Worlds colliding! My family met my English friends yesterday. After a lovely day dominated by presentations about bus reliability and transport economics lectures (4 hours, I understood 20 minutes, at best) I gathered up the troops and headed down to the parent's hotel on the most crowded bus ever. The hotel, aside from being in the middle of a traffic circle, seemed nice enough. But the real point of nervousness for me was introducing everyone! There are a number of things that can go wrong in these sorts of meetings. Primarily, it seems like there is the distinct chance that no one will have anything to say to anyone, and the other likely candidate is that the only thing people can think to discuss is embarrassing stories about yourself. Lukcily this didn't seem to happen. I feel like I must be careful in what I say because a high percentage of the involved parties are likely to read this! Overall, I think it went pretty well. The family got to learn about English sports and schools, and the friends got to learn about how great Portland really, really is. Oh, the activities included going to a pub in Bedford Place slyly called The Pensioners, and going to get pizza and an elusive John Smith's at Chambers. Kelly and MA went to Chambers when they were here as well. I got a pizza with an egg on it! It was exciting. And tasty.
In fear of saying the wrong thing, I'm going to leave this a bit short. Today we head west to Bournemouth and the ancient growth of the New Forest. Enjoy the photographic evidence of yesterday's meeting. I took the photo, which is why I'm not in it (but my purse is!).
2 comments:
Gee, which half of the group in the picture is locals, and which half is still dragging a bit from time changes?
Speak for yourself--I'm smiling!
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