The Kick-off: Durham & London, England
After week of packing and “dotting our T’s and crossing out I’s” (i.e. how do we plan on making sure our taxes get done while we’re on the road?, is our arsenal of pharmeceuticals enough?, do we really need shampoo?, how many pairs of underwear do we really need?, what are the social responsibilities and side effects associated with taking malaria medicine?, and etc.) we made our way to Durham, UK, a beautiful city in northeast England…
In Durham, we had the fortunate opportunity to get to know some really brilliant, fascinating and inspiring people as facilitators for an entrepreneurship program called Enterprisers (http://www.enterprisers.org.uk/). For Anthony, this was a particularly special experience as he is one of the “founding fathers” of the program who started it about 3 years ago while working at the MIT Entrepreneurship Center. He was thrilled to be invited back to contribute and to see it have developed into what it has. By the way, for those of you music junkies who always have an ear out for some new tunes, check out Rubberneck (http://www.jazzgirl.co.uk/Rubberneck/)! They’re a funk/psychedelic hip-hop band from Newcastle that played at the final Enterprisers event and they ROCK.
Before leaving the UK, we spent a few days in London catching up with some close friends. Our first stop was to see Amanda Ben-Scully, Anthony’s childhood friend, her husband Sebastian, their incredible 3-yr old son Spencer, and their dog Bailey. Our apologies to Amanda and Sebastian as we probably picked the most inopportune time to show up right in the middle of Spencer’s birthday party complete with family, friends, and a strong contingency of sugar-loaded children. Needless to say, we had an incredible time with the Ben-Scully’s and fell in love with Spencer who’s got enough charisma, spunk, and energy to knock anyone’s socks off. Amanda and Sebastian have been teaching Spencer French at home to build his bi-lingual skills and I have to applaud them for their commitment and effort to do so as it is no small task and their success is displayed by Spencer’s ability to switch back and forth effortlessly between English and French. Given that both Anthony and I were fortunate enough to have parents who kept their native languages as a part of our lives and would love for our children to multi-lingual as well, it was particulary eye-opening, helpful and inspiring to see the process in action with Spencer. By the way, if you want to raise your kid’s “cuteness stock”, raise them in the UK – the English accent is KILLER in kid-octaves and there is nothing that will melt your heart faster than hearing “Mummmmmyyy” this way. Our last day in London was spent with Emily Ainsley, a long-time close friend of Shan’s, and her boyfriend Colin who we had a great time catching up with and trading crazy travel and love stories over pints and gut-warming English pub grub at their local pub. The perfect way to tie up our time in the U.K. – good times with good friends. Love you guys!
– Shan
Tags: England, Getting Started
Shan