Dear Lantern Weekly, Happy New Year to you all!  Just before Christmas, Bay Tree Cottage had the morning gatherings.  John talked about Big Ben and how its iconic Dong is famous around the world and how excited he was to be heading to London for New Year's Eve and to hear that 'dong'. Mark talked to us about the time map.  How, on the time map of the world in the East, sits New Zealand and Australia, they celebrate the New Year a whole 12 hours ahead of us. Then to the West, the Americas and Canada, being one of the last places on earth to welcome the New Year, almost 12 hours after us. We heard a great account from  Anwar and Raphael about Christmas in their different countries.

Then on the 28th December what seems like a whole year ago, Bay Tree took the coach to London. We stayed ten floors up in an apartment. From our balcony we could see the O2 to the left and to the right the office building known more by its unofficial name of 'the Gherkin'. We stayed here for five nights. On Thursday we boarded our pod and took flight on the giant London Eye. With great views of the City and Parliament, followed by a river view of the City in a boat.  Friday took us to meet the famous of the world, from cinema stars, music legends, to heads of state ~ Madame Tussauds.  On Saturday morning we became scientists and saw the amazing world of how things work and why they work.  A good rest in the afternoon before we headed out again for the last night of the year.   We found a great view by Cleopatra's Needle and waited. Perhaps you saw what we saw. Heard that long awaited 'dong' twelve times and the night sky came alive with a world class display of fireworks. With 250,000 people watching and 4 from the Lantern!   It was awesome!

                                                                                                                                Anwar, John, Mark  and Immanuel