2 Weeks In

Family and Friends,

It is hard to believe I have only been here 9 days. I have seen more rain, sleet and snow in these 9 days than my entire 4 years in California. Jeff and I just returned from Madrid where we spent the weekend. Thankfully it was sunny there or I would be climbing the walls. When we landed at Heathrow the pilot announced, "welcome ladies and gentleman to another horrendous night of weather in London". There has been so much rain in South East England that my car almost stalled in a foot of water while trying to pick up Shadow from the country kennel today. I am going out to buy a pair of Wellies this weekend which are English rain boots. I have no idea why I brought all of those open toed shoes with me!!!!

Madrid was absolutely beautiful, very clean and architecture which reminds me of Paris. I will send a link to our pictures in the next e-mail. Jeff and I had a very hard time staying up for dinner while we were there. We arrived for dinner at 9pm both nights and the restaurants did not start to fill up until 9:30 pm. How do these Spaniards do it? Of course no one starts work until 9 am and lunch is between 2-3 pm so go figure.

I have discovered why Jeff likes Spain so much and the answer is the ham. He loves ham and it is in every restaurant and hanging from every restaurant window. Ham (while not my favorite) appears to be the national dish of Spain. They have ham croissants, ham pizza, ham quesadilla, ham salad, ham slice appetizers and ham and cheese poppers. You name the dish and they have added ham to it. The wine we had was delicious and very inexpensive. We brought back several bottles of Rioja which would average $12 per bottle. Spain is very inexpensive compared to the UK when it comes to wine and food.

I had my 3rd driving lesson today and my instructor whose name is Mr. Leonard reminds me of Mr. Rogers. He is the nicest man and has a great deal of patience. I asked him this morning why getting the hang of the roundabouts, turns and changing lanes seems so difficult when I have been driving for over 20 years in the U.S. He told me that while I seem to be a very intelligent young lady he fears I have developed some "bad habits" and have been getting away with them for awhile. Here are some of his favorite phrases- 1) Mind the curb now, mind the curb.... 2) Your shaving the cars on your left again.... 3) Watch as it's a bit dodgy through here... 4) Mirror, signal, mirror, change lanes, change lanes, change lanes now please 5) You mustn't speed around these bends, imagine "John the Skip" is coming the other way 6) Give way, give way to oncoming traffic remember please 7) Your keen on the blinkers aren't you? Your confusing the traffic behind you now.... and occasionally, 8) Well done, well done, good effort there!

I hope everyone is well and I will send out the Madrid pictures soon. I have a big day planned tomorrow as the plumber is coming to visit with the landlord. For whatever the reason you need to turn on the bathroom sink prior to turning on the shower in order for it to work properly. I would go on and on about the idiosyncrasies of our little home but I do not want to scare away any potential visitors.