And I'm back. Vacation was cool, albeit pretty normal when I was home. I only made it to Columbus 3 times for a combined total of about 4 days. I would have liked to spend more time there, but I know I would have started rolling through the dough which I needed to save for London. So, I spent most of the time in 'bula working on the house and exchanging torrents with my bro. As of right now, I'm up to 47,012 songs which is 131 consecutive days and a whopping 263.75 gigabytes. Guess that 320 I bought is gonna fill up fast.
Anyway, went to Minnesota to visit Rachel's family on the way back to Bahrain. Minnesota was cool, not much different than I expected. Although I did see the collapsed I-35W bridge from the airplane as we were descending. That was kinda cool in a morbid sort of way. Back to the story. When I went through security in Cleveland, I noticed they had highlighted a part of my boarding pass that said "SSSS" and as I was wondering what that meant they pulled me out of line for the "extra special search" that I always seem to get. If you follow my blog you know they got my ass at all 3 airports coming to Bahrain the first time, so I've kinda become accustomed to it. The strange thing is that I've never been pulled out of line when I'm with Rachel. That all changed as we were leaving Minnesota. Sure as shit, when we got our boarding passes, they were labeled with "SSSS," and surprise surprise we got pulled out of line. Rachel's never had the special search so it was all new to her, but not to me. They searched us, opened our bags, and swabbed everything with the chemical pads. I love the TSA. The picture above is of the boarding pass after they cleared us. You can see the clearance stamps on them.
So after that fiasco, we took off to London for three days. The school pays for the trip home every summer, so we figured we'd mooch 'em for a free ticket to London. London was freakin' sweet, but fucking (and that's an understatement) EXPENSIVE. I knew it was going to be pricey going in, but not nearly as much as it really was. Thank god we only spent 3 days there. I'll post pictures on here in the next week or two, in more detail. Then we took a train to Scotland to visit a college friend of Rachel's who teaches in Scotland. Holy shit was that a fiasco riding the train--but once again, I'll get into that later in more detail. Scotland was cool but cold as hell. As cold as I was I appreciated the shivering, because that's the coldest I've been in a year, and probably will be for who knows how long. As I type this it's 7:12 at night and 95 degrees with 70% humidity.
So here I sit in Bahrain, after about 3 days of orientation at school. Classes start Sunday, and things are quite different here now. Our old principal decided to bail on us without telling anyone (and went so far as to ignore everyone's emails) so they had to hire a new one at the last minute. The good news is that she seems pretty cool. The bad news is that she has no idea really of how the school operates (although you can't blame her) so it will be an interesting beginning of the year.
As I can get new pics to load I'll post more. Peace from the middle east (for now).
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Now playing: Ozzy Osbourne - No More Tears via FoxyTunesLabels: airport, Ashtabula, vacation
The first thing we did (after the Hard Rock visit the night prior) was head off to see the changing of the guard. HOLY SHIT were there a lot of people! In the end, we never got close enough to see the actual changing which is performed behind that gate. Above is Buckingham Palace.
This is the entrance to the royal gardens, which were next to the palace.
This is the English band that marched into the palace. I think the changing of the guard had something to do with these guys.
There was a huge monument in the middle of the roundabout in front of the palace. Rachel asked someone to take our pic.
This was taken with my hand way up in the air so I could get over people's heads. You can see the band marching in through the gate.
A motorcycle cop protecting the band.
Palace garden gate.
I like this one. People everywhere, except on the road. The cops shuffled you off real fast if you stepped out onto the street.
As close as we could come to the fence.
One of the gates to the palace.
The monument in the center of the roundabout.
This was on the way to the palace. "Balls Brothers."
