The one with Marissa's flashback

Post-London, we headed north in England to a little town called Grantham.  If the name means nothing to you, then join the club.  I had never heard of it, but Marissa studied at Harlixton there while at Evansville University.  And her 'host' family offered to let us stay with them for the night, so I was game.  It was interesting for sure.  After dropping our things at Jenny and John's house and enjoying a cup of tea (How British are we!!), we headed over to the Harlixton manor to check it out.  The way it works is that students from EU and a few other universities come to England, stay and take classes in the manor.  Families in the area volunteer to bring the students to their homes a few times a month for a home-cooked meal and a glimpse into British family life.  The manor was built by some rich guy with too much money on his hands and ultimately donated to the University for study abroad.  It was a unique mixture of opulence and university.  For me, the best part was the chocolate snacks we snagged from the vending machine ;p

Afterwards, we headed back to John and Jenny's' for more tea.  Have to say, I am a fan, though I take it with sugar like a good American does.  The families of two of their daughters also joined us later in the evening, which was awesome because they brought CHILDREN! One of them has a three year-old boy and a 9 month old baby girl who were just precious.  The boy, Harry, was so shy at first, but by the end he was playing mountain climber in between us and didn't want to leave. ADORABLE! We ate some Chinese food, which was nice, adding to our multicultural food theme.  Eventually we snuggled into bed with our books and enjoyed the feeling of a comfortable bed, for once.

We woke up to a snow storm, which was actually quite beautiful.  The only problem was that we needed to be able to fly out to get to Dublin.  We enjoyed an elaborate breakfast of tea (of course), bagels, fruit, yogurt and cereal, then settled in to watch the forecast and keep in eye on the airport news.  Lucky for us, the airport reopened before our flight, so we headed to East Midlands Airport on schedule.  The lines there were atrocious due to all the canceled flights from the morning, but ours seemed to be okay.  Everything was fine until we boarded the plane and sat there for an hour.  It didn't bother me because I slept like my life depended on it, but evidently they had to de-ice the plane twice.  Better safe than sorry, for sure.  Eventually we began the short flight across the sea to Dublin :)