our 4th week in London!!!

Hallo hallo from London Central—I’m coming to you from a crazy packed Starbucks {yes I know} off of Tottenham Court Road down the street from the British Museum and if I go outside and look up the street to the left I can see the London Eye, which rests on the banks of the River Thames…

So I believe I’m sitting pretty.

I would love to tell you about our 4th week in London; and hopefully I will be able to relate this week to you with more detail and more effectively than some of my other entries simply because this week has just happened! I am not writing two weeks out, I am writing directly after it has happened!

{on a random side note I just started a new blog…which I find very hilarious especially when I have found it so difficult to stay dedicated and on top of ONE blog…oh well we will see what happens ha ha}

Monday the 18th of October

A wonderful start to the week—after classes we all headed….

{On another side note if you are wondering what I do in the mornings when all of the students are in class I with a bit of shame tell you that I usually sleep in…unless I hear my alarm, which if you have roomed with me you will know is a miracle in itself…I have a nice breakfast, including and entire pot of tea; I sometimes run errands for Lauren in the city; once or twice I have headed to a coffee shop for some time alone…but mostly I just relax, read, or {this is the shameful part} watch “the Office”….I know I’m obsessed.}

so after the students’ got done with classes and after a quick lunch we all headed to the National Gallery—once inside we basically dispersed and I actually did not see the majority of our group for the rest of the day…the gallery is massive and wonderful.

It consists of paintings from the Italian Renaissance all the way to the Impressionist period including pieces by Monet, Cézanne, and Van Gogh.

I chose Mindy as my Gallery buddy, one because I know if I wandered off alone I would not see anyone for the rest of the day…which would have been fine, but I wanted a buddy to explore with. Mindy and I go through museums at about the same pace so we decided to team up {ha ha} We had fun looking at all of the works, and especially commenting on the creepy baby faces in the majority of the paintings….they painted babies with adult features so it for sure makes them look creepy because it looks like little weird wrinkly people floating around in all of these religiously solemn paintings. That might be an exaggeration…but if it is I do not think it is too much of one. ;)

After we made our way through the entire museum…I know right we did it! Took us about 2 and half hours…we headed in search of coffee! Well I looked for coffee Mindy is a tea lover herself.

We stopped in a chain bookstore, like Barnes and Noble, and settled down with some Costa Coffee (a brand over here). And I had the most excellent cup of coffee I have had sense I’ve been here: it is called a Flat White…now I do not remember if we have these in the States but I sure hope we do because I will get them all of the time!

Basically…at least as far as I’ve been able to figure it out…it is like a latte but with less milk and more espresso….so you still get the latte taste without all of the extra milk…you get more of the strong espresso coffee taste…which let’s face it is just amazing!

I also found a gluten free brownie there! {mom they are so gluten friendly here you would be in heaven} Mindy and I had some good heart to heart convo and just relaxed and talked for a while…which is just so nice and one of my all time favorite things to do…sit and just talk to someone over a great cup of coffee/tea ;)

After we indulged…Mindy got a huge hot chocolate and a huge chocolate muffin! ;)…we wandered about the city—at first in search of a Tube station but then we just kind of ended up wandering, which was great!

We finally found a Tube and headed back to the flat! A great day if I do say so myself.

{Another side note…man we have a lot of these…we do go out at night occasionally—however as strange as it sounds a lot of stores/places close pretty early around London…some as early as 9 or 10…so unless you are going to a Pub or a club there really are not too many places to go at night…aside from shows, ballets, plays etc…so most evenings we just hang in the flat, the girls do homework, the guys come over and we play crazy random group games! AKA picto-phone!}

Tuesday the 19th of October

Another trip day…where did we off to?

Dover Castle (including the cliffs) and Canterbury!!!

Our first stop was Dover Castle and surprisingly enough we did not go to the castle itself but underneath…we toured the tunnels that were constructed back in pre-Napoleonic times to house army troops…it was later used during the World Wars as a place of war operation and secret headquarters.

It was very interesting…reminded me a lot of the Churchill Museum in London; which makes sense because most of the exhibit had to do with WWII, which is obviously the war Churchill was involved with.

After the tour we headed to the beach for a quick look at the white cliffs of Dover! Oh they were beautiful indeed—that was the other weird thing about the tunnels was that could they are actually IN the white cliffs…back in the day they had doors that led out from the tunnels to the cliffs so the officers could see if anyone was trying to invade England from the Channel.

After the cliffs we hopped back on the bus and headed to Canterbury! Our goal in Canterbury, besides eating lunch, was to see the Cathedral where St. Thomas a Beckett was murdered…and obviously because of his murder he was Sainted by the Catholic church…so the sight because an ideal place for Christians to make a pilgrimage to back in the 12th-14th centuries! ---Hence the Canterbury Tales by William Chaucer…it’s all coming together now isn’t it!?

So we made it to Canterbury broke for lunch and this is when Stephanie, Mindy, and I began our desperate search for “fish and chips,” and finally with only about 30 minutes to spare we found a place that served it! We told our servers we only had 30 minutes, we told him what we wanted, and 15 minutes later we were eating our huge “fish and chips!’ ha ha

And then with only 3 minutes to spar we paid, booked it out of the restaurant and met up with our group ready for our tour of the Cathedral!

It was beautiful inside and it was basically a self guided tour however they had “guides” spread out all over the church ready to answer any questions we had about the building or the history behind it…we ended up talking to one man for quite some time; he was very informative and fun to listen to!

Lauren K, Lyndsey, Mindy, Stephanie, and I headed to find some coffee and dessert after we had had our fill of the Cathedral…it took us a while to settle on a place but finally we did---everyone got gelato except me, I got some coffee! : )

After another quick stop at H & M {there was a sale} we hopped back onto the bus and headed for London!

Wednesday the 20th of October

This day was an excellent day because we arose early…..{well 4 of us did} and headed to the Victoria Apollo Theatre to get tickets for WICKED!!!!! And did we get them at a reasonable price you ask?! Heck yes we got them for 25 pounds per person! And they were not bad seats at all! Two of them were 6 rows back from the stage and the others were front row…now that made a lot of us nervous {neck craning was not a desirable feat to be performed} but the front row seats, in general, were nice—they could see everything and enjoyed the show! Mindy and I sat in the seats a few rows back.

And earlier that day Stephanie, Mindy, and I decided to venture out and find the Twinning’s teashop! It is the only “official” brand shop in the city {I think maybe in the world…} I mean obviously the brand of tea is sold everywhere but this is the only official shop. After a bit of wandering we finally found it! And got a couple pictures and of course bought some tea!

But anyways back to Wicked…it was wonderful. It was my first time to see the show…I actually did not really know too much about the story line so I was a newby for sure! And I loved it! So wonderful. Great music. Hilariously funny. I have to say I really liked Glenda! Ha ha she made me laugh a whole lot!

So it was a great night full of magic and mystery of course ice cream…..it is still so funny to me how they serve ice cream and other snacks out of bags during intermission, like they do at baseball games! Oh my the British are funny funny people and I love them! : )

Also, back tracking to earlier in the day, Mindy and Stephanie were so kind to come with me to South Kingston! I had to go out there and find a restaurant for our group meal on Friday. So we headed out there and luckily there were several restaurants close to the Tube station so we headed into one called Café Chino…the owner was very kind and said he could accommodate 15 people for Friday night—so I said PUT US DOWN! Ha ha

I was a little nervous about the place just because we had picked it so quickly…but more on that later…

Thursday the 21st of October

Today was the day we went to the Museum of London!---it was quite an excellent experience.

The museum has artifacts from the time “before London” when it was inhabited by the original peoples, animals, etc, to the Roman times, then onto medieval London—complete with an interactive video about the black plague, the museum then covered the Great Fire of London, Victorian times—with a walk through “garden party”, and walk through “down town London” complete with shops; THEN (I know right) onto London during the World Wars with spoken memories from survivors of the London bombings; then they had modern London with artifacts such as a 1960s dress with the Beatles faces on it, to the Lord Mayor’s epic carriage…..whew.

A lot of stuff—kind of over whelming, but really interesting to see London unfold before our eyes in just a couple of hours.

They also had a great gift shop too! Ha ha and I don’t really remark on gift shops often because they are pretty much all the same BUT this one just had a lot of great stuff and a lot of variety from books to mugs and key chains. Ha ha

However my favorite part of the evening was when Stephanie showed me what she’d bought at the shop….a family tree poster of all the kings and queens of England!!!!! WE HAVE BEEN TRYING TO FIGURE OUT THIS MONARCHY LINE THING FOR A WHILE! Ever since we saw Henry IV at the Globe! Ha ha

So we spread out the poster on my bed and went down the family tree until we were satisfied in our understanding on the British Monarchy…who killed whom and who married whom…who stole the thrown from which cousin etc

Friday the 22nd of October

What an excellent day this was---Lauren Bryan Knight is an excellent chief, cook, baker, foodie WHATEVER you would like to call her…and in her excellence she picked a couple of recipes to make for the group to have as a late night dessert after we attended the Philharmonic concert.

So I was off on an early morning adventure to purchase the ingredients for the desserts!
I found almost all of the ingredients down the street at Sainsbury’s…but there were a few items that I had to go on the hunt for:
*Vanilla extract/flavoring
*corn startch
*apple sauce
*ice cream

They were out of our “favorite” ice cream at Mark and Spenser’s…and they did not have any of the other items either…so I went to Tesco’s—my 3rd grocery store of the day…but they are all in a very short walking distance so it was not too much trouble.

At Tesco’s I found the vanilla flavoring, but I asked 3 workers if they had corn starch and now of them knew what I was talking about…one lady pointed to the corn flour when I asked her where it was so….no luck on that one. Also the apple sauce…they apparently do not have apple sauce like we do in the States; at least not in the city…so when I asked one of the workers he led me to the jelly/meat dressings section…the apple “sauce” I got said “great with pork” on the front. Ha ha which it probably is…but the stuff I got is more like the cranberry sauce you have at grandma’s on holidays…. chunkier more than soupier…so it actually ended up being perfect for our APPLE CAKE! Because who doesn’t like a little bit of chunky apple in their apple spice cake with cream cheese frosting! : )

So I headed back to the flat and started doing some of the prep work for Lauren…Lauren arrived and started finishing up the dishes…we made an apple spice cake (as I said above) and a mixed berry cobbler…for time sake Lauren planned to leave the concert early and come back to pop them into the oven so they would be nice and hot when the group arrived.

After helping Lauren I rushed back to my room to get ready…I had only about 25 minutes….I’d say I clean up pretty well ;) then we headed to the concert!

It was fun because Nathan Guy (our Bible teacher who has just moved over here to go to school) and his wife got to come with us!
They met us at the restaurant which…sigh…apparently was supposed to be horrible. I looked up the phone number online that afternoon before our reservation to confirm with the owner that we were coming…and while online I stumbled across SEVERAL (4) really bad reviews about the service and the food… I was kind of freaking out. Ha ha

But the owner and the servers had been very kind when I made the reservations…there were a lot of people at the restaurant when I made the reservation…so I told a couple of people, but mostly just prayed that the food would be good.

Nathan Guy’s wife, Christina, even said something to Lauren right after she got there that she had read some bad reviews about the place…ha ha so we were all kind of crossing our fingers…..and…..

It ended up being great! Everyone was satisfied. It was a great price, and no one threw up after! ;) So it worked out well…and I’m pretty sure I asked everyone if their food was good! I wanted to make sure!

We headed to the concert hall…and seated ourselves ready for a night of musical entertainment! It was beautiful…so soothing…I will admit I almost fell asleep! Ha ha

And the interior of the building was also beautiful; it really added to the experience—and everyone was dressed up really nice, which was fun to see!

We headed back to the flat’s and while the dessert was finishing up started to play a little game…Kind Frog…yes this game consists of animals noises and motions and let me tell you that Dr. Organ can do an amazing impression of an elephant! Ha ha we had fun and play the game for a bit before the dessert was ready.

One of the highlights of the evening for me, however, was when we each had to show a talent or tell a story to receive our grocery allowance for the week…ha ha I did my little squeaky voice (Anna B. if you are reading this knows what I am talking about), there were some baton twirling routines, funny poo stories, some lame *cough* jokes….it was pretty funny.

A great night had by all.

Saturday the 23 of October

Ok I am really ashamed well kind of embarrassed by this day…ok I woke up and made whole wheat cinnamon walnut pancakes for every body! Because we had some extra ingredients from baking and what a better way to use them up than by making breakfast for your friends!

So I had so much fun making breakfast for everyone because they had a big study session for their mid-term at noon—a great way to send them off to study…after they all left I made myself some brunch and then put on a disk of “the Office”….I was super tired…which should not have happened because I’d slept in BUT then I realized…oh crap I ate WAY more dessert last night than I should have and the pancakes had sugar in them this morning as well…

I have not been eating sugar or white flour for over a year now…obviously I occasionally do but in general I try to avoid them for health reasons and because NOW since I do not eat them very often when I do they really affect me….and the sugar really affected me big time because I lied down to watch the office around 1 and did not get up again until oh about 5……….and I was STILL TIRED!!!

I just feel kind of drugged…basically a huge sugar crash! So I woke up watched the two new office episodes with Stephanie then pretty much went to bed on time….so today I feel better BUT I will not eat that amount of dessert THEN sugar pancakes the next day. For the love. Oh my body why are you so weirdly sensitive to foods!

Sunday the 24th of October

Great day. Went to Wembly Church of Christ again via the excellent route Nathan Guy told us about…came home. Ate. Hung out.

Then Stephanie and I went to Starbucks!!! She to study and I to write my blogs which I had neglected.

After Stephanie left to go to Bible class, I met too lovely girls from Hillsong Church who got my number and invited me to coffee! It was a really random thing…they were wandering around looking for a seat, I offered them my table because I was about to leave and one of the women immediately asked me, “Do you go to Church?” (Hillsong London folks just call it “Church” and the met right down the street from this Starbucks) And I was like, “No, I mean yes I do go to Hillsong, I just have not been today.”

They both just started smiling and talking; turns out they are on Hillsong London staff; one is from Malaysia and the other from South Africa! So we just had a nice little chat before I left to come back and get ready for 6 p.m. service at Church!

They got my number, texted me their’s, and said sometimes they go out for coffee after church and if they went they would call me! ha ha so sweet! What a blessing to meet some of my sister’s in a coffee shop in London! And all 3 of us are not even from the same country or speak the first same language! Wow I just love God and love how He is so universal!!!

And now here I sit…no longer in Starbucks (where I began this entry) but in my flat on Great Russell Street. Church was great. So encouraging I meet someone new and friendly and welcoming every time I go!

Thank you God for being everywhere and showing up everywhere even when we least expect it!

This next we is pretty bare for “planned” group activities…so hopefully we will find some grand adventures to partake in!

If you are reading thank you! Comments are always appreciated; I would love to know you’re experience this journey via blogspot with me!

Kisses hugs love
Caroline <><