Stories and Scotland

Tuesday

Tuesday at work I got to write a story about Marks and Spencer! It’s my favorite grocery store here that I talked about in one of my first blogs!

Here it is: Marks & Spencer defy the downward sloping market as profits rise to £714.3m

My family is coming to visit this weekend, but my dad had a conference, so he got in today. He met Grace Ann and I for dinner in the Spitalfields Market area. It was so great!

Thursday

Thursday is the last day of our working week, and as great as it’s been, it’s exhausting, so I was looking forward to the weekend, weekend… Sorry, had to.

Anyways, they gave me an extra article to write today, and it was on the homepage of the website! So exciting! For anyone interested in Ratko Mladic, here it is: Ratko Mladic's arrest ends "a very hard chapter in Serbian history"

A group of us went to eat dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Soho. They gave us two baby-sized bowls of chips-there were 7 of us- AND chip refills weren’t free. They obviously have not figured out how to do Mexican here yet. But other than the chip fiasco, it was really good!

We stopped at The Crown on the way home, and we hung out there for a while.  They had a fantastic music selection, and we sang every word to Say My Name. Just when we thought it couldn’t get much better than that, Sweet Home Alabama came on.

Friday

On Friday Grace Ann and I woke up and went to Crepe Affaire for breakfast. It’s a cute little crepe place like Crepe Myrtle right by our housing. It was so good! I got a Chicken Supreme and an I’ll Have What She’s Having, which was a desert crepe with Belgium chocolate, strawberries, and whipped cream. Yummm!

We made a little pit stop at the market, AND we found another market. These things are really bad for my newly found frugality.

After that we met up with my Dad and went to the train station to catch our train to Edinburgh, Scotland!

We stayed at the cutest Bed & Breakfast called Dorstan. We had the whole first floor to ourselves, and half the time I forgot we weren’t staying in our own little house.

The man who owns it lives next door with his family. He was so sweet, and he cooked us breakfast for dinner even though it was like 10!

My mom, Anna, and Andrew got in later that night, and it was so great to see everybody! We got little breakfast menus to fill out with our orders for the morning- they we’re so great!

Saturday

In the morning we woke up and went to the Breakfast Room and got what we ordered the night before. I got grapefruit, poached eggs, bacon, and toast, and it was all so good!

After breakfast we walked around town. I mean ALL around town. We took a cab back later and were shocked by how far we had walked-this was partially because we started out in the wrong direction for at least 25 minutes before we turned around-but it was cool to see everything. Scotland is beautiful, but the weather is SO weird. It would go through this cycle of sunny and pleasant to sprinkling to hailing and pouring down rain with wind that could blow you over about every 15 minutes.  

The most amazing candy shop we stumbled upon.

Don't we look impressed?

Scottish lambs!

Wouldn't be the first time Andrew's worn a kilt!

Proud member of the MacDonald Clan!

We walked down the Royal Mile, which is just a stretch of old cathedrals and other historical structures mixed in with some new shops and restaurants. 

The Mile ends with the Edinburgh Castle. We took a short tour and then looked around a little bit. The whole area was incredible, and it was really interesting to learn about some of the big parts of Scotland’s history.

In front of the Edinburgh Castle!

Beautiful.

We enjoyed the gift shop a little too much.

After that we went back to the B & B and watched Braveheart. Yes, we watched Braveheart in Scotland. Cheesy, I know. I had never seen it before though, and it was so good! It was cool to watch it there for the first time.

Sunday

On Sunday we took a train to St. Andrews. After the usual amount of Bonner family travel delays- a tree fell on the train tracks when we were one stop away- we got there and it was SO beautiful.

Waiting for the train to St. Andrews with Andrew!

Punny, right 219?! 

First we went to the golf course, and it was incredible! Cody, good thing we watched the entire British Open last summer-I’m sure that really gave me a whole new appreciation for the place. We all got to hit a little bit, and Anna, Grace Ann, and I were absolutely terrible. Still, it was cool!

Such a pro.

Not quite there yet...

...

 ...And neither was I...

...And neither was she.

So we just decided to watch.  

After that we walked into town and got their famous Fish and Chips for lunch! So good!

Yummm!

We decided to walk down to the Castle Ruins after lunch, but on the way we passed an interesting little coffee shop.

Some people probably don’t know about St. Andrews because of the golf course, but because of the college where William and Kate met. The coffee shop had this huge sign on the window.

There was this newspaper article about William and Kate next to the sign.

I can’t decide if they meant that they actually met there, or that they would meet there for coffee. Either way, it was fun to see!

We made it to the Castle Ruins area and is was SO beautiful! It was right on the water and it was such a pretty day!

Don't worry, Andrew hitched a train for us so we could get back to Edinburgh.

Monday

Saying goodbye to our new friends and their B & B!

On the train back to London.

The view on the way back.

Hope everyone’s having a great Memorial Day! We got the day off too for a Bank Holiday! 

Isaiah 26:12

Lord, you will establish peace for us, for you have also done all our work for us.

Westminster, River Boats, and Writing Articles

Saturday

We woke up bright and early on Saturday morning and were greeted by our tour guide who is quite the morning person.

Us with Joel- our informative tour guide and new buddy.

Joel taught us all about “English English”- the words that mean something different in England than they do in the US. In England they say rubbish instead of trash, pants instead of underwear and trousers instead of pants, and instead of saying awkward in an awkward situation (which he imitated in an American accent by plugging his nose) they break out in Kumbaya. He even taught us some abbrevs- like calling the Queen “Her Maj”. Emily, obviously this would have been your favorite part. 

He took us on a tour of Westminster Abbey, and it was incredible. There was so much more history there than I realized. There were even some tributes to Americans like Martin Luther King Jr. and FDR. It was so interesting to see all of the different kinds of people buried there and the significance of it.  The strangest one was Charles Darwin; I thought it was pretty ironic that he ended up buried in a church.

The group outside of Westminster before our tour.

Alpha Gam at Westminster!

So beautiful.

Martin Luther King Jr. in the middle.

After that we took a river boat to Greenwich (pronounced Gren-ich). I had never heard of it before, but it was such a cute little town! We loved it.

We had a guided tour of the Thames on the boat, and our tour guide was hilarious. We got to see a lot on the way to Greenwich.

Waiting for our boat.

Marie, Liz, Grace Ann and Me.

Our boat and the eye.

The Shard- when it's finished it will be the tallest building in Europe.

In front of Tower Bridge- not London Bridge!

Cher used to live here! She moved because everyone knew where she lived because of this boat tour.

This is so weirdly designed so that every room can be water front.

When we got to Greenwhich, we ate lunch at a little pizza place.

Then we just wondered around the town a little bit.

You will see this again, but it will be in Pirates of the Caribbean 4. They filmed a lot of it here.

We stopped by the Greenwhich Market, and it was so great- they had art, jewelry, clothes, food, and tons of other stuff. I made my first real shopping purchase of the trip-some cute handmade bracelets! I even bargained and got a lower price- Dad, you would be so proud.

Sunday

On Sunday we slept in and walked to a cute little restaurant for brunch.

Best hot chocolate ever.

We’d really only explored the area around our building that is on the way to our tube stop, but there was this awesome area on the other side that we didn’t even know was there. It has all kinds of cute shops and restaurants, but most importantly it has the SPITALFIELDS MARKET.

This place deserves all caps. It was incredible. They had all sorts of great jewelry, accessories, clothes, art, food and all kinds of other things. Everything was so unique and fun. We spent a few hours here after brunch and made a few purchases. At first we were really excited/overwhelmed by all the awesome stuff. But I remembered (thanks to all my Bonner family market experiences and the wisdom of Jim Bonner) that you can’t do that if you want to bargain, so we started acting semi-uninterested and asking for deals- worked like a charm! Dad, we’re getting pretty good.

Dying to know more? I wrote an article about the market!

Emily look- It's your Tacky Christmas sweater! This is the second time I have seen it for sale for real. Judy's still got it.

This was our favorite booth! The lady handmade leather accessories, and they were all SO cute!

This is one of her bracelets I got.

We went to the evening service at Westminster Abbey tonight. It was really cool to get to see what an actual service in there is like. He talked about the “small family wedding” that was there a couple of weeks ago. It was different and there wasn’t really a sermon, more like a story, but it was good. We sang a couple of familiar hymns and said the Lord’s Prayer.

Before the service.

We were waaaay overdressed.

We made dinner again tonight- chicken kiev, green beans, and garlic bread! So good! And I remember to take a picture this time.

Yummm!

Monday

Today was my first day of work! I thought I was going to be really nervous this morning, but I really wasn’t. I could really feel everyone’s prayers! It was a really long day - I’m not used to doing ANYTHING for 8 hours slash I couldn’t even take a lunch break until 3- but it went by really fast! It was intense and really busy, but I actually liked it a lot!

This is how the day started out- I walked in and when I went to sit down in the lobby I was greeted by a table full of the latest edition of the magazine. It looked like this…

What a warm welcome!

I would start working the week Mr. President is coming over here for a visit. Oh well, anyways… The first thing they had me do was write an article! It was a little intimidating, but it actually turned out to be my favorite part of the day! It’s already published online!

Most of you will probably fall asleep reading it, but I can be a dork about this kind of stuff, and I had fun writing it. So here it is, my first big publication:

http://www.newstatesman.com/banking-and-insurance/2011/05/merlin-banks-lending-target

Everyone if the office was SO nice and helpful! God really answered my prayers about this summer, and I can’t wait to see where he takes me over the next six weeks!

I decided to start closing each blog with a Bible verse that I feel like the Lord has been teaching me something from lately.  So here’s the first one:

Ephesians 3:20-21

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.