A free lunch

They always say that customer service is better in the States and we've seen a good example of that today. After Annalie had finished the majority of her first essay, we decided to pop up to a mall in Manchester (Connecticut that is!) to pick up some shopping. After doing most shopping, we had already picked out where we were going to go for lunch as we had a $5 voucher.

When we arrived, we seemed to have been given a table served by Mrs Non-Charisma! Our waitress was not exactly the happy smiley face you expect of Americans. Anyway, we duly ordered and waited for our meals to arrive. After what seemed like an age, we started to realise that people who had been seated after us were already getting their food. And the place wasn't exactly heaving so we started to wonder what was going on. Just as we were about to ask, one of the managers was spotted looking in our direction and talking to our waitress.

A moment later she appeared at our table and told us that one of our plates had been dropped so they were remaking the meals and that they would pay for the entire meal for us! Up until that point we'd been very disppointed and contemplating leaving no tip (almost a crime here!). But after that gesture, we decided we were a bit happier with the service! The meals arrived very soon after and were pretty reasonable, especially for a freebie!

Also this week, Annalie went for her first "Girls' night out" with the Rolls-Royce gang. It was a mix of wives and workers. although the wives outnumber the workers significantly! Ian is still the only male spouse out here. The other female workers either came out here as singles or are wives of Rolls-Royce secondees who also work for the company and have been able to get jobs with IAE as well. It was a very nice night and quite emotional for some of the girls as one was leaving.

The most exciting part of the week has been our decision to book our first 'proper' holiday of our time out here. Hawaii! Honolulu to be precise - oh yes! You'll probably all be of us by the time the holiday actually comes around and wishing we'd Annalie is going to be in LA already as IAE is hosting an Operator's Conference there in November. So for her it's just the cost of the flight from LA to Honolulu - which has worked out at $500 each. Not bad. For Ian we're going to try and get him there on air miles to save even more money. We've just bought a guide book to help us decide what to do while we're there but our friend, Heather, grew up on the island so she'll be able to tell us where to go and what to do We'll be there for Annalie's birthday and Thanksgiving as well - so that will be very nice. And timed just right for when it starts to get horrible and wet in CT.

Annalie has got the result from the first part of her assignments for her second Masters module and she got another First!! She's completely stunned by the fact but obviously pleased. Shame it's only worth 10% of the final mark! The second part of three is almost over and she reckons part three will be pretty straightforward as she's done something very similar for her CIPR Diploma. But it's not plagiarism - honest!!

Ian's been out taking some nice photos around Glastonbury. Which we would have uploaded now but when he downloaded them, he backed them up straight away onto our external hard drive back-up and erased them from the PC. We'll get some on, hopfully on Sunday, so that you can see some more of the lovely place we're calling home for the next three years.

The weather has been great pretty much all week. The terrible humid weather continued into Tuesday when tempteratures were reaching 100 degrees An amazing thunderstorm blew in on Tuesday night and things started to cool down then. We say cool down, but we have still been enjoying temps in the 80s. There have been some more amazing thunderstorms coming in late in the evenings but they provide some amazing views. Often there's no rain and you're just watching these lightening strikes. However today (Saturday) the thunderstorms hit us in the middle of the afternoon and the rain has been lashing down for a couple of hours.

Everything is settling down for us out here, except for the fact that Rolls-Royce have been unable to get Annalie's pay right so far. For three months in a row (it appears) they have stuffed it up in one way or another You'd think that, given that they facilitate people working around the world on a daily basis that they'd get it right

I think that's it for now. So when are you coming to visit to experience it for yourself?