A Guest Appearance

My sister Katy is here visiting for the month, and I thought her first letter home was worth posting:

Hello everyone!

I've arrived safely in the UK, having experienced only minor turbulence during the 11 hour flight over, mostly due to the tossing and turning of my nieces as they tried to find a comfortable position for sleeping in my lap. I am proud to say that I only had to ask Greta to hold my hand once while on the plane, during takeoff, and not again for the duration of the flight. Every good thing anyone has ever told me about Virgin Atlantic is true: free alcohol, free movies on demand, and unbelievably courteous flight attendants who are willing to hold an infant while you're dealing with the two toddlers in your party. I'm really looking forward to watching Superbad (and Pirates 3 and Harry Potter 5 and a bunch of angst-ridden Indie films) and drinking a bottle of wine on the way home, but while chaperoning three little girls on the trip over, 8 episodes of Dora the Explorer and loads of spilled orange juice were as close as I got to taking advantage of the amenities on board the plane. <> We lost an entire day in transit, leaving from LAX in the night and arriving the following evening in Bedford, with three tired little girls and 12 million pieces of luggage in tow...Greta and I have only now gotten around to putting our arms back in their sockets.

At 11 p.m., we arrived home from the airport to Greta’s tiny house (everything seems to be in miniature here…the average refrigerator for a family of 5 is the size of my dorm-room mini-fridge). I finally got my glass of wine, fell asleep on the first page of a new book and woke up at noon on Tuesday. The first order of business was to reunite my nieces with their playmates, so we spent the day drinking highly caffeinated tea and visiting with Greta's friend Emma and her two children, Kate and Isaac, who delighted me with their cockney accents, which are even thicker than those of my nieces. My brother-in-law opened a bottle of my favourite (this version of WORD keeps denying my attempts to spell the word ‘favorite’) wine with dinner (a dish the Brits call 'Bubble and Squeak'), which made the experience of waiting for the jet-lagged girls to tire themselves out and fall asleep a bit mellower.

Yesterday, I became ecstatic at hearing about a proper coffee shop in Bedford and demanded that my sister drive me there. So, we packed up the girls and two hours later, after getting dressed and having a snack and putting on coats and mittens and taking them all off again to go wee and putting them all on again and buckling the girls into their car seats, were on our way. Once there, we ordered our drinks and let the girls flirt with the barista, who happened to be a really good-looking Frenchman. We settled into a table outside, and before I had taken my first sip, Greta downed her latte in a single gulp and started packing up the kids again. I’m learning more and more on this trip that sitting and sipping are luxuries not to be had when you’re the mother of three.

Today we froze our bums off at the town square, which is an enormous outside mall/market closed off to vehicular traffic. I learned about ordering in grams and paying in pound notes, and watched my nieces eat bangers wrapped in puff pastry…hmmm…Everyone was crying by the time we left the square; the girls were too cold and too jet-lagged to walk another step, so once we got home, they went upstairs for a nap while Greta and I delved into the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice for perhaps the 27th time since we’ve been sisters and enjoyed yet another cup of tea.

It’s been so nice getting to hang out with my sister, who lives altogether too far from home; though, it’s quite something to see Greta at work in her own home. She is absolutely tireless in her enthusiasm for taking care of her girls, and my brother-in-law is the same, coming home from work every night to have a dance-a-thon with Cerys, Addien and Macy before ever sitting down to rest.

I’m really looking forward to going to London in the near future to view the Tate Modern, which comes highly recommended, and hopefully meeting up with some of the Brits I met over the semester…We’ll see. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to loads of email correspondence to remind me that there are conversations to be had revolving around topics other than Winnie the Pooh. I miss you all and hope you’re having a fantastic holiday back home! That said, I’ve just been notified that it’s time for another ABBA-accompanied dance extravaganza with the nieces…

Cheers,

Katy