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Everywhere a blog, blog.

So my blog looks a bit different… I thought I’d try something new for the new year. I love the blackboard style of it, so fitting for a teacher’s blog, but the font might drive me to change again in the near future.

As you can guess by the steady stream of blogging, I haven’t started work yet. Calls are starting to come in for different schools though so I don’t think it will be long. I’ll keep you posted. For now, a post about another London weekend done on the cheap. Well mostly.

Friday night I got to finally have a girls night and catch up with my good friend and future roommate. She also introduced me to two girls I hadn’t met before. One woman from Romania who works in a corporate setting, the nature of which I couldn’t quite gather, and another woman from Italian, doing one of her doctoral residency years abroad in England. Very interesting girls! We went to this awesome sushi place where the tables were very low. We hung out in Camden for the evening and chatted for hours.

Saturday, my future roomie Katrina and I went to the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Hindu temple in North London at Neasden station. So epic and something I’d completely missed last year. She has the photos we took so I’ll add them into this post when I get them from her. It was incredibly beautiful. The main temple is all white marble and every surface is carved with beautiful patterns or figures. The evening was spent cuddled on her bed watching hilarious clips of things and eating terrible, cheap, and delicious London take away.

Sunday I spent with Dan. We walked from London Bridge to Waterloo station enjoying the festival of the Thames, though there wasn’t much to see. I do always love walking along the Thames and they even unlocked the gates so you could walk down where the tide normally covers.

After that we went to the museum of London, ANOTHER thing I had never done last year. Honestly it didn’t sound like much but it is a beautiful museum. Very well put together and I learned so much about the city. It covers the whole history of the city right from the Roman beginnings and what it would have looked like before them. Very cool. And there special exhibition was all about bikes…. We saw a professional bmx cyclist doing some amazing tricks outside the museum.

Finally, we saw a life sized Dalek, nothing gets much cooler than that.

Sunday night we watched “Jonathan Creek”, and old murder mystery Dan is trying to get me into…. I’ll keep you posted on that too.

These blue trees are also something we saw walking around this weekend. They are to raise awareness about the importance of trees in the city. Very cool looking, so vibrant even on a cloudy day.

A Tudor Weekend

I had the pleasure of having a touristy weekend with my three favourite U.K. friends.

On Saturday, after working out at the gym and making a nice lunch we headed to central London to visit the Tower of London. An amazing place to learn all about British history. Using my degree I was able to educate my British friend on some of his own history, but he taught me a couple new and interesting things too.

It gets dark quite early here. This photo was taken at about 3. Maybe even before that. I was quite happy to see this castle, I believe it’s called the White Tower or the White castle, because last time I was here it was covered in scaffolding and ugly green sheets 🙂

We saw the Crown Jewels, some Beefeaters and a lot if Tudor history. This was one of my favorite carvings from within on of the rooms used as a prison. There were a ton of great ones but they were all usually very bitter and melancholy. Fair enough for prisoners waiting to be beheaded either privately within the castle walls or, more likely, publicly out in front.

Afterwards we went to a really cute English pub, all decorated to the max for Christmas. I had the fish and chips naturally 🙂 Cod, my favourite.

The next day we headed out of London to Hampton Court Palace. This is an even greater resource for learning about Henry the 8th because it was built by his advisor Cardinal Wolsey. After Henry had him beheaded, it became his main residence.

It is definitely the biggest palace I’ve been to… With a real hedge maze and everything!

I forgot my camera both days but these were snapped with our phones. One of my friends has better pictures of the four of us so I will try and get those off of her soon.

We, of course, visited another pub after Hampton Court and I chose to go crazy and have the roast beef dinner. I guess I’m getting my fill of British food before going home to Canada next week for Christmas.

Just thought I’d update about my fabulously historical and touristy weekend. It was great fun and sun was out more than it has been in a week! 🙂

Week One; Adjusting

So I wanted to do a little update about what living in London has been like.

-I’ve been in my house share for a few nights and I really dislike not having a living room (lounge). This would never have bothered me before but I think I’ve become much more social in the last year and I think I would have enjoyed that.
-I really like my house mates, 2 so far, both guys my age. One is from Nigeria but has been in London for 8 years and the other is English but just moving into London now.
-since my house has just been completely renovated there isn’t much here and “the boys”, as I’ll fondly refer to them, have no interest in stocking up the kitchen with essentials. I might ask them to pitch in anyway though since both of them have expressed interest in homemade cookies haha.
-On that note, I’ve been grocery shopping a couple of times and here is what I’ve noticed so far. Dairy is insanely cheaper (which sucks because I can’t eat most of it) and the quality varies a lot more. I also keep my butter in the fridge but it is still spreadable. I’m not sure how that’s possible but that’s how it is. I’ve also discovered soy yogurt which is delicious. Yay! Another thing, they do not refrigerate their eggs. That is going to take some getting used to!!! Weird!!! Finally, the availability of Irish Soda bread will probably be the downfall of the size 4 I’ve maintained for the past couple years (I’ve had 3 pieces today, with butter, Nutella and peanut butter).

This is turning into quite a long post. Ill have to update more often so they can be shorter.

I also wanted to mention my first night on the town. Myself and 5 other Canadian girls went out last night to celebrate a birthday and it was quite fun. Before we went out I was drinking red wine mixed with lemon fanta (a good way to make a four dollar (£2.50) bottle of wine taste good lol). One of the girls learned this while she was in Spain haha. We then left to go out at about 12, as you would in Canada. This was far too late here apparently. We had heard this but it felt weird to go earlier. When we arrived at the first pub they had last call already. So we decided to go dancing but the first place we went had closed their doors to new people already. Finally we found a place open late. It was playing terrible music, quite dated as well, but we went with it and had a good time. We even figured out the night busses to get home safely and had some great conversations with some locals. It was a fun night anyway.

I’m enjoying London quite a lot, though when I come home at night I get very homesick. I’m starting my job tomorrow officially so there should be a “teaching update” tomorrow or the next day. I have to travel 2+ hours to get to Kent tomorrow to teach so it is going to be a long day. I hope everyone at home is well and enjoying Thanksgiving. I’m thankful for opportunities to grow and the people who love me.

Quick update

Alright so just a quick update because I am very tired. (I’m not sure if its the weather, jet lag, lack of good food or all the walking but I am tired ALL the time.)

I found a place to live, there are a lot of good things and a lot of negatives. It is very close to a bunch of transit routes so it will be easy to get around. It’s in a safe, nice, young, clean neighborhood with a tescos and asda quite close. The place has just been completely redone inside so it’s clean and new. I really like the landlord. The negatives are that there is no common living space or even a kitchen table. It’s £600 a month inclusive so it’s a bit more than I wanted to pay and parts of it are still being finished up. All in all though I’m happy with my choice and I get to move in tomorrow! Pics to follow, once I get settled.

I also met another Canadian today who just arrived and we have a lot in common. She is from Halifax and both our families are from Cape Breton. She also worked at Starbucks for a while. It was nice to talk to someone going through all the same things and she even introduced me to some other Canadians tonight. (One of them went to my very small University and was even in my year; small world).

Tomorrow I’m going to meet my employer and find out about working. That starts on Monday. (Some well needed sleep and exploring needs to happen first).

So I guess that will be it for now. That’s what I’ve been up to. I’ve walked close to 40 kms in the last few days and the shin splint and blisters are my trophies.

I’ll leave you with a mobile pic of Cutty Sark in Greenwich. I promise better pictures in the future but I’ve been too stressed about finding a place to live to break out my good camera.