Yesterday I wasn’t feeling to good.  It was probably just a cold.  It is mostly gone now.

Yesterday we left the house at I think 11:00 a.m.  Aunt J had to go to the bank to get some money.  She was having problems with her card, so she couldn’t just go to an ATM machine.  After that we went to a little arcade place.  It was fun.  Then we went and got fish and chip.  We didn’t get them to go, but maybe later.  My first impression of them wasn’t to good, because in the first bite there were three bones.  There weren’t any bones in the rest of it, though, and it was good.  I had expected to just come in and order fish and chips, but there was actually a section in the menu for it, just like for soup or sandwiches.

After dinner we went to the circus.  The circus has changed a lot.  There isn’t any more trapeze, or animals, or people riding motorcycles in cages, it is mainly just a comedy routine now.  There were some dancers, a guy doing tricks in a big hamster wheel type thing, and once they put someone in a large milk canister thing filled with water, handcuffed, and had him escape, but mainly it was clowns.  It was good though.

Today we went to visit aunt J’s grandparents.  On the way we stopped in a little town, which is where she lived when she was young.  We went to the old post office there to mail a letter.  They used one of those really old scales, where they put a weight on one side, and the thing that they are trying to weigh on the other.  They had a wall of candy bars, so I got a couple.  Before I even came here aunt J told me that I needed to get a Mars Bar.  So I got one of those and a Double Decker.  Aunt J kept pointing things out to me and saying “you need to try this one, and this one is good”.  Finally I decided on just the two.  The Mars bar was nugget and Carmel in chocolate, I am not quite sure how to describe the double Decker.

Aunt J’s grandparents were really nice.  Before coming here I had never been hugged and kissed by a man that I didn’t know before, here everyone seems to do it.  As soon as I meet someone they hug me, and sometimes kiss me on the cheek.

We had dinner at aunt J’s grandparents.  We had chicken, potatoes, salad, bread and butter, with ice cream and cheese cake for dessert.  They kept offering me more food and drink.  When I first came in they had gotten me an orange juice.  After dinner they asked if I wanted another, I said no thank you, he smiled and said “another just like the first?”  then waited to see if I would protest.  They really were very nice.

We went to a park nearby after that.  It was beautiful.  We walked around for a while, there was trails and and a pound.  We fed the ducks.  There were two swans.  I almost got one of the swans to eat out of my hand, but at the last minute I changed my mind and dropped the bread.  Good thing too, that swan was mean.  It hissed at me.

We came home and had chicken, potatoes, salad, and bread for tea, then cake for dessert.

Mom asked me if it felt different here in England, this is what I wrote to her. 

England feels very different.  Aunt J said it really well when she said it was like going into a different era.  I have been mainly posting pictures of the cute little houses, but there are a lot of houses that look like houses in the U.S., except all made of brick.  Traffic signs are different, there are round abouts on the streets in a lot of places to keep traffic moving.  There are a lot of people in a little space, so things are smaller, and there is a lot more traffic.  When you go into a lot of bathrooms there are two different facets, one for hot, one for cold, so I guess you are supposed to plug it up and use it as a basin.  This house has carpet everywhere, so have the other houses that I have been in, including in kitchens and bathrooms, but mostly the kind of short, dark carpets that are in hotel rooms, at least in my experience.  It is not a lot of huge differences, just a lot of small ones.