cheers!
we’ve made it to manchester!!! our visas finally came the morning of our departure. thankfully they were delivered to the donovans, who kept them safely until we could stop by on the drive to the airport. we said goodbye to our moms at the security gate at RDU (where they promptly took our toothpaste and aerosols). we ended up going through security at each airport we stopped in, but customs was pretty easy and we didn’t lose any luggage.
here is zeke with our bags and guitar (there are actually 2 other bags you can’t see - and the yellow bag alone was 71lbs.)
we took this picture for bo and sam- “schuster!” this is in our neighborhood which is very quaint and leafy.
this is on the “curry mile” which is a really big row of ethnic restaurants that leads downtown. they have gobs of candy and turkish delights piled up in the windows. here i’m pointing out that sponge bob is on one of the buses (made me think of the kids).
this is me in downtown “city centre” trying to figure out where the arndale shopping mall is so we can get an adapter at the mac store. the shopping center is huge, with every imaginable store- even the disney store.
the mall also won the award for “loo of the year”. we tested them out, pretty good, but award-winning? maybe it was because my stall had two toilets in it - really.
then we stopped for lunch at a restaurant in the mall where i got cheese and onion pie (can you believe there’s such a thing?) and zeke got a pepper-steak pie, both with chips. the green mush on our plates are peas, which apparently just come like that, and on zeke’s plate they covered everything (including the peas) with gravy. zeke could hardly watch as a girl next to us poured nearly a bottle of mayonnaise on the chips.
after that full day, zeke fell asleep on the bus.
we’ll post more soon. in the morning we’re going to stand in the queue to open a bank account. today the lines were out the door and so they’re opening for a few hours tomorrow. everything here involves standing in line for a half hour. patience is a virtue, and i’m working on it.
