Family Visit

Hi Everyone,

I went on a family visit this past weekend. It is a part of the IFSA-Butler program. About twenty of us went and stayed with different families in Cumbria, near Penrith. I stayed with a woman named Anne Longbone, who lived in a little village called Maulds Meaburn (pronounced Maulds Meebin). She has two daughters, Sarah who is 15 and Charlotte who is 18. They were all very nice. The village was very cute. Only a couple hundred people lived in this village.















This is Anne, Charlotte, and Sarah's house. It's actually two houses smushed together, so their house is the one on the right.


















This is the view out the front of the Longbone's house. Notice all the sheep...it was very weird to wake up in the morning and see sheep out the front window.















This is the view out the back of the Longbone's house. More sheep!














This is the village green. One of the farmers has the rights to just let his sheep out in the middle of the village.














The sheep walk around in the village...even going over the bridges and such. If you can't tell by these pictures, there are WAY more sheep than people the live in the village.

The area in England we were staying is near the lake district, so on Saturday we went to Keswick and took a walk around the lake with Anne, Charlotte and their dog, Gigha (pronounced Gia) who is a black lab and made me miss having Jesse and Ginger around. Here are some pictures from the walk around the lake.















The beautiful lake. Anne told me that sometimes she would take her Brownie group to that island and camp out for a night or two.















Here is Gigha swimming in the lake. She loved to get wet and then would rub her self around me and get me wet too!!!














Here are some sheep (more sheep) that were around the lake.

After walking around the lake we went to Keswick and had lunch--fish and chips. All the food here is fried!!! I keep trying to go for a couple days without eating fried food and I can't. The block around my building has about four chipies (shops that sell chips-as in fried-and other fried foods as well including deep fried pizza, deep fried haggis, deep fried mars bars, etc). I'm gaining SO much weight because of it. Anyway, back to the home stay. There was a little market in Keswick as well, although I didn't buy anything. But there was a Peter Rabbit store. So of course I had to take a picture.














The Peter Rabbit Store!!

We also went to Anne's brother-in-laws, Martin, house for afternoon tea. It was her nephew's birthday the day before so she wanted to wish him happy birthday and give him a birthday present. Martin and his wife, Ros, had an awesome house. They had just bought it a year before and were doing a lot of work on it. Their backyard was huge and tiered. When you first walked out the door there was a little yard with a high wall and they had a trampoline that took up about half of the yard. Then you went up some steps to the garden. They had apple trees, and b
erry bushes, and lots of vegetables. They also had a lot of animals: two dogs (one neurotic one named Molly, who constantly had to be petted or she would butt her head into you until you fell over), two guinea pigs (which they let roam around freely and usually hid under their plants), a rabbit named Christopher (who Gigha was very intent on trying to eat, Charlotte had to hold him very tightly when Christoper was around), a black cat named Charlie, and four chickens!! Martin said he never had to buy any eggs because the chickens would each lay one a day. He had made an apple cake and lemon pound cake for us, both with his own eggs.

After tea we quickly hurried home because some friends of Anne's were coming over for a barbeque. Their old neighbors, Judy and Mel came over. Mel loved to use Anne's barbeque (apparently he has one of his own, but will only cook on Anne's). He made TONS of food. We ate outside even though it was very cold. Fortunately they had a fire chimney thing that we sat in front of to keep warm. After dinner, one of their friends was having a party were they had all this beer that they had made themselves. It was very very good! And I tried a few different kinds.

While I was in Cumbria, Anne also took me to see a stone circle. Like stonehenge, but not as impressive. Here is a photo from that.















We left on Sunday after Anne made us (I was staying with one other girl from the IFSA program) a wonderful lunch of Cumbria sausage, potatoes, vegetables, and applesauce. She also took us to a Jersey dairy farm, where they made all their own ice cream, on the way to the train station.




























The Jersey cows. They were grazing right out in front of the place where the ice cream was served.















They had calves at the farm. Aren't they so cute? They almost look like deer!

Overall the weekend was so much fun! Well I have to run off to class now!!!

Love Always,
Lizzie