- woke up at 10:30 and made my way to the kitchen to book our travels for the rest of the trip. after a very frustrating 2 hours involving lots of shouting at my parents, we booked everything for london... whew!
- my parents ditched us before we were ready to go off on our explore for the day, so caryn and i made eggy sammiches for us and charles and then we alternated between watching the tour and top gear for about an hour... i LOVE top gear so much!
- caryn and i wandered down into newport to buy postcards. we explored the town a little bit, i bought some ribena from a grocery called iceland (which was super exciting for caryn) and we explored clinton card shop for probably 45 minutes... english cards are just so funny! we also bought stamps for our postcards (from the post office and everything cause english mail actually makes sense) and mine had a character from THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE on them. i am so excited to send them off to my boys. on our walk home we explored st. mary's (the church just across the road) and wandered through the graveyard. many of the gravestones (at least the ones we could make out) are as old as the US... which is always quite odd to think about
- caryn and i spent the evening facebook stalking a whole host of our msu friends, which made us excited to get back to school. we don't want our summer to end, but at the same time it will be nice to be back home
- showered, sat in the windowsill looking out at the garden and listening to the church bells at st. mary's for about 20 minutes, and had our last family dinner at the cottage. we had yet another hilarious dinner conversation... this one began with an in-depth analysis of taylor swift's song fifteen. we argued about the actual age of students entering their freshman years and somehow ended up talking about statutory rape... only in my family. the conversation later revolved around english and american accents, specifically the difference between stalk (to creep) stalk (of an apple) stork (the bird that brings the babies) stock (the shelves) in each language. basically, brits say stalk stalk stork the same and americans say stalk stalk stock the same... madness! from here the conversation, as usual, devolved into much silliness and joking.
- went down to the pub with my parents and caryn. we went to the 8 bells this time (about the same distance, but in the opposite direction of the waverly). we split some bags of crisps and discussed at length different drinks, the virtues of various beers and ciders, and how pub/drinking culture has changed over the years and between our two countries. then we talked about languages and my abroad plans for next year (because getting through this year first isn't enough :P)
- packed all our things up ready to move again and talked to krista before bed. it's crazy to think we're already moving on, but i'm very excited to get to granny's tomorrow and show caryn around all my favorite haunts... it will be a busy week, particularly since we also have papers we need to turn in by the end of the week! luckily, we won't have the internet there to distract us... many games of cards will be played. and we will have a lovely time. the blog will be back up (hopefully) thursday night so, until then, byeeee :)
