Gills adventures

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!!!!!

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!

Hello Hello,
Yes, babies everywhere...... Human, bovine, sheep, you name it! My host family had their little babe a week ago tomorrow. David Alexander, good Scottish name. It's been fun, always people dropping by, family coming to stay etc.
Calving is winding down slowly and we are mid-lambing. Not to brag or anything but I am really starting to get good at lambing a sheep! Today I lambed one where there was twins and their heads were like right on top of each other in the birth canal, so I had to push one back and then find the correct front legs to pull them out.
My supervisor for agriventure came to meet me today. He is the guy I call if there are any problems or anything with my placement. Simon is his name, he is really nice. He went on Agriventure to Austrailia and Montana, 20 years ago. He's getting me set up in some Young Farmer's thing where young people just get together and do some fun activities, I guess kind of like 4-H maybe???
My friends Mel and Steve who live in one of the farm cottages (I figured out the other day that 17 people including me live on this farm) took me out to a castle in Dornoch for supper and drinks on Friday night and then on Sunday afternoon I had some time off so we went to Mel's hometown which is 30 miles away and went hiking. It was so nice, great to see a little more countryside. So handy that they live 50 meters from the house!
I need everybody's help.....I was having a conversation with someone here and we got to talking about rats, and I said there are no rats in Alberta, and they asked why and for the life of me I could not explain why. They think it is something my parents told me when I was young so I wouldn't be scared. But it's true isn't it? So if someone can do some research and give me some scientific facts about why there are no rats in Alberta it would really help me out!
Hugh and Willie (Dad of host family, and Grandpa of host family) figure we are about half done lambing which is great news for me because it means I can take some holidays, and maybe sleep past 7 am one day. 6 ewe's have died so far, and I think there may be another dead when I go out tomorrow. They have never had so many problems apparently - maybe I am bad luck. 3 of the ewe's have died from this mysterious illness, Hugh thinks might be called Pregnancy Toxemia, where they are giving so much, nutrient-wise, to their lambs that they don't have enough for themselves. We have been treating them with this stuff call Liquid Life-Aid. (note: Has not been working).
So yeah, to sum up - just working away and still having a great time in this weird and wonderful world!
I hope everyone is doing great and thanks for all the emails and comments, keep em comin'!!
Ta ta

Hi everyone!
Things are going quite swimmingly here in the highlands as I approach the one week mark of being up here (ha ha - swimmingly, good word).
My biggest fear coming up here was that there would be a language barrier - everytime I told someone at home I was going to the highlands they all said the same thing - that I wouldn't be able to understand a thing. Quite the opposite however, much to my relief. Their accent is strong but I have had no problems understanding. The two younger kids think my accent is pretty funny. When we're all sitting at the table they say, " Gill, say water..............say football..........say window........." and on and on it goes!
My second biggest fear was that I was going to be soaked and freezing the entire time. So far, there has only been one afternoon of moisture - can't even call it rain - more like mist. And it has been quite sunny and warm. A little windy but very tolerable!
The sheep started lambing the day after I got here, as it stands now we have something like 11 sets of twins. Yesterday there were 3 sets of triplets, but none of the mothers can handle 3 lambs so I am bottle feeding 2 of them, the other we have put on another ewe.
As most of you know, I have had virtually nothing to do with sheep my entire life, and now as I am thrust into a sheeping world, I realize how lovely cattle are........Sheep are so dumb - trying to chase one into a pen by itself is just a waste of time - it's not going to happen. While the sheep are lambing, Hugh has an old retired shephard that he hires who comes and stays in the sheep shed all night, every night with the sheep for 3 weeks. I don't think you could pay me enough for that job!
I have made friends with a young couple who live in one of the cottages on this farm (have I mentioned it's pretty massive?), they work in Golspie and the girl (Melanie) and I have made plans to go riding together this week. No western saddles over here, so I'll be trying my hand at the english style.
I wish you all could see this place, it is so beautiful. Think mountains, and woodlands, and ocean, and you may be able to conjure up some ideas. I haven't taken any pictures yet, but I will and will try to figure out how to post them. Don't hold your breath though because it's a pretty elderly looking computer here......we'll see what happens.
Take care now, bye bye then.
Or as they say in Scotland.......Cheerio!