A little bit from me

One of the greatest opportunities that we have this year in London is to be active participants in the Rotary Club of Edmonton. I don't know how much there is to know about the Ambassadorial Scholarships, but the basic just of it is that we are sponsored by the Kirkland Rotary Club. Heather and I have absolutely loved getting to know many of the members of the club over the last two years. The person I have been in contact the most with his Bob Webb, who was instrumental in helping me through the scholarship process! We were delighted that Bob and his lovely wife, Marion, attended our wedding last year.

L-R: Marion, Bobb, Joe, Leslie at our wedding in 2010

Visiting the Stafford Castle In Stafford, England over the Rotary Link Weekend

Rotary Link Weekend: Scholar Maica from Germany,
 Hosts Barbara and Joe, Steven

Picture of Stafford downtown

Scholar coordinators: Lois and John Thorpe 

Scenery from Rotary's Weekend Away in Eastbourne, England

2011-2012 Rotary Ambassadorial Scholars

Eastbourne, England

Sunrise at Eastbourne, England

Keeping on topic about the scholarship, with the Kirkland Rotary Club generously sponsoring my education at King's College London (KCL), Heather and I will be spending a year here in London. Really the best part about this scholarship is that it certainly places a lot of emphasis on academics, but it places an equal emphasis on the "Rotary experience." While in London, as Heather has talked about already, I am hosted by the Rotary Club of Edmonton. They really are a fantastic club and they have been incredible about making both Heather and feel at home and a part of their club. Just in the short few months that we have been here, we have done so much with the club and that includes Heather! She already mentioned going to a local park in Enfield where the Edmonton Club manned the gates selling tickets for a carnival/festival that was taking place; baking brownies for a fish-and-chips dinner party put on by the club for local folks which included, what sounded like an intense game of Bingo. Heather has had so much fun and she has been incredibly supportive. For awhile there, she was attending more Rotary events and get togethers than I was, but luckily I was able to lock in a routine schedule with school and have been active ever since and it really has been a blast!

The first opportunity that I had to meet most of the members of the Edmonton Club was at a garden party which was incredibly nice given that it was so informal and laid back. John Thorpe, who is my host Rotarian and has been wonderful in helping Heather and I adjust, provided the food and catering for the event. Over a delicious spread of salads, meats, desert, and cheese and biscuits (this was my first experience having cheese and biscuits as a part of desert), I got to meet most of the club members. Luckily it was only going to be a few days until I got to see them during one of their weekly meetings.

One of the major characteristics of my Rotary experience is the chance I have to speak to a number of clubs in the London area about myself, why I applied for the scholarship, and what my goals/what do I hope to learn from my experiences. All this is achieved by giving about a 10-15 minutes presentation. For me, the easiest way to show someone who you are is by showing them pictures....they are worth a thousand words right? Only a few days after the Garden party, I had the opportunity to speak to the Edmonton Club. Heather came along and right away, like the garden party, we felt immediately at home. They brought us in, talked to us about the club, about themselves, and just made us feel relaxed about being there. Rotary meetings have a certain ceremonial characteristic about them, but I truly enjoyed, like the Kirkland Rotary Club back home, how the Edmonton Club blended ceremony with light heartedness. We laughed as we heard about the notes from the previous meeting, upcoming events and various other announcements. You truly get how important the sense of family is to the club as they take the time to announce those members who are currently ill or absent for that week. Then it came to be my turn...

I have to admit I was a bit nervous about my first time speaking with a club in England. From the time that I put in my application for the scholarship, it has been asked where I see the connection between Rotary's emphasis on peace studies and conflict resolution, amongst a number of other important priorities, and my profession as an officer in the Marine Corps. Coming to England, I worried that people would be even more critical of this relationship, but this was not to be the case. Going back to the meeting with the Edmonton Club, I felt perfectly at ease describing what I thought was an important link between Rotary and the Marines. There is absolutely an element of "Service above Self" and I know, from my experiences, the reality of war and would want to see the end of any war or conflict. Through my first presentation, I really hope I was able to convey this desire as well as many other connections. From the feedback I received, I think I was able to convey what I wanted to.

Outside of the garden party and my first presentation, the months of September and October have been quite busy with regards to Rotary. As I am not the only Ambassadorial Scholar in London, or in Ireland and the UK for that matter, we have been given a number of chances to meet with the other scholars.

The first chance was during a "Link Weekend" where I traveled to Stafford and got to spend two days with all the other scholars. Two of us were put up for the weekend by local Rotarian and her husband and I had a wonderful time getting to know both of them and their families. I even went for a run with Joe on Saturday morning. For activities, we spent some time in a Victorian era coal mining town, which was pretty interesting. That night we learned a bit about traditional English dancing though much to Heather's dismay, I am still a terrible dancer. I did have a lot of fun as we were able to spend more time getting to know each other.

The last thing I want to talk about is a trip Heather and I went on this last weekend. We had the chance to attend our first Rotary Conference. The London district put on a conference in Eastbourne, a wonderful Victorian era town just right along the southeastern coast of England. It was an incredible weekend as we were able to spend more time with the Rotary Club of Edmonton. We also heard from the many speakers Rotary brought to present with the members of the district. Two speakers in particular
really stuck out to me. Rosalie Swale Pope was this incredible woman that experienced the loss of both her parents at a young age and then lost her husband early to prostate cancer. Her response to this loss was to run literally around the world which she did in five years in order to raise awareness for prostate cancer. The other was Gary Skyner who overcame so many challenges in order to do incredible things that many told him he would not ever be able to do. Born with disabilities due to thalidomide, a drug given to expectant mothers to overcome morning sickness, Gary proved everyone wrong by learning to drive, to fly, and took on the British government in order to get compensation for those affected. Overall it was an incredible weekend!

Pumpkin Night

It's almost Halloween! Which means that it was time for us to jump on the pumpkin carving. Our friend Mike came over to join in on the fun. We couldn't find any pumpkin tools at the stores around us, so we went old school with the tools: knives and spoons.

Being in the basement floor of an apartment building, we don't exactly have anywhere to put them outside to show them off. So for now, they just sit on the window seal of our kitchen. 

Family Picts!

Steven and I did our first family pictures taken since we've been married. It was so much fun! One of the deals that came through LivingSocial.com was a photo session in the area. I loved it because 1. Snagging it on a deal means you can fit it into the budget 2. They do your hair and makeup (Yep, including Steven's hair) and 3. The photographer was really good and fun to work with. Here are the results:

Capel Manor

Have you ever been to a place and thought, "wow, this would be a great place to take pictures?" We went there today, and it was gorgeous. The Rotary program has what is called the Group Study Exchange program (GSE). This year, 5 people from Argentina came to London on the GSE program for a month. The Edmonton Rotary Club has been taking them around London to the different sights that they would be interested in. 4 of the 5 were Environmental Engineers, Lawyers and something or others. The 5th was an English teacher. Being Environmentalist, Rotary took them to a horticulture school today called Capel Manor- and they were great and invited Steven and I to come along with them.

Despite being the end of the season, the Capel Manor grounds (here to for now known as CMG), were breathtaking. They have all sorts of landscaping classes that range from DIY & How To classes, as well as Floristry courses, animal care (mainly horse and reptile) courses. The grounds were separated into different areas to reflect that type of garden or geographic area. This is what makes it my favorite college grounds to have ever visited.

Red Stone Gardens

Dennis, Steven and Jon

Garden Grounds

Edmonton Rotary President Alan with Steven

I thought this bee inside the flower was picture perfect

Cactus garden in the Australian Exhibit

Fully blossomed

Japanese Gardens

Some of the Rotary Club with GSE Students and Steven

More from the Red Stone Garden

The W is silent....

So today I went out to the Chiswick house with some of the girls.  You might recognize it from such movies as The Duchess with Keira Knightly and other music videos such as The Beatles' Paperback writer. Okay, so maybe you haven't seen them. Anyhow, we went and it was really nice. Basically it was a second house that a royal guy had for his artwork. He built it up in the Roman and Italian style. The house and gardens are complete with marble sculptures, stone vases and absurdly large mirrors. I will admit that I'm a huge fan of the gilded tables with the geometric marble tops.

And because I know you're all dying to see photos of me, here they are.....

What a wonderful world

One of my favorite songs of all time is What a wonderful world by Louis Armstrong. The other day when we were walking around St. James Park I couldn't get it out of my head because it was such a nice day. Here's the evidence:

This is probably one of my favorites

It's probably best said with pictures....

So a lot has happened, here it goes....

About the middle of July we moved from just outside of Dublin to smack dab in the middle of central London.

Click on the map to enlarge

We were here for a blissful 4 days before we packed the one suitcase we each had again and headed back to the good ol' USA. This is actually where the fun starts.

We headed back to the Seattle area where both our las familias lives. (I'm not sure if that sentence actually works, but it sounds good at 3 in the morning).

Here's the rough layout, and then I'll go into detail:

Phase one: Slaved (happily-wouldn't have had it any other way) for Sharisse and Craig's wedding which was less then a month away.

Phase Two: Monterey, California for the beach house!

Intermission: Weekend trip to Seattle for the wedding

Phase Three: Bromley Family Reunion- back to California

Intermission: At home in Seattle with las familas for a few days

Phase Four: Island Park, Idaho for Sifuentes Family Reunion.

Followed by the long flight back to London.

Steven's family has a tradition when it comes to vacations- it's called working. I'll let Steven tell you the story some other time, but in short, with just a few weeks to the wedding left, a new DIY patio was put in his parents house. Thankfully they had great weather during the rototilling of the grass, the leveling of the ground, and the laying the stone patio down. The outcome was pretty amazing, all the guys did a great job and it looked fantastic- plus Steven ended up with a pretty nice tan. And yes, Steven was pretty excited about the tan.

We also had a great time at my family's house. We were able to get back into the groove of playing board games. My youngest brother Christian would have us playing board game marathons if he could get away with it. :) He's pretty awesome like that.

After that, we headed down to California with my family. We met up with my sisters and their families and had an amazing time at the beach in Monterey. I seriously love that place. We played a lot at the beach, but we also went the Monterey Aquarium. I've never been to a cooler aquarium in my life. I may have been the oldest of the 4 that I was with- I probably acted the most excited though. (Note- I didn't take a single picture the whole trip since we didn't have a camera. So most of these are borrowed from family and other places).

Chloe, Christian and myself. 

Chloe, my niece, was pretty funny. She wanted to go out into the water, but she was too cold. Her solution: get aunty Heather to carry her into the waves so I can get wet while she stays dry. Christian is a fish sometimes- like most boys, he will swim until you tell him he has to get out. Even then- the possibility of staying in the water may be negotiable. 

Then came the wedding. Back to Seattle it was. The great thing about weddings, most people are able to come. So all of Steven's siblings were able to be there. The wedding was beautiful and we all had a lot of fun celebrating with Sharisse and Craig.

Then we came back to California for the reunion on my side of the family. We had a great time! It was all family topped by games, a swimming pool, a day at the ranch. One of my favorite nights was when we played Minute to Win it games. That was a hoot! My favorite was the Elephant Walk and the Whip Cream catching game.

L-R: Parker with Lucy, Tiffany with Sam, Sharon, Josh, Me with Maddie
Steven. Bottom Row: Brooklynn with Katie, Jackson, Christian

Bromley Reunion 2011

Best husband ever!

The Elephant Walk

After a very successful reunion, we headed back to Seattle. We had a few days of "down time." We went to the Seafair hydroplane races. I had never really been to one before and I really enjoyed it. The whole atmosphere of the races was super relaxed and I loved all the different activities going on around. Fair food is never really amazing, it's usually greasy and generally on the "okay" side of life. It's all about the experience of being there though. Plus we were able to watch the Blue Angels! So I give the event a 10/10.

Blue Angels at Seafair

We really were not ready to take this picture, but we spent a lot of time on
this floor playing this game: Settlers of Zarahemla. It's a version of
The Settlers of Catan. 

 I ended up with a random infection on my chin called cellulities. Basically it was infected and the lower left side of my face was very swollen. A few times to the ER around midnight and a boatload of antibiotics and it was down in time for Steven's family reunion.  The people at the hospital were amazing! Really. It was pretty funny to see their different reactions.

I walk in with a very swollen face, clearly not doing good. At this point, I'm feeling like my problem is very visible- to the point that you can't really miss it.  Nurse during trip #1: While staring at my chin, "what can we do for you tonight". Me: "Um, my face is swelling up and it really hurts, see..." as I point to my chin.  Result: 2 bottles of anti-biotics and pain killers.

Visit #2. Different Nurse as we walk in: "Wow, you're face is not looking so good." Normally, at any other point, I might be offended. However, I'm just really glad at this point, I don't have to do much explaining. Result: hour long IV of anti-biotics.

Visit #3: Different Nurse: "You're back?! It's not looking so hot. I'll grab the doctor."  Result: Area started to take care of it self out later the next day.

I have to say, through it all, I have an amazing husband. He was the best at taking care of me!

Then it was off to Island Park, Idaho for Steven's side reunion. Steven's sister's husband's parents (got that), have a cabin in the area. It was a great time. We went on 4 wheelers a million times, went to the lake, had fires, smores and played more Minute to Win it games. Yellowstone National Park was great! I liked the Buffalo everywhere. Although, they were sometimes a little too comfortable getting close.

On the 4 wheelers

At Yellowstone with the Buffalo.

While Steven's been gone, I've been trying to take the opportunity to get to know London a little better. Today, I went out for what should have been a couple of hours and snapped some pictures. I had a lot of fun and it was a beautiful day! I was glad I went because I was able to see a different side of London. On the opposite side of the Thames River (sounds like Tim's), is a whole different world. It's less hustle and bustle and more wharf meets the boardwalk life there. Knowing it's so close, just made the transition a lot easier. (My transition as suburbia girl transplanted into the heart of metropolitan lifestyle has not been 100% easy). Here are the picts, I hope you enjoy them.

 We hope everyone is doing great and will keep you up to date on our happenings here :)