Friendships Rekindled

After 7 months of living apart, it took only seconds to see members of the Willis and Thompson families right back where they left off chatting away, laughing, horsing around, treasuring the one they were with. The nights were very late, the days were full, the fellowship rich... a special gift for each of us.

We met Matt, Pam, Josh, Luke and Isabel in London for three days before we headed up north by train to Whitehaven for five more days.

It snowed our first morning in London. They said it was the first time it had snowed in April in 20 years! The kids thought it was fantastic!

Our last night together we asked what the favorite memories from the time together would be. I have included a few pictures from some of the favorites. Dennis will post a scrapbook of the rest of the pictures and Matt and Pam are working on a blog page too.

1) Goofing off, being silly together....

2) Dinner out just the four adults

3) The London Eye ride at dusk

4) The 2 hour drive through the Lake District with the six kids and two women singing to Hannah Montana at the top of our lungs. (The guys had the all the luggage in their car...rough isn't it?)

5) The hike at Wastwater

6) Worshipping together

7) Skateboarding in Whitehaven

8) Being a part of our daily life here in England.

Just being together again. We miss you!

Brackets on Julieanne

Yesterday Julieanne got her 'brackets' as they say or braces as we would say. They are only on the top and as you can see, white rather than metal. Just before we moved she was about to have braces put on so we obviously put that on hold. After a few phone calls over here I learned there are three orthodontists within an hour's drive and a 2.5 year waiting list if you go with the National Health System (free health care...sort of) or you can pay privately and get in in six months. The moral to the story is if you are looking for a good career option, try orthodontics in Cumbria especially if you love the great outdoors such as hiking, biking, climbing, etc.

Another interesting dental tid bit is they don't clean your teeth. I'm sure we're hyper about our image in the States but I thought dental cleanings were more preventative than image driven. We signed up and paid our 'private' fee to see a dentist (they are severely short handed in the dental dept. up here) only to have them examine our mouths. I was a bit amazed when they said the appointment only took 10 minutes for kids and 20 for adults. Don't get me wrong, the equipment and training seem totally modern and up to the same standards we're used to it's just they don't seem to use them as much as we do. At the end of the examination I asked when we had our teeth cleaning appointment only to be informed that, "We don't clean teeth unless needed or you want to pay the additional cleaning fee." To which I asked, "How is that preventative?" she said, "We educate on good oral care and examine the mouth twice a year." Well, no wonder so many people's teeth over here are brown! (You'll be glad to know, I only thought that and didn't speak it) So we just paid a lot of money to have our teeth examined and Nathan educated on oral care - which of course he seriously needed.

Enjoying the Differences

So far I(AC) love living in England. At first I didn’t like it that much but as I look back now I see that the reason I didn’t like it was because it was different. And to me different was bad, I see now that that is an unfair, inaccurate assumption. Different very often can be a good thing!

Difference #1-the British education system vs. the American education system
People often think that the British education system is really bad (Pink Floyd seemed to think so) from my point of view it is anything but! Then again I don’t go to a typical British school! St. Bees School is what we call a private school so it is very pricey to be a pupil there and because it’s expensive it is a very impressive school.(well we hope that’s why it’s good!)
«The teachers are gracious and seem to want to get to know the students. The facilities are nice… in a different sort of way from Davidson. Davidson was very clean and had a very large campus for a high school; all of the technology was fairly advanced.
«St. Bees is more of the old, historic, scenic sort of nice.
Davidson had loads of students! My grade had at least 150 kids in it; at St. Bees my “year” has about 30 kids! Personally, I like the grade smaller, that way you know everyone in a very different way.
«At Davidson there was a lot more girls than boys, at St. Bees there are more boys than girls! (Which could be a good thing!) But because there are more girls all of the girls are closer friends.
«School here starts at 8:20 am and ends at 5:30! Davidson got out at 3:15! So not fair! I feel like my evening is over before I even get home. It’s been dark for an hour by the time we get home so sometimes it can make you feel a bit tired.
«I do a lot more sports here than I did at Davidson. I have to do field hockey (which is unlike any sport I have ever played!), cross country, swimming and tennis. I am definitely in better shape than I ever have been! (This picture on the right is my sports kit.)
«The teachers have worked out this awesome method of how and when to give out “prep” (homework). In your organizer (agenda) there is a time table (schedule) which tells you what nights you have which prep. You can only have 3 preps a night and you can only spend 30 minutes on each prep, even if you’re not finished with all of it you can stop after 30 minutes. At first I found it very handy but now it bothers me if I don’t finish it all especially sense you don’t get that much anyways. At Davidson the teachers had no problem piling it on! I had loads of homework every night and I would stay up very late on most nights, here I don’t stay up late and if I do it’s because I’ve been texting(on “mom’s spare phone”) or just started my homework late or we had one of our epic Bible readings which take forever because we are constantly interrupted by one of us having to comment either that or Nathan, as usual, can’t stop talking!(or a combination of all 3) Dad says that if he just sat in his seat quietly waiting for us to calm down after we’d finished eating and cleaning the dishes so he could read the Bible that between mom, Julieanne, Nathan and I, we could continue talking and dancing around the room and making stupid inside jokes that no one really gets (but that’s what makes them funny) and telling random stories about our day for hours and hours and hours. So on average dinner lasts 2 hours. It’s good to know we enjoy being with each other…right?
«At St. Bees Julieanne and I have about 8 subjects. I have 3 sciences, biology, physics and chemistry(I haven’t ever taken physics or chemistry officially), English(we’re doing Macbeth right now and working on essays for coursework-you don’t do Shakespeare at Davidson till senior year!), maths(which is extremely hard because it’s a combination of algebra, trigonometry, geometry, statistics and then basic problem solving and normal math!), history, Spanish, music, R.S.(religious studies),P.E, and games(which is hockey, swimming, cross country or tennis depending on the season). Doesn’t that sound overwhelming!!! On top of that you have activities which take place from 4:30 till 5:30 everyday after school except Friday. Activities can be anything really, I have Christian Union for one of mine and Julieanne does jigsaws on one day!
«At St. Bees they understand the whole concept of “attention spans.” Every hour and a half we have a 30 minute break. Lunch is an hour and a half long!!! That’s really nice, that way on certain days you can get most of your homework out of the way early. At Davidson the most break we got was a 30 minute lunch break which was taken up by waiting in line for 15 minutes! Pointless!
«Now, the British school uniform. Our school uniform isn’t as bad as some; at least we match for the most part! Some of the uniforms I’ve seen are absolutely hideous. At Davidson I liked being able to pick out whatever I wanted to wear for that day but here I prefer the uniform because it’s too much of a hassle to pick out something every day. That and the fact that our washing machine has a capacity of 4 shirts, 2 pairs of pants and maybe a sock!

Difference #2-The backwards ways of a Brit…driving
«The British people are the only people who drive on the opposite side of the road from us. Even the steering wheel is on the other side! How many times have mom and I got in the car to go to ballet and apparently I’m driving! It’s really confusing when you’re trying to cross the street and you look left, looks clear, you step out but just in time someone pulls you back because you looked the wrong way and of course there were no cars coming! They were coming from the other direction! Really scary! The other day my physics teacher was “taking the piss”(making fun) of Americans because we are the only country who have not adopted Celsius as our measurement for temperature. I was very tempted to argue that Britain is the country which drives on the wrong side of the road!

Difference #3- Morals
«The British people have very different morals from us. Growing up in the Bible Belt where everyone goes to church every Sunday and says that they are Christians. . . . .it was a huge culture shock to see that here pretty much no one goes to church! Sunday is just another Saturday for them! Rehearsals and football (soccer) practices are scheduled for Sunday mornings without thought. We have had to say no to many things because of church.
«Also at school there is huge pressure that if you have a boyfriend you have to make out with him and things like that. It’s just normal for them. As I have not shown particular interest in this my friends and peers have been shocked to see this difference. It’s hard to stand up and stay pure in situations where you are pressured to act and think with that mind set.

Difference #4- where’s the sunshine?
«England is very far north compared to Georgia. It rains pretty much everyday and is almost definitely cloudy everyday. In the fall and spring it is said to clear up but winter is so wet and cold and windy! All though, the days when it is nice outside it is gorgeous! So we miss the sunshine in Georgia but here everything is green all the time but in Georgia there is a lot of brown!!!!!

So all though England is very different from our home in Georgia we have and will continue to learn to love it.