I will be leaving England in less than a week and it hasn't even felt like I have been here long! I can't wait to be back and see everyone (especially my Sorority Sisters, family, and all the students in my classroom). One of my professors, Dr. Leeper, just arrived in Gloucester for the week and I am so excited about the adventures that we have planned for the week. It is going to be a very long, jam-packed, adventurous week! I can't wait! On Monday, it is just a normal day. I will go to Milestone and then come back home afterward. I think we may do a little more shopping after school. Tuesday, all 5 of us are going to Widden Primary to help with a new Healthy Breakfast Kick-Off at school and then we have been invited to tour the Mosque in Gloucester, so we are going to do that. After school, we are meeting our England supervisor, Alan, and Dr. Leeper at the Cathedral in town and tour that as well. Then we are all off to Alan's home for "proper Fish and Chips". I am SOOOOO excited! Then, on Wednesday, I am going to Milestone as usual but after school, the other 3 girls, Monica, and Dr. Leeper are all meeting at Milestone and Mrs. Dance (the Head Teacher at Milestone) is taking us to a special Retreat with some of the older students at Milestone and we are having dinner together as well. We are all very excited about being given the opportunity to be a part of this. On Thursday, Dr. Leeper is taking us all to dinner somewhere in town, just to catch up and talk about all the fun we have had. On Friday, I will go to my last day at Milestone and then we have planned to go out to dinner together as an "England Family"-John, Monica, Melea, Sara, Lindsey, Kayla, and I and then stay up ALL NIGHT because we will have to leave John and Monica's around 4:30 on Saturday morning to head to the airport and we want to be able to sleep on the plane ride home! I honestly don't think I am ready to leave! I am ready to eat Chick-fil-a and I am ready to drive my car (honestly, I think this is what I have missed the most...driving!). I can't wait to get back and tell all my stories in person and show all my pictures!
Love from England,
Miss Dodd
Monday, March 28, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Learning More and More
Today was my second day at Milestone. I was placed in room 3P again for today as well. Today I began to feel a little uneasy with the students who were in my class. Many of the previous visitors had told us that the school was such an amazing facility but that many times you found yourself being sad or feeling bad for the students who attended the school when you should be feeling happy to be there. Today was my day to reflect on the reason that I was at Milestone and to really look at the types of students who were in my class. It wasn’t so much about that the students were different but that they had disabilities that I didn’t understand and that I wasn’t trained to help with. I enjoyed being at Milestone, but I felt a bit uneasy or maybe nervous is the correct word to use…again, words can’t describe but I felt very challenged by this class.
After leaving class today, I was walking down the halls and looking at all the pictures and all the artwork that was posted on the walls and I realized that even though the students that were at this school were different than students that I had worked with in the past, they were still children that were coming to school to learn. Whether it is to learn what 2+2 is or whether it is to learn how to buy groceries at Tesco Supermarket, they are at this school to LEARN. Man…here I am in another country attempting to teach other children and they are teaching me more than I could ever have imagined! I am in tears just thinking about everything that I have encountered in just two short days at Milestone.
Monday, March 21, 2011
First Day at Milestone
Today was my first day at Milestone Special School. The Milestone School is a community Special School that provides for approximately 290 children with a wide range of special educational needs.
The school offers the full National Curriculum as a basis for curriculum development, and adds to this a wide range of additional activities for personal and social growth.
Links with mainstream schools are developed through joint projects in certain subjects across the key stages. Our integration programme is important in ensuring that children who are transferring to mainstream are supported throughout the transition.
By virtue of its distinctive blend of expertise, facilities and resources, The Milestone School plays a significant role in the network of services the Local Authority provides for meeting the special educational needs of pupils in Gloucestershire. The school provides advice and support for teachers of pupils with physical and learning disabilities in mainstream school. (school website)
The class that I was placed in was a class that housed 9 pupils with 1 teacher and 2 teaching aides. The students that were in my class were students with a wide range of learning difficulties. I had 1 student in the class who was blind and non-verbal. I had another student who was in a wheelchair and another student who was verbal, no physical restrictions, and appeared to be a student I would see in a mainstream school who has a mild learning difficulty. I found this placement to be very eye opening and very emotional. I have never found myself in a scenario as a teacher that I didn't think that I could handle but being in this classroom has shown me things that I don't think I can even put into words. Anyone who walks through the doors of Milestone know that it is a special place and that there are special children who go to school here. The school is such a wonderful school and so advanced in regard to the things that children with special needs need in order to grow and develop. I can't wait to see what this experience brings me.
I will post pictures later; I haven't finished editing them.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
GLOUCESTER! GLOUCESTER! LV= Cup Rugby Game!
We left the house around 10:00am and headed to the Northampton area and John took us to a historic area known as Althorp. We went to an old church that was there that had the burial site for George Washington’s Great-Great-Great Grandfather. It was such a beautiful area. We then went for lunch in a cute little pub near the Althrop estate. I ate fish cakes and chips. It was delicious! There we met up with John and Carol, who are good friends of John and Monica’s. We all had lunch together and then headed to the game. You can find out more about the Althrop estate by clicking here.
Here are some pictures of the pub, church, and Althrop Estate. We didn't get to actually tour the estate because it was closed but I found some pictures of it. The bottom picture is the burial site of where Princess Diana was buried. She is buried on a little island on the Althrop Estate.
Gloucester won the LV= Cup and it was a great win. Below you will find a collage of some of the pictures from the game. We had SOOOOO much fun! We also stayed after the game to get pictures with a lot of the players. When we left the game, we got to the car and had a cup of tea and some hot crossed buns in the parking lot! I thought this was the coolest thing! We didn’t return home until around 10:00pm after eating dinner at KFC (this was not nearly as good at the ones in America)!
Love from England,
Miss Dodd
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Shopping
On Saturday we went to Cheltenham for the day to do some shopping! Cheltenham is kind of like the equivalent of going to Atlanta to go shopping. It was a lot of fun.
We wanted something fast and friendly for lunch so we chose to eat at Pizza Hut! It was so good! Much better than Pizza Hut in America.
While shopping, we discovered this AMAZING store called Primark and it has become our best friend! They have such cute clothing and accessories and it is soooo cheap! We all bought a lot of stuff and didn’t spend that much money on all of it!
After leaving Cheltenham, we came back to the house and had a little down time and then had a small dinner and went off to bed early so that we would have plenty of rest for the big rugby game.
Love from England,
Miss Dodd
Love from England,
Miss Dodd
Thursday, March 17, 2011
London Bridge is Falling Down...Falling Down...
I wanted to go ahead and post pictures and videos from my weekend trip to London! We had a lot of fun! London is very busy and crowded. It reminded me of what I envision New York City being like. Oxford Street was full of lots of shopping and it was a lot of fun to walk down and see all of the different shops there were. Please enjoy the pictures and I will try to blog some more stories tomorrow night or Saturday night. We are all going to a Rugby Game on Sunday so we are taking it a little easy on Saturday. Not sure of our exact plans but I am sure it is going to be a lot of fun!
This is a collage of what the house I am living in looks like! You can click on it to make it larger.
This is a collage of the city of Glocester where I am staying! 
Here is a collage of some of the pictures I took of Big Ben. I have to admit that Big Ben wasn't as great as I thought it was going to be but it was definitely worth getting to see in person!
This is just a collage of random pictures taken in London!
These are pictures taken from Buckingham Palace where the Queen resides. It started raining when we first arrived (the first rain we had and have had since we arrived) so the changing of the guard wasn't as great as we had hoped but it was still nice to get so close to the palace and look at everything!
These are pictures from the Natural History Museum in London. This was such an amazing sight to see because the building itself was just so beautiful! The main exhibit that was going on was the dinosaur exhibit!
This is a video of part of the tour that included Big Ben. I know that I turned the camera without thinking about the fact that the video would come out sideways! Sorry!! Hope you enjoy! The talking in the background is the tour recording talking about some the things around us at the time.
This is a video from the T-Rex Exhibit at the Natural History Museum. Enjoy!
Hope you enjoy and I will be posting more pictures and stories very soon!
Love from England,
Miss Dodd
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Off to London We Go!
Today, I am on my way to London for the weekend. We were able to take the day off from school and slept in until about 9:00am and then we woke to shower, pack, and head out to the bus station. We booked our StageCoach online so that we could get a better rate and then we booked a “Hop-On-Hop-Off” tour for Saturday and Sunday so that we can see all of London. We are all very excited to be exploring by ourselves for the weekend and discovering new things. I think I am most excited about taking pictures of Big Ben for Levi, my little brother, because that is the one thing that he has asked me to do and I promised that I would take plenty of photos. We are hoping to view a little bit of everything while there so that we can pack as much into the weekend as possible. We have free WiFi on the StageCoach but I am not sure if we will have free internet service once we get to our hotel so I may not blog again until Sunday night or Monday morning.
Love from England,
Miss Dodd
Have You Been to Hollywood???
Today was a day filled with lots of fun and new things. We didn’t have a specific classroom to be in first thing in the morning so we chose to walk around and see what classroom looked like they were doing something interesting. We went to assembly where the whole school got together to watch Year 6 students perform a few scenes from the William Shakespeare play “Hamlet”. It was very interesting to see how well the students used their voices and body movements to tell a story. They did very well and were very entertaining for all the students, teachers, and parents that were in attendance. The Year 6 classes will be traveling to Cheltenham to perform along with 10 other primary schools so it is something that they have been putting a lot of time and effort into so that it is performed well in front of all the other schools.
After assembly, we decided to go sit in on Mr. Aj’s Year 6 classroom. They were talking about the performance and things that could be improved and then went on to work on their Maths (yes, they put a S on the end of it!). They were working on their multiplication facts (like Mastering Math Facts) only they did it on dry erase boards and the facts were on the promethean board. They asked Melea and I to participate as well and it was going really fast but we managed to get 100% correct. It then went on to do doubles and halves of three digit numbers and that was really hard and really fast. The students in the class were doing a better job than Melea and I!
After Aj’s classroom, we had tea time. After tea, we were off to a Year 2 classroom where they were going to dance class. The class had an equivalent to a student teacher and she just happened to be a dance instructor as well. All of the students were together in the Hall (gym) and had their school uniforms off and PE clothes on and they began to dance. It was so much fun to see them all dancing and having such a wonderful time with their teacher. She was such an amazing dancer and did a wonderful job teaching the children. After dance class was over, it was off for lunch! After lunch, we went to Mrs. Taylor’s Year 5 classroom for a question and answer session. This was very fun because we got to hear all the different questions that the students had about America and about Americans. We continuasly get asked about whether we have been to Hollywood, LA, have we seen famous people, do we eat a lot of hamburgers, and are we rich. The perception of Americans is that we are all rich and we know famous people! I loved getting to hear their questions and also getting to ask them some questions. We ended our day with a small question and answer session with some Year 1 students. We were able to show them our money and they were fascinated by it.
After school, Monica needed to go get her nails done so Melea and I chose to take the bus home. We stopped by ASDA so that we could pick up some flowers for Debbie because we were going to her house for dinner and then it was off to the bus station to grab the bus. We made it home around 4:15pm. Melea and I also bought some cute pocketbooks to wear in London and just a souvenir to bring back! They were really cheap and they are really cute.
After getting home, we had tea, hot crossed buns (they really exist) and had a few minutes to just relax before leaving for Debbie’s house for dinner. She invited all 5 of us, Monica, and Mrs. Lyn Dance, who is the Headmaster at Milestones School. She prepared roasted chicken, pesto pasta, garlic bread, fresh salad, and an apple tart with custard and yogurt for pudding (which is dessert). It was so nice to be invited over for dinner and interact with them on a personal level and learn a lot about their lives. After leaving Debbie’s, we went home, bought our tour bus ticket, and headed to bed. Off to London tomorrow!!!
Love from England,
Miss Dodd
P.S. I am REALLY missing my little fourth graders at Centennial!! Mrs. Hartley’s Class and Mrs. Barry’s class...I hope that you are learning a lot and getting ready for Spring Break and learning a lot while I am gone! I miss each of you sooo much!!! Can’t wait to get back and tell you all about it!
Friday, March 11, 2011
Just Another Day at Widden
Today, we woke to the normal breakfast and off to school we were. Even though I had went to bed early the night before, I was still very tired. When we arrived at school, we reported to Mr. Baker’s Year 1 class. When we arrived in his classroom, they were working on adjectives and characteristics of characters in a story. They were each given pictures of certain characters from a story they had been reading and they had to cut out the character, paste it in their notebooks, and then write about the characters. They did quite a wonderful job at this. I was very impressed by the different words that they would come up with and how hard they were working. After that, the students worked on phonics, where they were slit into 3 groups which were mixed in with Miss Bland’s Year 1 classroom. After phonics, the students worked on directions and how to highlight their route to the city park on a map that was printed out for them. They did a wonderful job at this and it was so awesome to see how they knew all of the road names that were around them and how to walk to certain places in the city. Since they were working on maps and directions, Melea and I decided to pull up NGCSU, Walmart in Dahlonega, my apartment, and Melea’s house up on Google Maps. It was so cool to zoom in and be able to show them what America looks like and compare how big our schools are compared to their schools. They loved every minute of it!
After school, we came home and just had a few minutes to rest and hang out. Monica decided to cook fish and chips for dinner, which are just french fries and fish fillets that are breaded and cooked in the oven. It was delicious. She said that these were good but that we would have “proper” fish and chips from a shop in town later on. After dinner, Monica needed to go to the Quay’s which is a place similar to a mall. They have a lot of different places to shop. Unfortunately, we were only there for about 20 minutes before they closed. Most places in the area close at 5:30 and other places close at 8:00, which we find to be very unusual. After the Quay’s, it was off to downtown to look around and some of the old buildings and such. It was a lot of fun. We then headed home, booked out StageCoach bus ticket to London and off to bed we were! Before heading to bed, I was able to Slype with my little brother Levi and my dad, with some of my friends from college, and my aunt Christy and Grandma. It was a lot of fun to get to talk to them.
Love from England,
Miss Dodd
Pancake Day
Today, we woke to our usual breakfast of cereal, toast, and tea. We are dragging a little bit because we are pretty tired. We try to get in bed earlier and earlier each night but I think that the jet lag is setting in. After breakfast, we were off for school. When we arrived at school, we were greeted warmly by the staff again, and we were off to our classes. Melea had been asked the afternoon before if she wanted to go on a field trip with Year 1 to the city park. She was very excited about this opportunity so she worked with Mr. Baker’s class for about an hour and then it was off to the City Park. It was a walking field trip so they set off for a 30 minute walk to the city park. They were required to have 1 adult/teacher per 4 children. Melea said that she was amazed by how well the children were while walking down the streets and how well they behaved. They saw a few different farm animals. She has shared her pictures with me so I will add those when we return to Gloucester/home in England.
While Melea was away at the city farm, I helped with Mrs. Smith and Miss Bobat’s Pancake Day party. I was working with Mrs. Smith’s class when Miss Bobat asked me to come help her with a project. I was excited to help out with anything they needed. When I went out into the bay/hall. I found a microwave with 2 electric burners on top. I was amazed they had this available for them to use. I assessed the situation and realized that she wanted me to help cook pancakes. Well, there wouldn’t have been hesitation in my voice if I had been in an American classroom but English pancakes are much different than our pancakes. Our pancakes are think and fairly small while their pancakes are large and very thin. The pancake batter is very very thin and runny and quite difficult to use. I told her that I was a little worried about cooking these for the children because they were supposed to taste good and be a special treat and if I was the one cooking them, I wasn’t sure how “special” they would be! She assured me that I would be fine so I set out on the journey of cooking 70+ pancakes! She, herself, did not know how to make them so she couldn’t show me the proper English way of making a pancake so I started doing them to the best of my ability. Mrs. Smith came out a little later and saw how mine were looking and said that she wanted to show me the proper way of making one so I kindly moved to the side so that she could show me. After seeing her make them, I felt much more comfortable making them. I continued to make them and the children seemed to really like them! They thought that it was really special because an American was making them! The traditional way of topping them is to sprinkle lemon juice and regular sugar on them. I was a little worried about how this was going to taste but I tasted it and it actually tasted quite good!
Oh, I almost forgot. Before I began cooking pancakes, I had quite a special moment with one of the students in Mrs. Smith’s classroom. The student’s name is Ilhan and he is what we would consider to be a “behavior child”. He is always in trouble and has a hard time paying attention in class. When I arrived in Mrs. Smith’s class at the beginning of the day, he was having a difficult time with his morning work. The class was working on forces and gravity and he needed to complete a worksheet showing what gravity does to a ball when tossed from one student to another. Mr. Campbell (his one-on-one teacher) was asking him if he wanted to go outside and toss a ball so that he could see how the ball would look. Ilhan was not interested in going with him and was putting up a fight. I saw these happening so I thought, “Well I am visitor and somebody viewed almost as a celebrity in the school, why don’t I see if he would like to go outside with me”. I approached Mr. Campbell and asked him if it was okay if I tried to convince him to go outside and he said that would be fine. I bent down to his level and asked me what his name was and introduced myself. I told him that I was having a hard time understanding how gravity helped a ball stay in the air and how gravity worked and would he mind showing me outside with Mr. Campbell. He immediately said that he would like to and grabbed my hand to lead me outside. I was secretly thinking about how this was going to “go down” and was he going to stay on task. When we got outside (Mr. Campbell, Ilhan, and myself) we began talking about gravity and how it works on a ball when it is thrown from one person to another person. He opened up and began talking and explaining and showing me all different ways that gravity works. It was one of those moments where, as a teacher, you think to yourself, this is why I teach! We stayed outside for about 10-15 minutes and then went back into the room to look at the worksheet that he needed to complete. He immediately grabbed his pencil and worksheet and began working on it and had no complaints or problems. He even wrote a couple of sentences about what was happening in the picture. Mrs. Smith complimented him on how well he had completed his work and he was in a much better mood. She also complimented me on how well I helped with the situation. I left the room very proud of what I had done and was excited to have started “Teaching in England” on such a great note!
After lunch, it was outside for PE with Debbie. Ok, let me start by saying that Monica had told Melea and I that we would need our “trainers” for school on Tuesday. We nodded and said okay but secretly we had no idea what she was talking about. After getting to school and heading to Debbie’s office (she is the Deputy Head-”Assistant Principal) we understood what trainers were...gym clothes and tennis shoes! Well, Melea and I did not have those but we were ready to battle whatever the conditions were and just run around in a dress! We got outside to the field and found out that we would be playing rugby for the next 2 hours! WOW! We were with the Year 2 students, who were very rambunctious. We had a lot of fun...for about 10 minutes and then we were FREEZING because the wind was blowing so hard. We toughed it out for about 45 minutes and then asked if it would be okay for us to travel to the Reception classes (preschool) for their Pancake Races. Debbie said that would be fine.
Melea and I traveled to the reception classes where they were competing in the pancakes races in celebration of Pancake Day. Each child was outside, nicely bundled, and ready to run. There would be 4-6 children at one time lined up on the starting line where they would receive a frying pan with a pancake in it. They would then be given the sound to start and they would run down to a hoop, flip their pancake, and run back. There were lots of parents who came out to watch as well. It was so funny and so much fun.
After the pancake races, Melea and I were asked to go to the front lobby to help with all the children going home. We said goodbye to everyone as they were leaving and watched as all the parents came and picked up their children to walk them home. Monica also had a meeting after school to work on the Widden 25 Celebration which will be the day before the Royal Wedding and it is to celebrate the 25 years that the new location of Widden has been open. There will be a street party with all the children for lunch (a BBQ will be provided) and then later in the afternoon, past pupils/students and parents will come to tour the school and see what all is going on at the school. The meeting lasted until about 4:30 and then we were off to home.
After getting home, we decided to go town to the cathedral and walk around a little bit. We found McDonald’s so we stopped to have some fries and a coke. They were quite delicious. We had a lot of fun just looking around the town and riding the bus back to the house. This was mine and Melea’s first trip on the bus and it was a lot different than I had imagined.
When we got home, since it was Pancake Day, we began cooking tons and tons of pancakes and we cleaned out the fridge with all types of toppings or fillings. We had Nutella which is a hazelnut chocolate spread, cream cheese, tomatoes, salsa, guacamole, shredded cheese, sugar, and lemon juice. We tried all different types of combinations and they were delicious. We each had about 5 pancakes. We were quite stuffed when we left the dinner table.
I was VERY tired so I headed to bed at 8:30pm and slept through the night and never moved! It was quite relaxing!
Love from England,
Miss Dodd
Monday, March 7, 2011
Pictures...Pictures...and more Pictures!
Here are some collages of pictures that I took today at Widden. Click on them to make them larger!
The students do a lot of hands on crafts and activities. One of the classes in Year 6, which would be our about our 5th grade, was building forts because they are studying Shakespear and Hamlet. I really enjoyed going into all the different classrooms today and seeing children of all ages!
Love from England,
Miss Dodd
I am very sleepy and I am off to bed!
Tea Time…Would you like another cup of tea?...Ready for tea and hot crossed buns?
Today was a great day! Last night we went to bed rather late because we had a later “tea”-at night this is dinner and then we were up until around 1-2am and had to get out of bed by 7:00am in order to be ready to walk out the door at 8:10am and head to school with Monica. We had already planned to go back to ASDA after school so that we could have a lot of time to check it out and get a feel for what it was like.
That being said, we woke up at 7:00am, started getting ready and headed down for tea and toast. We have been served this amazingly delish bread that is buttered (just like regular loaf bread in the states) and we put pineapple jam (jelly) on it and it tastes wonderful!
After breakfast, we were off to school. When we arrived at Widden Primary
School, we were welcomed by the staff and children with open arms and everyone was so welcoming.
We were introduced to all of the teachers and classrooms and then it was time for our 2nd glass of tea with all of the staff. About an hour later, we were off to ASDA (right beside our school) to buy our lunch. I bought a chicken/bacon club sandwich, a small pack of sour cream&onion “crisps” (potato chips), and a Dr. Pepper. It was 2.95 pounds. It was very tasty!
Here is a picture of my lunch (they call this dinner) and you will notice that the Dr. Pepper bottle is shaped quite differently than those in the states.
After dinner, it was back to school for an awards assembly and then back to the staff room for my 3rd cup of tea! Melea and I then met with the assistant head teacher which is the equivalent of an Assistant Principal. She spoke to us about “Every Child Matters” and the tracking system that the school uses to keep up with student performance. After that, we were off to take LOTS of pictures of the school and all of the fun and exciting things that we found!
After pictures, it was time for the end of the school day, which is 3:15pm. We watched all of the students leave for home (all of the parents walk to the door of each classroom to pick their child up…do car rider line or bus rider line. After all the students had departed, it was time for yet another cup of tea…#4.
Monica, Melea, and I then headed back to ASDA for grocery shopping. We did quite a bit of shopping and then headed for home. We arrived home, had cup #5 of hot tea with a chocolate filled pastry. We then cooked some pizza we had picked up at ASDA and then we sat around the kitchen table talking about random facts. Conversations at the dinner table are very enjoyable. After dinner, it was Melea and I’s turn for dishwasher duty so we took care of the kitchen cleanup. After cleanup, I decided to blog, upload pictures, and chat a little on Facebook. It is now 9:35pm here and I am about to head to bed because I am REALLY tired! I will blog tomorrow as soon as I can!
Love from England,
Miss Dodd
Welcome to Gloucester...Welcome to as Georgia as it gets!
Yesterday we also went to ASDA which is the English version of WalMart. It is actually owned by WalMart. The parking is much different at ASDA than at WalMart because they have parking garages and many entrances around the building.
When you enter, it instantly reminds you of WalMart. There are self-checkout stations and the stations that have cashiers (32 check out lanes to be exact…all with customers in lines!) that get to sit down while scanning your groceries…it is quite interesting. While at ASDA, we saw many American items but many of the items looked like American items but with different names. We also found Capri-Sun’s but they are much bigger and packaged much differently.
Here is a picture of the Capri-Sun that we saw.
When visiting ASDA, we asked Monica where we would find some medications, should we need them and she said that we would visit the Chemist. We all looked at her with puzzled looks on our faces but then she explained that a Chemist is the same as a Pharmacist in America. There are a lot of words that are different than in the states but many of them make more sense. A list of the words that we have found are different are:
Chemist=Pharmacist
Cheeky=silly or funny
Boot=trunk of a car
Pavement=sidewalk
Trolley=buggy or grocery cart
Fancy=neat, cool, what do you like
Supermarket=grocery store
Dib Dob=tv remote
Rubbish=trash
Posh=luxurious, really cute
Can Opener=tin opener
Pudding=anything sweet.... this includes cakes, pies, brownies, American pudding, anything served as a dessert
These are just to name a few! I will keep adding to the list as the days go by because I am sure that I will pick up on a lot more!
We were also given the opportunity to visit the local rubgy stadium…Monica and John (host mom and dad) have season tickets to Kingsholm where the Gloucester Rubgy team plays and they have a passion for it similar to how we have a passion for Georgia football season or college football. The gate just happened to be open when we arrived so we went right into the stadium and took pictures inside.
Here are some pictures from the stadium.
Monica also took us on a tour of a place called Birdslip, which overlooked all of Gloucester. It was breathtaking….such an amazing view! Here are some pictures from that trip. We are so lucky to have Monica because she is so excited about us being here and she loves to travel so she is taking us to all of the popular spots around us.
Here is a picture of Monica and John so you can put a face to a name. John is on the far right in the that picture with one of his daughters (I think!).
We have tea every morning with our breakfast…normal American school breakfast of cereal, toast, and a variety of jellies. When we return home from school, we will have tea time and then we may have tea after dinner with pudding (dessert). I am really enjoying the tea. It is served hot with regular milk and I have been putting 2 teaspoons of regular white sugar in with it and it is quite delish. It is like drinking coffee but it is much weaker (not as strong and bitter).
Here is the spaghetti that John cooked us for dinner on Sunday night.
I will be posting a House Tour video soon where all of us will give a tour of our home and the surroundings. I will post about my adventures today very soon!
Love from England,
Miss Dodd
England-I have Arrived!!!
Hello Everyone! I hope that you have all had a wonderful Sunday afternoon. It is 8:00pm Sunday night here in Cheltenham, England and John (the host dad) is cooking us a lovely dinner. We have had such an exciting two days.
This is a picture for Grant in my class! He LOVES airplanes!
Our plane began to load around 9:15 and we were sitting on the runway getting ready to take off at 10:20pm. This was my first trip on a commercial aircraft and I did not think that the flight itself was too bad but Melea informed me that the turbulence that we experienced was not typical. We had to wear our seatbelts the whole 8 hours, which is very unusual. I was not able to get much sleep but the airplane had really good movies so that kept the time moving! As we arrived in London-Heathrow Airport, we were greeted by Roger Gill, who is a gentleman who specializes in picking visitors up from the airport and taking them to their destinations. He drove us to Alan Winwood's house where we were greeted with a nice little brunch of quiche, roasted potatoes, and fresh salad. We were then given "crumble" which is like our American berry cobblers and it was drizzled with custard which is Melea's new favorite food!
This is what the fruit crumble and custard looks like. The custard is like vanilla pudding but a thinner consistency and it is served warm.
Alan took us to get money from the "hole in the wall" which was an ATM and then we went to purchase our bus tickets for the month that we are here. It cost 58 pounds which is equivalent to $94.34 American dollars. We will take this bus to and from school and around town everyday. I have to be ready an hour before school in order to walk to the bus stop and get to school on time. The school day starts at 8:30am and get out around 3:15pm.
When we were at Alan's house, we found this cow on their coffee table and it reminded us of America so we took a picture of it. They said that it was a royal cow from New York, NY in the states. (they refer to America as "the states")
The Ford van that we were picked up from the airport in.
All of our luggage in the trailer that Roger had to bring to the airport! We filled it completely full!
Today, we were given the opportunity to attend a celebration for a student who was Muslim because he had memorized the entire Quran from cover to cover which is a huge accomplishment. He will now be able to be a teacher of the Quran. It was a great experience and we were able to try a lot of traditional foods. Here are some pictures of the food we were served:
This is rice, chicken, lamb, and a cucumber salad. All of the food was VERY SPICY and they served a yogurt drink (you can see it in the top left corner of the picture and it tasted like buttermilk and it was not that great but I did try it!).
This is the Islamic dessert. We had already eaten some of it, so obviously it was good.
On this plate, there are like really flavorful cornbreads. Very spicy also.
This is a carrot dish that is sweet. It tasted similar to carrot cake without the cake part.
It is way past midnight here and I have to get up in less than 7 hours so I am headed to bed! I will update more tomorrow when I have more time and update more pictures!
Love from England,
Miss Dodd
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