Big news recently was the earthquake on Saturday morning. Britain doesn't get many quakes you can feel, but there was one on Saturday that was 4.3 on the richter scale. We couldn't feel it in Sheffield, but it damaged some homes in the southeast of England. Hopefully we won't get one in Sheffield anytime soon.

Sheffield is currently bustling with its largest annual event: the World Snooker Championship. It rates up there with the World Series in terms of how world-wide it actually is though. Almost all of the snooker players in the tournament are British, with a couple Irish, one Australian, and two Chinese players thrown in. Snooker is a bit like pool, but with a small table and different rules. The balls are different colors as well. They have set up lots of signs and made a small snooker village near where I work. The snooker championship slogan is strangely reminiscent of Highlander "There can be only one." I keep waiting for a player, upon winning, to smack off the other guy's head with a pool cue and absorb his snooker skill. Not sure that will actually happen though.

Here's a view from the top of Montmartre of the skyline, including the Eiffel Tower.

This is obviously Sacre Coeur, from the steps below it. It was a nice place to visit, and very close to where Sarah and Nissim lived. It was incredibly crowded though. I think this is the only attraction we actually went inside for a bit.

During our first day walking around Paris, we had lunch at a little cafe in a square. Here's Victoria looking good despite being sick most of the trip.

It was beautiful and sunny almost the entire time in Paris. The same was true the day we visited the Eiffel Tower. We spent a lot of the afternoon lying around on the grass, relaxing.

Our "French" hosts, Nissim and Sarah. They were kind enough to let us stay with them. Nissim and I went to high school together. Sarah actually is a French citizen, though she is an American too.

Here's a view of inside the Eurostar. It was pretty packed. I thought the train would be larger, like the shinkansen, but it was pretty tight inside.

Here am I on the Eurostar train, headed to Paris. The channel tunnel part only lasted about 20 minutes. It was faster than I expected. It was mostly just dark.

This is the being remodeled St. Pancras station. The Eurostar will leave from here to go to Paris in November, but in the meantime we had to take the Underground to Waterloo station.

The building in the top of the picture is the Owen building, the largest building at Sheffield Hallam University where I work.

The day we left for Paris, it was a really sunny day in Sheffield, so I took some pictures by the station. This is the giant wall of water and a series of cascading waterfalls. The air conditioner-like building in the back is the Sheffield Hallam student union.

Job, job, job, job! Victoria got a job offer today from the school she did a placement with first semester. She really wanted to work with them, and is super excited about it! She gets along well with the other teachers there and the school is getting a brand new building for next year. It is also nice that she doesn't have to worry about applying to other schools, etc. for the rest of the year like many of her co-students do. That can be a real hassle, and a bit depressing too.

We will probably try to look for a new place to live that is closer to her school so she doesn't have to commute so far every day. If we don't find anything, at least our place is close to the train station currently.

We made it back from France last Tuesday night. It was a great trip, and we had loads of fun in Paris. We stayed with my friend Nissim from high school and his girlfriend Sarah (plus their cat Natasha). They are living and working in Paris and have a nice 1 bedroom flat. We stayed in the living room on a futon.

We spent most of our time wandering around Paris on foot and eating and drinking. Unfortunately Victoria was sick with a cold during the whole trip and I caught it for the second half. But we didn't let our general grossness stop us, and kept walking around despite it. We did sleep 11-12 hours a night though, so our bodies must have been tired. I'll post some pictures and more details later.