Autumn in Rural England

No Place Like Home...

I'd been crabby the past couple days, topped off this morning with an all-time low of the dollar to the British Pound. With just a half percent here or there, I calculate hundreds and thousands of dollars added to the cost of my home (and even to the down payment), with the loss of thousands when I sell it and change those pounds back in to dollars, which I am convinced will be stronger in a year or more. Ugh!

But then I went to my new home to talk with the landlord about which size appliances I will need, and I just felt better. I like my new place. A lot. It's bigger than I should be buying, but it has charm and warmth and history. It's in a historical town, with two market days each week. Today I looked more around the neighborhood and liked what I saw - more older homes that have been formed out of a former church, former courthouse, etc., and charming stone houses with character and style. My landlord was having a new window put in upstairs - the place has skylight-like windows in each room upstairs, letting in much-needed light (see below) and they had also put together a booklet of instructions for me - how to use the fireplace, how to adjust the oven, how to contact the neighborhood surgeon (British for "doctor"). It just felt like home.

Daylight savings? Where are we saving it to? We went to daylight savings time Sunday. Monday was beautiful all day, then at about 4:00 the sky was crisp and there was a sort of orange tone to everything (sunset on the fall leaves?). By 5:00, it was like someone had dropped a balck curtain around everything. When it gets dark here, it gets DARK here. There are very few streetlights and most roads don't have reflective tape or lights... plus we're pretty remote, so the houses (and houslights) are few and far between. Tonight I drove back from my house on one of the many Fens roads- the Fens are what some areas here are called- it's land that really is under sea level, but with manipulation it's been drained and made into farmland. The roads through the Fens are very narrow, usually not marked, and have no shoulder, which means that it's easy to "fall" off of them and when you do oyu are likely to fall 10 feet or more, into muck. Dangerous! I'm glad I had some training in Japan - by having driven there for a few years, these roads don't strike me as so narrow as they might otherwise!

Napoli

Naples for a workshop... lots to report on that!

1. Heather Sighting. I was sitting at breakfast in the hotel in Naples, discussing work stuff with a principal, when in walks my good friend from Japan, Heather, whom I haven't seen in two years! I was floored!!! Of all the places to just sort of run into someone you know. Heather was in Naples for a music conference and on Saturday night we were all treated to a jam session by the music teachers at that conference - some instruments were brought in, the piano player at the pub was given the night off, and one of the teachers sang, as well. They were good!

2. Pompeii.. On Saturday three of us went to Pompeii... perhaps with more confidence than we should have had, we programed "Pompeii" into the GPS and set off. TomTom led us on a really scenic route - through lots of little towns and scenic countryside. Eventually we wound up in the town of Pompeii but couldn't find the ruins. We asked and were pointed to Vesuvius and then thought perhaps we needed to head out of town. Eventually, though, we realized the volcano had come to Pompeii and so the ruins must be there and about that time we found the site.

Pompei itself was just incredible. It's always amazing to walk through a place and think of the history that has occured there, but this is a place where so much destruction and fire rained down upon a city of families, inventors, artists, and more. Especially thought provoking were the casts of people who were overcome by the smoke or gases or fires- where their bodies were "frozen" in the lava and later disintegrated, scientists poured a type of plaster in and made a casting of their position at death. One display was of a group of youngsters with just one or two young adults.

3. International Bazaar - One evening while in Naples, we decided to drive to a base to see the international bazaar (charity sale) there. It was unlike other bazaars I've been to; this one was mostly small booths, each representing a country or region, with free wine/booze samples. We barely made it from the Italy booth (Limoncello) to the Germany booth (sweet wines), when the Greek booth (ouzo) did us in. Eventually we finished the evening at the tent, reminiscent of New Braunfels, Texas' Wurstfest - a giant tent with a stage for music and shows, surrounded by picnic tables which were ringed by food booths. We made friends with some young military men, and the wife of one of them; when we asked them if the sangria was any good, they offered us their glasses and said "Have some!"... Nice folks!

4. Beautiful sunrises at the hotel...