May 2007

Hi all,
Current home: Melton Mowbray, Leistershire, England.
It's a nice place, I like it a lot. I'm living with a very nice family, the Warwicks (Val, Mark, Ben and Joe), and working at Brocklebys Farm Shop. I really like living somewhere different from where I work, it's much better. The house is another one of these old stone ones with barns attached to them (back in the day, they kept cattle in there which helped heat the house). It has all be redone, and I am living in the loft of the old barn part. It's pretty nice, like my own little apartment! I think Val really likes having a girl around, she has done a lot to make me feel at home. Ben and Joe both are living at home while working and going to college, so it's great to have my age of people around again!
The Warwicks live a couple miles from the farm shop where I work, and from Melton Mowbray which is the nearest center. They call it a town, but it has 20,000 people!!
I started working at the farm shop on Sunday. They sell like everything pretty much as far as food goes and all of it organic. The meats are their specialty. Ian (the owner/manager/boss man) has 300 sheep that he uses to supply the shop. There are about 15 people employed by Brocklebys and I am one of the few who does everything. Some days I work in the shop, some days I chase sheep around, other days I help make pies, and pretty much every weekend I go to markets or shows. My first one is on saturday, so I can't tell you much about it yet, I just know we go places and do stuff.
Tomorrow morning I am having a driving lesson. The last Canadian who was here (from Milk River, AB) nearly gave Ian a heart attack when she drove the first time, and she also got into an accident, so he's not taking any chances. I gotta do the driving lesson and if all goes well I will be in possession of one of the ugliest vechicles I have ever seen in my life. It is an old ancient bright orange diesel van. Not like a minivan, but more like a cube truck, but smaller......yeah it's pretty. You can hear it coming from miles away. So that will be my wheels for the duration of my time in England!
I am planning my first train journey on Thursday afternoon! I have to go to Leister for an identity interview to get my national insurance number, for tax purposes or something. I am so excited to ride a train, but am fairly sure I will get lost in Leister, as it is so hard to even tell which way is North in this twisty, windey country. I'll let you know how that goes.....
Last night Val took me into Melton for rec basketball, and it was great! I guess I can't really call it rec bb because we actually did drills and stuff - they called it training, but I don't know about that. Anyways yeah it was good and the guys there asked me to join their summer league team. I'm going to "train" with them again on friday night. Tomorrow night I'm going to yoga with a friend of the Warwicks. So yep, that's me in a nutshell.
Bye for now!!!

Yep, it's true, I'm getting kicked outta Scotland! My host family dropped the bomb on me a couple days ago that they can no longer host me. Apparently they are having some family problems that I was totally oblivious to, and they need some time to resolve them without having a houseguest. The mom of the host family hasn't been well since the baby and I guess she is just under a lot of pressure with everything. They said it's nothing to do with me, but I was still kind of upset when they told me I had to leave. I've made some great friends here and am really having a lot of fun, so I didn't want to go very badly.
The only thing I regret is that I worked everyday since I got here, because it was so busy with the lambing, with the understanding that I would be getting the vacation days later, and now I have to go and I haven't been to Lismore, or Glasgow, Edinburgh, the Orkney Islands and all the other places I wanted to see in Scotland. The day after they told me (Sunday) I took my first full day off and me and my friend went to Inverness and to Loch Ness and went "Nessie Spotting".
So I am leaving Scotland tomorrow and moving to Leistershire in England (that's in the midlands). I'm going to Brocklebys farm shop. I'm going to be working on the farm one day a week, then the rest of the time working in the shop or helping with the "shows". Apparently they sell everything from home baking to parts to machinery in the shop. The guy there just had a Canadian trainee who left last week. I really don't know what the shows entail, whether it is like livestock shows or farmers market type things I don't know. It sounds like a pretty good deal. I don't live with the people, I just live nearby and they give me a company vechicle to commute! My driving over here is alright......... as all my friends know I am terrible at knowing my right hand and left hand, so I really have to think about staying left in these crazy vechicles. I can't even count how many times I have gone to get in the drivers seat and gone to the wrong side. And don't even get me started on round-abouts......
But anyways, I should get back to packing. I hope everyone reading this is doing great. Hope to hear from you soon!