11 Minutes Late...

Lets talk about England.

They drive on the left side of the road. They have fantastic accents. Their bacon is really half bacon and half ham.

Chessington is really beautiful.

Leaving the country for the first time in my life was a bit stressful and nerve wracking, but now I want to travel way more. I was in Bournemouth, England for the majority of my week away for training for my new position in New York. Even though there was a ton of things that needed to get done, I still had many exploration opportunities. The first of which was getting from Heathrow to Bournemouth, nearly two hours away. My first day was actually spent in Chessington with my fellow graduate from America, Kent. We went into Merlin's Chessington theme park/garden/zoo and had a really great afternoon after a really long night of travel. It was certainly a family park, but it was beautiful. It had a very different feel from the corporate parks we see in America. No high fences, beautiful theming, and general work put forth into the look and feel of the park, instead of rides just slapped into big concrete jungles. I loved it.

Then there was the challenge of driving in England for the first time. Left side of the road was weird, but easily adaptable, the real challenge was maneuvering our station wagon (which is a big car for England) through the tiny streets of Bournemouth. I felt like I was going to hit something all the time for the first couple days of driving. Luckily I was able to drive the whole week back and forth from Poole, and got used to it pretty well. I wanna go back and drive some more, its more challenging. The only pain is directions, nothing is square like over there like we have here. Its all curvy roads, and if you get lost you lose direction quickly. GPS is required if you aren't used to it.

We were lucky enough to get an entire day devoted to heading into London to tour all of Merlin's attractions in the city. Called the "London Cluster" the attractions included the London Eye, the London Dungeon, the London Aquarium, and Madame Tussauds. Getting through all these attractions in the few hours we had was a challenge, but great fun at the same time. Favorite was probably the London Dungeon. It wasn't just a haunted house, there was plenty of history involved as well, so I was entertained and educated at the same time, which was great.

Me infront of the London Eye. 

One thing I found most amazing was the fact that being surrounded by English accents I slowly found myself changing the way I spoke toward the end of the week. It wasn't the accent of my voice as much as it was my sentence structure and vocabulary choices. They have common phrases over there like we do here, and I started using theres more. Just the sociology minor in me being amazed how surroundings can have an effect on people in their 20's.

One of the best memories to take away from the week was walking on the English Channel with some of the coolest people to meet in a different country barefoot. That was incredible.

More to come. Lots to catch up on. Next up is New York.