School lunches...

Remember when you were going to grade school and the school lunches? I remember talking with my friends about the revolting things they served. I remember seeing giant cans of peas sitting on shelves in the school kitchen and a giant tub labeled "lard". I could not believe it when I saw it. Even then, the days when the only criteria for what I put in my body was whether or not it tasted good, I was frightened by that tub of "lard".

I continued to eat school lunches through high school and even though I complained about them, there were a few lunches that I actually liked. They were the ones that included cinnamon rolls or ice cream sandwiches. I liked the chili and the tacos and, of course, the pizza. My kids today favor the pizza lunch over all others. In the US, my kids had pizza every Friday for lunch and they never got tired of it.

Now, eating lunches in the UK? This is a bit different. I have attached a picture of the school lunches here. At first, I did not understand half of the items on the menu. Alyssa had to come to my rescue. She decided that she was going to try school lunches (mainly for the social aspect of where you get to sit when eating). I get to ask her each day about the lunches. Some of the stuff she is not too sure about, but others she is able to explain. It is very eyeopening what the British children favor and what they don't like. Apparently, Shepard's Pie is top notch.

Take a look at the menu now (click on it to look at a larger version) and decide what YOU think is good. However, don't expect to find tacos or chili on the menu.

It's spring in the UK!!

Spring is here! I have attached a picture of the daffodiles that line the street in front of the school. The line runs nearly a mile down the main street of Hardwick. It is lovely!

Amazingly, people are actually complaining about the fact that the UK has had the warmest winter since they started keeping records in 1635. Amazing! In all truth, it has not been THAT warm here this winter. Unlike the January in Maryland, we have had a pretty steady stream for 40 degree F days until March hit. We had some lower temperatures, but it rarely was below freezing during the day. In March, we have had 50 degree days until this week when Mother Nature did her usual move for March and it snowed. The daffodiles have been up since the beginning of March and the crocuses too. The flowering trees are starting to lose their petals now and the leaves are starting to fill in. The rape seed fields surrounding us are making my nose run like a hosepipe. However, I am not complaining! I welcome a warmer winter.

The part of the winter that the complainers did not mention was the fact that here we have had higher than normal rainfall. Now for the UK, that is something to talk about! There is not a week that goes by where it is dry for more than three days in a row. The football pitch (soccer field) at the top of our street has spent most of the winter under an inch of water. The only thing that keeps the water from standing too long is the constant wind gusts that have done their best to dry things out. It seems there has been a battle this winter between the wind and the rain to see which element can cause the most havoc. I think they are tied!

New playground idea...

Now here is an idea! They have slides here that don't have ladders! They build a big mound and then put a slide on it. We have seen several slides like this at the local parks. No more falling off the ladder! Brilliant! Come all ye unstable toddlers!

Driving in the UK...

I just had a wonderful visit from my aunt, Mollie. She experienced most of the public transportation system in England coming up to visit us from London. She took trains and taxis and then I picked her up at the Cambridge train station for our final trip back to our house. She climbed into the car, sitting on driver's side (except in the UK). I remember the first time sitting in the front seat of a UK car and not being the driver. I felt like there was so much extra sitting space since you did not have to deal with steering wheels and brake pedals.

On our way home, we squeezed by doubledecker buses and parked cars. We went through half a dozen roundabouts and made at least seven turns before arriving at our house which is only six miles from the train station. You see, there are no straight lines in England. The only way you can go from point A to point B in a relatively straight line is on the train. The problem is that the train is a bit expensive. However, it is the most efficient transport. The trains go fast and run on time. Another bonus is that there are very few accidents. Last week, a Virgin train traveling from London to Glasgow, Scotland crashed going 90+ mph. The last train crash in England was in 2000. Considering that there are hundreds of trains running daily in the UK, I think that this is impressive. Of the 180 passengers only one person was killed and she was 84 years old. I don't mean to imply that someone's life is less valuable at that age. I mean to say that an 84 year old person's body is much less able to cope with trauma. Considering the accident, I think it is amazing that so many people survived. The site of the crash saw train cars off the track and the impact of the wreck caused the engine to fly back past the front train. You would not survive a wreck in a car going that fast.

Driving fast in England seems to be the norm. The speed limit on divided highways is 70 mph. Most people exceed that by at least 10 mph. However, the lorries drive 50 to 60 mph. This causes people to slam on their brakes when one lorry pulls out to pass another lorry on the two lane divided highways. Usually, by the time the lorry pulls back into the "slow lane" there are at least 5 cars stacked up behind it.

The roads are divided up into motorways, "A" roads, "B" roads and then the rest. Motorways are like the highways in the US. They have shoulders and are divided with two or more lanes. The speed limit is never posted on these roads unless there are restrictions posted due to construction, accidents, etc. The understood speed limit is 70 mph. The "A" roads are often divided like highways, but it is not the standard. They never have a shoulder even though many of the "A" roads around us are highly congested and a broken down car or lorry will cause considerable delays. No speed limit signs are posted here, but speed cameras are placed at regular intervals. The understood speed limit is 70 if the road is divided. The "B" roads are like county roads in the US. Depending on what they connect, they can be busy, but usually are used mostly to get from one town to another. Since they do not go straight from point A to point B and are routed through many villages, traffic is not too bad on these roads. However, cars usually traveling on them use the rule that if the car does not roll when you go round a turn, then it is a safe speed. I got passed on a one lane country road the other day by a car that had to have been going over 70 mph. I was afraid to watch him go round the bend up the road. I felt sure that I was going to see the car in the farm field next to the turn. I see a lot of evidence of this happening around us as I have seen may tire tracks going from the road into the field next to the roads.

Despite how fast you drive, you still don't get to go from point A to point B in a straight line and there are always several roundabouts to negotiate. You cannot really cut off much time going fast in the straight sections around here since there are so few of them. However, I guess that there will always be people who try to get to their destination as fast as they can even if they risk their lives to save a minute.

Calpe and siestas...

While we were in Spain, we visited Calpe which is just up the coast from Benidorm. It is a beautiful city tucked in between the sea and the mountains. Once an ancient fishing village Calpe now has about 20.000 inhabitants and boasts enchanting views of the rock of Ifach. Ifach rises to 332 metres. The Phoenicians called the Rock of Ifach the "Northern Rock" to distinguish it from the "Southern Rock" at Gibraltar. Today it is a nature park. It was amazing to look down the beach to see a huge chuck of rock sticking up out of the sea.

Another place of interest was the fishing dock. We could see the boats coming into the docks in mid-afternoon. The boat were always trailed by huge flocks of seagulls making the boast look like they were pulling clouds behind them. Once at the dock, the fisherman unloaded blue trays full of sea creatures. There were squid, flounder, eels, shrimp, lobsters, snapper, and a lot of other types of fish I did not recognize. I watched a man on a boat preparing a tray of squid. He had a wooden, cylindrical club (kind of like a rolling pin only without the handles and much wider in diameter) and he would use it to pound the squid prior to putting them in the trays. The squids were certainly alive when they were unloading the trays, so I am guessing that the clubbing was to stun them.

After being unloaded, the fish went into a warehouse, where it was put on a conveyor belt, identified by a man sitting at a computer next to the conveyor belt, then weighed. The trays would travel further down the conveyor belt which ran between two section of seats where the buyers would sit and bid on the seafood. A big board would announce the price per kilo and the buyer who purchased the tray of seafood. The trays moved further down the conveyor belt where a man would shovel ice into it and a machine would drop a ticket into it identifying the buyer. Then the trays were off loaded, sorted according to buyer, packed with more ice and then loaded into trucks where the seafood was taken to supermarkets and restaurants. The whole process was amazing to watch! The kids enjoyed watching the squid try to make their escape. They reached their arms over the edge of the trays and slide out onto the conveyor belt. Many squid were picked up and pitched back into their trays throughout the process.

After viewing this process, we had no doubt that the seafood in our paella in Calpe was as fresh as you can buy.

Benidorm, Spain, Altea and the flipflop...

We traveled to Benidorm, Spain during the kid's term break, February 10-17, 2007. Shortly before our trip, we stumbled across a TV show making fun of Benidorm as the home away from home for the British. Benidorm claims to have more pubs than any other Spanish city. This concerned us greatly since we were aiming for an authentic Spanish city, not "Little Britain".

Upon our arrival in Benidorm, we discovered that we indeed had found the British escape. We also found that the average age of the visitors was 60+. We chuckled about this most of our trip. We decided that if ever we were feeling old and slow, we could just nip down to Benidorm to feel young and agile again. There were very few couples there that did not include a walking cane or a wheel chair.

The first item on our travel itinerary was to escape Benidorm, so we ventured up the coast of Costa Blanca to Altea. This is a wonderful Spanish city that is relatively new in Spanish history (Altea's church is only 100 years old). Surrounding the city are mountains, making you feel safely tucked in and safe from the everyday craziness on the other side. The beach (la playa) is covered with rounded, white stones and when the water recedes it makes the sound of water being sucked from the bottom of a glass of ice by a straw.

As you venture into the city, you find that all the houses and shops are pressed together on steep hills. The mountains come right down to the sea, so any direction away from the sea is up a steep hill. We climbed 250 steps to the church placed at Altea's highest point and got a wonderful view of city and the sea below.

Alyssa and Nathan loved playing in the rocks by the sea. I was constantly reminding Alyssa about her shoes and several times she had to run back to retrieve them in the last place she was playing. No matter how much I bugged her, she did not want to wear her shoes near the sea.

After lunch, the kids found some much larger rocks to climb on. They had run ahead to play on them as Dale and I walked slowly behind. Upon our arrival, Alyssa was in a state of great distress because one of her flip flops had slipped off and had fallen in between the rocks. The sea was lapping the rocks below and if we had laid on our stomachs on the rocks we would have been able to touch the water. Dale told Alyssa, who was now quite distraught, that the water coming into shore would push her flip flop right back to the rocks. However, we waited and waited, but still no flip flop. Suddenly, Dale said, "Uh... there it is." I turned to see where he was pointing and there was Alyssa's flip flop gently floating on the top of the water, being pulled out to sea by the water. It was already hard to see as it had been pulled away from the rocks a remarkably long way since she lost it. I suddenly had to supress my laughter at the situation because Alyssa had burst into tears claiming that those were "a treasure" to her and now she only had one shoe to get home. Fortunately for Alyssa, flip flops are easy to find especially in a beach town. Once she had the new pair on her feet, the flip flop floating out into the sea was no longer a concern and she was happily prancing down the beach to the next playground.

Now, when I look out to sea I look for Alyssa's flip flop, I giggle at the memory of the loss, and I wonder where it will land or if it will stay out at sea forever.

The pressure to be "green"...

Every time I turn on the radio, I hear reports stating,"Humans blamed for climate change" and "Climate change fight 'can't wait'" and "Scheme to cut 'carbon footprint' ". At home, the only time I ever heard such reports were if I were listening to the science section of an NPR radio broadcast at 8:00am. In the UK, you are given the feeling of desperate urgency about the state of our world's environment. It is as if the UK is now coping with serious problems caused by the climate change. The news reports make you feel like the crops are not growing well and the air is no longer clean.

To encourage Britons to be more "green", the government allows each household only one bin for trash and your trash is picked up every OTHER week. The bins are the kind that have wheels on the bottom and a lid on hinges. You must use the county trash bin if you want your trash collected. If you overflow your bin the lid does not close, you will often see you full bin sitting at the end of your driveway when you get home. You are also given a green bin where all organic waste goes. In addition you have smaller recycling boxes where you can put glass bottles and metal cans. We figured out very quickly that unless we do a LOT of recycling, we will not make it to the next trash collection without recycling. We are forced to find ways of disposing of all our waste in the most efficient way possible.

A family we know here in the village has four children. They found that it was nearly impossible for their family to only fill one bin of trash every other week. They had to beg the county council for an additional bin. Finally a woman came to their house and sorted through all their trash with rubber gloves (YUCK!!) to make sure they were not throwing away biodegradable items! It would make the environmentalists in the States quite proud.

Another way that the government is pressuring consumers to be more environmentally conscience is by levying a "green tax" on fuel. A gallon of gas here costs about $6.80 per gallon. Air Passenger Duty currently ranges from £40 (double for dollars based on the current exchange rate) for standard rate flights to a 'discount' down to as little as £5. When I was recently surfing for airline tickets, I was shocked at the final prices. Most of the time the taxes on the tickets were more than the actual fare! The government is now considering a proposal to double the green tax. Their aim is to enforce the "polluter pays" principle.

The good news is that in their proposal, the government is offering a credit to people who CONSERVE energy. That means money in the bank for all those people that ride bikes! :) Hee! Hee! By the looks of the bike parking lot at the Cambridge Train station, I think this city will be in the black! Everyone start pedaling!