In York

We arrived in York last night, checked into the hotel, and took an
after-dark stroll thru town (it gets dark around 3:30 or 4:00 p.m.).
I haven't blogged until now because the hotel charges exorbitant rates
for Internet connections. After exploring York all day, plus taking
photos and checking out free WiFi pubs, I walked from the hotel to the
train station (a 30 second walk) to use the train station WiFi. That's
where I am now, blogging from my iPhone. I'll go back to the room, put
together a blog and some of tday's photos, then bring my laptop back
to the train station and use their wireless connection again.

Still on the train

But just ten minutes from York.
I never did change the time stamp on the blog entries, so they show
Santa Fe time. Add 7 hours to if you're in Mountain Standard Time Zone
to calculate our time here.

below, another statue in St. Pancras Station.

Beautiful train station

We had lunch in the St. Pancras train station, a beautiful magnificent
restored station. More photos later. The man credited with saving the
station is John Betjeman, a poet. His fabulous statue is in the station.

Fun on the train

Shooting sunset photos from a fast moving train, then posting to a
blog. Love it love it love it.

On the train to York!

Just left the station in London. Using the train's WiFi connection.
Update soon.

Flat 25 News

The group dinner for the residents of Flat 25 is two hours away. No cooking activity is evident in the kitchen yet, for the potluck event that’s supposed to happen at 7 p.m. If everyone participates with a home cooked dish, the kitchen is going to be crowded pretty soon, with at least six people competing for counter space and oven racks or burners. Should be interesting. I’ll update that big event later.

Robin and I made an apple pie and a pecan pie last night. Pam, from Thailand, has been updating a reminder for everyone.

Today’s art project:

Room 10 Peephole: Hallway Variations 

The Exhibit's  World Premiere is shown below.

Hallway Variation #1: Empty Hallway

Hallway Variation #2: Robin in the Hallway

It has been another full day of working on a digital slide presentation (below) for Robin’s grandmother’s 100th birthday celebration to be held in January. The presentation will be featured in one of our first blogs for Peachpit Press, “John and Robin’s DesignWorld.”

I left the residence hall once today, to buy ice cream for the homemade pies tonight. It has been snowing lightly all day. Now, at 5 pm, the snow is getting heavier.

We leave around mid-morning tomorrow (Tuesday) for London, then York. We’ll go in to London a few hours early to visit The British Library and have lunch before our two hour train ride to York. While in York we hope to hook up with Jay Baykal, the Turkish exchange student who lived with us for a year in 2000. He and his wife live in Manchester, a couple of hours from York.

A Sunday Work and Cooking Day

We left our Michael Bevis residence hall only once today, to shop at a neighborhood store and buy cookies and a couple of bottles of wine. For most of the day we've been working on a presentation.

Tonight we cooked two pies (apple and pecan) for tomorrow night's Flat 25 group dinner. So far I've met everyone living in Flat 25, except for an Italian girl who's away for the holiday break.

The residents are just slightly more ethnically diversified than my fellow students at Louisiana College, years ago. Most of those students were from Louisiana, with a couple from New Jersey and Mississippi, two from Iran, and a maybe one other from Brazil.

In this one flat we have:

Osman — his parents are from Pakistan, but he was born in Canada. His twin brother is here for a visit from Chicago;

Dido from Syria;

Hassim from Saudi Arabia;

Kwi from Taiwan;

Pam from Thailand;

Dao from Thailand;

Demetrius from Greece;

Abdul from Zanzibar;

Robin (and me) from the USA.

I’ll try to get photos of everyone Monday night during the potluck dinner.

Bilao and Osman, twin brothers. Pakistani parents, Canadian born.

Speaking of cooking, we went to Sainsbury’s, a large grocery store, to buy ingredients for baking pies for Monday night’s potluck dinner. We couldn’t find shortening to make a crust. We worked our way up the ladder of 4 Sainsbury’s employees, finally ending up with the head baker, and no one had ever heard of shortening or Crisco. They also have never heard of corn syrup, one of the ingredients we needed for our pecan pie recipe. We’ll get by without. I guess it’s a small price to pay for being walking distance from a pub that servers hot mulled cider.