Pikkujoulut
The first weekend of December some friends from Finland invited us over for Pikkujoulut, or "Little Christmas." I guess this is the traditional Finnish Christmas party, where we enjoyed some traditional food and drink that was prepared by our hosts, which was awesome. There was a white elephant gift exchange (or apparently if you're from Memphis, "Dirty Santa"). Jenna got some cookies and I got an ornament. There was a quiz over the history and traditions of Finland (the world record for the sauna world championship - sit in a 230 degree sauna until you can't stand it - is just over 17 minutes). There was even an appearance from Santa Claus. It was a very fun party and helped us get the Christmas season started.
Stomp
Last weekend we had nothing planned, so we thought it would be a good opportunity to hit the London theatres for the first time. There is a tkts booth (1/2 price retailer, same as in NYC), so we went there. It opens at 10:00, so we needed to leave around 9:00. Turns out that is a little too early for us on a Saturday, so we got there just after lunch, so the selection was less than ideal. We'd been talking about seeing Stomp for several years, but never really got around to seeing it, so we figured this would be a good opportunity, since it was pretty cheap.
In between getting the tickets and the show, we went to Harrod's and braved the Christmas crowd. We were looking for a decent snow globe, and their Christmas section ended up being at least 50% off, so we also ended up with some ornaments and a Christmas puzzle.
Stomp was pretty good. Our seats were excellent, and the show was pretty impressive. After about an hour, I guess I did get a little bored. I guess there's only so many things that you can bang on before it starts getting repetitive. We're really glad we went, but it didn't compare to Blue Man Group that we saw this summer.
Cambridge
Like when we went to Oxford, we bummed off our KC friends that have a car and drove up to Cambridge. The weather was significantly better than Oxford - 50 degrees and off-and-on sunny. Again, we took a guided walking tour of the campus/city. Our tour guide was incredibly disappointing. She was some kind of scientist before retiring, so she concentrated her tour on all of the scientific breakthroughs that happened there. She showed us all of the buildings where they discovered things like blood flow and DNA, and talked about a lot of scientists that nobody has ever heard of. She did mention that the school is involved in other things like philosophy and history, but that was mostly a side note.
The buildings and the campus were amazing. It is a little weird to walk into a church and see the section that is dedicated to Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn and to think that he stood in the same spot several hundred years ago.
All in all, Cambridge was very cool, but I think we preferred Oxford. If anyone reading this has some affinity to one or the other, our bias is probably based mostly on the tour guides, so don't get too upset. That, and the T-shirts in the gift shops weren't all that nice.
Misc
A few random items from the weeks:
-We finally decorated our house for Christmas on about the 12th. All of the local stores were sold out of fake trees, so it took us a while to get one. It looks good now, though, and it helps make things a little more festive.
-The Christmas puzzle we bought (the first we've put together since being married) made me realize 2 things. 1 - When Jenna sees that a puzzle may be difficult, she just tries to not get started, thus saving herself from getting annoyed. 2 - When I see that a puzzle is difficult, I HAVE TO beat it. In this instance, I did win. It took a little time, and we decided that of the 1000 pieces, Jenna placed about 15. Just don't know when we'll give puzzles another try.
-We went to see a Christmas Carol concert. The churches here don't really play Christmas music, and since we don't have cars we don't get non-stop carols starting November 1st, so Jenna was pretty excited to do this. We saw the Mozart Choir and Orchestra. The orchestra was dressed in period wear - so white wigs, tights, and buckled shoes. That was probably the highlight, as we realized fairly soon that Christmas carols are very different here. They have a bunch of weird ones that we've never heard of, and then about half of the ones we knew were set to a different tune, which kinda ruined it. It was nice for the 3-4 songs that we knew and had the right music, and it did a pretty good job of making it feel Christmassy, but we probably won't be back next year.
