England days 4 - 9

Well, we've had just over a week in Oxford and it's still raining... boo hiss.
We have done some sight seeing and Bronson has already gotten himself some fun british cars to play with on the sleek "wood" floor of the kitchen. (This one's a taxi - I find taxi's here very hard to identify, often they don't even have a taxi sign on them, nevermind they're not yellow!)



Here's the view from our kitchen window - all the rain has caused a couple rivers to flood, the Thames being one of them (the one which runs right through Oxford). Alright, so not really through our window, but this is from the Magdalene Bridge, 10 minutes away, this field has totally flooded, if you didn't know better you'd assume it was another river running under the bridge (in fact I did the first time I passed).
Today Bronson and I went to Alice's shop, the Alice in Wonderland store. Lewis Carroll based the sheep shop on this actual store which is right across the road from Christ Church College where he was a student (through, L.C. is his pseudonym - Bronson and I learnt that on the Oxford story ride we took yesterday!)



So we're starting to feel right at home here, Bronson bathes in the kitchen sink and is okay with it. Matthew did a load of laundry for us in the laundry room downstairs and now all of our underwear, socks and most of B's pj's are purple. And I have a regular line-up of game shows to watch in the afternoon on t.v. after we get back from our outings ('Win my wage' and 'Golden Balls') I find Brit gameshows to be more human based, they're all about guessing if someone's lying or not, though they never resort to being rude and after being voted off people congratulate the remaining players on a good game.
On Friday I threw out my back so we took it very slowly on the weekend. On Saturday Matthew got us kicked out of the Museum of History of Science, so we went to the Ashmolean museum which is an art gallery. It was nice, had a great display on egypt, but the art wasn't as extensive as the Norton Simon in Pasadena.
This is Radcliffe Camera aka Rad Cam, it's a library, part of the huge Bodleian library. The rain started as we left the Ashmolean. We found a small restaurant called 'Vaults and garden' in, well, the vaults of a nearby building (I feel like I should call it a castle - buildings around here are far more than just your average run of the mill business building, they're so grand) We had a nice carrot and lentil stew and scones. The garden area had tables and chairs next to grass and graves. That's right. Graves. Eating next to a grave, in North America seems wrong. Here you have little choice. In fact, as I search for places to allow Bronson to roam free, I'm finding that most greenspace is either flooded or grave sites randomly strewn about the city, a few here, a few there. There is a small meridian in a road near Matthew's science building with a few grassy graves and a small fince around it. You see people leaning on the fence, hanging out.

Other things I've noticed:
- It's encouraged that cars park half on the sidewalk, half on the street
- Supermarkets around here do not refrigerate their eggs
- They have weird chip flavours here "prawn cocktail" anyone?
- Although they drive opposite, walking still seems to be a 'keep right' situation
- I feel very safe here, even when I hear people making their way home from the pub at 4 am
- Everyone calls you 'Love' ; at first I thought people just really liked me... but no
- The tellers in supermarkets, etc sit down at the till!
- There are alot of large sizes of clothing in normal trendy stores, which is funny because I think the average american woman is larger than the average brit lady...
- They don't have normal baby food - they have 'Fisherman's catch' and 'spaghetti bolognese' and 'mushroom rissotto' but where's the green beans???!??!
- Bronson is still really cute, even with the exchange rate.

England (Days 1-3)

Well, we had a long trip. 2 planes, a long underground walk to the bus depot at the airport, a 1 hour bus ride, a taxi to the astronomy building in Oxford, alot of meeting people and chatting and then a ride to our rented flat from one of the faculty and 26 hours into our journey we could finally sleep. They've rented a studio flat for us and it's divided into 4 rooms, as pictured below. The bathroom, bedroom and kitchen all meet in the hall/entranceway "room". It's much nicer than we expected to get and it's great to be able to cook.

It's also in a nice neighbourhood (though I haven't seen any bad neighbourhoods in Oxford so far) and a 40 minute walk to the astro building. The Oxford campus is scatered all throughout town, the Mary Magdalene campus is 1/2 a block away and Christ Church Cathedral starts about 2 blocks the other way from us.

The city centre is a 20 minute walk away (on the way to campus), but there is also a busy shop filled road 2 blocks away where we've found gracery stores and a park for Bronson.

We slept from about 6pm until about noon the next day (waking often as Bronson woke often) and then we went to Tesco's (think Safeway) and did a base shop. Matt went to the school and after a short nap B and I walked around the area of the flat, ending with a nice long play at the park. The area we're in is separated from downtown by a river. B and I did not venture across the bridge today, but probably we'll head that way tomorrow.

the bedroom

The view from the bedroom window

The kitchen

View from the kitchen window

Bathroom

Bronson - happy to have a home away from home

Other things that I've noticed - all the elevators here say "door opening" and "door closing" in a female voice with a brit accent, people use the word "lovely" quite often around here, Things are so old and so crowded, there are cemetery plots everywhere, their cheddar cheese is white, they still carry cocoa puffs here, EVERYBODY takes tea time, people don't drive in Oxford, they walk (and a short walk is considered 40 mins), best of all there are many different types of chocolate covered digestive cookies (McVities) and I will report back on which is best. :)

We're Baaa - aack... but not for long!

We had a wonderful visit to the great land that is Canada and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. We didn't take as many pictures as usual, since there were so many photographers about (and some even professional!) we didn't take any at the three wedding celebrations, but we did take a few of candid moments in the "off-the-beaten-track" parts of our journey...

Bronson and Alexia had a baby chicken fight when we visited Kim's grandma at the lake - Bronson thoroughly enjoyed visiting with his new cousins.

We all tried our hand fishing for bullheads (don't worry, we released them)... Bronson and I are the only 2 who never caught any. Jayden was the mastermind behind the plan, here he poses with some of our catches.

Bronson got to visit with David just before David turned one (and I got to visit with his mom and some of my other girlfriends - I'm still indebted to Matt for my night out)

Our friend and next door neighbour (to the Barkers) Molly and cousin Sky took Bronson for a swing in the Port Alberni drizzle.

We visited grandmere and grandpa Alan at the cabin... B could not figure out why he needed a helmet for a bike ride with them.

Here Bronson finds his favorite window at Grandma and Grandpa Portage's place, moments later a huge hailstorm hit and B was intrigued by the stuff falling from the sky.

After Teri and Jay's wedding, on the way to Regina from Assiniboia we stopped at Rouleau aka Dog River and tried to act cool in the face of Canada's Hollywood.

My baby, he's not Regular, he's a Premium.

We had a lovely trip, thank you to everyone who picked us up, dropped us off, provided us with places to stay, meals, washroom facilities, hugs, beer, baby cuddles, etc.

Congratulations to Susanne and Les, your wedding was beautiful.

Congratulations to Teri and Jay, we had a great time celebrating with you.

Since we've been back we spent a few happy days in Pasadena, I saw various docs every day with regards to my shoulder, and it's looking better. Bronson is so happy to be home, he keeps making the rounds of all his toys, and he's sleeping well at night again too. Rudely we dragged him away from all this happiness up to Owens Valley (10 hour drive return) for 2 nights while Matthew worked on the telescope there. But now we're back in Pasadena and off to England tomorrow morning! Hopefully Bronson won't mind the trip as at least we'll be living in one place for the 4 weeks we're there.

Well, 20 hours before we go and we've got lots of work to do. Hopefully there will be internet where we're staying and I'll be able to blog.

Bye.

(Matthew tells me that's what the english say for aurevoir)