US vs UK - Spectator Sports

Just thought you might find this article a fun example of cultural differences between the US and the UK/Europe. How fans like to watch their fave sports- baseball (US) and football (soccer - UK/Europe).

Wall Street Journal Europe

The Cotswolds

Yesterday I enjoyed a girls day out with a trip into the English Cotswolds. Since it's a long holiday weekend, Bettina and I talked about a girls day out in her car. We invited Gina too, since she is leaving the UK soon and still has lots to see before she goes. It wasn't exactly warm and super sunny, but it wasn't cold and rainy either. In fact, the sun did peak out throughout the day and we kept on the move to keep warm.


The Cotswolds is an area not far from Oxford, where it's a large cluster of towns and small villages with a certain type of architecture and stone used for their homes. I believe it's a type of sandstone that they call Cotswold stone and makes this beautiful honey color. Many of the homes also still have the traditional thatched roofs. This time of year especially is beautiful in the villages with all of the blossoms, lilacs, wisteria, tulips etc.

We started off with a stop in the town called Morton-in-Marsh and had a little stroll. We had coffee and breakfast at one of the Tea Rooms and luckily they had a table in the back garden in the sun. Lovely!

Next was the most picturesque town in the Cotswolds - Chipping Campden. Chipping means "Market" in Old English. So there are other "Chipping" towns in England - Chipping Norton for example. Here we walked along the gorgeous buildings, around the church yard, the Old Market Stall, into some shops and then another Tea Room/Eatery for lunch. Since it was Sunday, the proper English thing to do is have Sunday Roast. Usually it's served between 12-3 in the pubs. I ordered the beef roast and Gina the lamb. It includes a nice slab of your choice of meat, roasted potatoes, yorkshire pudding (which is a savory fried bread), gravy, roasted parsnips (yum!) and steamed (or roasted) veggies. I thought there was no way I would eat it all, and of course I did! In more than two years living here - I've never had Sunday roast since the hubby isn't too fond of that!

Our last stop was Bourton-on-the-Water, which I've been to before. It's very small, but very quaint and cute. There is a large square, where a large creek runs through the middle and little bridges cross over from each side. We also visited the model village of the village, which was pretty funny. Gina got some shopping in for gifts before she leaves and I considered some Cotswold cream ice cream, but was still too full!

We drove home on some back roads, where you can really get a sense of the English countryside. It's absolutely beautiful - especially right now with all of the green grass, little lambs and yellow rapeseed growing everywhere. This is when I miss having a car, so you can get out in the open space and drive around. I was living in Iowa and Oregon for goodness sake with all of that gorgeous and spacious farmland and greenery!

I also realized that in England, one must be well off to be able to live in the country. You would need a car, and to own that much land and a stand alone home, it costs a lot of money. And I couldn't imagine the heating and maintenance bills on those gorgeous, but really old and cold stone homes!

Easter in Oxford

Yes, Easter was almost a month ago now, but as I'm catching up, just thought I'd post a quick mention on how we celebrated Easter this year. The past two years, we've gone to Brian's advisor's home and had a nice lamb roast with his family. As things were really crazy busy for them this year, we stayed home and invited our friend and Brian's colleague Gina over for a meal. I've mentioned Gina before, she's one of the few women in the physics group over here, and she's American. Gina came over to Oxford about the same time we did. So it's been a pleasure getting to know her and hanging out. She's actually landed an associate professor job at the University of Delaware for this autumn. So she's leaving Oxford at the end of this month. We will be sad to see her go!

But back to Easter - Gina invited me to join her for the Easter church service, at the local church she attends in Oxford. I've actually only been to services at the big Christ Church - so it was really nice to attend a smaller local church. By no means is it any more modern, all the churches here are extremely old and traditional. But I did notice that the parishioners didn't really dress up for the service, as I expected them to. Looks like they are following the similar American church clothing style these days - pretty casual! It's a protestant church with a really nice service with the pastor in his thick British accent. This church also burns incense where someone carries the metal ball around the church throughout the service. They also inducted a new choir member, a young girl, which was really cute. We enjoyed coffee afterwards and Gina introduced me to her many friends she's made there.

In the meantime, Brian was home working hard on our turkey dinner! I say that with emphasis because as you know we don't get to cook a whole turkey very often. Frozen full turkeys are hard to come by. Somehow, I had found out from a supermarket that was closing and it was really cheap for over here (probably around 14 USD). Gina came over, we showed her our Singapore pics, had a relaxing afternoon and then a nice turkey meal. We took a stroll around the neighborhood afterwards and once Gina went home, I think we all slept well after that tryptophan!

Early May Bank Holiday

It gets harder and harder to try and blog on a regular basis! But we've done some fun things again in the last few weeks, so I'll try to catch up a bit today. We don't have work today, since it's a public holiday called Early May Bank Holiday. It doesn't really have anything to do with the banks, it's just what they English call a public holiday. We still have another one at the end of May, Late May Bank Holiday. It's the same day as Memorial Day in the US.