Brit Bars Vol. 2

One of the great things about the UK is that these are available from the first of the year until a month after Easter. Another great thing about the UK, is the Cadbury Twisted which is available all year round. The Twisted is the classic Cadbury Egg fashioned into a twisted Twix bar shape. Very nice for those times of the year where one is missing the gooey goodness of the egg.
A surprise sweet that I am really enjoying are Starbursts. The fact that everyone in the UK uses real sugar instead of HFCS as a sweetener makes these moderately enjoyable candies extraordinary over here. The downside however is that one of the original fruit flavours over here is Blackcurrant. which tastes extraordinarily like a raisin. No good.
The last candy bar that I love is a Cadbury Double Decker. Named after London's famous bi-level buses. This treat is best described as a combination of two of my favorite American sweets. A Three Musketeers bar and a Crunch bar. It is a bit thicker than your normal candy bar and is a thing of beauty.
Though, since we all know about British dentists and their handiwork, I'll try to lay off the sweet stuff.

It's Like The Internet In Newspaper Form or Oh my-I-O

My (Zac's) local paper back in Ohio has a section entitled "Readers Tell Us". Readers Tell Us is an editorial that allows folks to call the newspaper on the phone and leave a thirty second anonymous message with whatever they have on their mind. This can range from thanking a good Samaritan for returning their keys at the mall, to asking for help in getting rid of earwigs, to (as most often occurs) complaining about the government. It is probably this feature of the paper that keeps it profitable as many only read the paper for it. As Garrison Keillor once said, "A good newspaper is never nearly good enough but a lousy newspaper is a joy forever." So without any further ado, a few swatches from the Alliance Review.

"Dry eyes. Does anyone have any solutions for dry eyes? It would be really appreciated."

"All right people of Alliance, here's your challenge; on July 4 between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m., somebody set fire to a building in Alliance. Look around your house. Who wasn't home with you last Sunday at that time? Who came home smelling of smoke and fire and was a little bit dirty? Whoever that person is in your family needs to be turned in. Stand up for what's right. Stand up and do what you need to do--turn this person in."

"Black and white need to stand together against illegals becoming citizens. We are going to become the minorities. Spanish and Muslim populations are growing very, very fast."

"This week we need to pray to open the eyes of those who would destroy this country as our founding fathers envisioned."

The Big House

As you may have heard we moved house (as the Brits say) three weeks ago. The lease on our cottage was up and we had not seen anything a) in our price range and b) that was not located in downtown Maidstone (NorCal people think Vallejo, Ohio people think Canton, all others think rundown town area).
We were fortunate enough to have the curate (read associate pastor) of our church offer us a few rooms in he and his wife's home. A few rooms? you ask.
About a year and a half ago Chris, his wife Ruth, and their two teenage sons Johnny and Peter moved into a turn of the 20th century grange house. The house was formerly publicly owned as a residence for visiting judges from London who would preside over court cases in Maidstone. I have not gotten around to counting the rooms, but someone at church said it is at least nine bedrooms. There is an area that was formerly the servants quarters that Erica and I have been allowed to set up shop in. It is four rooms and a bathroom. One of the rooms used to be a kitchen, but that room had been renovated before we moved in. In exchange for rooms Erica and I have been doing work specifically on our area of the house. The whole house is in a bit of disrepair and work will continue on it for the foreseeable future. We scraped wallpaper and painted the room we are now using as our bedroom and are scraping wallpaper on another room.
The property sits on a large piece of land and we have been enjoying the outdoors. As with the house the garden (read yard) needs a lot of work. Much of it is being left to grow for now, but the back yard is clear and is home to a croquet lawn. (Lawn being a relative term). We challenge Johnny and Peter on a regular basis and fair pretty well.
The only downside to all of this is that we will have to be out sometime in early September. The church is taking on an apprentice who is hoping to go into ministry and the space has been promised to him. We are enjoying it for the time being though.

Zed is for...

I was under the impression that zed was only to be used in France, Quebec, and language confused parts of Canada.
The first trouble came when we called a company over here looking for car insurance. While we often outsource our customer service lines to various Asian countries, England outsources theirs to...the Scots.
The exchange between Erica and the Scottish gentleman on the other end had gone smoothly until it came to getting our names down.
"And what is your husbands name?"
"Zachary, Zee-A-C-H-A-R-Y"
"Sorry, what was that again?"
"Z-A-C-H-A-R-Y"
"Um...okay, we'll put that in the post shortly"

Upon receiving our newly purchased insurance we discovered the confusion. The policy had been made out to Erica and Vachary Neubauer. Ah, Zed is bigger than we thought...

I was reminded of this confusion today at work when I had to take inventory of the letters that we iron onto the back of England football (read soccer) jerseys. "We have six Zeds? What is the plural of Zed?" Between my five co-workers who were standing there they could not decide.

For a fun look at Zees, Zeds, izzards, and uzzards, take a look here.

The Great Evangelical Pastime: Church Swapping

Being discontented with the church we were attending by default, Erica and I decided to give church hopping one more chance. I talked Erica into visiting a C.O.E. in the nearby village of Loose. (I've mentioned Loose before here) While church hopping initially we had heard the curate (read associate pastor) of All Saints Loose speak at a different church and I was impressed so we decided to give them a chance.
We are so glad we did.
Our first visit was Palm Sunday and was the kickoff of a week known as Passion For Life week in which the church was very intentional about welcoming outsiders. They had a quiz night the night prior, the first session of Christianity Explored the next night, and other events for the non-churched public. We were warmly welcomed (there's a first time for everything) and ended up meeting the vicar (read head pastor) and his wife and chatting for a bit after the service. We told them why we were in the UK and that I had been looking for a job. We mentioned the church we had been attending and Steve told us that All Saints was probaly more "text based" than the church we had been attending and then proceeded to use the term "expository preaching" as the method the church followed in teaching scripture. I have never in my life been to excited to hear that term.
It turns out that Steve (the vicar) just took over the post in September and that All Saints is his first head pastor position. He is a graduate of Oak Hill Seminary which is one of the seminaries I was considering if we stay over here long term. There is certainly an enthusiasm and life to the church started by the previous vicar and now really taking off with Steve. The church isn't a one man show however and that is another aspect that we are excited about. There seem to be four or five other Godly men who preach on a regular basis and wise believers of both genders who make up the church along with a lot of newer Christians.
Erica is jumping right into helping the church do some branding and establishing itself graphically. We're still considering what exactly my role might be, but it sounds like we'll at least be helping out with youth group a bit.
With All Saints as a home base we are really beginning to contemplate being over here long term. If we can play a role in a growing body (and get Erica or I a decent job) we'd love to do it and there are so many opportunities in the C.O.E. for followers of Christ to step forward into a society that is suffocating without Christ both inside and out of the church.
We have been so blessed in our two months of being a part of the body.

Europe Road Trip, Part 2

After 3 days in Paris we said goodbye to Erica's cousin and drove to Geneva, Switzerland. It ended up being the sunniest and warmiest day of our trip, and we spent it in the car for 6 hours! The countryside was beautiful but the toll road was not: over 55 euros to get from the top of France to the bottom!!! We made it to Geneva, met up with Zac's sister Anna, and went out to "The Swiss Chicken" for dinner- sounds like a diner but it was actually a charming bistro sort of place with big salads and of course chicken. The next day we walked around Geneva, seeing the cathedral
the Reformation Memorial, the Reformation Museum (we didn't go in as it cost money)
and the iconic Geneva fountain, here pictured with the lovely Anna.
Then we head 2 hours north into the Alps and visited the beautiful little village of Gimmelwald.
We had to ride up a gondola to get there (no cars are allowed). The weather was sunny and warm and we hiked in the Alps and drank the fresh mountain water that pours out of the village's taps. We would love to return there sometime!
For our next outing we returned to France (just minutes away from Anna's place) to the town of Annecy, where we played Frisbee next to a icy-cold lake (the weather was again fairly warm and we got hot, so I stuck a toe in to cool off- and my toe nearly froze off!). Annecy's town centre has a series of canals and cobblestone streets which we walked along, it is very picturesque.
From there, we spent one more day in Geneva checking out the great collection at the Museum of Art and History (or something like that) and then headed to the Black Forest, Germany!
Erica's favorite thing in Switzerland: hiking in the Alps at Gimmelwald!
Zac's favorite thing in Switzerland: good cheap chocolate!

Europe Trip, Part 1: Paris

Here is the long awaited Europe trip post, sorry for the delay.
We started out via ferry from Dover to Dunkirk and drove into Paris, arriving at 12:30 am in the morning. Prior to leaving, we had bought a European road atlas, which was actually useless, as it only showed where the major cities were and those are easily locatable via road signs; when we got into Paris, we spent 1 1/2 hours driving around, trying to use Zac's high school French to ask directions to my cousin's studio flat, which we finally and gratefully found. Our first day in Paris was Easter, and we went to a Easter brunch with Americans studying in Paris (very nice people) before setting out on our own to explore. The weather was slightly rainy but the sun did make an appearance later. We came out of the metro station and immediately in view was the Eiffel Tower, incredible! Also incredible was the size of the line at the Louvre Museum; sadly, we weren't even given the option of waiting in it, as they closed the line due to overcrowding.
We then walked all around along the Seine, to Notre Dame, and the Musee d Orsay (also ridiculous long line) and anything else we could stumble across.
Easter also happening to be Zac's birthday, we went out to celebrate at a Breton cafe (the sort of Britishy region of France) serving buckwheat crepes and cider- an interesting but delicious pairing.
The next day, as advised by my savvy cousin, we rented bikes to cruise around the city. Its a great deal: you pay 1 euro for 24 hours access to bikes all across the city; the only catch is that you can't keep any one bike more than 30 mins.
We hopped on and rode to the Eiffel Tower, where we enjoyed a picnic lunch of cheese and bread on the lawn beneath. The flowers were all out and it was a beautiful Sunny Day. However, it being Easter Monday, which is a public holiday in France, the line to go up had about 400 people in it, so we decided to forgo that pleasure and contented ourselves instead with attempting to get far enough back from it to get the whole tower in our camera's viewfinder (no small task).
After seeing the Tower, we rode across the river (riding next to it was miserable as it is mostly cobblestones) to the Arc De Triomphe and the Champ Elysees (the avenue that runs through it). We dodged traffic ala "Frogger" in order to walk underneath it; it was hard to imagine what it must have been like to see the Nazis marching through it.
The last thing we did was the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, a huge place with loads of famous people buried, including Oscar Wilde. As we showed up minutes before it closed for the night, however, all we saw were a few pretty mausoleums of no one in particular.
Erica's Favorite Part: Riding bicycles from place to place.
Zac's Favorite Part: Eating buckwheat crepes