Because It's Important

I like this sign.

It was outside a park near Highgate Cemetery where we went to visit Karl Marx's grave.

(which was Spencer's idea)

How To Do The Laundry..

1. Open the drum door.
If the door cannot be opened, see "Problem Solving Guide"
Also, make sure there are no cats or small animals inside the appliance before and after using it. That could be bad.

We were trying to figure out how to use the washer/dryer in the apartment where we're staying in Bristol, hence the instruction manual pictured below.

These scenic pictures were taken from the car on our way to visit stonehenge.

And this is stonehenge!

...and this is a swan! This picture was taken when we went punting(a punt is a type of boat) in Oxford.

So... I'd say we've been enjoying England greatly thus far!

We've visited:

• Bristol(which has sort of been the base camp for all of our other trips out)
• Bath with the Roman Baths and Bath Abbey
• Stonehenge(which was actually pretty cool, we were especially lucky to have had great weather on the day we visited)
• Salisbury with Salisbury Cathedral(a really quite impressive place in terms of archictecture and artistry)
• Oxford where we toured around and visited Christ Church and some universities (and went punting)
• Blenheim Palace(another really impressive and beautiful place) My favorite part was the area around the Palace including the gardens and landscaping, all of which was designed by Capability Brown.
• The Cottswolds including the villages of: Bourton-on-the-Water, Slaughter, Snowshill, and Broadway

And now we're back in Bristol getting ready to take the train to London, where we'll stay for 4 days. Then we head off to Loughborough for my mom's cousin's wedding! (which is actually the reason we're in England)

Other interesting pictures:

Chimney pots viewed from the apartment in Bristol

A flower monster! Salisbury is heavily populated with these creatures...

The dam at Blenheim Palace which was constructed in order to form a water feature for the palace grounds.

Quite impressive I think. ^_^ And pretty!

Good Morning

Laura asked in one of her posts whether big urban cities or farmhouse countryside sorts of areas are more preferable. I vote cities, or perhaps the outskirts of a big city. I wouldn't want to be directly in the center of a big urban city, but I'd prefer that to living in a farmhouse? Actually, now I'm wondering about the other options that were left out here. What about villages? Or cities/counties in England like Bristol, the Clifton area to be specific(my current location!), that are so fantastic and pretty. Or Cape Cod, which is neither big city nor village nor countryside exactly. That is the area, or sort of area, I'd want to live in, anywhere around there really.

"So Bristol," you might ask, "how's that going?" Now that we're here, we arrived yesterday at 9am their time(it was 4am Indiana time though...), and now that we've overcome much of our jet lag and exhaustion, I'd say Bristol is going well enough. While we've had a few mishaps, for instance, Spencer broke his glasses when we were in the Indianapolis airport shortly before we had to board our plane, but they've all pretty much worked themselves out. I and my mom both got a little sick yesterday after having some coffee in one of the local coffee shops, we're suspecting it was the caffiene on top of jet lag and lack of sleep(because neither of us got any sleep on the 6ish hour plane ride), but now we've quite fully recovered. We all also went to bed really early yesterday, as we all, not surprisingly, quickly became exhausted nearing the end of the day.

For the problem of Spencer's glasses, after we arrived yesterday we scheduled an appointment at a Vision Express, where they can have your glasses ready in 1 hour, and went to the mall... where they have an Optical Express and a Vision Express. So of course we had to go in the Optical Express(which is the first that we saw), asked them if they were the place we scheduled our appointment, explained our situation, and somehow ended up deciding to cancel our appointment at Vision Express and instead go to this new place because they said they could help us out quicker. After spending about 30 minutes or more in the Optical Express getting Spencer's prescription and trying to pick out frames, we discovered their onsite lab technician guy got off shift at 5:30pm. It was 5:20 when they told us this. So, having already gotten Spencer's prescription(which they kindly gave us for free since we ended up not buying anything, normal charge is £15), we headed off to the Vision Express, because we didn't want to have to come back the next day to pick up the glasses at the Optical Express, where we ended up picking out a pair of frames that had a buy one get one free sort of deal, so we got that pair and then chose to have the second pair as sunglasses, so we picked out a thicker plastic frame and for £10 had the lenses tinted gray. Of course, the tint could take a little more than 2 hours to take, so we would have to come back the next day. Great right? But it's okay, because we decided we might as well just drive back to pick up the glasses since we're getting our rental car today anyway. So, all in all, the mishap sorted itself out, and now Spencer has his glasses, and in about an hour he'll have some prescription sunglasses!

And in about two hours we'll be off to Bath for some sightseeing!
Forgive me for the long post(hahaha).. there may or may not be more to come.
P.S. Why is Gemma up at 5:39am?!?! I'm not, silly, it's actually 10:39am in England. (hopefully you could've deduced that on your own)

The Natural Awakening

Birds. This morning I awoke to birds. Chirping, no, yelling through my open window... and through every other open window in the house, as I realized when the obnoxious noise continued even after I shut mine. 5am is not when I care to awake on a Saturday morning in the middle of summer. And of course, once I rise that early, I just can't get back asleep! ...Not when nature is yakking away full volume outside. So instead of sleeping I went downstairs and read.

Hopefully, I'll get better rest and actually wake up tomorrow at the time I plan, more like 7 or 8, since I need to vacuum the pool and maybe go for a bike ride before we head off to the airport to pick up my grandmother. She's flying in from Florida to then fly with us to England on Wednesday. :D And once she gets here it's off we go to get food and other stuffs because we're having relatives over for the 4th of July! My hopes for a bike ride keep getting pushed around to make room for other plans, which is perfectly fine by me, but that's why I'm considering going in the morning tomorrow. (I think my determination on getting a good bike ride in are simply the longing for a bit of wind in the hair and relaxing exercise, where my rollerblades just aren't cutting it. I love rollerblading, especially in the fall, but in the summer sun I'd rather be on a bicycle.)

Also, has anyone noticed any REALLY big squirrels lately? Because everywhere I look it seems there's some large(and by large I mean fat and adorable) squirrel bounding across the road, or charging up a tree, or taunting my dog. Maybe I just never noticed them before?

The First Taste

We got our English money! Pounds!

Isn't it pretty?? And they're different sizes! I think that makes so much sense! Our money is boring. Did you know in Australia their money is apparently made out of a polymer/plastic?

Anyway here's a video I found when I was browsing and looking up the song Supermassive Black Hole because it is a good song and I realized I somehow don't have it in my massive collection of music when I thought I did.

This is definitely a different style than the original song by Muse, but I like it ^_^

Repeat

Last day of summer school! Finally! I'm free! Now I need to work to get ready for my family's trip to England in two weeks. I also have to try to make up on lost reading and hanging out time. :D

I Can Find Meaning By Myself

I am now a third of the way done with summer school. Yay. Two more weeks to go, that's not too bad... Even though its two more weeks of class, from 7:30 in the morning to 4pm. I'll live. :P I hope summer is treating everyone well, and now I'm off to write a six page reflection paper on my religious beliefs and traditions.. since summer isn't treating me well, it's just giving me homework. Ha, thanks world religions class.