After months of deliberating, strategizing, decision-making and then fine-tuning those decisions, Scott and I are finally on the brink of a dream we’ve wanted to achieve for many years: we are taking our family to England.
We gave away our cat, loaned out our dog, put our house in beautiful North Carolina on the market and just finished driving across the country. All of our things are going into storage, and now the only obstacle between us and the biggest adventure my family has ever had is 8 days.
Scott will be working at Oxford for only a semester, so we will be back to the States in December, but it will be enough time for us to have a wide range of experiences in the United Kingdom and surrounding areas that we would not have if we were simply tourists. To make things even more interesting, we won’t have a car and we will be living in the middle of a city.
If you are wondering how we are feeling about all of this, imagine you are about to jump off of a bridge, step into the gladiator’s ring, or are standing on a street in Pamplona, Spain just before the bulls are released and you will have a good idea.
Wish us luck. Updates to follow.
We went to Nassau and then to a more remote island. This might give you an idea of how big the island is:
It is still hard to believe I was there. Sniff.
The first day there we went kayaking, snorkeling and cliff jumping. 
As for accommodations, we roughed it . . . no luxury hotel for us! Instead we stayed in at “Surfer’s Haven” with our guide and his wife. He was an incredible guide. She was an incredible cook. 
I’m always trying to learn new things for my books (I write mesoamerican fantasy romances. It’s a new genre, soon to be the rage) and our hosts had a great variety of tropical plants in their yard including coconuts, orchids, lemons the size of grapefruits, pineapple plants . . . 
. . . and poisonwood, which was very well marked.
This is Tom, our guide, surfer, kayaker, diver, and native Bahamian:
I have to admit that the weather wasn’t ideal every day. On our last day it got a little windy. 
Here is a little surfer’s hangout at the beach. I suppose they use car seats because they are the only chairs heavy enough to not blow away. And if a hurricane came rolling through at least you could buckle up. 
To escape the wind our guide took us underground to a mile-long cave filled with graffiti, some of which dates back 200 years. 
Here were some of our favorite signatures. 
And this is how we got out.
Saturday night the BYU/Utah game was on. Of course being in a foreign country on a small island was not going to stop Scott from finding a tv, even if it happens to be in a bar. We had a great time watching the game and teaching the 18-year-old bartender the rules of American football. 
We drove over the famous “glass window bridge” many times while we were there. This is the left side of the bridge (the Bahamian Bank, or the Caribbean side):
And this is the Atlantic side of the bridge: 
On our way home we hung out in Nassau for a few hours.
This is how they celebrate Christmas in the Bahamas. 
But we missed our kids so it was time to head home. 
Flying over Charleston, SC.
Chelsea Dyreng 