jolly good!

(So this post is sort of a combination of three posts I've been writing since we got to the SLC airport yesterday morning at 7:00 AM)

Greetings from Blackpool, England!

Our flights went smoothly from SLC to JFK to Manchester and

then taking a "coach" (that's a bus for all of you Yanks) to Blackpool.

I learned that I do not like rye bread, airplane dinners are pretty good (or I was too tired and hungry to care), I can handle jet lag pretty well thanks to a semester of chem 391 (no sleep for weeks), free wifi is too much to expect from most of the world (except for the SLC airport and the bed and breakfast we're staying at), Delta's biscoff cookies are so delicious, fish and chips is tolerable (I ate fish!! This is momentous!), and what Pugeot and Renault symbols look like on cars.

stormy English countryside...our first view of the country!

confusing pence pieces at the fish and chips shop, huzzah for English currency!

eating fish and chips! yum!

And now...I just got back to the hotel from watching the team match competition.

Oh. My. Gosh.

Dream come true. The top couples in standard and latin in USA, Europe, Great Britain, and Asia going head to head, dancing. We watched Eugene and Maria, Riccardo and Yulia, Michael and Joanna, Franco and Oxana, Victor and Anastasia, and Arunas and Katusha. Wow, wow, wow. Another cool thing we got to see was Eugene and Maria announcing their retirement (they're retiring! I can't believe it! They were the ones who choreographed our latin medley and have been working on it with us).

the beautiful Spanish Hall where we got to rehearse today (standard team's in the photo)

watching the team match competition!

team match! so many incredible dancers!

Tomorrow we're off to Preston to see some church history sites. It should be really cool.

Until then...hope your Sundays are great!