At this point, we had been in Wales for almost two months and had been doing quite a bit of driving around and checking things out. Victoria was singing with a Welsh choir once a week which I think was a good experience for her. We drove up and down the coast, admiring the scenery. Sheep abound everywhere in the area. The water was beautiful and the beaches led to some research being done about the rocks we found on the beaches there.
As the month grew on, the weather got colder. The rain continued. It made it rather dreary. We'd seen a considerable amount of the area by then. Thoughts of Thanksgiving started coming to mind. I started asking around about finding a turkey since I had very little success even finding sliced turkey for sandwiches, with alone anything that resembled the actual bird. I guess I had never given it much thought that turkeys are very American. I asked at Morrisons (http://www.morrisons.co.uk/), one of the local grocery stores (in Aberystwyth - about 45 minutes away) if they had or would be getting any. The very helpful man told me mid-November, in preparation for Christmas. Knowing that the freezer was barely big enough for the ice we had in it, I knew that would be perfect timing to buy a bird.
At one point, I couldn't drive for a few days, which was extremely frustrating. I stood up to walk somewhere and my foot was dead. Down I fell to the ground, apparently thinking my hand would stop me and I ended up falling onto it. Wow, did that hurt. I landed on my knee (which I had recently had knee injections) which scared me, and did considerably more damage to my hand. It was so bad, I actually went to hospital in Aberystwyth thanks to the kind help of Jayne Hopkins. I wasn't even able to drive because the car was a 5-speed and I couldn't use my left hand to change gears. Jayne was kind enough to come pick me up and take me to the hospital, where they x-rayed it and decided it was just badly bruised and twisted. It took a good month plus for all the swelling and the bruising to go away, but thank goodness it's as good as new again. And again, thanks to Jayne Hopkins for her very generous help.
Thanksgiving came and our friend Kerry came up and spent a few days with us. Taking him around and showing off the area was fun. We even went to Portmerian again! The weather was a bit cool but the rain held off a few days for some sightseeing! Thursday we cooked and cooked and had a typical American Thanksgiving with a turkey breast (decided a whole bird for three of us was a bit excessive! and expensive in the UK!), green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, rolls, dessert. We had a good time and afterward spent time finding the funniest and most weird videos online that we could come up with. We had a great time!
We tried not to hold onto many of our American ways, so much, as this was a trip to teach Victoria that there were other ways of doing things. Thanksgiving, however, was an exception. How could you turn down a chance to make amazingly good Thanksgiving food!? (Side note: good thing we did Thanksgiving too! We didn't do Christmas but more on that later!)
By this point in the month, we discovered we'd be needing wood before too long, since it was our ONLY source of heat for the house. They'd left us with quite a bit and a check to order more. The man delivered the wood the same day I called which happened to be Kerry's last few hours with us. Thank God too because I'm not sure I'd had gotten all this wood stacked alone! Trust me - there was more than what you can see here! Thanks again Kerry!
I'm off - till my next posting...
Love ~ Peace ~ Happiness
Always,
Marianne
