Eating my words....

I'm finding myself eating my words for breakfast this morning, because last night I witnessed something I never thought I would EVER see. For months now, I have been getting a kick out of the ridiculous continuous fascination with boy bands in England. The definition of a boy band is a musical group made up of men who do not play instruments, but all of them sing (for those of you who were wondering... Grandma). Best American examples would be Backstreet Boys, N-sync, Boys to Men, and New Kids on the Block, all of whom were popular in the 90's. 

Anyways, over here their biggest 90's boy band was called "Take That" made up of some guys- one being Robbie Williams for those who know him. Believe it or not, "Take That" is BACK, and they love it here! But unlike America, where Boy Bands died in the States for the last 10 years, they have continued on strong here. Looking at the bands that this country is putting out, most of them all involve multiple men singer.

 My favorite one of course is, "The Wanted". I have been getting a chuckle every time I see anything with their faces on it. They look like a bunch of overly manicured metro-sexual men who would not be friends in real life.

Now we can't forget JLS. The country voted them to win X-factor a couple of years ago and this year, One Direction, a boy band made up of actual boys. They might have been 15, I'm not sure...looked like it!

I have been almost mean in saying that boy bands don't exist anymore in the States and England is crazy for keeping them around, but what do I know. I haven't been on U.S. soil in the last three months. I could be totally wrong. Who knows?

Back to what I witnessed last night… Sometimes you just want to watch American T.V. to have that connection with back home, so I watched the American Music Awards. In my opinion, the performances were mostly bad and the acceptance speeches were weird, but nothing prepared me for the end. The last performance was a collaboration of New Kids on the Block and Backstreet Boys. A nine grown men group sing-a-long to their old hits. I mean, it was interesting to see what 10 years of age does to someone, and a lot of them still looked pretty good, but really? I sat there speechless, not able to share this phenomenon with anyone because everyone else was asleep.  I've spent a lot of time trying to defend the States and their musical tastes and then this? I guess words are going to have to taste pretty good this morning. YUM……

Keep in mind that this award show happened over a month ago, but I just saw it last night...We're a bit slow over here!

Christmas movies!

I didn't grow up watching the old Christmas Classic movies. We've been spending December watching any Christmas movie we can get our hands on. From the Home Alone 1 and 2 to the classic Holiday Inn with Bing Crosby...we've watched them all! Tonight we are planning on watching, It's a wonderful life. I really wanted to share one of the scenes that I love from the movie, A Christmas Story...

Howarth

On Saturday made our way to Howarth. It snowed on Friday, so we didn't know for sure if we were going to be able to make it there, but we had heard that they have wonderful Christmas activities. After taking a train to Keighley, we took a steam train to Howarth. They were having some trouble with the train in front of us so we had to wait a bit for our train to leave. This allowed us time to have a cup of tea and explore the train and the train station. 

When we got to Howarth, I was surprised...I've never seen a village completely uphill. We walked ages uphill in the snow to get to the main street. The streets were cobblestone and very cute with all of the snow. The main street was filled with unique store and shops. There was a walking nativity that caroled all the way up the main street. Afterwards we ended up going to a pub and enjoyed warm food to help us warm our feet. We are really loving pub food, maybe it's the closest to American...I'm not sure. It was a very cold and exhausting, but fun day. 

View of the main street looking back downhill...

Santa always knows the right way...

Lidget Green Christmas party

After 3 months at Lidget Green it was time to have some fun!

It required a lot of hard work to blow those
balloons up in the first place...just to let them go.

On Friday night, we were invited to our schools Christmas Party at the Guidepost Inn. For there meals there an entire room is full of people and a 3 course meal is served in one go. Lidget Green took up 3 table there out of the 8 in the room. I must say though, we (our staff) were the rowdiest by far! Maybe it was the fact that is was a time to let loose, or maybe it was the fact that we are surrounded by kids all day requiring us to act like adults and when the kids aren't there we can act like children. I'm pretty sure that was it! The hotel had put horns (like the ones you would get at a birthday party) on the table along with balloons that once filled and let go would fly like a missles! Not a smart idea with our group. I'm not sure if the horn blowing stopped at all for 2 hours! There were contests for who was louder. There was getting ones attention by blowing on it continuously. There was scaring people by the unplanned honk. It was ridiculous- in a good way! But, as you scanned the rest of the room and tables, no one else was blowing on their horns, or soaring their balloons like missles...just us! Funny enough, at one point, one of our lone male teachers grabbed a horn out of someones mouth and smashed it and this caused the other side of the table to whoop and cheer! One less horn to be blown- was all they were thinking! It was such a good night!

Yorkshire Pudding, Roast Beef, veg- potatoes and carrots (no sprouts)

Apparently the meal that we ate was 30 quid, but I'm hoping that some of that cost went for the atmosphere...the food wasn't anything fantastic. The food was 20 times better at Barbara's Christmas dinner! I did eat prawns and like them for the first time in my life...

We sat with our principal (a.k.a. headmaster) Mike Pope. He is a busy man and we hadn't much time to talk with him since we have gotten here, but he has always shown us great hospitality and you get a sense that you are appreciated. It was good to actually be able to talk with him and since he is not our boss in the same way as the other teachers, there wasn't the same weird feelings.

I wanted to be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle with my problematic crown!

No kids around means a time to act like kids! :)

The second table of teachers!

After the meal, there was a dance floor with a D.J. that was absolute random. It may have been because he was dealing with a crowd from like 5 decades...Anyways, we danced it up and had a lot of fun. I don't dance for other when I do dance, I dance for me...In other words: I didn't care what I looked like when I danced and because of it, it was a BLAST! It may also have helped that there were 97.3% women present...and the other 2.7% were unavailable men! :)

Christmas at the Jones'...

This past Sunday I went to a traditional British Christmas feast at Barbara's house.  Barbara is the ICT (computer teacher) at Lidget Green and is apparently a brilliant cook! Because I had been sick for so long, I was very thankful to get an excuse to finally get out of our house and back into the real world. The meal was really amazing. Nowadays in England, it is traditional to have turkey for Christmas dinner instead of the ultra traditional goose. I suspect they have turkey because obviously they didn't just have it for Thanksgiving and every country needs a turkey holiday. Besides the turkey we had three different stuffings, veg (a.k.a. vegetables) -2 different kinds of potatoes, carrots, peas, brussel sprouts, and I even had my first taste of parsnips. Apparently once they have been soaked in duck fat they are pretty good! Who knew? There also were pigs in a blanket, which in England is a sausage wrapped in bacon.


 It all was really good until we came to the traditional Christmas pudding. Here pudding does not mean the same as in the States. Pudding is another word for desert. A "Christmas Pudding" is what most people would be scared to eat in the states because it is a fruit cake with dates, figs and the whole gang. Now, no offense to Barbara or any other British person who actually likes this awfulness, but this pudding was not my thing! It didn't help when I found out that "proper" Christmas puddings were actually mixed up and made in September and then fermented for 3 months before finishing the baking. I found the presentation to be neat though. Barbara lit it on fire (easy to do with all the alcohol present in it)!
June and I were struggling for a while before we were let off the hook...and didn't have to finish it.
Lots of thanks to Barbara and Brendan for hosting June and I in our first English Christmas! It really was a splendid of a time!

June and I waiting for Barbara to pick us up. We were dancing to Christmas carols with our antlers.
I'm pretty sure everyone thought we were crazy!

Barbara's cats all seemed to take a liking to June. At one point, all three were within touching distance.

The last two weeks...

I know it has been a long time since I have posted, but this is mainly because it's been a very challenging two weeks for me. I have been struggling with some sickness that just will not go away. For the first 5 or 6 days I was completely useless, and that is a hard feeling for me to get over. I really did not like having to sit around not able to do ANYTHING! The last few days I have been gaining energy, but my symptoms have changed and now I have a lingering cough and snotty nose. ahhhh! I'm ready for it to all go away! Good news though- my energy level is up and my blogging should continue! :)

Der Schnee ist hier

Apparently, "It does NOT snow before Christmas...not usually that is..." or so I was told! The snow is here. It has been for a few days now. And with the snow, came the loss of heat in our house. We are told that it must be the pilot light or something, but unfortunately we are on the third day with no heaters and no hot water. Last night I resorted to taking a boil-water bath. I was in desperate need of bathing and washing my hair and so I boiled 4 pots of water and 3 kettles. Add that with the ice cold water from the tap, it made a semi-comfortable mixture. It got the job done at least.
Again, our new friends are coming to our rescue. We have gotten multiple space heaters from people, many wonderful offers to stay at houses, and tonight my friend Abby brought over hot water bottles and extra blankets. I'm finding it really amazing how wonderful people are.
For instance, this past Sunday we were invited to go to a Thanksgiving meal made by someone we had never met. Hospitality was shown to us just because it was known that holidays are hard away from families and Americans love Thanksgiving and need a lot of excuses to keep eating! I don't know if people realize the impact that they have on us, whether it is a simple ride or teaching us to knit, it's people showing God's love.

I'm so very thankful for...

This Thanksgiving was one of my favorites. Obviously it was not because I wasn't with my family, but because my new make-shift "family" was here. Leigh, Bethany and I decided that we wanted to have a HUGE Thanksgiving not only to celebrate the American holiday, but also to show how thankful we are to all of our new friends here in Bradford. After preparing for several days we had a feast to feed 20 people. Our turkey itself was over 13 kgs! We also served: mashed potatoes, cheesy potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, creamed corn, cooked broccoli, stuffing, cranberry sauce, vegetable platter, and bread.
My favorite part of the evening was before the meal when we went around the table and had everyone say what they are thankful for. It was really special to see people there from many different parts of out lives here. We had people from the Great Horton Methodist congregation, the St. Wilfrid's congregation, some teachers from Leigh and my school and some teachers from Bethany's school. It really was a great mix and everyone that came has a special place in all of our hearts.
After our "gorgeous" meal we had everyone come back to our little place and eat "pudding" (desserts).
We had 4 pies and a couple of cakes. After a long problematic search for pumpkin with no luck, one of the teachers at my school was able to find us some orange coloured squash and we made squash pie with the hope that it would be very similar. We still called it pumpkin pie though! HA! Later we found out that the American teacher at school had cans of pumpkin shipped in and she was willing to share. Oh well!
It really was a special day and afterwards we all were so excited that we pulled it off and it was a success! All the hard work paid off!