Putting out Fires

Well, I’ve been here almost 3 weeks and we’ve officially accomplished….NOTHING on my test.  That’s right folks.  3 weeks of missing home for nothing.  I’m going to be here forever.

Trying to be positive, thought I’d remember my Sunday solo trip to Salisbury.  I had an AWESOME time all by my lonesome in Salisbury.  This little town is so beautiful and has one of the river Avons (there’s like 7) flowing through it.  (A little trivia:  ‘Avon’ means ‘river’, so basically there’s all this rivers flowing through England called ‘River River’)  Anywho, gorgeous little town built around a gorgeous river filled with swans and the occasional bulldog jumping in after a ball.

There’s where I had lunch reading Harry Potter.  It was a beautiful day.  But the real reason to visit Salisbury is the cathedral:

Salisbury Cathedral has the tallest spire in the world.  Standing near the cathedral looking up you could actually hurt your neck!  The inside was stunning as well.  But I must point out:  the English LOVE their dead people.  Dead people in the church, outside the church, in the walls of the church.  Anyway, I digress.  I loved this baptismal fountain. 

There are a lot of good things about traveling alone.  In Bath was given a killer price on my bus tour because the guy selling the tickets felt bad for me because I was alone.  In Salisbury I was able to get the ONE ticket left for the tour of the tour.  They only take 12 people up and the tour is very interesting, if not a bit terrifying.  The stone spiral staircases in the walls in the corners of the cathedral were so small that you could barely put your feet on each step.  And there’s no handrails.  If you’re claustrophobic or affraid of heights, not the tour for you.  Here’s a view from the first level down the length of the cathedral:

Didn’t take too many great pictures on the way to the top because I was too scared and mostly it was just dusty and dark and I was trying really hard to ignore the HUGE cracks through the structure of the top of the roof.  Anyway, got to the top in one piece, so here’s a picture from the top:

6 of the people on the tour were teenagers on a ‘pilgramage’ with their church group.  They were from the US and were without their chaperone.  I’ve never been embarassed of being an American (in fact, I’m realizing more and more how lucky I am!), but I came REALLY close that day.  They were awful. 

Besides the dead people (which truthfully, I found really interesting w/ their ornate tombs), this cathedral also holds the oldest working mechanical clock in the WORLD.  Its from the 1300s.  I’m constantly amazed by being in a country with such history that you can see all the impressions of the people who came before you wherever you step. 

OK, stop sending good thoughts for the weather.  Start praying for a miracle. 

Saturday I caught a ride into a suburb of London then took the tube into London.  I should remind you that I’m traveling with ENGINEERS.  As such, we spent 2 full, boring hours looking at clocks at the Royal Observatory.  The only cool thing is that this is where GMT is.  You know, in Greenwich.  Where the time starts.  Here’s me straddling the two hemispheres:

Next, 3 trains later, I convinced the guys to go to the British Museum.  If you’re in London, I DEFINITELY recommend this.  They have a HUGE exhibit for Greece and Rome (including parts of the Parthenon!), and in this area was the actual, real-life Rosetta Stone!

I also loved the mummies.  Here is an incredible mummy of an old woman who was unwrapped.  You can see her face is perfectly preserved and her fingernails were still totally intact!

Next we got lost for about an hour trying to find Abbey Rd.  You know, the actual one where the Beatles’ studio was (and still is).  The one seen here.  One of my coworkers took this picture of me unknowingly walking JUST like a Beatle. 

Take notice of the 3 boys there in the foreground.  Yes, that’s right, those are fine specimens of 20-somethings from the US.  Standing in the middle of the street.  Nearly getting run over.  For about 15 minutes trying to recreate the cover. 

Next we went to the Hard Rock Cafe.  Wouldn’t normally go here on vacation, but I was ready for American food, listening to loud American (and Canadian!  Barenaked Ladies!) music…  AND, they have a vault FULL of music stuff from famous people that you can ACTUALLY TOUCH.  They had Jimmy Hendrix’s guitar, John Lennon’s wire rim glasses, the ACTUAL piece of paper where he wrote Imagine, Kurt Cobain’s guitar and glasses, all kinds of stuff!  But what I chose to take a picture with:  Miles Davis’ trumpet from Bitches Brew.  MILES DAVIS’ TRUMPET!

On the way back to the car on the tube I managed to step in some idiot college kid’s puke.  At 9pm.  Right before he almost stumbled backwards on to the train track.  Mind the puke!  (sorry, no picture of that)  Next post will be about my AWESOME solo trip to Salisbury.  (and no, I didn’t eat any steak while I was there.  :-)  )

Just got off the phone with Ryan, then I flipped on my TV to one of the 5 channels left after the storms knocked everything out, and can you guess what I saw on Sky News?  It said, “Arizona Fires, Live from Carefree”!!  From an English TV station!!!  My home!  I nearly cried when I saw my beautiful desert behind the newsman. 

Got stellar treatment at the doc’s office and I am happily consuming drugs and feeling mucho better!

Ryan, good luck on your test today!!!

I’ve had a little bit of something hanging around in my chest since I got here and this morning I woke up to weezing like I haven’t done since I was a kid.  Between the hot weather, cold weather, no a/c, no heat, too much heat, I’m afraid England’s got the best of me. 

Thankfully, England’s health care system is a bit kinder than ours.  I’m having to go in for a ‘private’ consult, which means I’m not covered by insurance of any kind.  I’ve been terrified of $1000 bills, so I called to confirm and it is going to cost me a mere 32 pounds!  I am so relieved.  And thank you to S.O.S., the international emergency health number.  They managed to get me an appt in the village I’m in this morning.  Amazing.

Its just as well that I’m ditching out on work because it is miserable outside.  We’ve had thunderstorms most of the night, and they’ve been so bad this morning that the power has gone out 9 times thus far.  Usually if power goes out in the US, it seriously goes out.  Here it goes out for about a minute each time.  Just enough to be REALLY annoying.  And for some reason, when the electricity goes out, so does the running water. 

I really feel for the people at Glastonbury this weekend.  It is almost w/in walking distance from here and I can’t even imagine how all those people are suffering.  FYI, Glastonbury is one of the largest music festivals in the world.  People camp out for the weekend and some of the bands playing this year are Coldplay and The White Stripes.  If it wasn’t about $150 to get in, I’d be all over it! 

One other thing:  as my gym here only plays the same 4 stations, I’ve been watching a lot of cricket lately. I thought David Beckham was the yummiest thing to come from this part of the world, but lately I’ve found Andrew Flintoff.  Yumm.

Alright, so other than the obvious (driving on the left-hand side of the road), there really are a LOT of things that are different here in England than they are in the US.

1)  Not only do Brits drive on the left side, everything is opposite:  walking up and down stairs on the other side, entering stores on the other side, entrance doors on the other side…  I’m constantly running into people and doors here.

2)  The weather completely controls people here.  I may be overly sensitive because my testing fully depends on sunny days, but I’m telling you, the weather is so wacky here that people are talking about it constantly.  For 2 days last week I was freezing in a sweater and my leather jacket.  This weekend it was so hot that I left Bath earlier than I’d planned just so I could fight heat stroke with the a/c in the car.  There is absolutely no a/c anywhere, so everyone is left dripping in the humid heat.  I’ve already spent about $35 on fans for my hotel room.  And on the hottest day of the year, a town in Northern England was flooded so badly that the whole town was destroyed.  In this rainy country, it takes a hot sunny day to create a flood.

3)  The language is so completely different from American English that I can barely understand people half the time.  An example:  “Oye Colin, sort out some skittles.”  Translation:  “Hey Colin, could you organize a game of skittles (an English bar game like bowling).”    They also use the word ‘bits’ a lot in place of ‘pieces’.  “We’re missing some bits.”  I’ve been called ‘luv’ and ‘luvey’ like a million times.  I try my hardest not to giggle, but I’m telling you, its HARD. 

4)  Shopping is completely different (aside from the fact that I also run into people with my cart as I’m on the wrong side of the isle).  I wanted some sleeping pills and I had to go to the pharmacy, justify to the pharmacist why I needed them, prove that I wasn’t taking anything else, then I got a tutorial on how to use them and we had to look through all the choices before I could buy one.  Oh, and when you check-out, you are expected to bag all of your own groceries. 

5)  Everything here (shops) closes at 4pm.  You’re S.O.L. if you get out of work at 5pm and you need to get something.  Then, not a single place is open for dinner until 6pm, and even then they are only open for a few hours.  In fact, everything is wacky here.  People go to work at about 8 or 9 (I’m used to 6am!), the cafeteria and restaurants absolutely don’t open until noon, and sometimes stores and restaurants just close whenever they want to, despite their posted hours. 

Anyway, who knew people w/ the same language could be so incredibly different?

I’m a bit remise in my blogging as I’m trying to keep myself as busy as possible.  I figure the more fun I have, the faster this will go and the sooner I get to go home to my hubby and my pups!  So, I made a point of doing some great things this weekend.

On Saturday I went to Cheddar, you know, where the cheese is from.  They have these gorgeous living caves there (where they used to store the cheese) and the little village is situated in this beautiful gorge that is renowned for its rock climbing.  We did a hike on the top after we walked through the caves, and would you believe that it was STIFLING hot and that I got sunburnt??  Anyway, here’s pics:

Attractive picture up my nose in the cave

This doesn’t do the beauty of the caves any justice.

Me checking out a tomb in a closed church

Yesterday I was brave and drove all by myself to the city of Bath.  It was awesome.  I listened to Barenaked Ladies all the way there and back, and I successfully navigated through some tight little villages solo!  They call this ‘motoring’ here.  Here’s me driving on the wrong side of the car:

The Abbey in Bath.  This abbey was so gorgeous that when I sat down inside and listened to the organ, I couldn’t help getting a little teary.

The Circus is a large roundabout totally surrounded by housing.

The Pulteney Bride is one of the most photographed in the world

English Firemen.

Tomorrow:  off to check out the crazies at Stonehenge for the Summer Solstice.  Haven’t made a lick of progress on my testing, so I’m busy making plans to keep myself entertained for about 4 more weeks. 

So one of the cool things about being here is that the sun stays up until 10pm.  I’m anxious to not be alone in my hotel room, so the sun being up affords us all lots of opportunity to take advantage of being in a new place.  This week there’s been about 4 or 5 of us who have been hanging out together.  On Tues night (the only day we’ve had nice weather) we took a hike to Ham Hill.  I guess its named for the hamstone that is mined there that they use to make the houses in this county.  On top of the hill is a statue that pays tribute to the men who died in the ‘Great War’, World War I, from this area.  The whole trip was 2.5 hrs roundtrip, including the stop at the Half Moon pub for a beer.  ;-)  Anyway, we had to take the public paths to get there, and just to give you an idea, this is what a public path consists of:

Walking Through Cow Fields

Going Under Electrified Fences

Running Across the Highway

Checking out the Scenery

Climbing up the Hill

Finally the Statue (dedicated on my birthday, by the way)

Alrighty, everyone out there in the blogosphere, please hope for sunny days in England for the next 4 weeks.  I’m ready to come home and we need good weather for the testing! 

Well, here I am in Jolly Ole England. And I’m feeling, well, not so jolly.  I swear to you I’m just a homebody.  I do enjoy traveling, but even when I’m on vacation I miss my home, my bed, my dogs…  But now that I’m all the way over here I just miss Ryan.  Ryan.  Every time I think about watching him walk away from me in the airport I get teary again.  And then him coming back for one more kiss…  D*mn it, there I go.

So the plane ride was, well, typical for my clutzy self.  I managed to get the one seat on the plane  where the video screen wouldn’t stay up on its own.  So, as I’m talking to the man from my company who was sitting next to me, I managed to knock the screen, which in turn knocked my FULL glass of red wine all over me.   Ruined:  one book, one pair of kaki capris which had formerly been my favorite.  (picture doesn’t do the pants justice…)

Now I’m here at the hotel.  I was in the bar for dinner w/ the rest of my team and one of the guys said he was all done and that he was flying back tomorrow.  As soon as he said that I felt panic in that tiny bar with the low ceilings, which seemed to be getting lower by the second.  Tomorrow HE is getting on a flight and going home to his family.  I haven’t even been here a full day and I have no idea how long I’m here for.  I immediately started to feel claustrophobic. 

After dinner about 5 of us went walking on the public paths through some fields, back to town, through an old cemetary, then to the grocery store.  Do you know that in stores here the only think in the snack isle is chips and candy?  No crackers.  No pretzels.  Nothing.  Then I saw a jar of ’salsa’ and I felt homesick all over again.  And by the way, by chips I mean “lamb and mint sauce”.  I kid you not, that was one of the flavors.

Tomorrow I start work.  I’m nervous about my role and where I’ll fit in.  I’m nervous about finding my way around the plant.  I’m nervous about getting up the guts to actually try driving.  But, here’s to one day down.  Tomorrow can only be better. 

Every good bride knows that weddings aren’t necessarily about the couple.  Weddings are a time for family and friends to celebrate the couple and to have a little bit of free food while they’re at it.  Having been to many perfect weddings, I’m a bit of a critic when it comes to the festivities surrounding people’s nuptials. 

Last night I went to a wedding that, while beautiful and totally touching, was a bit lacking in consideration of the guests.  First, the wedding was on a Thursday night starting at
7pm, giving me cause to worry about my beauty sleep before having to be at work at 6am the next morning.  And as it was so late, and being that the invitation said nothing about a reception, we didn’t know whether to eat before we went or not.  The wedding was outside overlooking a lake at sunset, which was gorgeous, but they had only about 3/4 the number of chairs needed for the guests who were there.  After the beautiful ceremony, there was a haphazard receiving line which dumped guests out by the bar.  Where we stood for over an hour sipping our $5 glasses of wine.  Once the DJ managed to finagle us all into our seats he opened the floor to toasts, which lasted a good 15-20 minutes.  When all was said and done, my table was excused last to the buffet and I finally sat down with food at about 9:15.  By 9:45 half of the people at the wedding had gone leaving just a few people to support a dollar dance, which was really sad. 

Now don’t get me wrong, it was a beautiful wedding, the reception was just gorgeous and the couple was really happy, but I really think a few simple changes like start time and something to snack on while we waited for dinner could have made the night. 

Oh, and as a side note:  I really take issue with people who put little cards with the invitation that say where they are registered.  While it may seem that this is a convenience to guests, it really does come off as the bride and groom asking for a present.  We’re smart, we can probably figure out on our own where you’re registered with about 5 minutes of searching on the Internet. 

I’m not quite sure what to blog about. Lot’s of things have been going on. I’m packing for my trip to England, of course. I’ll be gone for a minimum of 4 weeks, but its looking more like 6. *sigh* It’s a little scary to get on a plane and then be totally at the mercy of my company as to when I come back. I am proud of myself for my packing skills though. It looks like I’m going to make it into one large suitcase and a duffle for random stuff. That’s incredible when you consider that one of the guys I’m traveling with is planning on bringing TWO bags and then shipping himself some extra things. What?! And I thought I was the girl.

So I’m a little bit nervous about being in a foreign country with only men for a month plus. I mean, they are all nice guys, but there’s nothing to do but drink beer at the hotel at night, and men and beer…. Well, you know. I honestly don’t feel comfortable at all not having any other females around. My plan is to try to stick to myself as much as possible. I’m going to get up early, hit the gym, go to work, have a nice walk through the village before dinner, hit dinner at 6, then go read or chat with Ryan on the phone. I am going to try to travel on the weekends if there’s time, but I REALLY don’t feel comfortable going with guys on leisure trips. And if I did, it certainly wouldn’t be just one guy, I’d need a group. But then again, is it really safe for me to travel all alone?

I also have an issue with being so young. For those of you who don’t know me, you should know that I look like I’m about 18. If. This causes all sorts of problems when I travel for work. On one particularly pleasant trip to the UK, a nasty flight attendant refused to let me return to my seat in business class upstairs on the 747. Even when I produced a boarding pass, she didn’t believe me and snottily tramped up the stairs after me and walked me to my seat where my boss had to confirm that I was indeed in business class. Embarassing.

And then there’s how I’ll be treated at work. What will the British think when they see me come in and realize that I’m in a position of some authority? And to be completely honest, I AM really inexperienced at this job. I’m slightly panicked about whether or not I’ll be able to succeed over there. And I’m terrified that I’ll get there and I won’t be able to do anything because I don’t know how.

But, with all the aprehension, I really am trying to take a positive view on the whole thing. I do have a possible trip to Ireland with Ryan to look forward to at the tail end of my trip. That would be so great. And, I think about what I was doing a month ago from now and it really doesn’t seem like it was THAT long ago. I will miss the dogs so much, and thinking about being away from Ryan for more than a few days breaks my heart. But it is only a month, right? And thank goodness for the Internet and email.

Over the next month or so I’ll post lots of pictures of things in England. I’ll show you Stonehenge (where I’m going to try to hit the summer solstice to see the crazies!), the little village Martock where my cute hotel is, my teeny hotel room, the pub in the hotel, Yeovil where my work will be, and then any travels I take.