The sun woke me up early, in time to shower and help pack up a bunch of stuff to bring back to Ross. Although they had only been down at that house for a couple of days, they had accumulated a surprising amount of stuff to bring back. It took all morning, but we finally had the car loaded and ready to go.
The drive to Ross-on-Wye was pretty unexceptional--just your standard 3 hours to go anywhere, really. It seems kind of amazing how easily you can cross the border between Wales and England; the only real experience I have with that at home is the border to Canada, and that's definitely a lot more guarded. Here you just see a sign on the side of the road, like you would between states at home.
Anyway, after arriving at their main house, I unpacked the car and then started meeting their six tenants, their chickens (especially Daisy, who flies out of the coop and loves Jack), Jack's flowers, and exploring the house. It was built by Martha's ancestors a century ago and is awesome--there are nooks and crannies and books everywhere. It was very comfortable to live in.
As a side note, I had another new food: faggots, served with vegetables. They were actually quite good, so we had them again another night. Much better than the liver I tried later...
Apparently Aunt Karen made them a photo album of our side of the family a couple of years ago, which is how they recognized me when I got off the ferry; they showed that to me and quizzed me about how everyone is related. We spent hours going over all of these random relatives that are great-step-cousins on the Jones side or connections of the Watts or all these different things. I wish I had a better memory.
Martha let me use her computer while I was there, so I got to check my email once or twice a day and keep in touch. It also helped me show Jack where NY was and write down all the 50 states and other random things like that.
The biggest news of the day was Gordon Brown's huge political gaffe of calling his supporter a bigot; I saw on TV that he resigned last night, so that must have factored in somehow. For supper, I convinced them to let me make them something American...after trying it, they insisted that they liked my grilled cheese, but I think they were just being nice!
And that was basically it. Here's the view from my window:
Exciting!
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