3-9-15

Could I go back to working food service? Not like food-food, but at a coffee shop? I’m not sure, I think I may have gotten too unwilling-to-take-other-peoples-crap for it… But there is a really nice coffee shop in downtown that is hiring and I’m tempted. It’s exactly the part-time, low pressure employment I was considering. Hmmm…

We spent another weekend enjoying Wantage this weekend, we meant to get out and do something tourist-y, but didn’t quite make it happen. Having to arrange things without the internet and in correlation to distance walking and bus travel times makes it a bit more difficult to get things going. But, perhaps next weekend. Our current touristing front runners are the Uffington White Horse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uffington_White_Horse) and going to Wales for the day to see Cardiff Castle again (again for me, new to Matt). Cardiff Castle’s Arab Room ceiling is perhaps my very favorite thing I saw during my study abroad time here, and if it’s not number one, it’s easily top three. The Uffington White Horse is a prehistoric hill figure created by carved out deep trenches into the underlying white chalk of the hills (according to the wikipedia page). It’s been maintained since it was carved out, for something like 3,000 years. It is the reason that our area is called the Vale of the White Horse and I’m super excited to go see it and to eventually participate in weeding it – which is a local tradition and required if the white horse is to remain for another 3,000 years. How cool is that? We learned about the horse and some other local historical hot spots during our tour of the Wantage and Downland Museum on Saturday. Apparently there is also a place in town (Robert Stiles Almshouses) where the sidewalk is paved in sheep knuckles. Because EEEEW. Or because this has been an agricultural and industrial town for a very long time and they really wanted to find uses for everything… And, they meant EVERYTHING. Seriously though, I’m dying of morbid curiosity to see the knuckle sidewalk. I think that’ll be my little adventure after I leave the coffeeshop I’m camped out in at the moment.

This weekend, we also accomplished getting a sofa, going on a major grocery shopping trip, visiting the Saturday farmers market in the village square and learning that coriander is the stand in for cilantro here, and is essentially the same thing. We also established that cooking Mexican food here is going to be almost as difficult as finding it in a restaurant. There is seriously nothing here to work with – I’m not sure Matt will survive.

Laptop battery is dying, so I guess I’ll go knuckle searching now and then there is a sink full of dishes waiting for me at home (oh, the romance of life abroad… I miss our dishwasher (and our dryer)).

Observations: There is a lot more coffee available over here than you’d expect, it’s just that too much of it is instant. Eew. But, at least you can get free wifi in the coffeeshops and the pubs, so you can do morning coffee and afternoon beer and be covered all day long. Also, overly hydrated. hehe

Why don’t they have two outlets per socket? Seriously? Why do the English hate plugging things in?!?

More to come.

– alaina