Bruce Almighty

Dad said there was a group of Dutch kids at his program in Iona, Scotland who nicknamed him "Bruce Almighty" because they could hear him laughing 500 metres away.

Yesterday, Dad got some sightseeing in around London: He caught the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace and then stopped in at my office before heading back to the Westminster area to spend the afternoon at the Cabinet War Rooms. He topped off his British government tour with a brief visit to the Houses of Parliament where they were having some debate on climate change.

In Chinese class last night, we learned that cathedral is 大教堂 (big church). Also, in Chinese they have measure words. So, whenever you talk about a quantity of something, you have to insert a measure word. You can't say three apples, you have to put a measure word between the three and the apples. The most common measure word is probably 个 (gè) and if you don't know which measure word to use, you can probably just say 个 and get away with it. But there are some particular measure words that you use with certain types of objects. Some can be translated as "glass" or "dish", e.g. 我要一杯啤酒 -- "I would like a glass of beer". We also learned 条, which is supposedly used for "various long narrow things" but we learned it because it's used for dog. Another measure word we learned a while back is 口 (kǒu), which means "mouth". Our teacher told us last night that this is a special measure word used for family members and pigs.

Dad met up with me and some friends after Chinese and we went to the Old Bank of England pub. Today Dad is visiting Coventry cathedral and tomorrow he heads out to Paris.