Sorry everyone for the long silence. I (Luke) have been really busy finishing up the term and doing finals and Hilarie has not had reliable access to the internet. Poor excuses I know but I had to come up with something so you wouldn’t think we just don’t love you. We have been having a ton of fun here in England. It has been a chance for us to just get down to the basics and to think and dream about the future. We haven’t done a ton of traveling yet, unfortunately. We are hoping to do most of that in May when the weather is a bit cheerier.
Since the last post a lot has happened though. We moved into what Maddy calls our New New England house, as apposed to the Old New England house that you all got a video tour of. We haven’t done a tour of our new place yet probably cause we are much more comfortable here and don’t need the “looks like a fun place” reassurances you all lovingly offered about the other place. It was a little to small to say the least. We have a great deal of space in this place. It is a big two bedroom, probably bigger than our place in Logan. Maddy has her own room, she no longer resides in the closet nook. We even have a huge living room that has now become Craig’s room. We finally have been able to break him of waking up at night. Hilarie doesn’t know what to do with a full nights sleep, she is in the process of redefining who she is after having a few “normal” nights sleep. Craigie is so funny, he will wake up and cry and if we just go in and reassure him that we are still here he goes straight back to sleep. We feel a little silly that we didn’t figure this our earlier but on the other hand things just weren’t conducive to it before. Funny why it is such a big deal for a person to learn to sleep through the night, we sure get weird and find joy in the simplest things when we have kids huh?
Our landlord Mr. Omar Malek has been very accommodating to us. He either bought or lent us almost everything that we needed to be comfortable: microwave, iron, DVD player, toaster, pots and pans, bedding, towels, etc. We feel really blessed. He is such a classic English bloke. He blows kisses to Hilarie every time she sees her and calls her “my love”. I’m not too worried though, I feel confident that I could wipe the floor with him, well at least I could probably wrestle his ever-present scarf away from him to wipe the floor with. He even wears a scarf to the gym. He does claim the what he calls the “droit du seigneur” any time Hilary cooks, his interpretation is that he gets the first taste. The tradtional use for that French phrase is not so pleasant. I will leave you to look it up. He has a beautiful garden that he sometimes lets us venture into, its about 5 acres with a pond. He invited me over for dinner one night when Hilarie was out with her dad and the kids and I had to study. It was pretty funny seeing him and his “housekeeper” get drunk and loosen up. They served some very nice food. I am really getting a taste for parsnips. They also served some cheese on a dense wheat bread with relish on top for “desert” that was nice stuff. Nice is the word they use for tasty, we find ourselves using a few of these “posh” words when we are feeling “cheeky”. They call desert pudding and Mr. Malek makes a mean “pud”.
More on his “housekeeper”. Her name is Penelope (Penny). She grew up on a farm just west of where we live. She has a twin sister and they are both blonde. They used to do field work on the farm in their bikinis. Can you imaging two identical goodlooking blondes out in the fields in their bikinis? They must have been quite a sight, and it seems that they have some sort of reputation. She is a sweet lady, really mild mannered and soft spoken. I guess it is just a little funny for a housekeeper to show up Friday night at 10:00 pm in high heels and not leave until Monday morning. Hilarie got all the town gossip about it at the post office/store in town, pretty funny this English small town stuff. We have a pretty good relationship with old Omar and so one day Hilarie actually said something to him about it. She said, so Penny is your housekeeper? Omar kinds smiled and Hil said, maybe a friend too huh? He said, oh your such a nosy neighbor aren’t you? It was funny. He and Penny gave Hilarie cards and flowers for her birthday and they also came over for cake and icecream, Penny brought her glass of wine. We also came in the house from church on Sunday to Easter presents for the kids just inside the door. He has let me borrow tools to work on my Audi and also gives us access to his barbecue. He says he doesn’t use it cause burned meat is a carcinogen. I grit my teeth and I have to admit I imagined myself strangling him with his woosy scarf when I heard him say such blaspheme but I took it in good stride, I was proud of myself.
Wow, that last stretch made it sound like all we do is hang out at home and wait for our land lord to do something funny, we are a little more adventurous than that. I should talk about school. It has been fun going to the oldest Ag school in the English speaking world. this school was established in th 1840’s by rich land owners who wanted to have a place to send their kids to school. It has remained kind of a rich kids school with a lot of social deviance. The kids drink beer like water and are pretty unruly. I guess that 60 percent of the freshman drop out. We went to the Student Union meeting to complain a bit about the roudyness in the computer room but they didn’t seem to care about what we had to say. The school president was there and he just said it was part of the “right of passage”. Good job buddy, that’s the way to influence tender young minds. He said we were just experiencing some culture shock. Sounds like the whole town of Cirencester is in culture shock then. Most of the land lords won’t rent to students and they describe the school with 3 words “sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll”.
I have to include this part at the risk of offending some people just to give you a glimpse of the “culture shock” we are getting. Also proof that I am learning how to apply my Economics Knowledge. A little background. They are running the elections right now for the Student Union or what we would call the Student Body Officers. They have posted some pretty racy posters around including one that has a picture of two drunk girls and a caption “we are up for social sec’s (secretaries they mean)… if you are.” Then add to that the big fat neon green signs posted all around the computer lab saying “absolutely no food or drink allowed in the computer lab” and our meeting with the president(principle) and the student union about the fact that no one followed these signs to which they agreed that something should be done to protect the equipment from damage. With that as a background here is a chat conversation I had with a classmate here:
JC: the girls running for student union just brought in a bunch of beer to the computer room and handed it out to those who wanted. I asked them if that wasn’t against the rules. They said they had permission.I asked from who. Do you know what they said?
do you know who gave them permission?
me: the principle
JC: The principal.
me: he he
JC: some punchline, huh?
me: are they the ones that are up for social sex?
JC: yes,Some principal. Probably just couldn’t hack it in industry.
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me: We could develop a model for this: free beer = social sex = std’s and teenage pregnancy = lowered quality of life = increased incentive to cover up crappy feelings with more addictive substances and practices = more unhappyness = mass social unrest including school shootings and other terrorism = deterioration of social framework and consumer trust = prolonged economic downturn = mass depression = the need to look for someone to blame for our problems = WWIII = the need for Christ to come in and save us from utter destruction = happiness in the kingdom of God and a thousand years of peace for the loser American students that thought the principle was spineless and the students should be disciplined and burning of the RAC as chaff and the eternal torment and suffering in hell not only for the students but mostly the principle for not using his position of authority to enact change in a corrupt organization.
Lest you think that I am not impressed and don’t like it here I should now expound the good parts of the school experience. We are what they call post-graduate students and so we don’t have to deal too much with the kids. Our lectures are really good, for the most part. The RAC doesn’t really, in my mind, specialize in academics too much but what they are good at is knowledge application and industry experience. This goes along with the history of the college. A lot of the professors are actually not full-time faculty and are outsourced to come in and teach. This means that they are not the typical professor type that couldn’t really hack it in industry so they teach. They have extensive experience from the “real world” which gives great application to the material. Most of the class material is not new to us, we had most of it before in our undergrads but they give an industry perspective on things that I have found refreshing and fun, if not very useful and inspiring. My mind has been racing on things that I would like to do for my future career and for a future farm. I have been scheming and writing a lot of ideas down. I like the different teaching style a lot and am going to be very proud of my degree. I feel like after I am done I will be able to have a lot of confidence in a job interview, and really with all the contact that the professors have here I may be able to get a few of those, at least internationally.
I’m about done with the commentary for now. I will try to write some more later. I want to include some pictures and videos though.
Some fun pots in the back alleys of Malmesbury
Is this a car? I’m speachless, in total awe.
Fun english scenery
Cute Cragie
My easter family getting ready to feed ducks
Maddy’s easter cake. She saw this one on a magazine cover and had to have it. It was the highlight of her Easter. She was so excited to show Megan. I helped Hil make the cake, the ugly chicks are mine. They are made from marsipan.
Cute new easter clothes, the kids aren’t bad either.
Maddy easter dress photo shoot product.
This was our family’s first geocash. Maddy still talks about the treasure hunt all the time.
I took a Saturday Class on “Hedge Laying”. Here instead of fences to keep in the livestock they traditionally used hedges. There is an elaborate art of making these hedges suitable for fences ie. strong and thick. There are over 40 registered hedge laying techniques, I only learned one. Here is what it is. They take the plants, usually hawthorn but any deciduous plant will work, and they cut them at the ground 3/4 of the way through and then lay them down. This way they can keep them closer and thicker at the ground and also it makes them look really neat and nice and promotes good new growth. You can see a little of the process we went through in the class in taking a wild hedge looking row of pretty much just little trees into a neat hedge that should hold in sheep. This was really fun for me. To do the work they use a tool called a Bill Hook. You can bet that I am going to give this a go when I get home.
Maddy burned her finger on the iron pretty bad. She found this cup that fit her hand perfectly and wouldn’t come off when she made a fist inside. It had cold water in it and she wouldn’t let us take it away, even when she went to sleep.
Malmesbury Abby, 1600 year old or so.
Maddy and Megan, her English twin. They are so alike it is scary. They were pulling the same faces at the same time when I was trying to get them to smile. They are nuts, really.
Our tour of the Museum of Natural History, neat place. Maddy’s favorite was guess… the sea turtles or mexican turtles for Grandma Nancy
Craig is such a cuddler these days. The kids are watching a movie together.
Maddy saw craig getting a bath in the sink at the London Temple Accommodations so she had to have one too.
The oldest church owned chapel in England. Maddy is impressed you can tell. This has a great story/history we will have to give you when you come, or when we get home.
Here are some videos on google video.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6691750323569512452&hl=en
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5885377748864066283&hl=en
Petersens in England Weblog 