17 April 2010

We are now comfortably settled into the lovely University town of Charlottesville, which is about 2.5 hours south of Washington DC. We travelled down yesterday on the Amtrak train, which was a welcomed change from being on a plane! No volcano dust to contend with but the pollen levels are sky rocketing with the sudden warm weather!! Yes, it is like summer here - t-shirt weather, outdoor dining and people running marathons. Our hotel is at the finish line for the marathon, so we were very impressed to see people running over the line!!

Charlottesville is famous for some of its literary and entertainment celebrities: Rita Mae Brown, John Grisham and Sissy Spacek. The Downtown Mall is gorgeous - lots of outdoor dining, beautiful ash trees in full leaf, interesting shops and theatres and a sense of enjoying the spring weather.

University of Virginia is huge (there is a bus to take you around the campus) and full of historic and grand southern American buildings. It is one of the oldest Universities in the USA and it feels like it! Lynda has five interviews booked for the coming days with various academics and administrators there.

We had a traditional lunch at the Virginian today (the oldest restaurant in Charlottesville) - crab cakes and club sandwich! Very busy place bustling with students and their families - lots of fun and energy!

We hope to get to the Charlottesville women's gospel choir tomorrow afternoon - 'tis the place to sing along with such high energy music!

Thanks for your great messages - we are enjoying ourselves, but missing home too….take care y'all xx