Emily in Edinburgh!: Lake District of England, 22 Jan

I have lots to update on!!! I am so incredibly busy I have not had a chance to blog!! OK so, last update was the week before I left for Shap, England for my weekend homestay that was provided through the program I am on--which is what I am going to talk about now! About half of the people on my program had their homestays the same weekend, so we took about a 3 hour bus ride to the town of Penrith, England. I had no idea what to expect! I did know another girl, Cris, that was staying with the same family so it was nice to not be the only one. Two other girls on the butler program were also in our house, Mollie and Minh-Tu, so there was four of us all together with our homestay mom, Linda!! It was quite interesting cramming in all of our stuff in her tiny car, whilst Linda made fun of me for having my blankie haha, I had to bring it though!!

So we get in the car and the first thing Linda says is "Okay girls, who wants some wine?!" I knew that Linda and I were going to be good friends after this and that it was going to be a fabulous weekend. Before we could discuss anything, the wine had to be poured. Some people had to drive 30 minutes from the stop to their houses which were on farms, but Linda lived in the town in a flat. We pulled up to her bright purple door with dolphin mosiac and entered the most eccentric/hilarious house ever. It was small, but just enough room and very cozy. Linda gave us a tour and showed us the different rooms we could choose from. Poor Linda gave up her own room for us and slept on the couch!! Minh-Thu and Mollie had their own rooms and Cris and I shared her son, Jordie's, room, who is away at Uni in Newcastle. As we were walking up the stairs to the third floor where our room was we see this life-size sesame street character hanging, as in like a noose, from the ceiling. haha it was so bizarre and definitely not the only wacky thing in her house, but it fit Linda perfectly. There was one bathroom in the whole flat which was full of everything dolphin--dolphin shower curtain, dolphin pictures, dolphin trinkets, dolphin tooth brush holder, dolphin rug, dolphin rubber toys, dolphin wallpaper, and so on... Dolphins were obviously Linda's favorite. It was cute though. Another crazy thing I noticed as I walked into the living room was the huge tapestry of a bat above the mantle haha it was like made out of carpet or something. Very odd, but again, fit Linda perfectly and we didn't ask questions.

After we got settled into Linda's house and got acclimated to all the wacky decorations Linda poured us another glass of wine and started cooking dinner! Linda prepared for us a very English meal--Cottage Pie. I was a little weary being the super picky eater I am, but, the English are like me and like things very plain so very much enjoyed it actually!-or it could have been the fact that it was 11pm and I was starving, but whatever. Speaking of time, another unusual object Linda had in her house was her "dyslexic clock" the numbers and everything were backwards so it ran backwards. Threw me for the hugest loop I never knew what time it was. Linda is a special needs teacher who tutors from her house, so I have no idea how the kids who are actually dyslexic try to reverse their problem with that backwards clock. Anyways, it was funny. We had a wonderful evening talking, eating, drinking wine, and playing games. We stayed up til after 1am and finally went to bed after we were all falling asleep on the table, even though Linda wanted to play more games.

On Saturday, Linda tutors all day, so her ex-husband, Gordon, took us around the lake district. It was absolutely beautiful! I have never been to that part of England before, I had no idea there were parts that looked like this. We hiked about a half a mile to this really pretty waterfall and then went to the adorable town of Keswick. There, we met up with some other people from our program for fish and chips. After we walked around the little market and got some yummy chocolate crepes and sat in this cute coffee shop until Gordon picked us back up to take us to Linda's. Back at Linda's we got ready for dinner and watched American Idol! It was nice to watch TV since I don't have one here (not that I would have time to watch it). It was also very nice to be in a home atmosphere. Good break from the city life, as well. After dinner, Shawshank Redemption was on TV so we stayed up and watched that then went to bed!

Sunday we got up early and Linda took us on a drive to see Hadrian's Wall, what used to separate Scotland and England back in the Medieval times. It was great seeing parts of the English country side and running in the fields with the sheep! ha we had some great views as well. Linda was so funny, there were a couple sights that were closed, like this castle ruin, and she just told us to go anyways and if somebody came out to say we were Americans and we've never seen a castle before. Linda definitely does what she wants. It was fun in the car ride to tell her about ourselves and hear her stories as well. She is registered on match.com so she goes on all kinds of blind dates. She had some hilarious stories--my favorite was the one where she shows up and meets the guy in his car and he is so large he can't get out and she had to help him. She had to break it off and told him it was because she wanted someone to go skiing with and be active, etc. Ha very entertaining. She said "whoopsiedaisy" like every other word and all I could think of was Hugh Grant in Notting Hill. She was so cute.

After Hadrian's wall and some castles, we returned to Linda's where we had our farewell lunch! It was a nice getaway but I was ready to be back in Edinburgh with my friends and computer! We returned around 6pm and I had lots of reading to do for class so I just took myself to the pub around the corner from my flat for dinner. There I had a glass of wine and some yummy mac and cheese. I felt so independent going out to eat on my own! Anyways, so that was the end of my homestay weekend. Here are some pictures....