Church @ St. Paul's Cathedral.

For my Sociology class I had to watch a court case at Old Bailey, one of the courtrooms in the City of London.  So while I was down there working on my homework (see I do homework on this trip, obviously) I was literally RIGHT NEXT to St. Paul's Cathedral.  So after watching a British court case, which was another story in itself on how I got there, I went inside St. Paul's to look around.  Well I was there around 4:30 and I saw there was a public church service at 5! Perfect!  I got to go to church @ St. Paul's Cathedral!  It was sooo pretty inside.  St. Paul's was the same church Princess Di and Charles married in, just a side note.  The service was wonderful and the preach, pastor, whatever they call it here, was a woman who talked about love & duty.  It was such a good service and I am defintley going back sometime.  I didn't know this before but St. Paul's has 4 services a day and also 4 services each Sunday!  Although I got some great pictures of the outside I couldn't take any pictures of the inside.  I guess I'll have to go back to the gift shop and buy some postcards =]

St. Paul's Cathedral Pictures

My American Valentine.

My Valentine "iPod" with my iLove playlist!!

Auntie Kim's London mailbox =]

The complete Valentine package.  The best Valentine's Day I've ever gotten sent to me from overseas!

Yesterday I came back from my flat after and adventurous afternoon of grocery shopping to see a box, a brown box, with my name on it!!!  The address was from Indiana; it was a Valentine from the States!  After tearing the box apart I found a tiny metal mailbox with my address (my London address) on it.  Inside the mailbox were pink & red socks, a little bottle of body wash and also an iPod...or should I say a Valentine "iPod".  A creative, special someone made me an iPod out of a sweetheart candy hearts box.  On the box was an iLove Playlist including: Kiss the Girl, Happy Together, You're my Sunshine and You're the One that I want.  The iPod also came with earbuds (string attached to 2 mini Reece's Cups...YUM, my favorite candies)!  The Valentine box also included a picture of Tyler from Christmas!! I think my heart broke into a billion pieces when I saw his cute little face, argyle sweater, and straw drumsticks.  Anyways, I LOVED the Valentine and I am soo happy that I have not been forgotten in the States.  I was getting worried because everyone else in my group had been getting packages...and everyday I looked...to see NOTHING!  =]

Anyways,  I loved my Valentine so Cupid...GOOD JOB!

Lots of Love from London!! Xxxx (kiss)

Museum Day!

Considering that I wasn't in Ireland this weekend I needed something to fulfill my time.  Not many people know this but London is home to more than 200 museums...many of those museums being free.  Therefore, I went to two different museums this Saturday including: the Museum of London and The Science Museum.  Here's a little synopsis of each one:

The Museum of London: This museums was the entire history, and detail of events, that happened in London until present time.  It included when London was filled with Native Americans and settlers to Roman London times, Medieval London (including the Black Plaugue which killed 40,000 people in London and at that time half the population!), the Great Fire of London (1666) and present events (while there they had an exhibit on homeless people in London including poems and artwork).  It was quite interesting and I enjoyed it...although the rest of my friends didn't. What can I say I just really like museums!

Interesting facts:

-The Great Fire of London was started in a bakery oven by a baker on Pudding Lane.

-The city of London had been dry for numerous days and all the houses and buildings were wooden; basically it isn't surprising the fire carried throughout most of the city based how it was set up.

- The great fire destroyed 4/5th of the City of London and overall destroyed 1/3 of all of London.

-Although one man was hung as responsible for the London Fire they to this day don't know who truly started the Fire of London.

-Although many people's homes and belongings were destroyed or burned to ash barely any people died and only a small few (I want to say around 70-something possibly) were hurt or injured.

The Science Museum:

The Science Museum was AMAZING.  It reminded me of the Indy Children's Museum back at home with a couple more grown up exhibits also.  They had this one floor called Launchpad which was all interactive stuff such as a long echo tube, pulleys and levers, making ice and more.  There were a ton of little British families and kids there and there my friends and I were, right with them trying to test out all the different machines!  Anyways, it was great but also HUGE so I definitely am going back there again. 

Below are some pictures from the 2 museums.  Most of them are from the Museum of London except for the last 1 or 2. 

Pictures!

Enjoy looking at them and hopefully I taught you something from my Museum Day =]

New London Hair...thank you Posh Spice.

The Posh Bob I wanted (minus the tattoo, I'll get that eventually. HAHA mom & dad, don't panic).

The back...inches lost.

Somewhat side view.  Thumbs up...I love it!

My new haircut, yeay!

So...after being bummed out from not going to Ireland, and bored from nobody wanting to do anything, my friend Lauren and I decided to get our hair cut.  Now before I left I had cut my hair to look more 'London'.  My hair used to be pretty long.  I had been growing it out for 2 years or so but before I left I got it cut pretty short compared to what it used to be.  Now it's even shorter!  

I wanted something shorter...less maintenance.  And cute.  The whole short in the back bob thing is pretty in right now and that's when the light bulb in my head went off.  Lauren and I went to the hairdresser and I found a picture in one of their hair magazines of Victoria Beckham, formerly Posh Spice, and saw it.  That is what I wanted. The Posh Bob!  So that is what I got all for 27 pounds (cheaper than what I pay in the states for a haircut).  I love it! I'm so glad I got my hair cut...why didn't get chop it short before?!? 

Well, I guess everyone was right when they said I'd come back from London a different person...I'll look completely different!

Toad in the Hole

As part of my British Life and Culture class our teacher, not professor...teacher, gave us the task of making a British dish in our flat groups.  He told us that him and his wife would come by and try each groups dish and then award prizes to the winning group.  Instantly, being Americans, each flat went into competition mode thinking of bigger and better ways to out due the other flats.  The British dish each group had to make was 'Toad in the Hole', a breakfast dish consisting of sausage and breading.  

This is what my flat did to beat out the competition.  First we cleaned up our flat.  Yes, even though we are girls it NEEDED cleaning.  Then, we set up the table; we took off one of our bed sheets to fold in half as a tablecloth, set the table, bought flowers for a centerpiece, and even framed a note for our teacher that said, "Welcome to the taste of London...on behalf of flat 40 we thank you for visiting!" (clever, huh?).  Oh, we also had symphony music playing on someone's laptop as background music.  We are classy.

To prepare the dish we first had to make the breading the night before our teacher came.  The recipie called for us to sift the flour.  Unfortunately we don't have that many cooking utensils in our flat so we had to use a tea strainer as a sifter, we were very dedicated to this dish!  Then, after we sifted 6 cups of flour through a small tea strainer we had to add eggs and milk to the batter.  After all that we let the batter sit for a night.

The next day before our teacher came we then cooked the sausages, put the batter in and cooked our Toad in the Hole.  We also made some additional items to our dinner.  I prepared a dessert tray consisting of Victoria Sponge Cake (white sponge cake with creme and raspberry jelly in between the 2 layers-it's delicious), chocolate wafers and Jaffa cakes (not as good as they sound - they are wafers with orange gel covered in chocolate coating, they'd be better without the orange gel).  We also decided that when our teacher came we were going to serve them mushy peas, a British veggie, with the Toad in the Hole.  Mushy peas, though they sound gross, are actually good! I really like them, better than regular peas!  

Anyways, we had the whole thing all planned.  We all were super prepared for our teacher to come, we were going to pull out their chairs, offer them tea, then offer them merlot (which they did take our offer on, we even had it chilled in our freezer but found out later merlot doesn't need to be chilled. oops!)  and make conversation with them about the other groups.  We all were really nervous before they came, we just wanted to win soooo badly! 

Well when they did end up coming we had a great time!  Like I said before they didn't want tea but they took up our merlot offer.  They even said our Toad in the Hole was good but the mushy peas...yes, those are suppose to be served HOT not cold.  We had them in the fridge before they came thinking they needed to be served cold.  Other than that we had a hilarious time talking to our teacher and his wife and learning about British food.

After the festivities our teacher than awarded us prizes.  Unfortunately we didn't win first place =[ Our teacher said it was a close call between us and the flat that won first place BUT we did win the better prize.  Our teacher gave us the designated 'rowdy group' prize: a 4-pack of Kenttish Ale! Yeay! And the first place winners only got 1 bottle of wine.  Lame! Haha!  Anyways we had a great time and enjoyed making and serving the meal. The pictures below show the whole process.

Toad in the Hole Pictures...

Here's the recipe if you'd like to make it yourself:

8 sausages

4 tablespoons cooking oil

For the batter:

6 oz plain flour

pinch of salt

1 egg

1 egg white

8-10 fluid oz. milk

(The batter can be made up to 24 hours in advance)

1. Sift the flour with the salt.  Add the egg and egg white to flour. 

2. Whisk in 8 fl. oz. of milk. To check consistency of batter lift spoon in and out of batter; the batter should hold and coat back of spoon.

3. Let batter rest for at least 30 minutes.

4. Be sure to cook sausages before baking the dish.

5. In a roasting tin, put sausages in roasting tin.  Pour in batter up to three quarters of the way up the sausage. 

6. Place in oven at 220 degrees C or 425 degrees F and bake for 35-45 minutes.

7. After the toads are ready, get your HP (brown) sauce and eat.  Yum!  Don't forget the tea =]

PS- Toad in the Hole is best served with Onion Gravy or fried onions on top.  

Snow Day in London

So as many of you have heard London had a snow storm last Monday but English snow storms are not the same as US snow storms. As most of you are scraping 6 inches of snow off of your cars daily, or salting ice off of your sidewalks, Londoners are usually just taking their umbrellas with them everywhere they go. When it "snows" here it usually just flurries and doesn't even stick to the ground. Sunday night was different; there were HUGE flakes coming down and before my flat mates and I knew snow was ACCUMULATING on the ground! It was INSANE! There were groups of people on the street throwing snow balls, playing in the snow and having fun in the winter wonderland. Our teachers told us later that many kids from London had probably never seen snow like this before (that is, snow on the ground in fluffy white balls).  The snowstorm was the most snow London had had in 16 years!

Anyways, the next morning when I woke up, early, I was about to shower when my flat mate Danielle says, "SCHOOL'S CANCELLED!" I look out the window and what do I see? Oh, only about 2 inches of snow!!! Not joking at all, it was barely anything. It was equivalent to the amount that the midwest sees in about an hour of snow.  

So all of us Midwest kids thought it was ridiculous that London completely shut down from 2 inches of snow.  The news all day was about: the weather.  One reporter even said, "There is no new news besides the weather.  The weather is the only news."  Also, the tube was closed.  Early that morning all the buses were out of order but later on in the day a couple buses were running.  All the schools in London were closed and since the tubes were down many Londoners couldn't go to work either.  Londoners were crazy about the snow!

Anyways, I posted some pictures from the snow day.  I tried to take pictures outside of my flat window of the street covered in a "snowstorm" but they came out a little shaky.  Also, some kids from our Ball State group, out of sheer boredom during the snow day, came up with a game called "Sockball" inspired by a Friends episode.   Since we didn't have a ball to throw around we had to make a ball with someone's clean pair of socks rolled into a ball.  Basically, sockball requires the group of people playing to continuously throw the 'ball' for as long as possible without dropping it.  If a player drops sockball 3 times they are out.  If there is doubt about who dropped sockball the group can do a chirp-vote, inspired by the 'chirp' Cardinal call, to see who the strike is against.  Our goal was for sockball to last 5 minutes...we got to 3 minutes before we decided to watch a movie.  Sockball is definitely a winning game we will bring back to Muncie.

Pictures from SNOW DAY!

Not the best weekend in London =[

So this weekend five of my friends and I were suppose to travel to Ireland. YEAY!...or so we thought.  We had the whole weekend completely planned. Here's how it went:

Thursday: class until 1:30 p.m., 3 p.m. leave for airport, 6 p.m. get on plane to Ireland, 8 p.m. arrive in Dublin, Ireland and go to our first hostel, and the rest of the night was free for us to eat in an Irish restaraunt, shop and see the locals!

Friday: Start our 3 day Southern Ireland tour...arrive in Kilarney.

Saturday: Complete 2nd Day of tour...arrive in Doolin that night.

Sunday: Complete the end of tour, arrive back in Dublin and fly back to London around 9 p.m.

Sounds like a pretty fun and exciting weekend, right?  Well here's how the story went:

We all, including myself, stay up super late Thursday night trying to complete our first assignment (a paper) for our British life & culture class, while also trying to pack our whole weekend belongings into a backpack (not easy), and making sure we have everything including our e-tickets, booking confirmations, passport, euros, etc.  Wed. night I am up till 2:30 a.m. trying to get everything done and I have class at 9 a.m. the next morning.

The next day everything goes fine.  We get through another day of class, get Euros, get our stuff together, get everyone together and leave.  We get on the tube to the Victoria station, take an express train to Gatwick airport and finally arrive at the airport with plenty of time to spare.  I even say to the group, "Wow you guys, this is going way too smooth.  Something has gotta go wrong!"  Well, knock on wood! Something DOES go VERY wrong!  We get to the Aerlingus counter where we are suppose to check in and we see a sign that says: all fights to Ireland cancelled until tomorrow.  WHAT?!?! Apparently, Dublin's airport had snow the 2 days before and although some areas the snow was melting, by the airports it was really cold and the runways were icing over.   

So, I myself don't really worry much so I just think, "Ok now what do we do?" while others in our group, not all but some, go straight into panic mode.  After running around in circles we get directed to another counter to find out our flight options.  Somehow I get nominated to call the tour guide company we are suppose to meet at 8 a.m. tomorrow and talk to them.

After many phone calls to Irish people, discussion (including a little grumpiness and complaining because we all are loosing money on this trip) and weighing out our options we figure that we can either:

a- Book a flight for tomorrow morning, meet up with the tour group by catching a train from Dublin to Kilarney, miss a day of the tour and still have 2 and 1/2 days.

b- get our airline ticket refunded, lose money on the tour and stay in London.

So...we stayed in London.  Not the weekend we had planned for =[  Although it's a day later many of group are still grumpy but what can you do?  We couldn't plan the weather so we might as well just get over it and remember to check departing flights before we leave our flat.  Anyways, that's my first traveling outside of London adventure.  It ended before it began!  Well, at least there is a lot to do in London and now I have time to catch up on sleep!

Oh and I already have my homework done so now I am footloose and fancy free the WHOLE weekend =]