the Manson kids. It was very cold (about 13 Celsius and windy)!

Monday we'll be headed back to London. Hopefully we'll finally be able to get into some semblance of a routine as we have now stayed at three different places (interestingly all within the same family).

On a side note, you may be interested to know that we have become quite the skilled tea drinkers (hot tea, that is). Matt got into the habit of drinking tea at the office with Tim, and Rebecca felt the need to try to catch up with his progress. So we're now drinking several cups a day and are actually enjoying it, especially since it has been so cold.

Hopefully we'll be better about keeping this updated, so feel free to check it out every day or so.

P.S. Did we mention it has been really cold?