The Adventures of Sara, Sabrina and Ashlyn

On Monday 14th March, our flat travelling visitors arrived, riding a number 15 bus all the way from Iowa to the tower of London. Sadly they arrived literally hours too late to come with us to the Museum of London where we were doing some research for our March geo-box swap, but they were able to come with us to all of Hannah's activities during that first week.

On Tuesday we forgot to take any pictures of us just sitting in the conservatory which serves as our work space as Hannah had a calm day at home working on maths, history and spelling. In the evening she has a swimming lesson but photography is strictly forbidden so I took them to the chip shop later and took a pic of them there. We almost always end up getting fish and chips after swimming. And fish and chips is quintessentially British thing so a good experience for our American visitors.

On Wednesday we went first to home ed drama group which happens in the home of one of her closest friends. Here they are with Hannah in costume for the play they are going to be performing next week.

Later on in the day she had Irish dancing but parents are not allowed in to watch so the photo was hastily taken at the end and isn;t very good...you'll just have to take it from me that the flat travellers are with me and Hannah is dancing a reel in the background

the photo above was taken on walking our puppy, Bella, at our favourite local beauty spot. We are so lucky having a vibrant, exciting city like London to explore and play in but to live right on the edge of it, up against the remnants of an ancient royal hunting forest. Best of both worlds.

 

Thursday night we took them to the theatre to see the older students of Hannah's other drama school perform in a national competition NT Connections. The photo I tried to take didn;t work, but we did go, honest!

 

On Friday, Hannah was meant to go to a concert at the Royal Albert Hall, but sadly ran a really high temperature in the early hours of the morning and had to miss it. Instead I took our visitors to work with me at a local primary school (for children age 5-11..whatever that translates to in American). Here they are sitting on the storyteller's chair in the library (am the school librarian)

 

 On Mondays we have Hannah's best friend here so her mum can get some time to study/work/relax. As soon as the sun came out, they were into swimming costumes, sunglasses and out to relax with books, toy dogs and ipods in the garden.

 This was taken at Hannah's riding lesson, with her lovely instructor Mandi!

Later we went round to my brother-in-law's house for my nephew's 16th birthday and the flat travellers joined us for the celebration.

On some Fridays Hannah does a science class and although I didn;t go with her (sometimes you can tell when I didn't take the photos..people have heads in mine!), she managed to get pics of her guests with an experiment and with Cosmic Chris, her teacher

Afterwards I have to go to work so I hand her over to her best friend's mum at a local organic food growing site where she volunteers, Hawkwood. There is plenty of the site not turned over to growing  so the girls have woodland and meadow to run wild in. Now the weather is nicer, they have a hammock strung between two trees and they love it. At one, everyone stops for a communal lunch, which is where the visiting girls met some of the regulars.

Our birthday gift to our nephew was tickets to see an International football (soccer) match and I took the visitors along for the experience. Here they are at the Emirates stadium, home of Arsenal FC (my team) with a crowd of over 50,000 people to watch Brazil v Scotland.

On Monday we went to the Museum of Childhood where Hannah and I are researching for a history project, which you can read about in my other blog, A Week of Living Edwardianly

Sadly the camera got left ebhind by mistake, but we've sent a leaflet home with the girls to prove they were there.

For their last outing before we sent them home, we felt we had to take them to the Tower of London. It was great for us because I haven;t been for years...since I was about 11 and Hannah has never been. Here they are just outside, with a view of Tower Bridge and City Hall, home of the London Assembly.

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Inside the Tower, we stopped to look at Traitors' Gate, where prisoners accused of treason where brought by barge along the Thames into the Tower. 

and then visited the White Tower, the oldest bit of the the whole complex, built by William the Conqueror in about 1080. Excuse the expression on my face...I was concentrating on getting them high enough to be seen and still get the Tower in.

On the way back to the car, we just took some pictures of St Katherine's dock because it's pretty and because there are iconic red telephone boxes and pillar boxes.

Our friends are now on their way back to Iowa with lots of information about us and about London, some photos and a few little souvenirs. we hope they've had fun and that their real-life counterparts enjoy reading about their travels