Isle of White and Fancy Dinners

Friday morning I am asked if I want to go down to the Isle of White to tour another school for sailing and such. Sure when? Saturday morning, we have to leave around 6am... Wait a minute.. you want me to wake up at WHAT time??... okay, I can deal with this. Friday night, I get talking to Madre and lil sister and Steve. I then realize it is 1am, I got to get up in about 4hours. So I say goodnight and then go to sleep. I am woken up at 5:30am and I jump in the shower and start getting ready. Its gonna take about 2 hours to get down to the ferry, and we have to be at this school for 10. We wanted to allow for 1 hour of getting lost (almost always comes in handy, cuz I am the one reading the map lols). So we leave the driveway at 6:15am and we get to see the sunrise.. I am not used to that.. sunset maybe.. but we are well on our way. We dont get lost, but we get to the ferry place in Southampton. A pretty little town, and pay for the ferry and Stuart got a cafe latte, and I got a hot chocolate. Then we were on the ferry for nearly a half hour. Soon as we got off the ferry there was a few people with jackets from UKSA (The school that Stuart wants to attend) United Kingdom Sailing Academy. So we got in their vans and was shipped directly to the school. We went into the room and watched about an hour of presentation. It was very informative and interesting, but unfortunately my head kept bobbing up and down and despite my interest in things I kept dosing off and on. After an hour or so of presentation it was tea time. I had an OJ (they also offered coffee, tea and pastries). Then back into the room for another hour or so of presentations.. Back to head bobbing again... for 2nd tea time I got myself a coffee.. I had no trouble the rest of the day staying awake after that (and I only put 1 tablespoon full of sugar.. wasnt gonna risk the strange looks again lols). Then another hour of presentations. Then we got to go on a tour of the facilities of the school and we got to play a simulator game type thing for sailing boats.. that was interesting. We got to see the living accommodations where you would live if you went to the school. There were 3 different types of rooms. 1 room had 3 beds in it. 1 bedroom had 3 beds in it but had bathroom accommodations with the individual rooms, and the 3rd bedroom the "suite" had 2 beds bathroom accommodations and had tv, vcr, and internet hookups. They were all "dorm-like" accommodations. They try to prepare you to small spaces on the boats. Then after this tour we went to the cafeteria where we ate lunch. It was very good. Then we did a little more touring and then we went up to the Bar for some 1 on 1 questions and attention. Stuart got to ask all the questions he had and decide if this school was for him. Needless to say, he starts Jan 5th 2009. He is taking the Ocean Graduate class. He will get skills in all sorts of aspects of things. The course seems very intense. 2 weeks in class 2 weeks on a boat, then 2 weeks in class 2 weeks on a boat. Not getting very much time off on weekends. The course is 23 weeks long. A few of the nice things about this school are that if you live on the property, you get free breakfast, lunch and dinner. And the food is actually really good. This school is very well known around the world. People from all over have come to this school to train. It is located on a little island south of England and it is just beautiful. And then much to Stuart and I's surprise... we got to see Gyspy Moth IV. I heard about it back in HS a long time ago.. but forgot a lot of the history and such. But I remembered the name... Stuart was like going into fits like he had been standing next to a celebrity. In the yacht world, he was... and you could even touch it. It was the real Gypsy Moth IV not just a model we learned. In case you are reading this and aren't up with yacht's which I am going to assume most aren't. Gypsy Moth IV is famous for sailing around the globe a few times. One of her most famous voyages was in 1967 when it took Sir Francis Chichester around the world. She was beautiful. We weren't allowed to get in, but we could touch it hehe. After all the tours and signing up, we were put back on the vans when we were ready and sent back to the ferry where we were taken back to Southampton. We saw an Oceana Cruise Liner and OMG it was huge... the world Titanic came to mind. I got a few pictures of this too. So beautiful. Then we headed back for home, but stopped off in Warmister to visit Stuart's mother and brother, they were not home, so we stopped across the street at Jean and Fred's who are Stuart's grandparents. Had tea and biscuits then headed back for home. We were both soo exhausted but neither of us could sleep. So we watched a few films and then finally went to sleep.

Tonight we went out to dinner. It was pretty incredible. Most fancy dinner I ever had in my life. The kind where you got more silverware than you know what to do with. 6 course meal. Im not sure what all we ate, but I tell ya what. it was good! I know we had pigeon, and lamb, potatoes and quite a lot of other things. It was kinda funny because I attempted to eat like everyone here does.. I am not gonna describe it in here, but I will tell you different than the way we do at our house, or what I have been exposed to. I find chopsticks easier.. but I am going to try to use this skill the rest of the trip, maybe I will get good at it. *smiles* I want to take a few things I learn here back home with me.. One thing I am gonna learn is how to make Pad Thai... my family is hopefully gonna like it, cuz I am gonna be making it as often as I can.

I have thought about what am I gonna take home with me... am I gonna want to have tea 3-4 times a day? Am I gonna get free range chicken and eggs... do we even get the option at our stores? Am I gonna want wine with dinner... or am I gonna just go back to the way I used to be? I am not sure to be quite honest. A few things I do want to change. I do want to try to be a little more conscious about my sugar intake. We have kinda figured out that my diet and exercize does affect my mood quite a bit (yes I know all my family and friends and doctors and everyone always told me this.. but I never really tried it for real).

Okay I cant think of anything else to write about tonight, so I will sign off.

Hope you enjoyed reading feel free to comment

Donna