Our vocational visits and Arundel

Note: I think my cold addled my brain. Earlier I misspelled one of the Rotarians' names. It's now fixed.

I'll make this short, since I'm nursing a bit of a cold and need to get to bed. We all spent time learning about similar businesses to ours over here in England. I talked to Gary and Theo at the West Sussex County Times, and also spoke to Matt at The Resident, another newspaper in the Horsham area. It was very enlightening and left me with some new ideas and an understanding that newspapers here are struggling just like those in the United States. As a side note, the Times of London announced yesterday they will begin charging readers for access to its content online.

Brad spent a day with a police detachment in West Sussex; Jim went to Lancing College, also in West Sussex; Scott went to a hospital in Brighton; and Cam went to two separate financial services facilities. They'll have to fill you in later about what they learned, but it sounds like they had a wonderful time.

Yesterday we were treated to a tour of sites around Arundel by Rupert Brooks, a local man who wrote a book about pub sites around the area. We got a nice view of the castle (here's me in front of it), but we're looking forward to a better view next week.

We then headed to the St. Mary's Gate Inn, a local pub, and met Rotarians James, Mark, Keith, Tim and Stephanie. We also met James' wife Helen and Keith's wife Sam. Mark's wife Clare was a bit ill and couldn't join us, but since I'm living with them I was able to visit with her yesterday and today. We share a love of Jane Austen and visited Jane's home in Chawton today. It was amazing. Tomorrow we will spend more time with the local Rotarians, we will move on to Chichester on Monday, we'll have more vocational visits on Tuesday, and we'll do our next presentation Wednesday.