Lazy British Summer...

Howdy y'all!

Long time, no write! I hope you're all doing well. Since we've been back from Africa, things have been rather hectic catching up at work for both Annelies and myself. But we're finally settling back into a nice rhythm of working hard during the week and enjoying the nice weather during the weekends.

We decided to pick a half-marathon to run in September (13.1 miles), so we're now busy training for that. It will be in a small town called Mablethorpe on Sunday, September 10th. That gives us just about 10 weeks to train and get in shape for it, which we seriously starting to do last week. Mablethorpe is in the northeast portion of Britain, so it will be nice to get out and check out the countryside a little bit. After the first week of training, I can safely say that 13.1 miles is a long way to go :-P

Kew Gardens & The Salaam Music Festival
Two weekends ago we decided to expand our "cultural horizons". We went to a music festival called "Salaam", which means "peace" in arabic. The music festival was held at the Kew Gardens (which usually comes with a GBP12.00 charge just for admittance, and was 1/2 off for this festival). First of all, the Kew Gardens is quite spectacular in its own right -- the gardens hold thousands of types of plants, trees, and even some exotic plants; as Kew is devoted to the scientific study of cultivating and growing plants, everything is labelled in Latin names. Luckily for us, neither had to ask, "hmmm, I wonder what they call that plant (in Latin)."

The music festival was very entertaining and enriching. The focus of the festival was traditional and pop music from the Muslim world. We saw bands from places such as Iraq, Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, Kenya, Indonesia, and Pakistan. Between the sets, the organizers spoke a message of peace, non-extremism, tolerance, and civility both within and outside of the Muslim world. A quick poll of the audience showed that there was an equal mix of white, black, brown, yellow, pink, orange, and even a few blue people!!! (I don't really want to go into what the guy was smoking to turn himself blue...) ;) People of all religions were out to enjoy the hot day and nice music -- Christians, Arabs, Jews, Buddhists, etc.

Our personal favorite was the Iraqi band (pictured below). Those guys started out with some very traditional Muslim music and by the end of their 6 song set, had the whole audience rocking out to it! A spontaneous group of dancers broke out near the front of the stage; the most entertaining was a lady who really never left the sixties -- she would dance, gyrate, bang on the ground, throw her hands in the air, and even play the air bongos! I wondered if she was even listening to the same band as the rest of us...

A Trip to the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club

As all of you in America who have HBO know, the Wimbledon tennis tournament is one of the biggest events for those elite atheletes that excel at "stroking the fuzz" (i.e. Tennis). It's two weeks of grueling lawn tennis, on often hot summer days, just outside of London. It also happens to be quite

a British "thing to do" in the summer. Being good marketeers, t

he All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club (AELTC) knows that having a scare product can certainly help increase demand. As such, thousands of British citizens and tourists alike camp out at the gates of Wimbledon, queueing up for their chance at getting tickets to enter the AELTC grounds, eat strawberries & clotted cream (DELICIOUS!), and see a few matches at center court. One of Annelies' coworkers even camped out overnight during the tourney, and was rewarded with center-row seats in Court 1.

Determined to share in the fun -- but not so keen about camping on concrete -- Annelies and I decided to go to the town of Wimbledon during the last Saturday of the tournament. Myself being adept at most-things-internet, I decided to do a little research on how to get tickets to see the tennis. Well, it turns out that, indeed, the AELTC releases up to 5000 seats each day for reasonable prices (GBP 20 - 45 depending on the day and court you get into); these tickets are non-transferable and expire once you leave the Club Complex. They also sell series of "debenture tickets", which grant the owners the right to transfer, sell, profit from, and have access to each and every day of Wimbledon for 5 years (current debentures are good from 2006 to 2010). "Wow!" I thought, "how can I get my hands on these?" "You need a lot of money", said the Internet. The Wimbledon debentu re tickets are actively traded by Barclays bank (yes, they trade kind of like stocks in the stock market) and even seem to be a good investment. For those lucky (and rich) enough folks who decided to buy tickets last year for GBP 23,500 each, they could leisurely sell them for GBP 33,000 just before the start of Wimbledon!!! That's a sweet 40% return on your investment! If you're interested in trading Wimbledon debenture tickets now or in 2010, I suggest you check out their website at http://www.wimbledon.org/en_GB/about/debentures/index.html.

Anyhow, we just hopped on the Tube (Wimbledon is 5 stops away from our flat) and walked around the AELTC. Then we walked into town, had a bit of lunch, then watched the Women's Finals from a pub in Wimbledon. Kinda like the real thing!

A Seaside Trip to Brighton
After 3 or 4 false starts over the previous 6 month s, we finally took a trip to Brighton yesterday. Brighton is a town directly south of London on the English coast. To describe it, one could simply say that it's like "London by the sea". After a quick 1 hour train trip, we enjoyed a fun excursion to Brighton on a clear and sunny day. The city apparently became very popular with the upper-crust and royal society of London sometime in the 1700's. It remin ds me a little bit of the touristy cities of New England in the US, although certainly with the English flair.

There were plenty of English folks and tourists alike as it was a perfect beach day. However, the

odd thing about Brighton -- which is SOOOO not like American beaches -- is that the beach is
made up of small pebbles and rocks! That's right, no sand! Everyone's out there sunning themselves (sometimes sunning too much of themselves because children are present...) but lounging around on rocks! Oh well, I guess if that's the London-Victorian-elite's idea of a nice beach hangout, I shouldn't tell anyone otherwise...

We had a lovely day walking around the new and old piers, checking out the marina complex, walking through a few intense rounds at an executive-golf-course-by-the-sea, and doing a bit of shopping. We both liked Brighton and would certainly go back on another nice lazy summer day (next time on a beach chair, of course!)

We hope everyone is well and can't wait to hear from you soon!

Love,

-Annelies & Jason