Just Under the Wire

Hello Dear Readers,

Had another really great weekend (this year seems to have been full of them!).  Adding to the list of my high school friends who have made the trek out here to visit me (Jennifer, Adam and Melch, Matt, Devin, Luke, Amy) Susan sneaks in right at the end of the year!  Hoooray!  She came under the pretense of giving a talk at the Institute of Physics, but I think we can all agree that seeing me is the highlight of the visit!

 Sunday morning I took the tube out to pick her up from Heathrow.  We went up to Great Portland Street to drop her luggage off at the hotel.  Fortunately it was very close to Oxford street so we could spend the day doing a bit of shopping!

 I took her to YumChaa, my favorite tea shop in Berwick Street, then we wandered around such highlights as Liberty, where I fondled the yarn section (as usual, they have ALL the Rowan yarns!)

 And we had fancy tea in their tea room, complete with Christmas themed mini mince pies and a delicious but mysterious jelly (English jelly, Jell-o to Americans) thing with cinnamon flavor.

 We walked around Regent street to see the lights, and of course hit up UniQlo and LUSH!!  Walked to Chinatown, Leicester Square where the Hobbit grand opening was on Friday, Trafalgar Square for some truly weird carols before walking Susan back to her hotel, wet and tired but so happy.

Monday night Susan came to my house for a traditional English dinner of Bangers and Mash.  Don't get excited, that just means sausages (vegan in our case) and mashed potatoes, which I served with a side of stir fried kale.  Yum!  And mango for dessert.

Afterwards we went into the living room to try to get a nice serious photo together, unfortunately we were talking so much and laughing so hard we couldn't really get one.

It looks a bit like that strip of photos you get in a photo booth.  In the third one Susan is recreating a funny high school photo which I don't think I have an electronic copy of (Jennifer?).  I like the last one which is a classic Susan pose where she is clearly explaining something to me in a hilarious manner.  My brother came downstairs and asked what all the laughing and screaming was about but really we couldn't say, it was just funny!

 We did get a semi serious one over here by the fireplace, which is in full Christmas swing now.

My mother and sister sent boxes with gifts, so they are piled up, PLUS the huge mystery present from Chris to me.  No idea.  Also, if you look closely to the right of the American flag is a sweet handmade hand painted Nativity scene Susan's mother, avid reader of this blog (Hello Mrs. Clark!!Thanks for the gift, I love it!) made and sent to me.  It's fantastic!  I'm sure I took a close up photo, but I think it might have been on Susan's camera, which is very similar to mine.

Well, Christmas will be a let down now after Susan's visit, but what can we do? Just get along until the next visit comes around, which I hope will be sooner, rather than later.  Miss you already Susan.

We are spending a quiet Christmas at home, I have Monday through Wednesday off (the day after Christmas, called Boxing Day, is also a national holiday here) so I plan to do ALL the laundry in the house, sheets, towels, heck, maybe even curtains!!  We'll see.  It would just be nice to know that everything was clean starting in the new year.

Hope everyone has a good Christmas, I'll report back soon.

Cheers

Scillier and Scillier

Hello Dear Readers,

Part two of the Scilly trip, as promised.  On Monday we went to the island of St Agnes for Mark to do another Wildlife Trust talk and for us to finally start on our collections.  Here is Megan carrying the plant press around in the field.

After some hot dusty plant collecting work we found the pub near the harbor and sat for about an hour, drinking and relaxing.  It was such a hot day that I even braved taking of my stuffy boots and plunging my feet into the glacial waters.

That's as far as I got, but Mark went knee deep, and Elisa went up to her waist!  Apparently after a while you don't feel the cold but I wasn't going to stay in there long enough to find out.  It sure was pretty to look at though, look how BLUE!!!

There was even a lovely blue butterfly on the island which we saw all over the place.  I managed to catch two in the act, but what I like about this photo is how you can clearly see the difference between the dorsal and ventral views of the wings.  You wouldn't know they were the same butterfly if you saw them separately
.

The butterflies were on the island of Breyher (pronounced like Briar Patch) where we went on Tuesday.  This was probably the smallest island we went to, only 1.5 miles long and 1 mile wide.  The most exciting part of being here was searching for the dwarf pansy.  It was a beautiful flower (damned hard to photograph though) but it was also hilarious watching a whole group of botanists butts in the air admiring this little gem.

Here is one of my best attempts at photographing it, with my 10x loop for scale.  The pansay is the little purple splotch...... you can try clicking to make it bigger, but I don't think my macro setting was really up to it.

Wednesday was a "free day" in that Mark didn't have to give a talk, so we did some more serious collecting around St Mary's, with plenty of time for fun of course.  Megan explored some exciting rocks (in some exciting home made leg warmers to protect her sunburned legs).

And we climbed to the famous preacher's rock, no mean feat for someone like me who is a bit skittish of bouldering after that nasty accident when I was a camp councilor....

We hiked out to the site of neolithic burial chambers and settlements, here even before the Romans came.

And our real free day on Thursday was spent finding PUFFINS!  We took a boat that specifically promised we would see puffins and seals and they were not wrong.  They live mostly on the uninhabited (by humans anyway) islands of Annet and Samson.  This is probably the best shot I had of the birds, but they were everywhere.

 Kate had a handy monocular since the puffins are a bit shy and tended to fly off as we got close.

This seal on the other hand seemed almost too happy to pose for use as we came by. Not shown in this photo is the baby seal that was swimming nearby, perhaps that's why (s)he? was waiting around.

Friday was our last real day of work so Thursday night we had a bit of a celebration in the Barracks by lighting a bonfire in one of the old gun wells.  We had a grand old time finding dead wood in the nearby foresty area and burning as much as possible.  We grilled meat and veggies, invited the ornithologists over (they were looking for shags.  Honestly, it's the name of a bird!) and had a grand time singing songs (that was me and Kate) dancing around the fire in our bras (that was just Kate) and listening to tunes on my iPad (that was me).

Friday we spent on the island of St Martins and made a feeble attempt at collecting, but by this point we were all totally knackered.  After hiking out to see the famous Scilly Ant and giving up our search for the Scilly bee, we took to the beach, as it was probably the nicest day we had.  

 Kath made the mistake of lying too long in one spot so she got covered in sand and turned into an exquisite mermaid princess, complete with seaweed wig and merkin, as you do.

Clockwise, starting from me, Kath, Elisa, Megan, Kate, and Jacquie

Nothing left to do after this but catch the ferry the next morning, wait till 5 pm in Penzance and take the 6 hour slow train to London (thank goodness for iPads and knitting) and arrive at 1 am in Paddington station.  Phew!  What a great trip!

So much more has happened since then but this post is already long and photo heavy so it'll have to wait till next time.

Cheers!

A Quickie

Hello Dear Readers (both of you, no, three, Kat emailed the other day...hi Kat!)

Just a quick bloggie today, for two main reasons.

One, Chris doesn't get back until late tonight (1 am) so I'm still limping along on my housemate's computer. It's painful because it's a bit old, the internet explorer hasn't been updated in a while and it has an ENGLISH KEYBOARD. What is an English Keyboard? It's another one of those quirky things about moving to a new country, even though we speak the 'same language' there is always something just a little different to keep you on your toes (and it's what makes living in England fun, no really, i'm not being sarcastic, it would suck if everywhere were the same) . Anyway, things are just different enough to slow me down, the letters are in the same places, but the shift key is smaller, so I keep hitting the \(for some reason next to the z), and the " is above the 2, and the @ is above the ' next to #, ~ and the enter key. Weird.

Second reason for quickie blog, Chris doesn't get back until late tonight (1 am) so I'm cameraless and I think the blog is a bit blah without photos. But when I get it I'll try to capture some of the lovely springness that has been happening around here. Cherries and Apple trees in bloom, lovely fields of daffodils, and people walking around without bloody big parkas on! Still lots of scarves, seems to be THE fashion accessory around here. If you don't have time to accessorize, wear a scarf!

Knitting night tonight. I think I talked too much as usual but it is always so lovely hanging out with those ladies! What diversity! What knowledge! What patience for me and my big American mouth! And they didn't make fun of me too much when they asked what I was knitting and I said......hot pants. Hope it means the same to them as to me and not something crazy (have already established here that pants=underwear, and tank top=vest....didn't have time to look up 'hot pants' in my English to English dictionary). I intend them as yoga/sleep/warm up shorts, but who knows, I just may take London fashion week by storm this year.....

A Grand Day Out in Gilford

Hello All,

Last weekend Chris and I went to visit his cousin Christiana in Gilford (yes, Chris has many cousins, and many are in England). It's a really quaint little town just south of us, and we got to take the train and everything. I LOVE the transportation here!

Here is a picture of Chris and I on the High Street. We, well, I, did a little yarn shopping (I'm making a giant pink baby blanket in acrylic! Help me Steph!! What was I thinking?) then met Christiana at the Slug and Lettuce (how cute a name is that for a restaurant!). After making another diversion to another yarn shop, we walked on the high street and enjoyed the street musicians playing American sounding blues..


and in true Cypriot style spent the rest of the afternoon in a coffee shop. My Greek gets phenomenally better after hanging out with a bunch of Cypriots, and their extensive use of hand gestures helps a lot! We went to Christiana's house for some more drinks, then Chris and I bolted for the train, just stepping on as the doors were closing. Still loving the public transport.


Today I went out for a while and saw two pretty neat things. The first was a crow actively dropping a nut onto the hard rocks of the river shore to crack it. Something I've read about a lot in biology, but the first time I've observed it for myself. On the same walk I also got to go through that quintessential British trail sight, a kissing gate! No one to kiss when I was there, but it was fun anyway.

We are looking to do something fun next weekend as well, and I'm going into the city some time this week to have fun too, so more to report later.

Cracking the Enigma

Hey gang,

What a fun weekend. I finished Patrick's hat (well it's fun if you are a knitter! and here is the Ravelry link if you are)


On Sunday Chris and I trekked up near Milton-Keynes to visit Bletchley Park where the Brits cracked the Enigma code during WWII. We went with his cousin (also called Christodoulos, but Dakis to the family) and his wife Rowena, who is British by birth but like me has moved around quite a bit and now calls Cyprus home. It was really amazing to see Alan Turing's code breaking machines in action, and the fantastically creative solutions they were able to come up with to crack the codes.

We have passes for a year so I think we'll be going back up there again to see more of the code breaking history. They are even rebuilding one of the computers (named Colossus) they used just from a few blueprints and photos, I would love to be a computer engineer in on that project. It also happened that this weekend was the LGBT heritage weekend (Alan Turing happened to be gay) and we heard two lectures about him, though there wasn't nearly enough math in it for Chris. We wanted some equations, dammit. What I want to know is, what about the hidden Lefty history of the world? The lefty community has been a silent 11% minority long enoough, I want to see Lefty history month celebrated, who's with me?

We went to the "Flying Fox" pub afterward for lunch (not a Freehouse I'm afraid Molly) and I had this yummy nut roast with Yorkshire Pudding (which is actually more like a bread bowl......very tricky to eat delicately). How English to finish up a rainy day walking around historic grounds than with Sunday dinner at the pub. It was really fun to visit "family" over here. I guess I've finally traveled so much I'm starting to cross back on myself! That, and London is a pretty popular place to live and visit. Open invitation still stands!

Watching the English

On the recommendation of a few friends I checked out a book from the Library called Watching the English by Kate Fox. It is so fantastic, I wish they had one called "Watching the Texans" when I moved to Amarillo! The most interesting part is that I have a little bit of an uncontrolled experiment going on because I'm reading the book as I'm here and so sometimes find myself in situations before I've read about them and sometimes after. For example, we went to a pub on Friday and I noticed some differences between American bars and pubs, but didn't think too much of it. Reading her chapter on Pubs though threw a whole new light on the experience. When we went in I automatically started looking for a place to sit and wait for a waiter, but my brother said no, we have to go to the bar to order. Fair enough. But Kate goes in depth as to why this is so, how the English use going to the bar as an opportunity to talk to other people since starting conversations is culturally more difficult here etc. etc. Fascinating.

The chapter on language was really interesting too, having lived with Madeleine (Hi Maddy!) for a while, then reading about all the words she uses and what they mean in terms of where someone is from etc. What I found particularly striking was how so many of the words that "smart" or "posh" upper class people used (sofa instead of setee, dessert instead of afters, home instead of inside, bathroom instead of toilet) were common (no pun intended, for those familiar with the English use of the word "common") in American usage. I wonder if Americans were trying to imitate upper class accents and that turned into the American vernacular? or did our adoption of those words evolved independently ? Fascinating stuff, even if you aren't an anthropologist. I did skip ahead to the chapter on sex (!!!) just out of curiosity and it largely involved a discussion on dating. Very apropos because a girl in the knitting group has a date on Thursday. Perfect for me to compare notes with Kate Fox's ideas on the subject.

Fun English difference of the day noticed at the Hammersmith Bus station waiting for my Red Double Decker number 220: Way out instead of Exit, Way In instead of Enter.

I'm Here!

Well followers (all three of you.....) I have arrived in England. It's been rainy and cloudy since I got here which suits me just fine, it's that lovely gray light sifting through the the skylight in the ceiling that lets me know I'm really in England. I've been here two days and have thoroughly cleaned both the Kitchen and Bathroom. I haven't lived with other people in over 5 years so this is a new challenge but I will try to make the best of it. So far everyone else is pretty busy which means Chris and I have the house to ourselves most of the time.

In addition to kitchen cleaning I have finished piecing my brother's t-shirt quilt (see below) and will start hunting for a store that sells batting tomorrow (shops close here on Sundays, how quaint).

My good friend Molly is coming to visit Friday and I'm so stoked! Hopefully my hip will be rested up by then, it's been aching the past few days making walking difficult, but then I only really have to get to the tube to get into town, and I can make it if we take it slow.


I have been really busy with the house and settling in so I haven't been able to take many pictures but during the week when everyone is at work (and hip-pain permitting) I will go forth and explore the city a little. There is one particular sign that confuses me here, but I'm going to try to get a picture and see if any one can guess what it means before I ask a Brit.

Thanks for commenting on the last posts (Susan, Adam, Jennifer), I will try to have a follow-worthy blog, though it may only be of interest to people who like laughing at the English or crafts.....no offense Madeleine!