Hiya! Well! It's been a year already. In England, that is. I can't say it's flown by, but you know what they say, life's what happens when you're busy making plans.
I'll give you all a quick-ish rundown of some of the highlights of this past year, and in no particular order of awesome:
1. I helped pick out and decorate the Wells' Christmas tree. Complete with day drinking, The Muppet's Christmas Carol, and a little kitten who kept climbing in and around the decorations and perching precariously on the top branches.
2. Actually watched snow fall where I was living. I know, I've BEEN to the snow but I've never woken up to it or really watched it fall. Little ginger kitten loved it. (In case you didn't know, his name is Trevor, and Sarah got him right before I came over. He and I spent every day for about 3 months together. Loved him!!)
3. Went to a pretty good NYE party with all our friends. Nice potluck, formal dress, drinking games and the countdown.
4. I went to my first Pantomime (Panto) with some girlfriends. It was HILARIOUS and my new favorite thing! I saw Robin Hood. It's kind of like a tongue-in-cheek play where the audience participates. The actors talk to the audience and get them into it. Matt and I are going to see another one soon!
5. We went to the Newcastle game for Matt's birthday. It was the first time that I'd seen Sunderland coming into the stadium. The Newcastle-Sunderland game is the derby, the big rivalry game, and it gets CRAZY. If you can see in the snap, there's HEAPS of cops and cops with dogs and cops on horses marching all around them keeping them contained (and I promise there were 1,000 or so). They were singing and yelling and had come from the train station down the road, probably 99.9% were hammered. It was a really charged atmosphere. It's the second derby game we've been to and our plan is to go to one of those a year.
6. Hmmmm, and then after that I got a job. At Capital Recoveries. With Matt's mum. But I don't work with/for her, I work for the collections/recovery side. It's ok. Started off being part-time but then I'm REALLY smart and they realized it so I became full-time. Matt and I also wormed our way into taking Phil's top floor flat. He bought a house in a terrace of houses, and then converted the two floors to two flats. We said we'd love to take the top one. So at one point Matt and I went over and helped him paint the walls.
Ya that's right. I wore skinny jeans with tennies. And I'm not even embarassed.
7. For Valentine's Day Matt took the day off and surprised me with a trip to Windsor Castle (compliments of our family pass to the Royal Historic Palaces!) and then to some authentic Mexican Food and Margaritas. I'm a bit of a Mexican food snob and this was actually pretty darn close to the food at home. We had a great day!
8. For my birthday in April we didn't do much. We had a wedding to go to the day before so we were pretty shattered the next day. Even though, I got some nice things from Matt's family.
9. In June we had our second wedding reception. Kelsey came over a week before and we did London together, riding the sight-seeing bus, going to visit/stay with Simon, and other fun stuffs.
(Gutted I don't have any snaps from her visit as my phone has somehow gotten rid of them along with some others. Sad face.)
We also finally got pictures of Matt's grandparents with us in our wedding get up, so that was nice. :)
From left to right is: Dot, Bob (Kim's parents) and then Jean and Tony (Sarah's parents).
10. While the weather was nice (that ONE week, wink wink) we visited Hampton Court Palace and Gardens. It was gorgeous and probably my favorite so far.
11. Also during this nice-ish weather, we went camping to the New Forest. It's south a couple of hours and we took off after our 'half-day Friday's' that we both have, which is great! There were wild horses all over and Saturday morning we were camped next to the car with the trunk open, next thing we know a horse has his head IN THE TRUNK snuffling around! I looked over, and with my mouth full of breakfast began gesturing and grunting and pointing, wide-eyed. It was hilarious. He left our site and as all the sites are pretty close, wandered over to the next one...then the next...and through the whole place looking for free handouts (which then made me sad that IDIOTS feed them). But we had a great time and even took a walk, about 5 or 6 miles round trip, out to a pub where we drank beers and played dice for the afternoon and we even came across a herd of horses with nobody else in sight.
12. The more I write about this good weather spell we took advantage of, the more you're going to think the weather is actually ok here. It's not. I'll elaborate more later.
Another good weather activity we did was visiting Millett's Farm for the Pick-Your-Own. I've never done this, and was really excited for it, and it definitely lived up to my expectations. Not only did it have spectacular fruit, it had farm animals, with the most emphasis on one of my favorite animals, the alpaca. The day couldn't have gotten any better.
Raspberries and strawberries. MMMMMMMMMMMMM.
13. There was a music festival in August, I think, called Fieldview. It was kick-ass. It's mostly made up of unsigned bands, but almost every one of them was really, REALLY, good. I found quite a few new bands I like and the best part is they're pretty much from the UK so you can follow them on facebook and go to their shows. Neat-o!
My personal favorite bit of the festival, besides camping and bringing your own beer, was this little kid in one of the music tents. He had a pacifier and a plastic hook hand. He was sat on his dad's shoulders LOVING it. Coolest. Kid. Ever.
Look how cool he is!!
14. September 17th was our anniversary. We decided to spend it in London. Matt made dinner reservations for Sunday night. We went to The Goring. It was a super fancy restaurant/hotel where Kate Middleton and her family stayed the night before she married Prince William. I had the most delicious roast duck. It fell off the bone. Oh!
The following day, Monday, was our official anniversary. I made reservations for tea at The Ritz. Like, THE Ritz. It was super posh and fancy and I had a fantastic time. We drank out of bone china (the best from which to drink tea, and I concur!), and had little finger sandwiches with the crusts cut off (of course!) and champagne. Then they brought out a little personalized cake for us for our anniversary. It was so lovely I didn't want to leave. Naturally it was tie and coat for men and formal attire for women. I rocked it!
15. After our anniversary we had a four day week and then left for holiday in Mallorca! It was much needed sun. I don't have many photos because all we literally did was lay in the sun. All day. Every day. Not sorry. Picture perfect beaches and all-inclusive. Don't mind if I do.
16. Oh yeah! The Olympic torch came through Newbury, and right past my office! I'm not sure who is carrying it right now, but it was semi-famous and local-hero types.
17. This might sound pret-ty boring, but Matt and I look out for postboxes. The reason being this: the current monarch, Queen Elizabeth II has her monogram on almost every postbox in England, when they first started being used in 1857. Obviously she wasn't born then but there weren't many at that time. You'll notice it on the snap below, ER II (Elizabeth Regina the Second. Regina is not her surname, its Windsor, but Regina is a title, with Regina being Latin for Queen). Anyway, you'll see that on most postboxes, like I said. BUT, if you see anything different, its from someone who ruled before her. And these are quite rare. GR (George Rex, Rex is Latin for King) is her father, and we happened to see these two postboxes next to each other. This is definitely cause for some excitement! Perhaps for only Matt and me, but nonetheless, kinda cool.
NOW, we saw this one in London. It's King Edward VII. He lived from 1841-1910 and reigned from 1901-1910. After him was George V, then Edward VIII, the current Queen's uncle who abdicated to marry an American divorcee, and then it was George VI, the Queen's father. This is the oldest one we've seen.
18. We also visited Kew Palace and Gardens. We brought a nice little picnic and checked out the tropical plants and the other buildings with rainforests and stuffs in them. Not too shabs.
I can't think of anything else really major we've/I've done since I've been here. I've done a lot of cooking. Matt and I go to the farmer's market every Saturday and do our veg shopping. We buy fresh butter, meat from the butcher and fresh baked bread, too. Our fridge is about 3' square or so, which means the freezer is like two pizza boxes stacked, but not that deep. We don't freeze anything but meat and we cook everything fresh. I really like that.
I've also tried my hand at baking bread. Edible, pretty good, but needs work. I've learned to use my sewing machine and have turned out a few nice things on that including a skirt and dress for my niece, Britney. British television has grown on me, I have heaps of favorite shows, and I love that they're not so strict on content. They've got a 9pm rule where almost anything goes after 9pm as the gov't assumes kids who shouldn't be watching those shows will be in bed by then. Makes for some hilarious evening television.
One thing I'm still working on is pronunciation. I get endless stick (ribbing) about my American accent when trying to pronounce certain words. For example:
- Oregano: here its 'ore-GA-no. Emphasis on the GA.
- High Wycombe - high wick-um. Right.
The British are endlessly butchering: taco (tack-oh), salsa (sal-suh), and jalapenos (sorry no tilde for the 'N') as (and this is my personal favorite mispronunciation) jolly-pee-nos. I mean, REALLY?! Usually they just say the 'J' and not the accented 'N'. Oh, well.
Also, they almost always finish a statement with a question, don't they?? Cracks me up and I found myself doing it too.
One thing I've noticed, as well, is that most boys from about 10 years old and upward, LOVE going out in their 'trackie B's' or their track suit pants, AKA sweats or warm up pants. It's not pretty and considered pretty trashy, or 'chavy' as they'd say here. You don't want to be a chav. And nobody wants to see your pork sword on display.
Also, pants are underwear and trousers are pants, to us Americans. You also 'hoover' the room, not vacuum. A cart is a trolley, too. Got that? There's heaps more but I'm having a brain fart.
Tomorrow is the 1st of December, which means I come home in 3 weeks and it only took me a month of working on this to get it finished. We're getting a tree tomorrow, a Christmas one, if that confused you, and I'm super psyched! Then Sunday I am finally using my last year's Christmas present from Sarah Wells. It's a day with birds of prey. DOUBLE PSYCHED. I love hawks and birds like that so I can't wait. It's gonna be epic!
Sorry I've written a life story. More than I thought has happened this year. I never did get back to the rain story, so a brief word. It rained more here this summer than it has since they started records in 1910. Of course it has. Because I'm here. I only hope this is rock-bottom for the weather and it will only get better!...after winter, though. It's cold already. Like high of low 40's during the day. Boo.
Anyway, hope you've all enjoyed seeing my last year. Here's to another great year!
xx
B
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