Back to Regularly Scheduled Programming

So, it's been a while. I've been away - to England, Scotland, and Wales! We had a wonderful, awesome trip - our first off this continent. I took 287 pictures which have taken me an entire week to upload to my Picasa album. We went on the British Landscapes tour sponsored by Collette Vacations. I highly recommend their company, if you're into escorted tours. Not only was the itinerary wonderful, but our tour guide was terrific. The hotels were 4 and 5 star rated, and the included meals were great. I can't decided which part of the UK I liked better. Every place we went I said "I want to come back here!" Certainly at the top of our list of favorite places we visited was Edinborough. We also loved the Lake District and York. Each part was beautiful and I really want to go back!!

What really surprised me though were the sheep.

Everywhere there is open space (and believe me, the UK has LOTS of open pasture lands) there are sheep - 30 million of them in fact. One sheep for every 2 people. At least that's the statistic we were given. And yet - I only saw ONE yarn shop!

It's hard to come back from vacation. Aside from the time changes, the meal changes, and the sleep changes, it's hard to come back to housework,cooking, laundry, and especially hard to look at the calendar and realize that school for me starts in 3 weeks. Don't get me wrong, I love teaching, but I hate the schedule I have to follow --- the alarm at 4:45am and the nonstop pace til 8 pm and then a brief break before bed and start all over again. Although I'm busy with a variety of things in the summer, including lesson planning and study, it's much more relaxed, with no outside-imposed time table.