Somusing

Even though we are all speaking English, there are many times when we have trouble understanding people here in England. I knew this would happen, but it's still amazing and fun. The UK has many, many different accents and dialects (Wikipedia has a long comparison of American and British English , if you're interested), and some are harder to understand than others. Liverpool's accent, called Scouse (Liverpudlians are known as Scousers), is one that's known to be hard to understand -- they talk fast and squish words together and leave words out and have slang terms unique to Liverpool, and when I've overheard Liverpudlians speaking to each other, it sounds like a completely foreign language. When we arrived at church on our first Sunday in Liverpool, I was surprised when people started asking me if I was okay. "Are you okay?" they said. And "Are you all right?" I thought I must look pretty tired or something, but it quickly became apparent t...

Here are some other photos of our recent Liverpool excursions. Erin waiting with me at the Queen Square bus stop: The Liverpool ward building and stake center of the LDS Church: The former railway bike trail we walk on to go to church, and on this day we moved for the weekend to a different apartment because ours had been booked before we came along: Phin eating a dry Weetabix and hunk of cheese for lunch with Zed napping behind him: The LightNight Liverpool festival, with lots of public events. We attended the re-opening of the public library which has lots of open space, interesting architecture, and a public rooftop desk with a nice city view. We also went to late openings of museums and the town hall, etc.: Mira and I saw dancing Chinese dragons on the street in front of the Hard Wok Cafe (really) accompanied by a crazy loud firecracker display, and around the corner some concrete guitar cases with labels naming famous Liverpool guitarists such as Paul Mc...

I've now been several times to the Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King in Liverpool and it's my favorite cathedral here, and one of the nicest modern-style churches I've been to anywhere. It's beautiful, with interesting tapestries and carvings, many small chapels off to the side each with different character, purpose, and dedication, and a nice large main worship area. Pope John Paul II led mass there in 1982. I felt it more successfully brought a sense of reverence and worship than many other cathedrals I've visited.

Lillian, Seth, and I went out around Liverpool one day to see various war memorials and the Walker museum, where we saw much statuary, paintings, the Loophonium (see someone else's short video of it): One of the most surprisingly moving pieces for me was a 10-minute silent video presentation from 2002 by Bill Viola called Observance . He said he based it on The Four Apostles panel painting finished by Albrecht Dürer in 1526. I didn't know that when I was watching it, but the framing, slow movement, and color saturation all point back to The Four Apostles. I really liked it. This short 1-minute excerpt from Observance gives a feel of what it's like, though the short excerpt can't show much of the interplay between the grievers. See the Artsy.net Bill Viola page for more of his work. We also saw the Liverpool docks: There was a monument commissioned and donated by the LDS Church to commemorate the many families who left Liverpool on ships for America: ...