Recipes, Religion, Racing and Ranting

Saturday Fish, Dan and I went to Portabello Market again, this time we got delicious fruit for amazing deals and we decided to make a real meal that night. So Some of the best deals I have found in London bought me the ingredients to the best meal I have had since I have arrived. We got enough potatoes for three people for two or three nights all for £1!! Asparagus, onions, lemon, rosemary, and fruit for the rest of the week...I don't remember how much because we all paid for different things, but by far the best deal ever a whole chicken for £3, yes that's right the WHOLE thing for only that much. Fish and I cooked dinner that evening for a few hours but it was very fun and made me feel at home. I started off by massaging the chicken with olive oil (which was a bit awkward) then seasoned it with salt, pepper and rosemary; then I stuffed it with onions lemon and more rosemary. We stuck it in the oven for two hours and in the mean time we baked a chocolate cake and attempted to make frosting without powdered sugar because they do not have powdered sugar in London...we also made fried potatoes and asparagus with a cream sauce. When everything was cooked we thought we would have leftovers for days. That didn't work out as planned because everything was so delicious that we ate everything among the three of us. It was delicious. We decided after devouring our meal that we would maintain this tradition and would do this once a week, next week it's Dan's week to cook. However, he won't tell us what he is going to make and keeps asking strange probing questions to figure out what foods we like or dislike...We will see how it turns out, but I am very curious about what he has planned.

Sunday the hunt for a church home continued. this week it was my turn to choose where we would attend our service. So Sunday morning Dan, Fish and I woke up early put on our Sunday best and headed to Hinde United Methodist Church. We were easily the youngest people there by at least forty years. But we had been searching for a traditional service for weeks now, and I sure found one. It was an interesting sermon that jumped right into anti-semitism. We then took communion and I noticed that during communion we not only gave thanks to God, but they also added a little onto the service; we wished the Queen health and prosperity. The church was beautiful and over two hundred and fifty years old, and I am excited to return to it, but maybe attend a later service which apparently has a congregation closer in age to us according to the pastor. The rest of Sunday was a bit lazy for me...I took a nap and then went for a walk in the park and found a lovely bench to sit in the sun and read for a few hours. The weather hit a record high for London this weekend, but I found it just warm enough for a wonderful afternoon outdoors which was the perfect end to a beautiful weekend.

Monday rolls around and I find myself in a lethargic mood, I don't want to run, I don't want to go to class, I frankly don't want to do anything. So that's when I decided it was time for me to get serious about being here now. I am requiring myself to run everyday regardless of what excuses I come up with, and I am having my friends help me enforce my new training policy. Shakespeare class was actually really good as I knew the history of some of the theaters thanks to my internship, and I was able to talk about the history of the areas surrounding Hoxton because I have researched it for the Hoxton Trust. Basically nothing really interesting happened Monday.

Tuesday's are internship day numero uno of the week. Before heading off to work though I went for a serious run. I ran for forty five minutes at a moderate fast pace. I decided it was a good day for some hill running as I jogged to St. James Park. Starting my watch in St. James Park I started zig zagging through the morning commuters and found my way to Green Park which has plenty of slow gradual hills that allow for a nice slow burning sensation in the quads. After running around there for a while I ran into a women who obviously is a marathon runner, she looked quite intense and we were going the same direction so naturally I had to keep up with her so I picked up my pace and matched hers. She noticed and I think she got a tad annoyed cause she picked up the pace but now I'm thinking "oh yay a mini race" so basically we just keep picking up the pace running loops through Green Park and when we reached the end of a path she let out a huge smile and said "Cheers!" I then proceeded to head into Hyde Park and ran up and down some hills. I lost track of time and realized I needed to be showering in five minutes to be on schedule to make it to my internship, so I booked it back to Vandon House. I really enjoy my internship, the work is interesting and I get to do a lot to help out and I feel like I am learning a ton about not only marketing but how to implement and present my ideas. One interesting thing about my internship is that it is creating a tea drinking habit, I actually really like tea and coffee now, and the British culture of tea and coffee at work is actually quite enjoyable because it gives you breaks to socialize and after the break you are full of caffeine so very productive until the next crash hits, but then its just time for another tea break.

Now time for my little rant about my computer and phone conspiring against me at Vandon House. We have wireless at Vandon and other people can access it at almost all times. It is slow for most people, but I think my electronic gadgets don't have a positive relationship with the Pella wireless router because they cannot even acknowledge that there is wireless available. It is extremely frustrating and prevents me from conversing with family and friends and from blogging on a regular basis. Ok I'm better now just needed to let everyone know how bad the Internet is where I live and that is why I cannot put up pictures...Anyways I promise to have more exciting things to write about next time.

Sunshine at Stonehenge and Bath

This Friday the Central College group ventured out to Stonehenge and Bath for the day. Upon arrival to Stonehenge I was surprised how it is a lot smaller than I had expected even when I had been told that it would be smaller than you think; it still took be by surprise. It was really cool though. They moved those large stones over two hundred miles and then they still had to position them. It made me wonder how many people got squished in the process...not a pleasant thought but still intriguing to think about how they accomplished the task. Besides the actual stone structure there were other interesting things to observe also. There were many small mounds scattered among the rolling hills surrounding Stonehenge, and these were ancient burial grounds and all around them were grazing sheep.
After that we moved onto the next phase of our journey, Bath. On the bus ride there I decided to eat my orange I packed for myself...now this started off going well a delicious orange treat after walking around outside on what is an record high day in London, but it would have been a cool front for Texas. Suddenly however, my leg started to feel irritated and then it began to burn extremely bad; the peel of the orange had been sitting in my lap and had started to burn my legs. I threw away the orange and washed off my legs but the burning persisted and grew worse for the next forty or so minutes. Fish was trying to distract me by playing twenty questions with me until we arrived in Bath, and then the miracle of Bath occurred. As soon as we arrived the burning stopped immediately, unfortunately I still have a lovely red rash where the orange peel was, but it's slowly healing.
When we got to Bath we took a self guided audio tour of the premises. I thought it was very interesting and my favorite part besides viewing the pools was seeing these tiny metal sheets people would write curses on and through them into the hot springs to inspire the God Minerva to seek revenge on their wrongdoers. It would have been incredible to see it in its heyday and actually get to use its pools. After taking my time in the museum and looking around I went and walked around the city of Bath, got some food and walked across one of three bridges in the world that is lined with shops still in existence.
The day was filled with beautiful sites and was a break from the big city, and was just what I needed to start my weekend off right!