Final Day in England

This morning I met Ann, the woman I lodged with in Hook, in town today. We went out for coffee, caught up on what's been happening in our lives and it was so wonderful to see her one last time before I return to Canada. I'm so grateful to Ann and John for letting me lodge with them, giving me a chance to come and go and explore so much of this part of the world.

I had to run some final errands in town so Rachel met up with me so we could spend time wandering around together. One of my favourite shops here is Accessorize - they have wonderful hats and handbags - and I love the handbag I bought last winter. I was planning to buy another one to take home with me, so Ama and Rachel surprised me by buying one for me as a farewell gift! They told me they were fine with me checking out the stock to exchange it if I preferred another model so Rachel and I spent a ridiculous amount of time in the store looking at bags and hats and oohing and aahing over the stock.

One of my errands was buying some books for my collection. I decided to pick up some British classics so whenever I see them, I'll connect them with my time in England. I bought The Tale of Peter Rabbit, A Bear Called Paddington, and Winnie-the-Pooh.

Rachel and I went to the flat for lunch and then made a chocolate cake because we planned to have a few girls over tonight for fish-and-chips, pudding (dessert) and maybe some games. Ama picked up two containers of strawberries yesterday for a good price so I figured chocolate cake and whipped cream were a good accompaniment! Ama and Rachel invited a few extras to surprise me and we ended up with me, Ama, Rachel, Jess, Emma, and Ian and Maggie. We laughed so much throughout the evening! It was a perfect final get-together. I'm going to miss them all so much! Although I'm excited about returning to Canada, I'm really going to miss my friends here - they've really become like family to me and it's going to be strange to live so far from them.

With ketchup or mayonnaise, fish-and-chips are yummy!

Jess modeling some jelly teeth candy.

I introduced Emma to fast Scrabble about a week ago and she's now introducing it to everyone and winning every time she plays.

The score sheet for fast Scrabble.

Strawberries and cream. Tasty stuff!

We also played a word guessing game, mostly just because Jess wanted to laugh at me trying to guess British-English words. Her wish came true and there were many words that left me completely stumped. A hilarious one was when I had to get my team to guess the word, "cracking" so I said, "It's 'something' good, Grommit" and my team stared at me blankly. I've heard so many people refer to "cracking good fun" or "it's cracking" and the phrase is often used in the Wallace and Grommit films so I figured they'd guess, but they had no clue what I was talking about (though the opposing team started laughing and saying, "We know! We know!"). I finally managed to use an English pop-culture reference in the game and it fell flat. So sad. At least I tried.

Goofing around while I set up the camera.

At one point, something happened to set Rachel off laughing really hard but she was completely silent except for an occasional, high-pitched squeak that made everyone double-over with laughter.

Still laughing at Rachel.

Finally calm enough for a photo!
L-R: Me, Jess, Maggie, Emma, Rachel, Ama, Ian.

It's now time to finish packing (just a few things remaining to cram into my bags), then it's off to bed and my alarm goes off at 6:30 a.m. Ian and Rachel are driving me to the airport just after 8:00 a.m. and Emma, Matthew and the girls will meet us there. I know I'm leaving but it doesn't quite feel real somehow. I'm going to miss my life here a lot, but I'm excited about the prospect of coming back for vacation!