Exciting things! ... and Halloween

So many exciting things are happening!

1. KELSEY HOEFER booked her plane ticket to London! AHHHH SO EXCITING!  Keep in mind I haven't seen Kelsey in years.. since 2010 maybe?  In any case, it's going to be so much fun :)

2. Mat and I booked tickets to go to Dublin the first weekend in December.  My friend Hanna is student teaching there.  She was here last month, so now we're going up there!  Very exciting :)

3. We're off to Belfast in 2 days!  Saturday morning we're off to Northern Ireland until Monday morning.  Mat's best friend lives there and he had a baby last year that Mat has yet to meet.. so we get to explore Belfast AND get a baby fix!

4. I finally have jobs!  Before I was working a whopping 3 hours a week (rough, I know).  Now I'll be working with another family in Angel, which is a short bus ride away.  A few mornings a week I'll go hang out with the cutest little toddler :)

That's about it I suppose!  I'm planning on doing some shopping tomorrow (I've hardly bought any clothes since I've lived here.. how is that even possible with my proximity to Oxford Street!?).  Then I have some serious research to do in the library.  Inclusive education research will be my life for the next 2 months, possible longer depending on my dissertation topic choice.

In closing, Happy Halloween!  Here is what Momma Keys concocted for their neighbourhood Halloween gathering:

She is a talented lady!

Borough Market and pumpkin carving.

Today is Mat and I's dating anniversary.  We've survived a whole year together!  Who would've thought?  In any case, we're going back to Cote Brasserie in Hays Galleria (which is where we had our first date) for a celebratory dinner tonight :)

But first, I'm off to Egham to play with the mixed volleyball team (boys and girls together).  Should be fun!  Hopefully my pulled quad muscle decides to cooperate and be un-pulled today.

We finally had to turn on our heat last night.  It is definitely winter in London!  Very cold and very windy.

Here are some pictures from the last week.. I've been awful at taking pictures - luckily, Mat is an amateur photographer with his phone :)

My first visit to Borough Market!  It's a magical place.  So many cool food stalls and great vendors.  We spent a ton of money :)

Tomatoes.

Truffles for sale - £570 per 100 grams!  CRAZY!  The black ones were only £108 per 100 grams.

Our goal is to take a picture of me in front of every landmark in London.  This is me and the Shard building.  Look at the sky - such pretty weather :)

Pre-carving.  Mat hasn't carved a pumpkin in years so he was really excited.  He wanted to do all these crazy complicated designs with their tongues sticking out and stuff, but he settled on Jack from the Nightmare Before Christmas.

My pumpkin - pre-carving.

Finished pumpkins!

:)  I love them!

That's all for pictures!  Amanda and I went to a market on Sloane Square yesterday, then wandered around Chelsea and saw some cool bridges but I didn't take any pictures (oops!).  Also, our clocks changed last night so I'm only 5 hours ahead of Midwestern America now (at least until your clocks change).

That's all for now.. time to get my volleyball gear together!

Things I've learned in London

This is what I've learned living in London (so far)...

1. If I get up and straighten my hair, it will rain. But it won't just rain normally.  It'll misty rain so an umbrella is useless and my hair looks like a lion's mane 3 seconds after stepping outside.

2. You have to have a nice umbrella.  If you buy your umbrella at Poundland (one pound for everything), it will blow away in the first hurricane-force London wind gust.

3. It's really sad seeing homeless people all the time.  Yesterday I saw a child in a sleeping bag on the street in central London.  So depressing.  Makes you appreciate everything you have.

4. If you have to be somewhere at 930 in the morning, you have to get up really early and leave at least an extra 15 minutes for your journey because the one day you don't, the buses will stop running randomly and the tube train will get stuck in the tunnel for 45 minutes and you'll be late.

5. Don't get on the tube between 8-930 am or between 5-7 at night.  You will have to hug the stranger next to you in order to squash into the train car and it will be 4 million degrees.  

6. There are pretty old buildings everywhere.  Not old like we have in America.. legitimately really old.  And massive. And pretty.  For example, here's one of King's College libraries on Chancery Lane.

And here's the inside:

It's sort of like living in a Harry Potter movie.

Greenwich and a mini photo-shoot with Evie :)

Picture tiiiiiiiiiiiiime :)

Just having some burgers and wine at Byron - our favourite burger place!

They also have malts - I want to live in Byron!

Ben and I waiting for the boat to Greenwich!  The pier was right by the London Eye and this was the view.

Parliament - I was in there last week :)

The man taking our picture didn't think we'd want to have the top of Big Ben in our picture apparently. Amateur photographer :)

Here comes the boat!

Me on the boat.  It was nice - heated and covered (thank goodness cause it was freezing and rainy!)

Mat is such a good photographer!  Tower Bridge, HMS Belfast, and the Union Jack.

This is where Mat and I went on our first date!  Cote Brasserie at Hayward's Galleria.  We're going back there for our 1 year anniversary next week :)

Made it to Greenwich!  This is the Cutty Sark, a massive old clipper boat.  Very cool!  We didn't go inside but you can see in through the glass on the bottom.

I will never get sick of London markets!  Greenwich has a good market.  I got myself a new Oyster card holder - doesn't sound very exciting but I love it.

Photographer Mat again :)

Outside the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. 

Just standing on the Prime Meridian at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. My feet are in 2 different hemispheres!  We had to pay £7 to get into the courtyard where the line was.

Mat in two hemispheres.

The old Prime Meridian line was just marked with a concrete pillar.

While someone was taking this picture of us with Mat's camera, some Japanese tourists were also taking our picture.. with their own camera. Very odd.

4 am in America!

Cool map that shows where it's day and night.

Walking back down the hill from the Royal Observatory.

Naturally it started pouring down rain as we were leaving.. this is me and the Cutty Sark.

The Shard building from the boat on the way back to Central London.

Built to look like a shard of glass, hence why it's called the Shard :)

That's it for Greenwich!  Mat and I went back to Dorking for the night after Greenwich and had a mini photo-shoot with Evie (Mat's niece).

Look at that cute little face!

"Seriously Uncle Mathew.. leave me alone."

"Save me!"

Just drumming away!

Adorable.

Uncle Mathew kisses.

Best friends.

More drumming.

"Uncle Mathew stop taking my picture and let me play with the camera!"

That's all for pictures!

I went to brunch today with Amanda on Brick Lane.  We went to a yummy little French place, but I had so many problems with buses!  I only took the bus because the Tube is a nightmare on the weekends.  They do engineering work on weekends, so half the lines were closed today.  Normally I would take the Victoria Line, then the Overground to Shoreditch to go to Brick Lane.  Conveniently, both the Victoria Line and the Overground were closed this weekend.  So I got on the bus to get there at 1030 (it takes an hour).. halfway through the journey, the bus says it's changing destinations.. then a few stops later, it terminated.  Out of nowhere. And in the middle of nowhere. So I had to walk 1.3 miles to get to Brick Lane.  Very annoying!  But I burned some calories before my yummy brunch :)

Mat is making me watch Top Gear now.. cars cars cars all the time!

Short and sweet

This will be short and sweet, but I promise a longer update (with pictures) this week!

Mat and I went to Greenwich yesterday and did all the Greenwich stuff (Royal Observatory, Prime Meridian line, Cutty Sark, etc.).  We took a boat from the London Eye Pier to Greenwich Pier.  The weather was really dreary, but the rain held off until the way home.  Still a pretty view of London from the boat on the Thames!

Last night we went back to Dorking to meet up with Mat's friends for dinner/drinks.  I accidentally drank a bit too much (oops!) so I'm not feeling so hot today.  Also, I have a black eye?  Mat says I "fell on his elbow".. a likely story! :)

We had our first volleyball game today!  It was just a friendly match against Imperial College.  I managed to legitimately pull my quad so I only played the first hour or so.  It's just so painful!  And it doesn't help that every tube station has 375430 staircases.

That's all for now!

Parliament etc.

In class the other day, our speaker was telling us about this website called wordle.net where you can make word clouds based on the number of times you use a word in a piece of writing, a website, etc.  So I put in my blog address and this is what I got!  I think it only did the first page (the most recent posts).. but you can clearly see what I write about the most :)

Chicken pot pies :) They refused to cook all the way (seems to be an ongoing problem in this house!) but they looked pretty!

This was approximately 10 pm on a Friday or Saturday night.  Poor thing has such a hard time staying awake at night!

Amanda and I in the entry hall of Parliament!  We were only allowed to take pictures in this room, which was disappointing.  We got to walk through the House of Lords and the House of Commons, plus the rest of the pretty rooms in Westminster Palace!  

 We didn't get to go up in Ben, but I will do it!

Ben and I. Jealous, Kate?!

Ben and Parliament and the London Eye in the distance - view from the bridge.

View from the other side of the bridge.. not quite so pretty.  That's the actual city of London.  The other side (where Ben and Parliament are) is the city of Westminster.

Cheese and Wine Festival.  So busy! We spent lots of money on cheese and wine :)

Mat is a giant when he stands the step above me on the escalator in the tube station.

We have our first volleyball game next weekend!  Very exciting :)  However, after practice yesterday, I'm pretty confident I pulled every muscle in my left leg.  Moral of the story - I'm out of shape.

I start my job today, then I have to finish formatting my paper, turn it in, and read read read for class on Wednesday!

Finally, we were cooking (and eating) machines again last night.  Mat made Pork Tenderloins with Maple-Mustard Sauce:

Yum!

Such a serious chef :)

Then we had a cheese platter with all our yummy cheeses from the Cheese and Wine Festival:

Then we baked chocolate chip cookies.  We do love our food in this house :)