Bath

Remeber this park family! It was so fun to walk these streets and think of the good times we had here! We also got to explore a little more than we did when we were here before. Fantastic!

Today we made a visit to Bath. What a beautiful place! Our first order of business was to take a boat tour of the river running through town. Fantastic!

The ducks on this river are kind of like pesky squirels in Zion's national park. If I wasn't careful this little guy would have had my finger for sure. A little further down the river we ran into two big swans. We were not that far off the water and I was honestly a little nervous. I was just remembering some bad experiences at Plaza park with the geese there. The boat driver said that they are pretty agressive and have definitly bitten people before.

This is the view from our little river boat. We were lucky to find some local guy that has been taking people down the river for 23 years on this little boat. So we got this personal boat tour all for 5pounds. Excellent.

This was the end point of our private boat trip. That bridge there is a private bridge. Costs 40 pence to get across each way. The boat drive estimated that they took in several thousand pounds a day. I should get myself a bridge!

We dropped by the pump room of the roman baths and had some stinky sulfer water and I am sure we are all cured now. This is Josh. I live at this house right now. He is an american army kid working over here right now.

This is called the Circus.....maybe that is because it is "circu"-lar. Not real sure. Nothing particularly crazy was going on.

This is called the Royal Crescent. A huge crescent of Georgian style homes around this big beautiful park.

So here's the crew that went to Bath. Josh, Charlotte and I. What a fantastic day!!!

Lulworth

When we were done laying around on the beach and it was getting a little colder we headed over the hill to the little village of Lulworth by way of this foot path. I really wish i was a better photographer, these pictures really do not capture how beautiful this little place is.

We wandered into this little old school candy shop in town. The owners were outside on the patio so we took the liberty......you thought I was going to say taking some candy...didn't you!....of taking pictures behind the candy counter. We got some amazing fudge there.

Then we started back to Bournemouth. The drive was really amazing as well. We drove through a little village with a bunch of these thached house roofs - this one had a particularly beautiful garden.

Dreamy!!! I think my Mr. Darcy must live here. Can you imagine!!! Someone actually lives here! This place is so enchanting.

Durdle Door

I woke up this morning and the sun was shining and it was this warm summer day. Amazing! so we took advantage of that to head to the coast to Durdle Door about 20 minutes from Bournemouth. I hadn't heard much about it but it was incredible! Look at that water!

The beach was made of all these little round stones, which I guess is what accounts for such beautiful water.

Charlotte and I layed on the beach for a while and just chatted and then decided to brave the water. It was freezing!!! People were swimming around like it was warm....not warm. I touched the water and realized I would never get in if I didn't just dive in. That took my breath away pretty quick. About 3 minutes into the swim my limbs were getting numb and so it was actually refreshing. Charlotte and I swam through the door and then up the coast for quite a ways. So we got our exercise in for the day as well.

I am so lucky that Charlotte has this time off between work and school and can show me around to some of the sweet sights around here. This beach was particularly beautiful. Despite the cold water I put it in the top 5 best beaches I have ever visited.

Hangin' with Charlotte

Today Charlotte introduced me to Primark. We don't have anything like it in the states. I have been seeing tons of people walking around with huge bags from this store since I got here and now I know why. It is EXTREMLY cheap. Which was nice for me since I am poor and getting sick of my very limited wardrobe. I didn't decide to get this amazing wardrobe addition, but I did get a couple other things. After we went to ASDA (UK version of Walmart) to get some curry. It was a really nice relaxed day. I am so grateful for Charlotte. She is fantastic. She has been a blessing from heaven for sure.

The LONG journey back to the UK

We are still rather chipper at this point.... We got to the airport extra early to account for all the weight shuffling we would certainly have to do. In the end it took about an hour to figure it all out. We really needed to study for our exam as well this morning so we figured we would be more focused if we were stuck at the airport. Turns out we had a lot of fun and just laughed a ton. I have a sign that says, "The League of Nations Tour '09". Some old guy in Tarbert had called us that since we were all from different countries. Hannah has one with all the weird Ausie stuff she said...
-"Breakie" - Breakfast
-"Swimmers" - swim suit
-"Pushie" - a bike
-"Sultanas" - another name for raisins
-"Blowie" - hair dryer
-"Sanga" - sandwich
-"Sunnies" - Sun glasses

Renee only had one weird Canadian saying..."Toque" - beenie.

Looks like I was the only normal one on the trip...I was the glue that held this weird nation together. We would regularly die laughing when Hannah would spit out one of these words we didn't understand and look at us like we were crazy. When I asked her what a sultana was she repeated it and when I still didn't understand she actually repeated it slower like I was completly dumb....I died laughing.

So in order for Hannah to be able to fit her bag in the overhead bin and not have to check it she was literally wearing 7 layers of clothing and hiding the majority of her stuff under those layers. She looked extremely lumpy!!!

We did get a really amazing view of the city from the plane. What a great adventure!!!! It was all about to get really terrible though. Once we got back to Bristol we decided we didn't want to pay for a hostel since we would only be there for a few hours. We had to be back in Bournemouth this morning for our exam. So we decided to take the train last night. We knew that there were no direct trains and we would have to make 4 changes, but we didn't realize just how horrible it would be...

Here we are at two thirty in the morning when we had to change trains in the middle of nowhere and the English guy at the train station was being insane and kicked us out of the station. He said, well at least its summer and it's warm.....whatever!!! Do we look warm to you! We were freezing for about 2 hours until the next train came. Then when we got on that one the conductor asked for our tickets and because we had just gotten a return ticket going the same way we got to Bristol and we weren't going that same way we had to pay for a whole new ticket. I had to pay 20 pounds....about 40 dollars!!! There were cuss words flying in my head! Cold, tired, poor. ahhh!

Good news is we got to our test and I passed and I threw my book away. Freedom!!! Now I am back in my little attic with Charlott...my home away from home...

Touring Dublin

This is the main quad of Trinity College which is the oldest university in Ireland, founded in the 16th century. They were having essentially their freshman orientation so we wandered around and checked out all the clubs and societies they had. Pretty much the same as anywhere else. It really made me miss college. What a fun time!

Our original plan this morning had been to go on a walking tour of the city. We got to the meeting place for the walking tour to begin and were informed by someone that the tour guide had an asthma attack, so it was cancelled....blast! Blast #2....the Dublin castle was closed. Too bad, we had heard that it was pretty amazing.

We did see this really cool gate outside in the gardens though...

Next we wandered by St. Patricks Cathedral. We decided not to pay to go inside...how do you charge to go into a house of God. Renee had gone to church there on Sunday. She said they just covered up the gift shop with sheets....weird.

Out in the courtyard of the cathedral is the burial place of James Joyce, a famous Irish writer best known for writing "Ulysses"

We continued walking and came across their city park. Incredible!!! It is almost sad to see such a beautiful place where it rains the majority of the year. There were plenty of people out enjoying it today though. Plenty of swans and ducks out too. So fantastic!

This is a monument to the Oscar Wilde, another Dublin born writer and playwrite who is most famous for "The Importance of Being Earnest". Seems like kind of a weird statue, but from what I have heard about him he was a pretty weird guy.

Sunday in Dublin

So at this place we have been staying they do breakfast. The first day the guy running the place asked us if we wanted breakfast, and we hesitated because we are really trying to be frugal and so he said he would give us breakfast. We got toast and juice and an orange that first day. Since then he has just been bringing us breakfast every day and it has gotten increasingly more ellaborate each day. This morning eggs, muffins, juice, toast, pancakes, oranges, two kinds of cheese,yogurt! What will tomorrow be???
After breakfast I set out walking to church. I didn't think it was that far. So I was walking down the street and saw two young guys in black suits talking to a crazy guy on the street....the missionaries. They told me that it would take me about an hour to get there walking...

So I hopped on the bus with the Elders and they told me that they were reorganizing the Dublin stake and that Elder Bednar would be there to make the new callings. Bonus!!! He is such a fantastic speaker. It was nice to hear him speak in a more personal setting than conference.

He said some really great things, of course.

-He explained the process of calling a new stake president. He and another regional authority arrived saturday morning and interviewed 30 or so men and from them were able to see who the new president was to be. He said that revelation was like the sunrise. When the sun rises before the actual sun comes up the sky begins to illuminate until the sun finally comes over the horizon. He said that the sun always comes up, but sometimes there are clouds and sometimes it is clear. So revelation is always the same and it is always there but it comes differently some times. He said that there have been times when he has done his 30 interviews and then had to pray to find out who the new president will be and other times he knows when he shakes his hand. It was of course much more elloquent than that. One funny thing that he said was that he percieves that most members of the church recieve text message revelation from above...not like that so much I guess.

-He also talked about the importance of sustaining our leaders. He said that we don't raise our hand to confirm that we think the right choice was made...becaue God chose that person, but we raise our hand to say we will back that person up and help them in their new calling. He said that the church is a laboratory for the perfecting of the saints and not a museum for perfect saints to be put on display. He wanted to get across the point that the new stake president would not be perfect and that the members of the stake would need to remember that he is trying out being a stake president on them. I thought this was a really good thought.

He then went on to talk about true conversion and missionary work. He talked about 1 Nephi 8:12 and how once Lehi had partaken of the fruit he wanted his family to have it too. He said that we really need to stop running around talking about missionary techniques and ways to talk to our friends about the gospel, but that we need to focus our energies on our own personal conversion. Once we are truly converted to the Lord it will be all we can do to contain our testimony from seeping out of us, and that others will notice the difference in our countenance and want to know about it. I really loved this/hated it. I loved it because it really changes how I look at missionary work and I hated it because it really says something about my personal conversion that I have such a hard time sharing the gospel with people.

What a marvelous opportunity to be in the presence of a prophet of God today!

When I got home from church all this mayhem was going on. There was a huge national gaelic football game going on. Another unusual Irish sport...we watched a little of it and it is a mix between football and soccer. There is a soccer goal and you use a soccer ball but you can pick it up and run with it and kick field goals. These Irish are very creative with their sports.
We finished off the night heading back to the hotel we went to last night to catch some traditional Irish Dancing. Now my Irish experience is complete. The whole time I was watching them do their riverdance stuff I was thinking of my cousin Jordan and how he learned river dance for his beauty pagent in high school....and how the whole family got a retake of it this summer at Bass Lake....haha....Love you Jordan! You should have been up there with them.

Dublin Day 1

Today we spent our first day in Dublin. The first order of business was for me to return the rental car. I really did get quite good at driving stick shift and at driving on the wrong side of the road....go me! Once that was done with we headed to the downtown area to do a little shopping, which really is rediculous since we can only have so much luggage and we were at our limit when we came over here.

We did see some pretty sweet street performers though. This statue guy even had his own pidgeon sitting on him for dramatic effect

So this guy wasn't really doing anything but he looked pretty sweet.

For most of the afternoon we went back to our hostel and relaxed. I shared my cold with Hannah and Renee. (Mine is almost gone...thank goodness!) Hannah and I also tried to figure out our next move. We are thinking northern italy and southern Switzerland. It's stressful being poor. That night we decided it would be super lame if we didn't go out and enjoy some of the Dublin night life...so we hit the town. I will tell you one thing.... it does not matter what you do, if you are wearing tennis shoes, you cannot feel that cute. Cute shoes are key!

We headed down to the Arlington hotel where we heard they had Irish dancing every night. We got there just as it ended....but we did hang around and do some dancing of our own (they love the 80's over here) and met this dreamy character. Meeting a handsome irish man was all part of the experience right. Not much of a dancer but good to look at. So our night out on the town was a successf except for the ugly shoes and the Irish dancers part....we'll try again tonight.

Wicklow National Park

This is an Irish national park just south of Dublin. So we have now driven in 10 days around the entire island of Ireland, on about 3 tanks of gas. Pretty small place. We did a hike to what we were hoping was a waterfall. We never did find it but the hike was really nice. It was effectively through a christmas tree forest. Down where we were walking it was really dark so there was hardly any vegitation, but on the tops of these trees were perfect little chrismas trees. The smell was fantastic!
We did find a ton of clovers - wasn't able to find a 4 leafer though...
We mostly spent a lot of time driving around and enjoying the scenery
There were huge open fields with tons of this purple heather. This is where another scene from P.S. I love you took place.
We also saw some excellent sheep specimines....running across the street. Sheep never were faulted with being that smart I guess.

Belfast Botanical Gardens

After the bus tour we took a walk through the Belfast botanical gardens. They were really stunning. I kept thinking of Grandma Mann as we walked through. She would have loved this place! These pictures are your you Grandma!


Of course, not nearly as stunning as in real life, but you get the idea.