Birmingham

While writing my last post on our engagement, I realized that I never posted pictures from our trip to Birmingham last June to pick out an engagement ring. We spent the morning in the diamond district, but we spent the rest of the day exploring the city. Better late than never, some pictures.

I didn't take many pictures in the diamond district or at the moissanite distributor (a tiny hole-in-the-wall buried in a very boring looking building) but here's a picture of a ring I much admired that didn't make the cut. I think it looks like leaves, but Mordu is strongly reminded of snakes:

After shopping, we sat down in St. Paul's Square, an old churchyard that doubles as a public green space, to take a lunch break:

The whole area is populated, seemingly randomly, with mossy tombstones:

I took many pictures (I won't bore you to death with tons of them) while Mordu sat on a bench and read. Here, I'm experimenting with "aging" the photo to look nostalgic. Instagram must have gotten to me.

In the 19th century, Birmingham was the world's largest manufacturer of pens. And by pens, they mean little metal nibs that are screwed onto wooden sticks and then dipped in an ink pot for a refill every few words. One of the factories is now a two-room museum. The factories are small because you really don't need much room for this kind of manufacturing.

Along the right wall is a row of machines that each serve a different function in the pen-making process.

The first machine punches out the basic shape of the metal:

And then other machines shape, mold, imprint, and further refine it:

This man showed us how it worked and let us then work down the machines, making our own pens:

And the last machine weighs the pens for packaging:

So many! Back in the day, you could buy a box of 100 for a penny.

Other display cases show various packaging for pens and pots of ink:

And this is a fancy display of pens for advertising purposes:

An imp-shaped inkwell:

We also got to try them out. They are actually delicious to use, my penmanship is way nicer using these than with a regular ballpoint:

Birmingham, like the rest of the U.K., has strange weather. Here are two pictures of the same street (looking opposite directions) taken a few seconds apart:

And while we were caught in a doorway during a downpour (this happened several times over the course of the day), I took random pictures of myself reflected in the glass:

The following two pictures are just for Katie ;-)

We had dinner in a pub called "The Shakespeare":

Afterward, we explored the downtown shopping district called "Bullring Market". These buildings are all quite new:

The requisite bull:

A rather bizarre building that is part of the new shopping and office complex:

And again from a different angle:

The secret to the success of this shopping district: free cash!

And, finally, we walked around to see a bit more of the city at sundown:

City Hall:

Glass elevator:

Botanical Garden & Engagement

As long as we're having a snowpocalypse here (it's been snowing for more than 12 hours and it's really piling on inches out there - even more since my previous blog post!) and the entire city of Jerusalem is shut down, I'm going to permit myself to compose a somewhat more lengthy post devoted to our engagement about six weeks ago. And because, as Jonah tells me, I suffer from ADOS (Attention Deficit...Oooh Shiny!) there may be a little over-talk about the ring here. Forgive me :)

Mordu and I have been talking about marriage for a long time, but neither of us knew thing one about buying an engagement ring. I wanted something that would be beautiful and last, but was ambivalent about a diamond for both ethical and economic reasons. My best friend, Kelly, recommended we check out a synthetic gemstone called moissanite. Rare in nature, first discovered on a meteorite, and today synthesized in a North Carolina lab, moissanite is easily mistaken for a diamond because it is nearly colorless, but is in fact more refractive (i.e. more sparkly!) and nearly as hard.

The only distributer of moissanite in the U.K. is located in Birmingham so we took a trip to the factory last May to pick out a ring. It took some time to decide on a setting (that's another great thing about moissanite—the stones are all of roughly equal quality, so you just choose a setting) and by then there was not enough time to have it made before I left England. So, we waited until Mordu arrived in Jerusalem and then ordered it shipped to Israel. Although I knew a ring had been ordered, I had no idea when it would arrive, so I didn't think much about it when Mordu asked if I wanted to take the morning off to explore the Botanical Gardens in Jerusalem (not far from our apartment).

These pictures are in the order I took them. Here's a view of the gardens as you arrive:

The visitor center has some beautiful leaf "paper cuts" by a local artist:

Train that takes kids around the gardens:

I really liked the bark on this tree:

Mordu refills his water bottle. I still have no idea what this is all about:

Mordu suggests we find a shady, secluded corner and sit down to enjoy the scenery. Sure, I'm game:

I put my head in his lap and tease him: "I'm going to take a picture so you see what I see from this angle."

And with my head still in his lap, he asked me if I'd like to marry him.


Pictures of the ring:

Then I took a picture of us. Not so flattering, but it's all I've got (there was no one around to take a picture for us):

And then I took a picture of our view from the spot where we were seated:

We decided to finish walking through the park and I took some more pictures:

That evening, after we had called our families, we went out to dinner at 'Tmol Shilshom to celebrate. Our waiter took this shot. It's not great, but it's the only one I've got:

We didn't realize until several hours later that the date of our engagement was November 29th. This is the date in 1947 that the U.N. voted for partition of Palestine into two states (1947). It so happens, the street we live on is called Kaf Tet B'November (Hebrew for 29th of November).

I thought I had posted some pictures from our trip to Birmingham last spring, but apparently not. I'll put some up in the next post.

PS - It's STILL snowing out there!