Zach & Maddie - London - Harlaxton Manor

May-June 2016. It's not all that often in our life that we get do something really special that we will cherish and treasure forever.

Actually it is Zachary's home for the next month. It's called Harlaxton Manor and it's 60 miles SW of London. Zach and his gf Maddie are moving in as I am writing this. Both she and Zach won scholarships for a University of Cincinnati study abroad program. 15 years ago my daughter, Beth, did the same scholarship and stayed here also.

Zach is 19 now and has completed his first year in college. His major is Electrical Engineering. He took two classes while abroad, Gothic Literature and yet another Calculus class. He said 9 out of the 19 kids did the Calculus class and there was a UC teacher there with them to teach it. It was a full semester crammed into 30 days. And that included final exams.

I followed their flight over on an app called Flight Aware. They flew on Virgin Atlantic Airbus 320 flight 104. Here is Maddie and Zach in the bus at Heathrow and some text messaging I did with him:

Z: Just Landed ( it was 1:49AM EST 6:49AM BST. They left Alanta at 5:38 AM)
J: off the plane?
Z: no standing in line
Z: I am really tired
J: When you were over Canada, Flight Aware said you touched 700 mph. That's Mach .92. A tad faster than your V8 Fiero.
Z: that's insane.
Z: ok I am out of the airport. It's 7:45 AM here I'm ahead of time right now. I am really tired.
Z: It's awesome. the traffic is really insane... it's all backwards!!!
Z: I'M IN LONDON ! ! ! ! the roads are crazy ....
Z: It's weird
Z: we are going to Harlaxton now..

More info on Harlaxton ... Harlaxton College is owned by the University of Evansville Indiana. It was bought for a song, refurbished and gave to Evansville University by a professor there in the late 60's.

We never called the school Harlaxton... Rather we called it HOGWARTS...

The room he shared with another boy ( Maddie was on the 4th floor) ... looks just like his bedroom back home LOL

I was driving to work one day, and happen to look at where the kid was on Life 360. He and M were at the London Eye. I sent a voice to text message to him: Take a picture where you are at right now and send it to me...this is what I got back...

The highlight of their time in London, at the train station McDonald's...

Wall at the youth hostel that they stayed at in Prague that the kids were encouraged to leave something ...

On the flight home the kids were in the last seats of the last row, so they were last to get off. Zach asked the pilots if he could see the cockpit ... and this was what happened. The Captain took the pictures. The plane was an Airbus 330...

They got back to Cincinnati around 10 PM and M's parents picked them up. Zach had said he missed Diet Mt Dew, as there was none, or Sausage & Egg McMuffins, none of those either. After a huge hug, first thing I did was hand him a Dew.