UK Letter Home March 2003

Welcome to the March edition of UK Bound

March has found Kim getting an interesting temporary assignment doing administration work at a volunteer agency. She enjoys the work, and the people are really nice. Unfortunately this is only a short gig which will be finished in the first week in April. At my job, we've hired a consultant to help take up the slack a bit, so right now there's more work than normal getting him trained up. Since the work schedule has been all over, we have pretty much decided that we are going to postphone our trip to Oslo / Stolkhome, but we have just booked a 18-30 trip. It was a great price, but it is dubbed more as a party holiday. Any guesses where we are off to? A hint is that they make really good salads.

We took a day trip out to Sterling. Everyone that has seen Bravehart, knows part of Sterling's history (although a little "Hollywooded up"). We went to the Wallace Monument (which was a long walk from the train station) and then a trip to the castle. A little trivia tid bit for you - the UK currency is the Pound Sterling, named after the city of Sterling. I have 65 pics that I have started adding to the website. Check out the website in a week or two and these should be fully uploaded.

We took a long weekend and rented a donkey of a car, and took a trip to Oxford. We visited Stratford Upon Avon which is only about an hour away from Oxford. Stratford is the birthplace of William Shakespeare. Stratford is a beatuiful city, and even without Willy being born there, the city can hold it's own as a beautiful, interesting city. We took a double decker tourist bus, but their aim was mainly showing where Willy was born, lived, where Anne Hathaway lived (his wife) and where his mother lived.
We also visited Blenimhein Palace, in Woodstock 10 miles from Oxford, which is where Winston Churchill was born and where was married. It is a beautiful palace, owned by the nineth Duke of Marlbough. The first Duke was given the land by Queen Anne for winning some battle against the dreaded French.
We also checked out Oxford which is pretty much one big university. Oxford University is built-up of 39 colleges. They are encrusted in tradition, so much that everyone takes their exams in one building because they used to do it that way 500 years ago. They are very proud of their history, and Oxford is quite posh, and therefore snooty.
Check out the website, as I have added another 70 pics to the site, including a couple of places I haven't mentioned above.

On the home front, we have been scraping wallpaper in the master bedroom and cleaning and painting the outside of the house. I am not sure what the wallpaper has been glued with - it's some sort of industrial strength glue that can take an hour per strip to unearth. So, for those of you who who read this, if you have used wallpaper in your house, I don't like you anymore. After we repaint our room, we will be ripping out the built in wardrobes and getting a couple new ones from Ikea. It will really make the room look nicer and make better use of the space. If you are any good with a scraper or can putty, come over and we'll give you your very own scraper.

We have pretty much decided to get a car. I only have my automatic licence but auto's are really uncommon here, so I'm either going to take my manual test, or go for some really ugly car. Either way, we'll have one for the summer.

On the website, I have added the Oxford trip and a couple more pics to the funny page. I still have a handfull of local pictures, but other than that, most of the pictures have been uploaded.

I guess that's pretty much it for this issue. Hope this finds you well.