A little bit of everything!

Since we last wrote, we had two more days in Wellingborough, one day of travel to Devon, and now we've been here for almost a day. Here is a little recap of what's been going on and a few weeklies.

One of our days in Wellingborough, we went to Cambridge, which is home to England's second oldest university. It was a little like most other college towns (students riding bikes everywhere, people studying for exams currently, etc.) although with the added charm of it being founded in 1209. The other day in Wellingborough, we visited Stoke Bruerne and saw the canal locks in action. It was so cool seeing the water level raise so much in such a short time. Walking along the canal was gorgeous, and it was so fun to look inside of the boats and see the tiny kitchens and such.



Overall, we've found England to be similar in looks to New England, with small towns, brick houses and lots of the same place names. Basically the biggest difference we've noticed so far is how much older everything here is. It's amazing to think that it's perfectly normal for buildings here to be over 500 years older than the United States.

We spent our first full day in Devon at the local high school with our host. For me, I found this school to be much different than the others that we visited in how they interacted with us. At the Hungarian high school, not many of the students' English was well enough to have a proper conversation, and at the international school in Switzerland, so many of the students were American, so it was just like meeting a new classmate. At the English school, however, we found that a few people (jokingly) refused to talk to us because we were Americans. However, we were forewarned that they might not be that friendly, but it was all in a good-natured way.


So now onto the Weeklies! Since we were only in Wellingborough for half a week, we decided to combine the weeklies from there with the ones from our week in Devon.


People of the Week

We interviewed both of our Wellingborough hosts this week.

Name:
Issa
Harry

Where were you born?
Issa: The east end of London. I'm a Cockney, although Harry has the Cockney accent.
Harry: London

What is your favorite place in England?
Issa: London
Harry: Derbyshire

What is your favorite English food?
Issa: Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.
Harry: Roast Lamb

What is your former job?*
Issa: Most recently, the Equal Opportunities Coordinator at Northampton University.
Harry: A printer

What are your current hobbies?
Issa: Working with children, being a School Governor**, line dancing, swimming, and reading.
Harry: Riding my motorbike, photography, gardening, and watching football***.

What are some places you've traveled to together?
Israel, American, Australia, the Far East, Europe, including Italy, France Portugal, and many more places.

What is your favorite place in the world?
Issa: The Italian lakes
Harry: New England

Anything else?
"When you first asked us to host you, we were surprised by your age. Most English kids don't do something like that until 18 or so."

* - Issa and Harry are retired.
** - School Governor is a bit like School Board in the U.S.
*** - In America, it's soccer.




Word of the Week

Although it's all still English, they do use different words for certain things. For example, in England they might say, "Let's use the zebra crossing to get to the other pavement." In America, we would way, "Let's the the crosswalk to get to the other sidewalk." There are also certain words they pronounce differently, like "zeb-rah" instead of "zee-brah". Overall though, it's great not to have as much of a language barrier as certain other countries.

More soon!
Ariel