Hey all!
So tomorrow I’m off to warm and sunny (fingers crossed) Spain for the start of my 9 day tour of the continent (that’s what Brits call the rest of Europe) then I’m back to Jeans for a day then shooting down to London (I’m such a jet setter these days) to meet the real Queen Mum…Annette Burns! For the past 10 days I’ve been at Jeans (my grandma’s pen friend since they were 12…grandma’s hitting the big 7-0 this year so you do the math on that one) and we have been having a blast, or at least I have! In her generosity Jean has given me a great glimpse of what the real England is like to a real Englander. Here are some highlights of the week for your reading enjoyment!
Last Friday we went to Lincoln where her daughter and family live and also where the Lincoln Cathedral is. We got to Lincoln and I came to realize that said Cathedral is at the top of a very, very large hill and we happened to be at the bottom. Apparently there is a bus that shuttles poor people like us up the hill but it was nowhere to be found so we started the trek. Once we made it up the hill we headed into the Cathedral only to be turned away when we replied that “no, we were not there for the service”. Shut down! But they did tell us that we could go around to the back and see that part so we did and it was worth it. Lincoln Cathedral can hold 2 Westminster Abbey’s inside of it and we stumbled across a very nice and knowledgeable man that gave us all kinds of info. Like do you know the difference between a minster and a cathedral, well you are going to in a second! A cathedral holds a cathedra (clever naming, huh?!) which is where the archbishop sits and a minster can be a cathedral but a minster is also a teaching church so clergy are educated in a minster. Interesting, right? And also the lectern thing that they put the bible on always faces east because that is where Christ will rise from (he will rise with the sun) and the bible rests on an eagle because that is the only bird that can look directly into the sun. The lectern that they have there is from the 1600’s. We learned all kinds of other cool things that I’m sure you will have the joys of hearing when I recount my travel stories to you in person J. All in all a great day that ended with a Chinese buffet and a chocolate fountain, score!
Saturday Jean and I headed to a food festival with Jean’s niece, Jane (ha I just realized that if you switch the letters around you can spell Jean from Jane, I wonder if that is a coincidence…) where we watched a man cut an apple in the shape of a swan, I was tricked into eating pork scratching (crunch pigs skin), I had a taste testing of port, and we saw the worst cooking demonstration known to man. Apparently the guy that knew what he was doing had an accident so he couldn’t be there so his boss was filling in and doing commentary while the students cooked. He didn’t know how to work the stove and the demonstration went downhill from there…but the quail egg I tried was quite tasty! That night Jean arranged for me to go out on the town with her grandson, Ciaran, who is around my age and in the RAF (royal air force) and one of his friends from the RAF. The night was a lot of fun and consisted of the three of us bar hopping, them making fun of my “American English”, me trying to figure out why so many roundabouts are in this country, and a lot of laughs on everyone’s part.
Monday we headed to Skegness, a seaside town on the east side of England right on the North Sea. The weather was fantastic even though rain was predicted and we enjoyed a day of walking along the beach and people watching. Then came the best part, seaside donuts. Now I don’t really like donuts that much but these were the best donuts that I have ever had. I got to watch them being made and then rolled in sugar. Needless to say they disappeared quite quickly and I will be running some extra miles in the near future after all of the good food that I have been treated to with Jean. The food that they feed us at school is not a true impression of good English food (thank goodness, I would have been a little worried if it had been).
Tuesday was full of laughs as I accompanied Jane (we went with her on Saturday) to her classroom of 11 year olds (year 5 in school over here) and helped out for the afternoon. She had apparently told them about her friend from America that was coming to visit because they all looked at me with wide eyes when I walked into the room. I was then peppered with questions of whether I knew this person or that person (needless to say I did not know little Johnny’s stepmom, even though she is from America as well), questions of what my favorite color is, what it’s like to live in America (I said not too different from living here and the little boy that asked me said “except you can’t drive manual cars though, right? And you did it on the wrong side”, cheeky little boy!), and told that I could be an actress (my life is now complete!). That afternoon they were painting African shields to go along with their study of Africa and the next afternoon they would be performing African dances. While we had a few mishaps including 3 spilled containers of paint (it wasn’t me!) the afternoon was a lot of fun and I’m excited to enter the field of education in a few years. Actually that’s a lie, I’m half terrified as well but if my students enjoy my class half as much as Jane’s enjoy hers I’ll be okay.
Wednesday and Thursday were filled with me brushing up on my English history. Wednesday we headed to Chatsworth Manor where the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire live. You can tour their home (parts of it at least) and the grounds. BEAUTIFUL! After that we dashed to the next town over, Bakewell, to pick up a famous Bakewell pudding because I was told that I have to try one. (yummy!) We found a bakery still open and then to my surprise we stopped in a butchers and got a steak and kidney pie (my stomach still quivers a bit at the thought) for tea (dinner). Back at home Jean prepared a dinner of steak and kidney pie, mashed potatoes, and green beans. I was crazy nervous about said pie because it’s not kidney beans that the steak is cooked with, it’s real, live (well it used to be alive) kidney meat. You can tell the kidney meat from the steak because it is oddly smooth looking and supposedly adds a lot of flavor to the dish. It was actually quite tasty when you forgot what you were eating and a plateful of mashed potatoes always puts me in a happy place! Thursday we headed to York and had a lovely day exploring the town, doing a bit of shopping, and trying not to get lost on the highway on the way home! We went in the York Viking museum where we were bombarded with a truckload of little French teenagers running around speaking in French. I got nervous that I was hallucinating and was still in Paris for a second. York is an awesome city and we saw the York Minster which is 4 times the size of Westminster Abbey and has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years and has 128 stained glass windows with some dating back to the 1200’s. My home country wasn’t even an idea in 1200, heck, they didn’t even know it existed and they were over here making awesome stained glass! It’s crazy to think about.
Today I have to pack, shoot. I have made myself pretty comfortable in my room at Jean’s so it could be another repeat of my struggles to pack back in January. I’m doing really well and having a splendid time (in case you couldn’t tell) and can’t wait for what the next few weeks will bring and can’t believe that this time next month I’ll be thinking about heading home. If you need to get in contact with me in the next 2 weeks try e-mailing (I’ll try to check it when I can but that doesn’t always happen) or call me on my cell phone (not my American one, mind you!) if it’s important. Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers. Continue to pray for safe travels in my attempt to see the world!
Love from Lincoln (and all over the Midlands of England),
Stacey
