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Tuesday, June 23, 2009

England highlights-Day 1: Culture Shock

*for all England pictures see post below*
Ok now that Ellie's officially in bed for a nap and I've got my bubble tea and I'm sitting in my air-conditioned apt. looking out the window at the unfortunate view of a beautiful pool (that was not entirely sarcastic as the unfortunate part is that there are three women down there with suits to small for ANYONE to be wearing).  Anyway, for those of you who do not want to look through ALL of our millions of England pics, I will point out a few highlights.  I imagine I will do this over a few days unless Ellie's naptime allows, so be patient.
We left our apt Friday, June 5th at about 4:30pm for our 6:30pm flight.  We immediately encountered a problem.  Our first flight to Phili was delayed which would not realistically leave us enough of a lay over to catch our international flight! Great! So we were sent off to American Airlines to get on a flight to Chicago and then catch a flight out to England.  Phew! Dilemma solved! So that's just what we did!  One 45 min flight and one 7 hour flight later, we were in England! This put us at about 11:30am England time (5:30am St. Louis time)

(I got in trouble for this picture and was asked to delete it-oops)

After waiting around the bus station a little while, we then hopped on a bus and 2 1/2 hours later we were in Cambridge greeting Jesse at a local park.  Then it was off in a taxi (on the wrong side of the road mind you) to their place. YAY! We were greeted with many smiles and hugs.  It was a wonderful greeting after such a LONG trip.  As it is now about 4pm England time (10am St. Louis time). 
After getting into some warmer clothes (it was 50's the first few days) we headed off to the park about a 3 minute walk away.  Beautiful!
First fun story:
Visual aid: 

While at the park Ellie immediately wanted to go on the swings.  So we put her in and started pushing her.  (Note the picture of the swing above and it's lack of safety features.) Lucy, who is 5 decided she wanted to push Ellie.  Ok! :)  So after pushing her a while, she decided to do an underdog in which Ellie was completely upside down in this swing hanging on by her legs on the crossbar! Disaster was quickly avoided by wild screams which I think scared Lucy enough to put Ellie and the swing down and NOT do that again! Phew!

Small highlight that possibly only nurses may find interesting:

(In the port-a-potty at the park.  Perhaps for all the epi-pens being used at the park?)

Another amazing thing to note on the first day.  You will find this all around Cambridge:

No, not Edmund, though for only a few days longer you will find him there.  Look in the background.  Yes, those are cows roaming about!  They are Edmund's favorite! :)

And for fun, here's Jesse and Edmund in the park (the shocking part of this is the horse they are on.  It rocked back and forth and about 5 kids [or grown-ups] can play on it at once)

After the park Kelly and I headed back and I took a nap while Kelly cooked dinner.  When everyone else arrived, we ate and had a worm dessert for Lucy's fifth birthday! Yumm! :)

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