Tastes Like Chicken

Dearest Friends and Family,

I can’t believe that my first week of classes have come and gone already! I am very thankful to have Fridays free from work, and today I am preparing to take a weekend homestay trip to Shap, which is a small town in northern England. I’ll give you a full update in a couple of days, but what I know now is that I’ll be staying on the Chalmer Family Farm and may be getting a little dirt under my fingers if I could make any predictions…

I thought I’d also give you a quick update on some of the highlights of my week. Tuesday night I joined my friends Jessie and David to go to the Grassroots Comedy Night held in one of the student unions. It was a great experience, but I think we were more humored by how much of the British-themed comedy went right over our heads than the actual jokes! Nonetheless, it was a great atmosphere and totally worth the one “quid” we had to pay to get in.

The highlight for me on Wednesday was meeting with Megan, my church friend, for lunch. When I asked what she might be hungry for, she mentioned that she wanted to try some local fish and chips, a popular UK dish! Although I’m not a seafood fan, I found the fried fish to taste “just like chicken” and figuring that there was Heinz ketchup available at the pub, I was quite happy with the chips (fries) as well!

Yesterday’s highlight would have to be the stir-fry night I had with some of my friends. We all contributed different vegetables, meats, rice, and noodles, and cooked up quite a mix! We also managed to cook up quite the mix of dishes to wash…but that’s neither here nor there.

While we were eating, one of the British flatmates who had joined our group mentioned that she had always wanted to visit Minnesota! Quite curious, I inquired further to hear the rationale behind the desire. According to Jenny, “I love Marshall’s accent in How I Met Your Mother.” This clearly was not quite the response I was expecting, but I was still very excited to have found another Minnesota enthusiast (we’ll just have to use a loose interpretation of the word enthusiast in this case).

Well, I’m off to the farm! Those sheep don’t know what’s coming for them…