Hommies, I'm Home!

Okay, so that doesn't sound right, but "Honey, I'm Home" didn't sound right either. When I arrived yesterday in Calgary, I wanted to yell like Fred Flintstone. I am so happy to be home!

Today I am reminded of a quote a girl translated for me, while I was on the road: "Foreign lands never become home, but home becomes foreign." It's so true! I never felt truly at home over there, but it feels strange being back. (Especially because of the time difference.)

I can't believe it's been 6 days since I posted last! A lot of stuff has happened so I'll try to give you the highlights.

1. Apparently anything over 45 minutes is a "long drive" for Europeans, so we stopped 3 times on our way to the boat.

2. Yachting can be done one of two ways: the old-fashioned way (young/fit person's way) or the lazy man's way. The first involves raising the sails manually, and there's a good chance to be knocked over board. Then the other is my kind of sailing. Within a few minutes out side of the harbour I could raise both sails by myself, while sitting down. Don't get too excited here. All I had to do was press a button, and then the sails went up.

3. I didn't get seasick! The waves were quite high the whole weekend, but I didn't get sick!

4. London was expensive, and there was too much to see! The average cost of a private museum was 13 pounds or 26 CAD, so I opted for the free walking tour instead. Between my own wandering and the tour I saw:
the Tower of London (Kind of creepy at sunset...)
London Bridge (plain and simple...Rocky's looks more interesting.)
Tower Bridge (This is the one everyone think of when they hear "London Bridge" and even Fergie got it wrong in her music video.)
Millennium Bridge (wobbly and expensive - 18 million pounds!)
The Globe Theatre
The OXO factory
"The West End"
Leister Square
Trafalgar Square
Westminster Abby
Parliament Buildings
Churchill's War Bunker
Hyde Park
St. Jame's Park
Buckingham Palace

5. Changing of the Guard
Each troop has its band there for the ceremony and they entertain the crowd during the ceremony. I say entertain because "Copacabana", "James Bond" and Barbra Streisand's "People" are not songs I would pick for the Changing of the Guard! They were well played, but seemed totally out of place! They did start and end with nice British Marches, so the tradition was kept up for part of the time. (Did I mention the Bands' spacing was crappy? AE or the Red Deer Royals could have done better! -okay band geek complaining done now.)

Well I want to write forever, but I have to go to a year end BBQ for my parents' school. I guess I'll just have to write the rest in installments so you'll keep reading... Stay tuned for my top 10 lists...

Love you all!
Andrea