From Mimi's Journal (July 27 - August 5, 2000)

July 27
My name is Mimi Melton, and I live in California. In about four days that's going to change. I'm moving to England for a year and coming back. I got this book as a going-away present from my Aunt Dana and Great Aunt Mary and my mom's cousin Cam. It also included scissors, a glue stick, a pencil, and a pen. My Great Aunt Mary gave me a ladybug pin for good luck, and a poem. Here's what her poem says:

Here's a little ladybug,
To speed you on your way,
Wear her on your collar,
And be lucky all the day.

The English land's historic,
And the meadow-lands bright green,
The black-face sheep are funny,
And like none you've ever seen.

The food will be so different,
And your studies and your friends,
You'll all have English accents,
When your great adventure ends!

So have great fun, we hope there's sun –
We'll meet again two thousand one!

Isn't that nice? We also had a going-away party with my friends at a swimming pool near our house. I got a bear, a puzzle, and some bath stuff! We played games and ate pizza.

July 28
We are wild packing! Everything gets packed away or taken to England. I will miss my poodle, Hugo, and my cat, Buster, when we leave for England. Buster gets to stay with our friends, the Smiths. Hugo will stay with Dad's brother's family at first.

I am worried about the trip, but guess what! I'm going to be a writer! Every month I'll write for a series called Teacher Exchange. The family coming to our house will be writing, too!

I'm very excited about going to England, but a little bit nervous. I know I'm going to have fun, so I will be happy leaving. Three more days!

August 1
We're in Washington, DC, now. Today we went to a lot of Smithsonian museums and saw cool stuff. We went to the Museum of Natural History first. It was really fun. They had a big elephant and real dinosaur bones! We took the Metro to get there. The Metro is like a subway. At the museum we saw ancient stuff like trilopods. Then we saw bones: a T. Rex, Triceratops, Dipladocus, Albertasaurus, and others. Then we saw the flying things and the prehistoric fish. One fish skeleton had a smaller fish skeleton inside it! It must have died shortly after eating. Then we saw the Hope Diamond, and it was pretty.

After the Natural History Museum we went to the American History Museum. We saw stuff about the first U.S. flag. We saw Muhammad Ali's boxing gloves and Dorothy Gale's slippers from The Wizard of Oz. Then we went to the Air and Space Museum. We saw planes and touched a moon rock!

We met our exchange family. Martin will be taking my place at my school, since he's about my age. Kimberly will take my sister's place because she's almost her age. I really enjoyed meeting them. They have two cats called Parsley and Fizz. Kimberly said that Fizz gets "vicious" when he's hungry! She told us that Parsley is Fizz's mother. I'm glad that we're going to have cats at our house because I'd probably get lonely if we didn't. I hope Fizz likes to play with strings.

I'm a little bit worried about school in England because I know that they do a lot of different things. I think when the teacher comes in, you stand. When they say "sit," you sit. At lunch at my England school, you can either bring lunch for the whole term, or you can buy lunch from the school for the whole term. But you can't do both. You get to wear a uniform at my school, a warm-weather uniform and a cold-weather uniform. I'm glad there are uniforms because I won't have trouble thinking about what to wear. At my California school, we don't wear uniforms.

August 5
Yesterday we went on a sightseeing bus around Washington, DC. We saw the Lincoln Memorial and the Korean and Vietnam War memorials. We saw the White House and the capitol building and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, where they make money. We got home late and had dinner and went to bed. This morning we woke up, had breakfast, and started packing all our stuff. We packed most of the day! Our van to the airport was late. As we waited, we saw a huge bug on a tree. It was a cicada! Dad is a science teacher, so he just picked it up and put it on his arm. Then he put it back on the tree and we left it alone, but when we came back it had a big crack in its back! Dad said it was molting into a flying bug. You could see a pulsing body through the crack! Then our van came, and we left for the airport. We boarded our plane, and I'm writing this on the plane. I miss America. Now my home will be England!

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