Rotary District 5550 Group Study Exchange 2011

Good day to all!
Jody returning to report on a few days of activities in the West Midlands.
Friday was our vocational day, and I spent mine at Harper Adams University, which is an agriculture university. Having spent the last of my university days in Saskatoon at the Agriculture College it was good to see the comparison to another Uni (as the locals call it here) over in the UK. Haper Adams has become increasingly hard to get into, and to get in today you must get better and better grades, and the Uni is one of the top 50 schools. There is only 2500 students that go to school on campus and quite a few that do studies through correspondance. I started my day touring the Biodigester or the BD. The BD is brand new and has just been up and running in the last couple of months. Very expensive to set up but if you can afford it the investment looks to be worth it in the long run. I'd explain how it works, but I'm sure that most of you would be bored with the details. Basically digestible food waste as well as animal waste is pumped into tanks where methane is used to produce electricity. The rest of my day included chatting with a couple of the professeurs in the college about sustainable agriculture, a tour of the labs, and lunch with the head of the lab Victoria (who is going to Canada on the return GSE tour in June). The day ended with a tour of the dairy barn, where I watched them milk on their new rotary parlour, and an interview with the on campus media team. Everyone I met at the Uni was extremely nice, and answered any questions that I had. Thanks to all involved!
Friday night was a last meal at home with my hosts for the week. They were incredibly nice, and I even had a little taste of Port, which was quite nice, although it was a very expensive bottle! Saturday my hosts Peter and Trish dropped me off at the car park, and I said goodbye to my first hosts. Extremely nice people!
Saturday afternoon I met my new hosts for the week Paul and Gaynor and we were off to Stoke-on-Trent.
A quick change of clothes and we were driving to Blackpool to see the sights and lights of the city. We drove through some rain along the way and were a little skeptical about how the weather was going to turn out on the coast, but when we got there it was overcast but dry. We searched for a parking spot, and checked 5 parking machines and after a note in the window were were off down the Promanade. Rock (candy), fish & chips here we come! We had a look at the rides, a walk along the beach (too cold for a bikini mind you!) and the bungee which I didn't think I wanted to attempt we continued walking until the rain came. 2 tries to get into different hotels for coffee and we were sitting at a bar 5 hotels up the street. The hotel had the heat on so high you would think that it was the dead of winter in Canada. When we were finished coffee we put on our rain jackets, and headed out to check out the world famous lights as we headed down the Promanade on the Tram. When we got back to the car driving down the street we saw all the cars Queing up down the road just to drive through the lights. I am glad that we took the Tram to see the lights even if the windows were all fogged up.
All in all a good day was had by all! Off to see the caverns tomorrow!
One of these days I promise to get some pictures downloaded and posted for you all to see!
Bye for now
Jody

Hello all!!
This is day 5 of England! The trip so far has been great! Arriving on Saturday I am pretty sure I don't remember most of the afternoon on Saturday, which should of been the middle of the night for me. My host family took me downtown Shrewsbury, and I was determined not to sleep until the evening so I was able to sleep that night. After a few hours I had powered out and went for a couple hour nap. I can report that even though I had a nap I had an excellent sleep that night!! Just one other thing before I give a short account on the Wednesday tours is that I loved being in the Livestock Auction! I was able to actually seem smart explaining to my team how things worked there, and how that compared to being home in Canada. I had an interesting conversation with one gentleman that was selling Holstein x Belgian Blue calves and hoping to buy a couple of Holstein cows that day to add to his herd at home. Very interesting how things work, and how farmers make a living here compared to home, especially with the small land base that they have to work with! There is not a whole lot of room to expand.

Wednesday was another really nice day outside. We keep hearing about the weather in England and how it is never very nice this time of year, and for the first couple of days I was very overdressed weather wise. I can tell you though that as I write this it is raining outside, and I've heard that we might have seen the end of the nice weather. But I have learned since I have come here that you never know what the weather is going to be like until you stick your head outside! In the morning we went to the RAF & Cold War museum, and I found this really interesting. They had an account of the timing of things happening starting in 1912 until today, and there were a few flights made by women that I took special notice of such as the first solo flight! I also found the newest hanger the Cold War exhibit to be extremely interesting. I knew the story of the Cold War growing up, but didn't know a whole lot of specific details about it, and I really feel the museum did a very good job of telling all sides of the story.
Lunch was at a very nice pub called the Bell Inn. Pubs in England I have found are nothing like what we would consider a pub back home, and most of them are sit down restaurants serving meals. The one we ate at Wednesday was very good, chicken Tikka being my meal of choice.
The afternoon was a visit to Lilleshall which is one of 4 English National Sports Centres. Lilleshall specializes in football, field hockey, and gymnastics. The grounds were beautiful, and I can only imagine what they would look like in the spring and summer with all the flowers blooming, and grass as green and lush as grass can look. The grounds and the estate used to belong to the The Duke of Sutherland who owned a lot of the land in the area. The large estate was a hunting lodge, and wasn't even the Duke's home. The details that they have inside the now hotel, and outside the building is just incredible! I am very impressed and thankful for the people we have met along the way it seems people will take a minute or two, or even longer out of their day to explain things to us. One of the managers of Lilleshall saw us in the gardens and came down to give us an explanation of the estate. We asked about a thousand questions which he seemed very happy to answer. I am really enjoying the information and pride that people here take in knowing facts about history of buildings and the surrounding area, and England as a whole. It is really very impressive.
In the evening we had a supper with the Rotary club of Newport and did a presentation for the club.
The day was a good day for all involved!!
A full day of activities is planned for Thursday, and soon we will be moving on to a new Host family. I can not believe that we have been here almost a week already! Had a great first week and I am looking forward to the next 3. I am especially looking forward to Harper Adams on Friday.
Signing off for now & will post some pictures in the next day or two.
Jody

We've made it to the Regina airport and are waiting for the plane to take us away.  Our GSE gear came in too!  Check it out.

See you soon, England!

              GSE Team from 5550.     Shaunna, Alicia, Jody, Brennan and Dave.
              Taken after their first presentation to Neepawa Rotarians and Guests.

Hey everyone!
The time is getting closer just over 2 months until our flight to the UK! I'm getting excited with all the prep work lately. I'm looking forward to our weekend here coming up soon. This weekend is the big Lily Festival here, and the town has a LOT of extra visitors. It rained yesterday so that put a bit of a slowdown on things here for a while, but you should see all the Lily's everywhere! The summer seems to have flown by so fast already.
Looking forward to seeing everyone in a few weeks!
Jody