Jun 2007

Hi everyone,
Here I sit in an internet cafe on a rainy evening in London. What a place!!!! You should see it - things to look at everywhere, millions of people pushing around, bright lights, bad smells, dodgy hostels - it's great!!!!!! I'm here with my friend Miriam from Athabasca and we have been very busy the past couple days.
I left Leistershire on tuesday morning and arrived at Kings Cross (the station in Harry Potter) and got on the tube to go to Heathrow to meet miriam's plane from Calgary. We checked into our hostel which is a little on the questionable side, but it is cleanish and cheap which is what matters to us. From there we went to Covent gardens to watch street preformers and look in some posh shops, then to Trafalger Square, Westminster Abby, Big Ben and a couple other places near there. Today we have been busy seeing "Madam Troussauds Muesum of Wax figures" or something - it was wicked!!!!!!! You should see how real these wax people are, it's amazing. Tower of London was next including the Tower bridge. We got to see where the parts of the castle Edward the Longshanks (the bad king in Braveheart) designed and lived in. So much history, but too little patience to stand around and listen to it all, there is just too much to see! We went to Westminster abby again and actually got to go inside and go to evening prayers, it was beautiful. Then we went across the street and toured around the parliment buildings (miriam's choice) - saw the house of lords and house of commons - actually a kind of interesting day to be there because it is the day that Tony Blair the PM is resigning. Next we went on the London Eye - which is a huge ferris wheel with the people in glass capsules. Tomorrow we are going to science center (my choice), B-ham palace, and the Lion King show. Would write more but but my time on the internet is going to cut out soon. Hope you all are well and talk to you later!!

Hello again
It's a beautiful evening here in Leicestershire and I am making the most of this precious precious time to myself by updating y'all on what's been happening.
Ummm, let's see...... I have been working a lot. 9-10 hour days, 6 days a week. Ian assures me it will slow down a bit soon and I will get the 2 days off a week that I am supposed to. But for the most part I am enjoying it. I work in the shop 4 days a week either doing the till and serving customers or helping Suzy make the pies. Melton Mowbray is famous for Pork Pies, so I am getting well versed in the art of pie making. Then one day a week I work on the farm (where all the animals for the pies come from), then one weekend day I am out at markets and shows selling all the products. Today we were at the Rutland show which is about 45 mins from here and kind of like the Calgary Stampede only way smaller, and no cowboys.... or rodeos..... or mini donuts...... but instead it had the posh show jumping horses and hunting horses.
The horses in this country are amazing!!! They are all huge! Like their backs taller than my head. Leicestershire is the only county where fox hunting is still legal, so there are people with money that flock here with their hunter horses and dogs to do fox hunts, it's quite fascinating, the history of the hunt and the people that still do it in their tight pants and tall boots and red jackets and fancy helmets. Some people do it for a living even. Ian used to hunt quite a bit (he actually went on a few hunts with Prince Charles), so he has some beautiful big horses that I may ride sometime if I can find a ladder to get on.
One thing I have been having difficulty with is the pants or trousers calling. You see in England, they call a pair of pants a pair of trousers. And they call underwear pants. So the other day when I got the bottom of my pants caught in the chain of a bike and ripped them, you can imagine the reaction I got when I tried to tell people what happened. I have also said that my pants are really dirty and asked my boss if I had to wear black pants to work. It is tough to be misunderstood!
In my spare time I have been playing a lot of basketball. I got asked to join this summer league team and I said yeah, and we had our first games last wednesday, and I went to it thinking it would be just like intramural type, but no............There were uniforms and referees and steroid filled men who could dunk. There were only 2 other girls playing, both on different teams. Come to think of it, there are not many sporty girls here at all.
I joined Young Farmers a couple weeks ago and immediately got adopted by one of the girls who is sort of in charge. Her name is Emma and she has been planning my social life for me since! It's great! Last night 14 of us from the club got together for my birthday and ate Chinese food and went out on the town - very fun, yet very expensive! The club has a meeting/event every tuesday night, and every meeting/event ends at "The Sugar Loaf" which is a pub about 2 miles from my house. This week we are playing Rounders (which is like baseball - they don't play real baseball over here). We are playing to get ready for June 17 which is the Rounders competition against the other Young Farmers clubs in the county.
I got great news from my old Vikings teammate and friend Miriam that she is coming to London for 4 days before she flies to Africa to volunteer for a year. I am so excited! I think I should be able to get the time off. I need to talk Canadian to someone. I feel I am losing my accent, people only ask me to repeat myself 20 times a day now.
That's all I got. Hope you all are good. I miss you!
P.S. Congrats Kelly on one whole year!!!!!