A primer for our UK friends on regional tea differences here in the US. (Although they’re missing the giant vat of hot tea that says “British” on it…)
zeke and wendy
We're living in Manchester, England.
Wendy is so happy to have Mexican food again! Welcome to Moe’s!
Safe and sound in the US: We landed at JFK and ran into friends we hadn’t seen in years on the same flight into Raleigh. After experiencing the earthquake aftershocks in the terminal we had a great time catching up with the McSwains. Then (w’s) mom and Milt picked us up at the airport and took us on to IP3s to see some friends over the Tuesday night special (see pic). So much fun. Then we drove on to the cabin and after being awake 23 hours are glad to be in bed.
Who drinks beer at 8:30am? People in the Manchester airport, apparently. We have seen this every time we have a morning flight- sometimes even earlier than this.
our very social week before america…
this past week, before we head to america, we’ve spent lots of time with our british friends. last sunday we went to gawsworth hall to see the venue where our friends jon and lois will be married in a few weeks (zeke is doing the photography, so he needed to scout the location). jon and lois took us on a lovely double-date there where we had a picnic in the sunshine and stayed for a big band concert.
we were by far the youngest people there and by far the least experienced picnickers. many of the people had set up nice tents with tables and one even had a chandelier hanging inside! these brits were taking picnicking to a whole new level.
the concert was very fun, and thankfully it didn’t start raining until we were seated under cover. it was a really fun evening.
on tuesday we had our small group friends from church over and had a nice time catching up. vincent and tamanda even brought their adorable 7 week old baby!
on wednesday we tried a nepalese restaurant in didsbury with some of zeke’s work colleagues who are excitedly planning their wedding for next summer.
on thursday zeke got in some quality man-time at an irish pub with dan.
and on friday abi and rich had us over for a lovely dinner and a chance to expend some competitive energy in a rousing game of ‘cluedo’! (yes, fellow americans, that’s what they call the board game ‘clue’. but apparently they invented it first, so we went with ‘cluedo’.)
most of the game is exactly the same, but the characters were tweaked a little:
(note how professor plum has conan o’brien’s hair)
rich looking competitive:
zeke took the picture below, because after an overly ambitious accusation he was out of the game which abi won only 2 turns later! (there was shrieking involved)
on saturday zeke had a wedding to film and wendy baked a pumpkin pie. (yes, it’s completely irrelevant to us leaving the country, but it just feels like autumn here and it’s one of zeke’s favourites!)
on sunday we got to see lots of our manchester friends at church and had lunch with dan and introduced him to pumpkin pie. his verdict was “gorgeous”- yes people here say that to describe food.
today we’re packing and cleaning to leave tomorrow for the states! in a little over 24 hours we’ll be in carolina!
lions and tigers and footballers, oh my!
Sadly, Cam had to go back to America (she kept saying she didn’t want to go, though we’re pretty sure that had more to do with going back to work than her enjoying the constant rain and/or rioting of our fair city) but we had loads of fun during her visit. On Wednesday, we decided to visit the Manchester Museum and Old Trafford, home of Manchester United.
The Manchester Museum had an exhibit going on with tons of taxidermied (not a real word, but I’m going with it) animals from around the world.
The Ram was even conveniently already wearing a Roy Williams sweater!
Wendy was not a big fan of the giant Mr. No-Shoulders exhibit, and had me shuffle her around the room so she wouldn’t have to look at it.
Cranes! (Origami and stuffed)
All the paper cranes were really beautiful.
After the museum we hopped on a bus in the rain to head to Old Trafford, otherwise known as the Theatre of Dreams, the home stadium of Manchester United. Wendy and Cam snapped a quick pic outside of the grounds…
And then we went in for the full Stadium Tour. Here’s the famous Stretford End…
And a panorama-ish thing that I cobbled together on my iPhone. Full interactive versions are here and here (you even see Cam and Wendy in that second one!).
After seeing the pitch we got to go into the players’ lounge and locker rooms, which were more sparse than I had imagined. They still had last season’s jerseys hanging up, so I got to snap a pic with the jersey of the great Dutch goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar.
We snapped this one for you, Fletch.
Exiting the locker rooms, we went to the entrance tunnel, where Cam and Wendy practiced their best post-game press conference faces.
The tour puts on dramatic music when you get to actually walk through the tunnel out onto the field. Most of the following video is probably undecipherable, but that’s because I was jumping up and down excitedly like a little kid. Even the little kids on the tour were looking at me like I was weird.
The guide also informed us that apparently the sun doesn’t shine enough here for the grass on the field to grow enough naturally, so they have to use these machines to grow the grass with artificial UV rays. Manchester, everybody!
Just outside of the players’ entrance. I’ve got my game face on.
This is as close as they would let us get to the actual field, but I practiced my goal celebrations, regardless.
Awesome.
Wendy and Cam took a seat on the actual benches where the players and coaches sit.
After the tour was over, we wandered around the Man United museum, which had loads of awesome memorabilia and displays. Or awesome to me (zeke) at least - Wendy and Cam seemed slightly more bored…
I loved this Eric Cantona doll. Where can I get one?
Game-worn cleats from JS Park, for the South Korean blog reader contingent…
David Beckham didn’t seem too happy about me giving him a pinch…
Me doing my best Wayne Rooney impression…
There was a fun exhibit where you got to do commentary on great Manchester United goals. Of course, I couldn’t resist, and I even got another Dutchman - Ruud van Niestelrooy - as my subject.
I hear this is where Sir Alex keeps his candy!
After Old Trafford, we decided to avoid the potential riots in city centre and hunt down royal wedding china for cam’s royal-loving family back home at the Trafford Centre (the crazy mall we’ve posted about on the blog before). We had a nice dinner at the Kro restaurant at the mall, and though they did warn us that we might be filmed as part of a Danish reality show, the evening was pretty calm. At one point Wendy even momentarily forgot we were in the UK, since after dinner we sat with our American friend at a Starbucks in the mall. Felt just like home!
Back from the hair salon and the sun finally came out.
Cameron’s last taste test: double decker was her favourite chocolate bar, while Wendy preferred lion, and Zeke was still liking the boost bar better than these. But we all unanimously decided plain cadbury bars were the overall best. And we are sorry to report to Ellie that we thought vimto was way too sweet. Wendy liked it least but we all agreed that Ribena was better.
Out of all the edible British things Cam tried she said scones were her favourite and she could gladly have afternoon tea every day!
Cam is already back in the US but we will post a few more pictures from her visit soon.
riots in manchester: yes mom(s), we are safe
cameron and wendy came back from their lovely visit to lyme park to a rioting scene in manchester. luckily zeke called them on the train and rerouted them past piccadilly gardens where some ‘incidents’ were happening.
manchester is pretty much the opposite of this scene today (below) from the lyme park gardens:
cameron is a big jane austen fan and was glad to see the place where they filmed part of pride and prejudice. we had a lovely time walking around the gardens and the hike up to the house. we had zero rain!
we had lunch and tea between walking through the house and the gardens. then after hiking back down to the village we stopped at the pub and had pimms and lemonade in the pub garden (though it did get chilly enough that we needed jackets).
now we’re all safe at home and ordering curries for a night in- away from the madness downtown.
On the train headed to Lyme park!
Having coffee in front of Manchester’s town hall.
cameron is here!
after a long, sleepless flight cam arrived in manchester around noon on sunday. after lunch, a nap, and meeting some of our friends at church we had a night of british immersion. below are the things we subjected cameron to on her first night here:
blackadder is an incredibly sarcastic, pun-filled british historical parody series featuring rowan atkinson (the guy who plays mr. bean), hugh laurie (the guy who plays house), and loads of other famous brits. wendy didn’t realise how much british slang she’d picked up in the past two years until explaining some of the jokes to cameron. wendy finds the series much funnier now that she can understand most of the dialogue.
we caught the food and drink reactions on camera, so instead of our recurring video segment “hello america” where we get our british friends to have a go at american things, here is “cameron’s UK taste test”:
Special birthday cards from Oma and the Stockwell nieces and nephew!
bday package
we were away leading at camp last week and had a great time. our really fun day at the beach happened to coincide with wendy’s birthday. it was almost 70F (which is warm for the UK) and didn’t rain while we played volleyball and rounders on the beach.
when we got home wendy had a package waiting for her from her mommy!
a really thoughtful and unique present was inside:
a leather correspondence journal from 1891!
so, though wendy is feeling a bit older turning 28, the journal is 120 years old!
it has really fun pouches for paper, pens, wax, stamps and even has an old flint lighter.
very cool.
summer update
since we’ve been back from venice wendy has been consumed with writing her second chapter and zeke has been quite busy as wedding season is in full swing. here is what the handsome mr. smith looks like when going off to work: (there are no pictures of mrs. smith working because grad student writing is not hot, not at all.)
what wasn’t so hot, was the cold he’s had for 2 weeks while working so many of these weddings. some of you might know how much zeke hates to be sick. he really hates it. he gets mad that he is sick, which turns out to be pretty funny. it’s exactly like this clip from the NBC show parks & rec where rob lowe’s character has the flu:
last sunday night our friend dan was also sick when we had him over to watch top gun- his all-time favourite movie. (he could quote virtually every line from it.) we think this was responsible for them both getting better this week.
zeke even had a celebratory kinder egg (german chocolate for kids with toys inside), that brought back childhood memories from belgium:
after turning in her chapter (and getting over her turn with the cold) wendy had a girly afternoon of nail painting with her friend katherine. they had pimms and tried an ambitious newspaper nail technique.
the only newspaper katherine could find on the way over was an agriculture and farming newspaper, so the words on our nails say “cows”, “lactating”, “farm”, “tractor”, etc.. Actually pretty appropriate for the two of us and our cow-loving dads.
our results were interesting, but not super impressive:
(it was also pretty difficult to get a picture of)
but we had a really fun time.
wendy’s panel on tuesday went really well, but it is still overwhelming to receive 45 minutes of feedback. she’s also excited that the next research trip to italy looks like it will include a completely legitimate, research-related visit to lago di garda! woohoo.
now we’re both prepping for the camp we’re volunteering at next week with some friends from church for 14-18 year old kids in north wales. and after we get back from camp our friend cameron is coming to visit for a week! we’re both glad for this upcoming change of pace.
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