June 10th/10th of June

If you visit the United Kingdom for any length of time, you must relearn how to express a date. Take a birth date, for instance. Written with numbers in America, it would look like this: 06/10/76. In Britain, it appears as 10/06/76. It is so easy to say, “Just keep in mind that the numbers […]

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At the YWP

This week, we again visited the Yorkshire Wildlife Park. My fourth post (1.4.25) focused on the cold temperatures of that first visit on December 30th. This time the weather was  gloriously comfortable! And the focus will be on the animals. YWP is home to some 400 animals of 70 different species. Many of them are […]

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World Famous Sites

At 6:30 last Tuesday morning, we headed southwest to Stonehenge!  The five and a half hour drive included 90 minutes of slow-downs due to a stalled truck, road construction, and rush hour traffic here and there. Stonehenge sets on the Salisbury Plain, which is “a chalk plateau in southern England covering 300 square miles.” Not only does […]

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Rick’s Birds of Britain

Kat and Rick are well suited for each other in many ways. For one, they are collectors. Before college, Katie collected all the Mandy books and, later, all the Star Trek films and TV series. Rick has collected planes, trains, and small woodland animals. Together they have collected the figurines of more than 140 birds […]

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Cat Walk

This is Bella, Kat’s cat. She has been part of the Dodge household for three years. Whenever she condescends to leave her sleeping place and come into our presence, she provides live entertainment that is better than anything on TV: from scratching her kitty post to gazing out the window to suddenly jumping up and […]

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The World’s Most Famous Vet

Today (March 31st) is my 104th day in the United Kingdom. I came expecting to travel and hoping to accomplish some personal goals. Among these were to post weekly on my website and to finish writing Doggie Devotionals. Both of these goals have been met! I finished writing Doggie Devotionals five days ago. I wrote […]

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British Idioms 1

I was well into adulthood before I learned the meaning of idiom. Looking through a list of definitions, I found this one from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary: “an expression that cannot be understood from the meanings of its separate words but must be learned as a whole.” Having hosted international people, I saw how difficult idioms […]

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Wensleydale Creamery

Visiting the town of Hawes in the Yorkshire Dales had been suggested in early February. Finally, after weeks of chilly temperatures and Rick’s bad cold and cough, we are on our way! Not only Hawes, our final destination is its cheese factory. Similar in size to the Blue Heron Creamery, a mile or so south […]

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Change of Plans

“This week I will have been here for two months,” I respond to the friendly woman at church when she asked how long I had been in England. “Oh, how nice! What have you done?” I know that she is actually asking where have I gone to see which sights. Her face, like others before […]

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“Let It Go!”

“Let it go, Chad. Just ignore them.” This was the advice that Kat and Rick gave their son-in-law, Chad. He had called to say that he would not stop by in the morning as was his habit because he didn’t want to lose his cool and make more trouble. A couple of nights previously, the […]

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