beloved bel

Yes another baby shower tea party, on two consecutive Saturdays!  For the one last week, it was far, far away.  It was up north in Derby, more than 3h drive on the road (I checked and it also takes the same time to take the train from Kings Cross station).  When I told my sis in law Denise, she commented that it's like going to Bangkok.  Indeed so. How cute is this teapot? I travelled up with Mims, her sis Samantha and Yimi.  What to say?  This is called dedicated friendships hah.  Phillipa, the mom to be, is having her second baby and it's a girl, who we call baby Smith.  Phillipa and Richard are really people with hearts of gold.  They are the unsung heroes of church and I do owe them.  Years ago when I had to move house and all alone, they both came to help.  And by helping I mean Richard borrowed his company van and drove all the way down with Phillipa to help me move all my stuff into the van, and then unloading it at my...

And the official baby shower season has started.  So many of my girl friends are pregnant at the moment and giving birth in successions.  The world is having a baby boom people! Last Saturday I attended the baby shower of one of my closest friends, Gabby.  Gabby and I met when we were relatively new to London, and we attended the same Hillsong connect group.  The five of us international girls got one really well and became my main girly group here.  It was a great combo mix too: Scottish - Norwegian - Czech - Ecuadorian - Singaporean, a mini United Nations of friends! When Gabby got married to Ben, I was honoured to be included as one of her bridesmaids.  When her grandma came over we hung out too even though she couldn't speak English and I couldn't speak Spanish.  She loves Chinese food so I do invite her over for some homecooked food once in a while, or sometimes we meet in Leicester Square for our Asian food fix.  She always says she ...

Christmas sounds like ages ago but of course it needs to be documented, it being my favourite holiday of the year.  This post is special because I've asked Pris who came over with her family, to blog about it!  As mentioned previously Pris and I go a long way back.  We were in NTU and met when we both joined Campus Crusade for Christ and were in the same discipleship group.  The friednship was cemented when we went to Canada for student exchange and it was there that we all knew Stephan, "the other exchange student from Germany".  Soon after Pris and Stephan started dating.  Fast forward they got married and she moved to Germany.  I had no idea that fate would bring me to this part of the world, and since arriving in London, she has very kindly invited me to join her and the Tews family for Christmas every year.  It's also Pris who inspired me to start a blog to keep in touch with family back home and I never knew I loved writing that much - th...