Christmas Chuckles

Good ol' Calvin!

Great News!

(Lauren's) Mom, for anyone who may not know, has been battling ovarian cancer since the summer. She completed her regular chemotherapy treatments. The bloodwork and CAT scan came back clear, so she can say that for now she is cancer free! Mom has been accepted into a clinical trial, and there were three possible arms of the study she could be put in: intensive chemotherapy, which would have been similar to the treatment she just completed in intensity and side effects, an experimental drug, or just observation. She is in the experimental arm, so she will get a 20-minute infusion once every four weeks for a year. Mom said that if she could pick which group she was in, it would be this one because it still gives her some of the protection of chemotherapy (which is great because ovarian cancer is particularly aggressive), but without, hopefully, the severity in side effects. If the side effects are too much, she can also quit at any time.

We will continue to post on her health whenever we learn more. Right now we are thankful for the arm of the study she is put in and her improving health. We are saving the big celebration, though, for a year from now when she's really and truly done!

Thanks for your ongoing prayers and support - they really make a world of difference.

What'd you say?

Last night Nick was talking to Duane, who just started a job in New Orleans coordinating volunteers to repair houses. All of a sudden he said, "Oh my gosh! OH MY GOSH!"

What could they possibly be talking about?? I wondered.

"My heart just stopped for a second. Did you just say what I think you said?"

"Did you say BOBCAT??"

It's wonderful that my chief competitions for my husband's attention are bridges and bobcats!

Happy St. Nick's Day!

Yesterday was St. Nick's Day, which is a big deal in Horstmania. We still put out our shoes, and St. Nick comes in the night and fills them with candy and leaves an ornament for each of us. The ornament commemorates some big event of the year. For example, I got a Pitt Santa my freshman year, and a tiny cruise ship the year I went on Semester at Sea.

Despite being an ocean away, my amazing Mama still made sure we celebrated St. Nick's Day right. On the day itself we got a package full of delicious American candy (Reese's peanut butter cups, how I've missed you!), and a wrapped ornament. I filled our shoes and set them out to greet Nick when he got home. Our ornament this year? Appropriately, it is a silver heart that says "Our Christmas Together," for our first Christmas married.

My mom's ankle is healing slowly - there is still a visible fracture but she is allowed to remove her giant boot of a cast to sleep and to drive. She tried to play the sympathy card and convince my dad and brother to fill the boot with candy (which would be A LOT of candy!), but they didn't fall for it!

Skittles: more than delicious colored candies

In our ongoing quest of culture-rustlin’ we joined a group of Nick’s co-workers to participate in the time-honored British pub game of skittles. This game has been played here as long as toothless pub-keeps have been pulling pints. Skittles is a precursor to 10-pin bowling, and involves rolling heavy, medium-sized wooden balls towards 9 wooden pins at the end of an alley. Only a few pubs around still have skittles alleys, because they take up a lot of space, they’re loud, and one can only imagine the liability of people hurling heavy wooden balls as the pints keep emptying.

By the end of the evening, after playing for 3 hours and getting to bowl 4 times, we understood why skittles was a dying game. You have to get your own balls, set the pins back up yourself, and keep score, and there’s just the one lane for a room that holds over 50 people. It quickly became clear that “playing” skittles is more about standing around with a pint talking than actually doing anything. It worked well when most of England’s pubs were quiet places where the neighborhood gathered to socialize and have a pint or two. Unfortunately, in today’s fast-paced, dog-eat-dog world of instant gratification, consumer-driven cell-phone relationships, the olde towne skittles lane(e) is going the way of the neighborhood milkman.

Let the record show that this blog does include actual cultural commentary.

Despite the thrilling competition, the night’s highlight was the ride home with Matt (a lifetime Brum resident) and a co-worker from India named Suds. Matt and Lauren both met Suds about a minute before getting into the car, where Suds’ first words were:

Suds (to us): “you are American, yes?”

Us: “yes”

Suds: “So, what do you find to be the biggest difference between people in America and people here?”

Us: “[Awkward silence] Oh, uh…well…I guess people are more formal here and slower to talk to strangers.”

Suds: “Yes! This is so true. In my country you can walk up to anyone at a train station and talk about the cricket scores. Here they look at you like you are crazy. What else?”

Us: “Hm…..well, people seem to be closer to their families. I think because they still live close to them, really, wherever they move in the country, so they can see them more often.”

Suds: “This is interesting what you say! Matt, is this true? Are you closer to your family and less friendly?”

Matt: “(laughing)…I don’t know, I’ve never been to America.”

Suds: “humm, yes, (back to us) Have you found that people don’t like you for being American? Personally, I really like America because we just signed a great nuclear treaty with them, but I wonder what others think.”
…

He just kept going - it was like being grilled on the Larry King Show! Suds was really digging deep for a near-stranger, and we were squirming under interrogation. He lives down the street so we are going to try to have him over for dinner sometime for more of his hard-hitting cultural dialogue!

It’s Christmas Time in the City

Though we are not going to be here for Christmas (hooray USA!), for the months of November and December, it is pretty hard to miss the Christmas build-up. Because the Brits don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, after their August Bank Holiday (a seemingly-meaningless convention for having a random 3-day weekend) they have nothing to look forward to until Christmas. For this reason, Christmas here seems to last for months, with most of the fall devoted to Christmas preparations.

When we first got here (mid August) we were amazed to see pubs and restaurants encouraging companies to hurry and book their Christmas parties there. Being a good documenter of culture, Lauren noted that OCTOBER 24th was the day that the Christmas exhibit selling Christmas cards and gifts went up outside the library downtown. Ever since then, it’s been full-tilt on the decorations, music, and shopping. The whole thing seems like Christmas overload to us, and, as if we needed another reason to love Thanksgiving, it serves the valuable purpose in the US of delaying the Christmas shopping madness a full month compared with here.

We spent yesterday (Saturday) in the Birmingham city center doing a little bit of shopping, and immediately felt like we were back in the States fighting through crowded malls. The only real difference is that the shopping center we went to, the Bullring, began in 1154 as a cattle and food market. This was just a few years before the King of Prussia mall had its first customer. We posted some pictures of the Bullring, an Arup-designed building completed in 2003 on our photo album here. Most of these photos were actually taken when we came out for Nick’s interview in early December, 2005, but everything looks about the same as last year. They give a good feel for the Birmingham city centre, and the small suburb of Solihull where Nick works.

Another Brum (Birmingham) Christmas tradition is the German market. There are rides, and stalls selling traditional German crafts and kitsch, and plenty of sausages and beer stands that line the city’s main thoroughfare. We feasted on fried cheese and warm pretzels last night, so good! This sort of outdoor market wouldn’t work as well in the snowy States, but the weather here is perfect – just cold enough to make you appreciate the crowds of people pushing against you.

The flower shop across the street from us has been selling Christmas trees for weeks now, and as convenient as this is, we’re glad we won’t be needing one. It’s been culturally interesting to see all this build-up, but we really just can’t wait to get on a plane and come back to America for the holidays. Just 13 days!

International 'Bond'ing

We finally saw the new James Bond, after hearing the hype for weeks. They love them their double-O. We had heard Casino Royale was the best Bond movie ever, and Daniel Craig the best Bond, possibly second only to Connery himself! It seemed that everyone in this country had or was planning on seeing the film.

Surprisingly, it lived up to all the hype. I was clutching Nick's arm most of the movie, and I kept talking out loud to the film (I wasn't as annoying as I sound - no one could hear me over the massively loud sound effects). One of our friends said that James Bond and Jack Bauer must be related, and that there's something about stern, blonde-haired, blue-eyed men saving the world that is utterly believable!

The best part of the night, though, was the international nature of the company. We saw the movie with about 10 of Nick's co-workers, and the following countries were represented:

• England (a given)
• United States (also a given)
• Poland
• China
• Canada
• Spain
• Malaysia

Arup is like England's melting pot - we've also met some people from India. It's really interesting to meet people from all over. We're having the guys from Poland and Malaysia over for dinner next week, so there should be some good stories to tell.

(A note on the corny title: I suggested it, and Nick said, "Alright, Norm Horstman." So we do turn into our parents as we get older, bad puns and all!)

Peak District

Last weekend we decided to get out of town and see what England in autumn had to offer (pics). We travelled up to the Peak District National Park, about 2 hours north of us between Nottingham and Manchester. National Parks here are funny, and very little of the land is actually owned by the government: they’ve found it much easier to just declare private land “National Park” and not have to go through the messy financial details of actually buying the land properly.

We went up by train early Saturday, and got a bus in Derby that stops at all the little towns throughout the park – that was a beautiful drive, seeing the rolling green and gold hills and the charming (albeit touristy) villages. We stayed in Bakewell, “the capital of the Peak District” because it was pretty central and had a number of hiking trails within walking distance of the towne centre. Bakewell is famous for Bakewell pudding, which was apparently invented there hundreds of years ago by the local tavern keeper. Lauren was intent on trying this even after we saw the recipe which called for 12 eggs and the yolks of 4 more, baked onto a crust covered in strawberry jam. Let’s just say this is one cultural experience you can skip when you visit!

Despite serious failures in local cuisine, Bakewell is a quaint traditional English town—er, towne—filled with stone structures and brick streets, and has some amazing countryside around it. After checking into our B&B, we spent Saturday afternoon hiking along an old rail line turned trail to the Monsal Viaduct, large, striking stone arch viaduct in a picturesque valley. We were amazed by the public “trails” that you had to take to get to the viaduct. Often, the trail would leave the old train line to take you through fields of sheep or cattle, with reminders at the gate to close it behind you and not let some poor farmer’s livelihood escape. One field had a sign that said, “Danger. Bull running with cattle.” It was a bit different than hiking in the US!

On Sunday we hiked to the awesomely huge estate of the Duke of Derbyshire, used as Mr. Darcy’s house in the recent Pride and Prejudice movie. This leads to some name confusion, as tourists call it Pemberley after the movie and locals (and the Duke who still lives there) call it Chatsworth. Apparently you can see a dress worn by Keira Knightley if you pay the £6 to go in, which being a total rip-off, we didn’t. The gardens were really cool though, with amazing fountains and statues. The landscaper in Victorian times (everything here happened in Victorian times) was a real go-getter, and he built a giant boulder garden, made a lake 400ft above the house laying piping for all of the fountains, and build an enormous glass green-house heated by coal supplied by underground tunnels.

The whole weekend was exhausting, hiking (or walking, as it’s called here) around 20 miles, and only getting the briefest peek at the beauty of this “park.” Thankfully our B&B was charming and cozy, run by a couple who bought it about a year ago. Between the full English breakfast Sunday and fish and chips in a pub Saturday night, it was a proper English weekend. It was nice to get away from the city and see some of the country, now that we are heading in to 3 months of near-total darkness and rain (hooray!). At least we’ll have our photographs for the winter to remind us that the sun does come out in England, and it is pretty nice when it does.

A rare artifact of historical life in the Peak District. See other pictures from our Bakewell aventure here.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We wanted to wish y'all a happy Thanksgiving! We've decided to forego the turkey dinner in the spirit of "if you can't do Thanksgiving right, don't do it at all." Our oven just has one tiny rack, and Thanksgiving dinners for both of us mean special dishes that only our Moms can make. To honor the spirit of Thanksgiving though, here are some things we are grateful for:

• Our fantastic friends, who even though we're not there physically, make us feel like we are home in spirit by emailing and calling and keeping us in their lives - being away from you makes us realize how very special you all are, and we can literally say there's no one like you in the world
• Our families, moms dads brothers sisters and extended - we are so blessed to be loved and supported and shaped by the strongest, deepest, funniest people we know
• the mild weather in England, where we still only need light jackets on most days
• the relationships we are beginning to form here

AND we are most grateful this year for the improved health of (Nick's) Grandmom and (Lauren's) Mom. Grandmom has been doing really well since the summer, and we are so excited about this long stretch of healthiness. Mom finished her last round of regular chemo a few weeks ago. Her CAT scan came back clear, and hopefully her blood work will as well (we'll hear soon). Plus, her ankle is on the mend and she is off her crutches! We thank God for bringing her to this point in her recovery, and pray for her continued healing.

A Teary-Eyed Tribute

Here’s a shot of one of our favorite streets to date. The ironic potential of a city alley literally called ‘Needless Alley’ could power a small town. Unfortunately this post is actually a tribute in loving memory of this wonderful sign. We usually get a good chuckle every time we walk down the main shopping street in Birmingham from seeing the good ol’ Needless Alley sign. Sadly, yesterday all that was left was an empty rusted frame and an unlabeled, seemingly needless alley. Apparently someone wanted to keep all of that ironic comedy to themselves, and stole the sign during one of the 18 hours of darkness here. It almost seems hard to blame them, and in a way, aren’t cities with nicely painted iron signs with witty and clever names asking for them to be stolen?

The answer, is NO.

Go Bucks!

The Ohio State Buckeyes held onto their number 1 berth yesterday, holding off University of Michigan in one of the most exciting regular-season college football games - well, ever! It was "the most-hyped game in the 103-year history of the most-hallowed rivalry". Just one more game between OSU and the national championship! For me, this makes 2006 the greatest football year ever.

And we missed the whole season. What are we doing here??? :-)

Roman Holiday

Well it only took us 3 weeks, but we have finally labelled and posted our pictures from our long weekend in Rome for Lauren's birthday. It turns out, there is actually a whole lot to see in Rome and we ended up with quite a few pictures. You can use the link at the end of this post to view them.

We had great weather for the trip, and apparently October is like the perfect time to go to Rome; it was not too crowded and it wasn't too hot, which was good because we did an enormous amount of walking which would not have been fun in the heat of summer. Rome has a metro system, which is great, but it only has 2 lines, a NS and an EW line. This meant that often it would be just as far to walk to a metro station as it would to just hike to our next destination. As a result, we probably walked 15-20 miles in the three days we were in the city, but they were scenic miles, with plenty of gelato and pizza breaks.

Rome is a great walking city, and we enjoyed walking along the river or getting lost in a dense maze of narrow streets trying to find the well-hidden Pantheon. None of the streets in the city-centre ever felt unsafe, and we found lots of cool little restaurants and monuments wandering off the beaten track. Our hostel was incredibly convenient, located on a main street just a few blocks away from St. Peter’s Basilica. Other than being the only people in the 38-bed hostel who wanted to sleep at night, we would generally recommend the place…more as a place to keep your stuff than sleep. We probably would have been better off on some park benches.

Other than a lack of sleep, the trip was fantastic, jolly good, a real hoot, etc. The food was amazing: we didn’t even understand how Italian food that looked pretty much like what we are use to in the States tasted like we were discovering lasagne, or pizza, or pasta for the first time. Perhaps the freshness of the ingredients has something to do with it, but we couldn’t find bad food in Rome. We would stop at some street stand for pizza, and, sure enough, it would be the best pizza we’d ever tasted. Any benefit we got from all our walking was certainly offset by the massive amounts of delicious food we ate. If Rome was a desert with a few Italian restaurants, we would still recommend going.

All in all, Lauren voted this her best big city (since no city can replace Pittsburgh) for the food, history, and beauty of the Italian capital. What are your favourite cities? We had a great trip, and we are very fortunate to have opportunities like this…not a bad 25th birthday!

Pictures, as promised.

I Heart Our Library

How do I love the Birmingham library, let me count the ways (I'm not joking).....

For starters, the library was our first and best friend in Birmingham. It's just a short walk from the train station, has great hours, and free internet! It is the reason we found our flat and it was a lifeline to home at a time we had none. The movie section is fanastic - there is an entire section of Classics as well as one on Literature. We're currently working our way through the Sherlock Holmes collection.

Then I discovered the music section. It is huge, filled with cds from all walks of life. I've never seen so many international/world cd's, including separate sections for each country. It has all of those Hear music cd's that Starbucks carries and I'm always curious about but never willing to pay money for, musical and movie soundtracks, even a country music section (and NO ONE in this country listens to c&w). You can check out 8 cd's at a time for two weeks. In the past two weeks I've gotten:
-The Hurricane soundtrack
- Damien Rice "O"
- Damien Rice "B-Sides"
- The definitive Don Williams
- The definitive John Lennon
- David Gray "Life in Slow Motion"
- Sergio Mendes "Timeless"
- The best of Patsy Cline
- John Legend "Get Lifted"
- Green Day "American Idiot"
- Bing Crosby "Winter Wonderland" (the best Christmas song-singer ever)
- Radiohead "The Bends"
- Radiohead "Hail to the Thief"
- Oasis "Familiar to Millions"
- The Rough Guide to Irish Music

It is like walking into a music store that stocks everything and being allowed to take whatever you want. As a result, we're trying to expand our musical taste: who is your favorite artist? Your favorite cd? What else should we be sure to check out?

Home Sweet Flat

We finally have pictures of our flat up! It is a cozy two-bedroom flat above a shop, in a nice, diverse neighborhood called Acocks Green. Ironically, it was the cheapest flat that we looked at, and by far and away the nicest on the inside. They don't seem to have the same rules regarding tenants' decorating as the States, so most of the ones we looked at had hideous carpeting and wallpaper, and at least one room clearly done up as the "kids room." It made us question why we were getting such an incredible deal for our place, and worry that we happened into a really bad area or something. We haven't had any problems in the last couple months though - we feel totally safe, and are getting to know the people who work in the shops on our street. Any remaining doubts we had were put to rest Sunday, when our first visitors came. They didn't say, "We can't believe you live in this godforsaken place." Instead they said, "Wow, your place is really nice! How did you find it?" making us feel like we had pulled one over on the locals :-).

We haven't totally let down our guard though. When I told my dad (Norm) that we were living above a shop, across from a school and next to a flower shop, he said it sounds like the setting of an Agatha Christie - just a word of caution for you soon-to-be visitors!

Nerd Camp

Since it took us like a month and a half of being here to launch this blog, there is a decent backlog of ‘significant’ things that happened we still need to get to. Since most of our blog-reading public don’t know much about Nick’s company here, Arup, we thought to write a bit on his Graduate Induction Weekend, which gives a good feel for the company.
Arup is an international design firm with about 7,000 designing buildings, infrastructure, and a whole lot of other things as well. They are well known for their design of the Sydney Opera house in the 1960s. Anyway, as a new starter, Nick went to a week-long introduction camp with about 180 other new hires from across Europe…

The first part of the week was spent in Cheltenham, which is near the southern border of Wales and England. I wasn’t sure if there would be any other Americans starting in Europe, and sure enough, it ended up being me and 179 Brits at the induction weekend, with a few eastern Europeans and one guy from Arup’s Botswana office (what are we doing here =). Other than late nights at the pub, the weekend was all about getting to know people, ‘team building’, and learning about Arup from the directors, etc.

The weekend was very relaxed, and the team building exercises, though there were far too many of them, were pretty fun. The highlight of the weekend for my team was this bottle-rocket competition, where about 18 teams had 3 tries each to launch a bottle half filled with water as far as possible (see pictures). To launch the rocket, you had to insert a specially fitted bicycle pump end into a rubber valve, and pump until the end popped out, spewing water out the valve and sending the rocket flying. After two embarrassingly mediocre launches, we decided to rig the valve up, and used brute force to shove the pump end through the valve completely, then used some blue tac to seal the valve. When we pumped this time, it got to the point where the guy pumping could barely push the pump down, and we thought the valve would never pop. Finally it did, soaking our whole team, and sending the rocket climbing for what seemed like forever. The whole assembly went quiet, watching as our rocket flew like no bottle-rocket ever flew before. The farthest rocket to that point was maybe a third of the way down this huge field, and our rocket finally set down in the bushes at the back of the field, utterly destroying the competition and apparently flying the farthest of any year ever. We won a case of beer, pokemon desk trophies, and unending glory and respect =). Not a bad day.

After the induction weekend, the civils group headed down to Cardiff on the southern coast of Wales for our skills week, perhaps the nerdiest part of nerd camp. We met in groups and learned a lot about a large new motorway project in southern Wales. Later in the week, we went on a site visit to see some of the fields and houses that the new road will actually pass through, and learned about the views of the local community, which are basically that they are angry.

While in Cardiff, we got to check out the city some, and were staying in the back of this huge new concert hall on the waterfront called the Millennium Centre. Arup designed this as well as a number of buildings on the Cardiff waterfront, and I was generally really impressed with the city. Maybe we’ll have to go back some time while we’re over here. Anyone up for flying over and coming with?

Breaking through the British Barrier

(I'm a fan of alliteration).

Life here in England is really great - Nick and I love the chance to spend so much time together, and I'm enjoying the break from the working world. My life is so segmented - I went from being at work all the time consulting and home nearly never, to being at home almost all the time. Normalcy is not a concept I can relate to! We like the hours that Nick works, and cooking dinner together, and lazy Saturdays.

It's a hard and lonely life, too, though. One of the biggest challenges so far has been making friends. We've met lots of people through work and church, and plenty of people who really like, but we have yet to transition beyond the acquaintances barrier. There are several reasons for this. For one, the culture is much more formal. There's not an immediate sense of friendship or ease that we're used to in America. Also, people are really busy schedule-wise - there's less time for last-minute plans and just hanging out. Partly this is a culture difference, but it's also a geographical difference. No one lives too far from their families, or from friends that they have always had. Some (almost) friends asked if we lived close to my family. I said yes, only a three hour drive (which is rounding down from the actual little over 3 1/2 hour drive). They laughed and said they could tell I'm from America because that is really far here. People's lives seem so full of relationships already, and it is hard to break through that. I told Nick that I'll be so excited on the day someone just calls me up and asks me to hang out.

I hope this doesn't sound like whining! We just wanted to share the highlights and the lowlights of being an expat. The cultural barriers to close relationships is a definite lowlight. It also reminds us to be so grateful for all of the incredible friendships we already have - it's not something we'll take for granted, and it's a big reason why we'll be happy to move back home (whenever that may be). This weekend though, we are having our first guests! It is as clean and nice as the flat has ever been, so we'll take pictures and post them soon.

- Lauren

Happy Birthday Lauren!

Today is Lauren’s 25th birthday, but this is not just any birthday. This is her uber-birthday, where for one time in her life, she can say her age and birth date are THE SAME. That’s right, today Lauren turns 25 on the 25th. We celebrated this weekend with a trip to Rome, which, amazingly is possible now that we are just a quick hop away with plenty of cheap airlines fighting for our business. We had a great time, and it was great to enjoy travel and adventure with my wonderful wife.
As many of you have experienced, Lauren is an incredibly thoughtful and compassionate person who is always willing to laugh with those who laugh, and mourn with those who mourn. This move to England has been especially hard for her, but through it all she has been amazingly strong and supportive. Every day I get to come home to her smile and great cooking, and I never want to forget what a gift and blessing Lauren is. I know that like me, you are thankful for Lauren and her 25 years of life, so feel free to post or email her a happy birthday message!

-Nick

Stratford-upon-Avon

While there are some serious gaps in this blog, like what our flat is like, how daily life is here, Nick’s company and job, Lauren’s job hunt, etc., were are going to have to save all this for future posts and at least get through the pictures we have posted to date on our photo album. You, the blog-reading community, will have to wait in eager suspense for a post on some of the things above.

Right, so Stratford-upon-Avon, Bill Shakespeare country… After a few weeks of city living, we were missing green and open air, so one Saturday we took the train about 45 minutes south to the town of Stratford on the Avon river, birthplace of William Shakespeare. The town is exactly what you would picture an idyllic English town to be: There are quaint shoppes (sic) and narrow streets with some thatched roofs and lots of taverns and inns. The main attraction in town is a series of houses where Shakespeare grew up, lived, visited, did shingling work, etc. We made it to the three houses in the town center including The Birthplace, Hall’s Croft (his daughter’s house), and Nash House (the home of his granddaughter and next to the remains of Shakespeare’s adult home).

After the house tours and having learned quite a bit about the bard, we got lunch at a street fair from a Frenchman who didn’t speak English, other than to say ‘Bon Appetit’ when our crepes were done. After eating, we walked down to the river area which is beautiful, and there is plenty of entertainment as people awkwardly bang down the river in rented row boats. The town was formed thanks to a bridge built there in the 1400s, with the bridge-builder gaining fame and fortune, the respect due someone of his craft. We got coffee at a table on the riverbank, and just enjoyed being outside on a rare warm and clear day. Take a look at our pictures from the trip for more! This would definitely be a great and easy day trip for any visitors ;-).

Challenges of the Subtitle

There are many challenges to starting your own blog: getting a good template, choosing your audience, and having time to maintain it once it's up. While these may be important, the critical factor for us was getting the blog name right. A bad, un-funny name can totally ruin a blog by boring people before they even get to the contents. Something like "A chronicle of Nick and Lauren's 'new' life in Birmingham England by weblog" would have our potential readers signing off en masse. Our subtitle "2 American cowboys rustlin' us up some culture"didn't come easily; there were quite a few rejects. Read on for the ones that didn't make the cut, and let us know if you think we made a mistake.

YANKS IN THE UK:

-What happens when two 20-somethings leave the American bubble for life in England?

-The adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Europe edition

-Two American Patriots bringing the "No taxation without representation" mantra straight to King George...230 years too late.

-New meets Olde: when worldes collide

-All this rain is hell on our cowboy chaps.

-Two ungrateful yanks undo all their ancestors hard immigratin' work by moving right back where they came from.

-Is Leicestershire even pronounceable?

-Watch as two apple-pie loving, backyard barbequing Americans experience a life of porridge and meat pies.

-What the heck are we doing here?

Happy Birthday, Meggy!

October 18th is my (Lauren's) sister's birthday! She turns 22 today. Meggy and I are exactly 3 years apart in age, minus one week. We would have a joint birthday party with family on the weekend in between our birthdays, so it is hard to be apart at this time of year. To celebrate Megan, or Meggy, or Meg, or Lindsay, here's a little bit about her:
-She's a senior at Eastern Kentucky University. She finishes classes in December, and then will move back home to student teach.
- She is the most beautiful person I've met, inside and out. She has an effervescent, warm and compassionate personality.
- She is passionate about caring for other people, which is part of why she wants to be a teacher.
- Meggy is very in love with her boyfriend, Andrew (that's him in the picture). We love him too and he's like family.
- She likes to sleep in, watch movies, and her favorite food is pizza.
- She is just an all-around awesome sister, and I love her dearly.

Megan, I hope that you have a really special day!

 

10 Days in Ireland (this is a long one)

Our trip to Ireland is probably better understood in pictures, since so much of it was just awe-inspiring natural beauty. We posted photos of our time in Dublin, the Republic of Ireland, and Northern Ireland on our new online photo album here. For a summary and some thoughts on the trip, read on…

We got into Dublin Friday morning, and spent Saturday by ourselves touring the city some. We saw the Book of Kells which is an amazingly decorated gospel from a monastery in Scotland from the 5th century and went to the Guinness Storehouse. After finding out all about how Guinness is made, shipped, and marketed, they give you a free pint in the Gravity Bar, which is a round bar 7 stories up with glass walls looking out over the whole city. We both liked Dublin, but agreed that it's sort of a low point in Ireland. The country-side is so magnificent that it seems a shame to spend too much time there. The next morning we departed on our bus tour around the coast of Ireland. There were 25 passengers on the bus, most in their mid-20's although we had some in their 30's and 40's. There was one girl from S. Africa, a couple from Italy, a couple fromAustria, several Kiwis (New Zealand), three other Americans, and all of the rest were Ozzies (Australians). Australia seems like the best-traveled country by far! We had such a great time, and made some close friends. We especially bonded with the Austrian couple, and can't wait to go visit them, maybe this winter some time.

The weather while we were in Ireland was, for the most part, exactly what you would expect: cold, raining, windy. At least that was the case every day except the two days we were outside all day, when the weather was warm and sunny all day. The first of those two days was Great Blasket Island. Great Blasket Island is off the coast of the Dingle Peninsula. It is probably about 1 mile across and 3 miles wide (that is a very rough estimate!). It was inhabited, although only by 15 families, until the 1950's when the government made everyone move to the mainland because it was too dangerous. The weather was awful there in the winter, and there was no guarantee the ferry would be able to bring them supplies or that they would get medical attention when they needed it. Now only 1 woman lives out there (I never understood why she was allowed to stay), and the near side of the island is a patchwork of stone ruins. We spent a few hours out there, and Nick and I explored it to the fullest. We climbed to the highest peak and saw the ruins of a lookout tower, we walked along the incongruously beautiful beach and put our feet in the ocean. Most of the island met the ocean in cliffs or rocks, except one beach which could have been straight out of Caribbean. We also played with donkeys, who let us walk right up to them, and sheep, which were a little scared of us. It was Ireland at its most visually stunning.

A day or two after that we spent the night on Inis Mor, the largest of the three Aran Islands. We took the ferry out, then had the day to explore. We rented bikes and biked around almost the entire island. This was no small feat, since the island is about 9 miles long. Like everything in Ireland, the real length is not known. That seems to be the case with all of Irish history and distances – even things that should be clear are not. Inis Mor is a patchwork of stone walls, everywhere you look. I'm not wholly sure of the purpose of all of the walls – each walled-in square is only about ¼ acre. I think maybe they were to put animals in for a little bit, let them eat all the grass, then move them into another area. In some areas, they just built walls to get the stones out of the fields so they could plant. There is a lighthouse at the end of the island, and a lookout tower at the highest peak. The most impressive part of the island, however, is Dun Aengus. This is a fort that they believe was built around the 900's. It is circular in shape, but only goes half of the way around, because it is built on the edge of a huge cliff. The cliffs are similar in height to the Cliffs of Moher, and you are allowed to walk around the fort right up to the edge of the cliff. It is unbelievably dangerous, and I'm surprised people don't die often. It is definitely the most secure fort I've ever seen. In addition to the cliff wall protecting it halfway around, there is an outer and inner wall. Beyond the outer wall there is an acre-wide band around the fort of sharp limestone rocks stuck up in the ground. It would prevent horses or even people from easily getting to the outer wall. After we left the fort, we swam in the ocean on another beautiful beach. It was cold, but not as bad as we expected. Once you got used to the water we could have stayed in for a while.
The days we spent on the islands were some of the highlights of the trip. It was nice to be off of the bus and able to break away from the groups for a while and explore on our own.

The last two days we spent in Northern Ireland. It was amazing to us that almost as soon as we crossed the border, it began to look like England. The road signs were different, there were gigantic supercenter stores instead of village shops, even the houses were different. Instead of the typical single-story homes, there were more row homes of double-story brick. We didn't like it very much, and missed the ol’ Republic. The cities we visited felt more dangerous, were more run-down and had more graffiti. This is a direct result of the Troubles. Derry is smaller and nicer than Belfast. It is the walled city, with an inner wall built into the city to protect it from attackers. The walls were built by London businessmen in, I believe, the 1400's, to protect their interests in the area. It was the home of the Troubles and Bloody Sunday. The city has worked hard since 1998 to reestablish itself, and things are much more peaceful. There were murals all over the city depicting the troubles and the struggle and work towards peace. The city is predominantly Catholic. Our tour guide said that people are much more at peace with each other and in general, and the city is trying to establish itself as a tourist destination. It felt like a city that was changing and healing.

Belfast did not. Belfast has had much more violence and problems over the years than Derry. This is partly because Derry had a natural water barrier between the Catholic and Protestant populations. In Belfast, the populations are more interspersed, and more evenly matched – it is roughly 50% Catholic and 50% Protestant. There are still problems and conflicts in Belfast, and the "peace wall," a wall erected to divide the two sides, is still standing. It is closed at night and during the weekend. I didn't realize something like this still existed, it felt so divisive and it seemed hard to work for peace in such a context. The murals were more belligerent as well. While the murals in Derry seemed aimed at remembering and laying to rest the past, the Belfast murals were designed to bolster up the individual sides. The Protestant murals included murals of sharpshooters who had killed tens of Catholics, and a mural celebrating Cromwell. The Catholic murals, on the other hand, celebrated their own "soldiers" and heroes. I think you'll understand better when we can show you the pictures. It was so disheartening. On the plus side, only a handful of people, 3 or 4, have died in conflict so far this year. The Northern Ireland government is just reforming, so everyone is watching to see what will happen. I'm glad we visited, but I don't especially want to go again.

After Belfast, we headed back to Dublin for a last afternoon and night before flying back (home? Where is home anyway?). Nick insisted on walking up the river Liffey to a bridge done by one of his favorite designers, Santiago Calatrava. After our bridge tour we walked the city and met some people from our tour group for dinner and Guinness. It was a great way to end our wonderful time on the Emerald Isle.

126A Yardley Road

Well we just got back from Ireland and wow, what a trip! We’re exhausted from the trip and too tired to write much on that now. Since we had a 5:30 am flight out of Dublin (You have to work for the cheapest fares!) we just stayed up all night and caught a cab to the airport at 3:30. Anyway, more on Ireland later.

For now, we signed our lease, got our keys, and finally have a place to call home, since leaving our apartment in Pittsburgh in late July. It feels great to actually unpack our things for good. Our place is really nice on the inside, with composite wood flooring and nice clean white walls and new appliances. Apparently the landlord just renovated the place last year. It has two bedrooms and is across from a private school and a flower shop on a fairly busy street corner, 5 minutes from the train station. It feels small and British, thanks heavily to the front door key. When they gave us a set of two antique-looking keys, we almost laughed. It looks like our key should unlock an ancient treasure chest or someone’s secret diary, not our front door. Apparently the modern tumble-lock has not caught on yet in England—so quaint!

Castle Photos

Week One

We’ve been here in the “Olde World” for about a week, and it has been an exhausting one. Arup has put us up at a posh corporate apartment close to their office, which means it is far from anything and everything else. We have become masters of public transit, though this also means we are covering huge distances between bus and train routes by foot. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that we have walked pretty much every neighborhood along the southern train line out of Birmingham. With all this walking, we have a good feel for each area and decided within the first 4 days or so that Acocks Green was the place for us.

The Arup office is in the extreme southern suburb of Birmingham, which is unfortunate because we are city-loving people and didn’t want to live too close to the office. Acocks Green is a great compromise: it’s right on the train line and it just 2 stops north of Solihull and two stops south of central Birmingham. There were about 3 flats/apartments in the area that we looked at, and we felt like the cheapest one was also the nicest, which doesn’t happen often. We reserved our modern 2 bedroom, 2nd floor flat on Tuesday, just under a week after arriving in England. Look for future apartment posts soon.

To celebrate finding our flat and finally take a break to enjoy things here some, we headed 30 minutes south on Wednesday to Warwick Castle, one of the best preserved medieval (or as they write here, mediaeval) castles in England. Other than raining almost all day (yeah England!) the day was great, as the pictures below clearly demonstrate. In addition to the basic castle tour, there were all these cool medieval demonstrations throughout the day. We saw a highly-scripted, WWF-style joust, as well as a “Birds of Prey” demonstration with hawks and buzzards and eagles. The eagle was by far the coolest bird, and it just reminded us of how fearsome and powerful the good ol’ USA is, or at least our national symbol. You don’t want to mess with an eagle. Anyway, the day culminated in the launching of England’s largest trebuchet, which is a siege weapon like a catapult, but better because it slings the projectile forward. It was a great day and it’s awesome to know that all of this is now just 30 minutes away from us (not-so-subtle plug for visitors)!

Visit here to check out all of our Warwick Castle pictures.

The beginning

We've arrived, and we've finally got this darn blog up and running. It only took a month! We hope that it will be an entertaining and insightful look at life abroad, as well as a way to keep in touch with all of you. Let us know if it's working!