It Sure Is Nice To Have The Internet!

Tooley and I have enjoyed having the internet for the past 24 hours! :) The past few days have been great...the weather has been sunny and 65-70 degrees. On Tuesday night, I went to eat pizza at this little restaurant called A Hole in the Wall with Michelle, Marfo, English Natalie, American Natalie, and American Natalie's boyfriend, Jonathan. Jonathan is a grad student at the University of Alabama, where Natalie is getting her ph.D. He came to England for 10 days to visit, so all of us went out to eat Tuesday night to meet him. Wednesday afternoon, I was walking through town and saw a man painted silver, wearing a Shakespeare mask, and standing on a box. Near the box was a sign that said Shakespeare's Ghost and a hat to put money in. He would stand very still, and when someone put money in his hat, he'd yell BOO and jump off the box. It was so scary but also hilarious! On Wednesday night, Tooley cooked a delicious meal of chilli and nachos. Her sister mailed some chilli mix from the U.S., so it tasted just like home. :) I picked up some yummy chocolate desserts called Fairy Cakes (after the brownie/pudding incident last week, I'm scared to try to bake again), which are chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing on the inside. When I was buying the Fairy Cakes at the grocery store, I saw that they were also selling googleberry muffins. Isn't that random? I have no idea what a googleberry is, but the muffins had red icing on them. I asked Michelle and English Natalie, but they had never heard of it, either. I also asked Michelle and Natalie what elderflower and blackcurrant are, because those are popular flavors for tea, dessert, and fruit juice. I had never heard of them until I got to England, but apparently elderflower is like raspberry and blackcurrant looks like a big blueberry but tastes like a cranberry. Another interesting bit of information...on Wednesday night, Tooley and I were talking to our landlord, Jeremy, about how weird it is that Starbucks and other coffee shops close at 6 p.m. in Stratford. We told him that most coffee shops stay open til at least 11 in the U.S. He said, "Well, Starbucks just can't compete with the pubs." He explained that England is a pub society, and people hang out in pubs the same way Americans hang out at coffee shops. The legal drinking age in Europe is 18 (you can buy cigarettes at 16), so everyone under 18 hangs out at McDonald's (no joke!) and once you turn 18, you go to the pubs. People don't always go to the pubs to drink...most people go to eat, watch football (soccer), and socialize. So in a way, a pub is the English version of an American Starbucks or coffee shop. This weekend, I have to go to the Rotary District Conference in Southport, England. Mike and Judy are picking me up Friday morning, and we'll return Sunday afternoon. I'll get to meet some other Ambassadorial Scholars, so that will be nice. I also have to miss class to go to the conference! Below, I've posted pictures of our room and our new "work station" for our computers. :) I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Our beds - mine has the purple comforter and Tooley's has the navy

Our "workstation," which consists of two laptops, a modem, a router, the Vonage phone, and the UK phone