Christmas at the Baecher's

We were invited to spend Christmas with Claude and Elisabeth Baecher. Elisabeth is Ed's first cousin. They live in a town just a 15 min drive from the Basel airport. They have four children all living away from home now. Marie Noel, the oldest daughter lives in the south of France and was not able to join us. Olivier is the next oldest. He spent a summer with us when we lived in Kansas working some for Brad Shue doing roofs. He is married to Valerie and they have a little 18 month old girl, Lucie. Then there is Florence who married in September and lives about one hour away from them. Viviane is their youngest. She spend one year in school in Goshen going to Bethany Christian High School. During that time she came to Harper for Christmas with our family for a little over a week. She is now working and going to school but was home on a break. I was not able to sing the words to the carols but I did hum along as the music is mostly the same. Of course they all speak very good English so I had plenty of people to talk to. We had a great time with them all and are very grateful their hospitality.

In the first picture is right before we took a walk over a bridge to Germany. Ed is trying to look French with a hat he borrowed from Claude, I told him it just made him look older.

The next picture is of Olivier and his daughter Lucie.

And then a picture of Florence and her husband David.

Basel Switzerland

On Christmas day we went to Olivier and Valerie's apartment for lunch after we had gone to church. We had raclette which Ed and I love. If you do not know what this is let me tell you. Raclette is a type of cheese but you can use other cheeses for this meal. There is a raclette oven, or machine that is electric. It sits on the middle of the table so everyone can reach it. There are little dishes that you put your cheese on to and then put it into the oven and it melts the cheese. You then take a boiled potato, cut it up and put the cheese on top of it. You can add anything you want, either putting it into the oven first or not. The concept is a bit like fondue in that you eat slower as you are waiting for your food to bake and so the conversation flows on.
We were so into the meal that Ed forgot to take a picture.

The big red building is the City Hall in Basel. We were able to walk through the front part into a court yard where there was a huge decorated Christmas tree. It was at night, was very cold, and Ed's pictures didn't come out too well as he was shaking from cold so the camera wouldn't hold still.

The picture of the elaborate manger scene is one of the cute store windows.

Roman Ruins

We visited a town nearby where Claude and Elisabeth live where Roman ruins have been discovered. The town Augusta Raurica was first begun around 15BC, existing until around 320AD. In 250AD, a large earthquake, and then warfare soon made the city mostly uninhabited. In the picture of the theatre, we are standing where the statue of the God they worshipped at the time would have been.
In the picture of the snow, we are walking along the Rhine going to a place where they believe baptisms were carried out after Christianity arrived in about 310 AD. Christianity arrived in the city via traveling salesmen (traders) but was reinforced later by monks from IONA (Scottish monestary still active) who brought more formal teaching and doctrine.

December 22, 2007 is our 28th wedding anniversary. We had no specific plans so we headed out to Central London. Here is Leicester (pronounced Lester if you are American or Lesta if you're a Londoner)Square. Leicester Square is where they show the film premieres before they are shown anywhere in the UK. So if you are really ambitious you can head to Leicester square early, wait for a long time and maybe you'll see a movie star. It's always a hive of activity. There was a small carnival set up there over the holidays.

Hyde Park Square

This is Hyde Park where they set up a carnival, food mall, and arts/crafts boothes. There was also this ice rink there. During the holidays, there are several rinks set up around London.

I finally got to see the Nutcracker. Every year I think that I'm going to make it to a production and every year it gets by me. I mentioned this to some of the others in the office one day and so when Janelle had two tickets to see one at a theatre in Islington, London, she asked if I wanted to buy the ticket from her and go with her. The tickets weren't the best seats, but I could see it even though I did end up with a neck and back ache. Anyway. If you click on the little x in the upper left corner of the next entry below, you will see the advertisement for the ballet. It was a slightly different slant on the nutcracker but it was fabulous!

The Nutcracker

The following pictures are: Ed & Phyllis wearing their paper crowns at the restaurant. Jane and Tina, two of the part time workers. And Ed and Dora-Marie after our lunch back at the LMC showing off their chocolates and bows that were on their gifts.
For some reason I was unable to add the dialogue to each picture like usual.

Staff Christmas lunch at Bakko's

Christmas crackers!!!

I'm sure many of you have heard about Christmas crackers. Everyone does crackers here. We had them at our Christmas lunch. We (The LMC staff) walked to Muswell Hill which is a 20 min walk through the woods to a Turkish restaurant. Before the meal, we had our crackers. Here's a bit of history about crackers:
Crackers are very popular and accompany many meals over the Christmas period, especially on Christmas day. A Christmas cracker is a brightly coloured paper tube, twisted at both ends. There is a banger inside the cracker and when it is pulled by two people, the cracker snaps in half making a loud bang. Inside the cracker there is a paper crown made from tissue paper, a joke on a slip of paper and a little gift.

How to pull a cracker: The traditional way to pull a cracker is crossing your arms and pulling a whole circle of crackers all around the table. Everyone holds their crack in their right hand and pulls their neighbours cracker with the free left hand.

Why do we wear king's paper crowns?
We wear paper hats on special occasions like Christmas Day and birthday parties. The traditions of wearing hats at parties goes back to the Roman Saturnalia celebrations (celebrated around 25 December) when the participants also wore hats. The idea of wearing a paper crown may have originated from the Twelfth night celebrations, where a King or Queen was appointed to look over the proceedings.

LMC staff

This is Alastair McKay (pronounced Mceye). He works at the LMC in the Bridge Builders department. He is the director of the department. Bridge builders runs training courses in mediation and facilitation skills for church workers. The courses are 5 day courses which are quite intensive and have become very popular. Courses fill out quickly and have waiting lists. They run them all over England and Scotland. I am officially the BB assistant, doing lots of office work for them. There are 3 full time workers for BB, one of them being Sharon who is a graduate of EMU, majoring in peace, justice, and reconciliation studies. She is on a 3 year term through Mennonite Mission Network, same as Ed and I. We have been trying to get a one year volunteer to work at least 4 days a week for them but nothing has worked out so far. I don't know if MMN has advertised for it or not. However, we needed someone so I said for the short term anyway, that I would do as much as I could and see how it went. So now I'm host and BB assistant. It's good for me because I like to stay busy.

This was at someones birthday tea. We are having trifle I think. Yum!

London Mennonite Centre Christmas Party

Saturday, Dec 8th was the Centre's work day and Christmas Party. We meant to have people come in the early afternoon to help rake the remains of the leaves in the garden then stay for soup and later for the annual party. The rain forced us inside and everyone helped with the mass mailing that needs to go out next week. We were able to solve many of the worlds problems over two hours of labeling. There were about five or six others that are not in this picture that also helped. They are some of the Centre's workers as well as church members and other friends of the Centre.
In the picture above, some of the party participants are in the lounge stringing popcorn and cranberries, putting whole cloves into oranges, and making paper snowflakes and other ornaments for the tree.
Here are a few of the kids of those that came to help out. They took refuge in the office to make paper airplanes and play on the computers. I got busy and didn't get pictures of the caroling around the piano (about 40 people were singing). Plus all the cookies that were baked for the three days prior to the party which drove us all crazy having to smell them and not be able to eat them. Total party participants totaled around 58. Many people stayed around the centre talking, stringing popcorn and eating. We had a lot of fun.

The last Cross Currents seminar for the Fall was last Saturday, December 1st called the Emerging Church: An Anabaptist Perspective. by Stuart Murray. He spent 12 years as an urban church planter in East London and continues to be involved in church planting as a trainer, mentor, strategist, and consultant. He is chair of the anabaptist network and author of several books. My only regret about working here is that I am busy in the kitchen and don't get to hear these speakers. I am still amazed at how many amazing people stream through the Centre in one capacity or another.
The other amazing thing is how often Ed and I are called upon to explain to others about the Mennonites and anabaptism and usually at the most unexpected times. Like when a delivery person is at the door. Last week we had a new floor put in at one of our flats that we rent out and the guy who showed up to do the work asked Ed about what the Mennonites are. And of course they want an answer in just a few minutes time. Days are rarely boring here.

Christmas at Covent Garden

We took Ed's parents to the transport museum which was at Covent Garden in Central London. Here is a part of the market there. They have it decked out with lights and trees for the holidays. There was an opera singer there which you can see in this picture. He is walking around singing to the crowd to recorded music. He was really good.
There were a lot of these hanging chandeliers all through the middle of the market.

A trip to Central London

Ed's parents treated us to see the play Les Miserables. It was really wonderful. It's been running in London for more than 22 years. The singing was by far the best of any of the other plays we went to.
We did most of our getting around with mother and dad on the tube. They are studying the tube map trying to figure out where we are.
Prior to going to the play, we walked through China Town.