Today, we said "goodbye for a while" to our friend, Thomas, who was visiting us from England. I feel he brought the cold weather from the UK with him, but I marveled the entire time he was with us at how things weren't cold to him, but to us, we were "freezing."
I hope he had a good time. He had two weeks to visit us--one while we were in vacation mode, and one while we were back to school.
We would have never met him had it not been for Kelsey's Gap Year, and knowing him and other Christians from "foreign lands" reminds me that God is NOT an American and that He has a global mission for all. Christ loves EVERYONE even people with whom we disagree politically, socially, and morally.
Words that Americans use that are NOT okay (for various reasons) for the Brits to use:
spunky, pants, fanny pack, and the American name, "Randy." Today, while Claire was playing basketball, I said, "That girl is spunky," and Thomas laughed. He also told
There were some common UK words that aren't okay in the USA, but Kelsey had done a good job of forewarning him, so Thomas didn't say them at all. lol. Thomas then told us that Allison, earlier in the week, said she was going to "Roll her pants up," and that made him laugh.
Speaking of lexicon, I should have made a list while was here as I'll never remember it all, but Thomas uses words that Americans know in different ways. I guess words that we commonly use he uses, but then extra words we might say occasionally are common for him. We were watching a Chelsea Football match the other night and one of the FC announcers said, "The team is really sparkling," which stuck with me. Things like that--but from Thomas.
We had New Year's Eve at our house and Brittany and Taylor, Kelsey's life-long friends, came over and spent the night and Allison and Anthony visited for the evening. After an intense game of Cranium and Outburst, we realized it was after midnight and said, "Happy New Year!"
I must say that in passing when Peyton's Scoutmaster would remind us that it is colder in the country than the city when preparing for campouts, I didn't really pay attention, but this week, I definitely did--temps. in the teens aren't normal for this time of year, but one perk to "country livin' " is that on Thursday and Friday we didn't start school until 10:00 a.m.
This was a blessing as Thursday night we were licking our wounds from Texas's National Championship loss, and were up late that night.
One hick-up with country life or the extreme cold is that we had a power flicker during the game, but thankfully it only happened once.
Stay tuned--a teacher told me this week that she and her husband, when driving through our neighborhood, saw a wild hog on our property. This week Kent was watching a four-part video series made by some good ol' boy with a thick accent about how to "gut a hog." That should be an interesting quest.
The living room redo is almost complete. We have a few wall accents to find, but for the most part, the room is finished. I need to "stain" the buffet, but I've had this piece for a while (my mom stripped the old finish off of the buffet). I'm going to stain it with a red tint that matches the "orange/red" in the fabrics. It's hard to tell from the ottoman (which looks orange because of the yellow undertone), but think "barn red" and you'll know what I'm talking about.
