"May you live in interesting times"

My parents taught me long ago that "may you live in interesting times" was not a blessing, but a curse. And we certainly are living through interesting times now in London. We tend to not post political things/events to this blog (not a mention of the election!), but I thought I'd share some thoughts tonight, since the blog is about our experiences living here.

With the attacks two weeks ago, and copycat or incompetent attacks yesterday, living in London is getting, well, more unpredictable. Thankfully we walk everywhere we need to go on a daily basis, so our regular schedules haven't been interrupted, and more importantly we haven't lost anyone we knew directly. One of my work colleagues lost his brother to the attacks on July 7th. He's been back at work since then, but I can only imagine what feelings arose when yesterday's news of new bombing attempts broke.

The places that have been hit are more than just names to us: Edgeware Road is home to the Woolworth's I shop at when the girls are in Sunday School; Russell Square is the Tube stop for the British Museum, as well as the stop for the picnic the girls and I went to on July 2nd. And one of this week's bombs was quite a bit closer to home--Shepherd's Bush is where we do all of our shopping, go to the library, and see movies--we live on the north side of the Shepherd's Bush neighborhood. We were at the Tube station that was closed yesterday just this past Saturday, shopping for presents.

There's a lot of comments about the British not being perturbed, or at least unbowed, by the attacks. The reality is that a lot of people are worried, but don't have the freedom to not go to work--which means they've got to get back on the buses, back on the Tube. One of my work friends has basically kept her boyfriend from going to his office downtown for the better part of the last two weeks (he can work from home). On the other hand, Shawn's Sunday School class still went to the British Museum on July 10th. Personally we're not planning to curtail any planned activities--London is such a big place that the risk of a random attack affecting us is quite small. And conversely, there are places in London that were dangerous before all this, that we do avoid. We had a great time in Egypt, a month after bombings there...I'm not sure what lessons to draw from all this, but wanted to let you know we're doing fine here though things are a little weird, and occasionally stressful. The girls aren't perturbed; we've discussed some of this with them and it's been discussed at their school as well.

Oh, and if we are mentioning current events, London was pretty stoked about getting the Olympics. If for no other reason than that they beat Paris. But for those of you who've asked, we're not planning on being here in 2012.