Day 2

Today was a great day in London:

First we started out on a bus tour. Now this normally would be too touristy for my family, but it ended up being a great deal. This bus would take us around town to all of the hot spots in London and we could get off for as long as we would like, and take pics, go into the point of interest, or do whatever. Then later on we could just catch the next one that came along, no charge, and it would just keep going to the next spot. So we got some really great photos and a real quick nice tour of London. This also included a boat tour, so we got to see London from another perspective too.

Next we went to the theater district and caught tickets to go see Lion King. AMAZING SHOW!!! Absolutely amazing! I loved the music, the acting, and the costumes were fantastic. I could go on and on about it. Oh and they served ice cream at intermission, why we don't do this in america i don't know!!!

Next we headed to this cute little bar to have some drinks before meeting Emme's friend Ann and her mother for dinner. We went to this neat little dive called, Gourmet Burger Kitchen (GBK), and my burger was this: No bun, bottom layer of grilled eggplant, next layer grilled sweet potato, next layer camberet cheese (like brie), next layer grilled red pepper, next layer grilled portobello mushroom. AMAZING! all over a bed of rocket (arugala here). Then we came home from our long day away, and are awaiting really scary weather!! Some really high winds and rain... eeeegads!!

Tomorrow we are off to the Tate Modern, maaaaybe the tower of london if the weather isn't too bad and the lines aren't too long. Then tomorrow night we might be going to see another show (maybe billy elliot). We're just kind of open w/ our plans, so i'll let you know how it went.

Cheerio!

Our First Day!

Well we finally made it here and we had a wonderful day with Ms. Emme Cake! She showed us around her town and we had a wonderful time.

To start off the day we went to our Bed and Breakfast, The Barclay House.
Its a quaint little place, but its just enough room for all 4 of us. Tomorrow we will get a traditional English breakfast served to us by the owners of the house. I'll update pictures hopefully soon of the B&B.

Then Emme took us to this cute little restaurant called The Stock Pot. We each fueled up for our day and headed out. The weather here is kind of nasty so we were bundled up and prepared to walk thru the wind and the drizzle. We set out on our first stop for the day Borough Market. If you love food, this is the place to go. It is a foodie Mecca, filled with every type of indgredient, specialty food, and local food you can imagine. It's all there. The hustle and bustle of the vendors and the shoppers is a lot to soak in, but its a blast once you get used to it.

We then went and saw Big Ben, Parliament and a tiny view of the London Eye. On our way back we stopped by an amazing cupcake place called Hummingbird. Oh my word, I had a nutella cupcake, and emme and mom had carrot cake. They were awesome! Then we decided to duck into Harrods because it was on my dad's list of sights to see :). He's such a funny man!

Next Emme took us to her cute apartment to gather her things and then we came back to the part of town that our B&B is in. We decided to eat close to home tonight because we were sooo tired from the day. So we ate at this fantastic Vietnamese place and all of us had Pho (its like a Vietnamese noodle soup, amazing!). Then we came back to our place of residence for the next 5 days and we're about to crash. We're pretty tired, but hopefully we'll be able to get going early tomorrow on a bus tour and see some museums!!

Cheerio!

WE MADE IT!!!

WE MADE IT!!!
I'm sitting here in the B&B w/ my family. We're about to leave to go out on the town. It's 1 pm here/ 7 am in TX. woohoo. TIIIIIREEEEED!

Anyways, i'll update later. but just wanted to check in and say that i'm here.

So far so... well not so good...

Well things started out pretty crazy yesterday. I got to the airport and there was terrible weather in Dallas. So they canceled all American Airlines flights into DFW, so it was a total mad house in ABIA. Thank goodness for my quick thinking (and witted if I might add) mother, who bought me a ticket on Southwest to get home to dallas.

Well our day continued suit today as well. There was no way that we were going to be able to fly standby out of Dallas today so we decided that we were going to drive to Houston and try and catch a flight on another airlines who would still honor our standby passenger status. So we finally get to the British Air counter and some crazy stuff happened. To make a long story short American didn't add a certain tax to our ticket and we ended up missing our flight.

So right now we're sitting in the airport praying that we are going to be able to get on a flight to London. And we are sending in an extra prayer that we will be able to sit in business class.

Here are some highlights of our trip to London so far:

We saw a mountee (yes like in Canada) in the Walmart parking lot in the woodlands. Horse and all.

Just listening to my parents loving banter with each other. Most of the discussion centered around The Girls Next door and how our family could soooo be a reality show.

Eating subway on the road as we tried to make it to the airport. It's harder than it sounds.

Passing by the prison and the humongous statue of Sam Houston in Huntsville.

Riding a terminal train that was about as small as a matchbox and about as fast as a boat on "It's a small world after all" in Disneyworld.

Hearing my dad begin his British accent for the trip. If you don't know my father, than you should know that his accent will begin to adapt in whatever culture is represented. This includes Mexican restaurants, Chinese Buffets, the british voice on any answering machine. So now that we are going to London, this should be fun.

So if anyone is reading this... say a little prayer that we get on the flight!

I can't wait to see my sister!!!

Cheerio!

History of Love

So I just started reading this book called "The History of Love," by Nicole Krauss. I'm going to London on Friday (whoot whoot!) and needed something to read on the plane, but as soon as I picked up this book I couldn't put it down. Well except to write this post, but I don't like to be too technical.

It's basically about this guy who fell in love with this girl when he was very young, the girl got shipped to America from their home in Slonim. He saved up money for years and years to be able to go live with her in America, then the Germans invaded, and being Jewish he had to flee. Once he got to America he found her and she had married someone else. She had been pregnant when she left Slonim with his child. He vows to never love again, and lives watching his son and his wife from afar. In vowing to never love again, he keeps himself at a distance from everything that requires him to love life.

I just really hope I never turn out this way.

Thoughts on Love and Change

So last night I was watching the L word and its the episode that Shane leaves Carmen at the altar of their wedding day. And the reason that she has left is because her father has left his wife to sleep around with other women. She's constantly reminded throughout the show that she is just like him, and that she's got his character. I think that she sees how this character can hurt someone and shatter someone's dream of a family and children.

I don't think Shane left Carmen out of selfishness, I think that she left Carmen because she felt that her character could never change, and that she didn't want to end up hurting Carmen. UHHH! This broke my heart. I can't stand it when I get so involved with fictional characters that I'm heart broken the next morning because of what was written in a script and happened on the television the night before. But it got me thinking. Can love change a person, or does a person always stay who they were before the relationship?

I mean I believe that all relationships have an effect on who you are and how you make decisions and why you react in certain ways. But I'm still confused if relationships can completely change your person. Speaking from personal experience: the 2 relationships I have been in over my lifetime have been completely different. The first was a constant struggle to not allow myself to completely change, my soul would not allow it, even if I tried, I could not change who I was. It wasn't possible and it allowed me to spiral into a deep dark place. But once I finally realized what was occurring, I couldn't allow it to happen anymore. So I ended it.

But now that I'm in this new relationship, it feels different. I wouldn't say that I'm the same person I was before I was in this relationship, but I also feel comfortable being myself. Its a strange feeling, wanting to become a better person, but also trying to keep your personhood ( i think i just made up this word :) )
This relationship drives me to want to do better, be better, feel better. But it also doesn't ask me to be someone that I'm no where close to being. Not saying that this doesn't come without hardship, sometimes it does feel like I am stretching myself to react in a way that isn't my first instinct, or to say something that isn't the first thing that comes to mind. I'm learning to be a more loving, more gracious, more patient individual while being with another individual who is very much an individual. I'm learning to love that person with all their individuality, their quirks, bad days, baggage and faults. And to my surprise I'm realizing that I'm loved and graciously accepted with all of mine.

Here's to change!

So this is now my life every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning... why do I put myself through these terrible experiences?

No I'm not in the military, I'm putting myself through work out hell every morning. Right now my fingers that I'm using to type this post is about the only thing I can move in my body right now. The first day we did a fitness test, 1 mile, crunches for 1 minute, and push ups till you maxed out. On Monday we did a hellish cornucopia of exercises: A mile run, dips, push ups, sit ups, running lifts, squats, lunges, bear crawls, at an unstoppable rate. I mean it really sucked, especially being at 5:30 in the morning, but after it was all over I felt great. And hopefully at the end of the month when the class is over my body will feel great too.

Other than that my life has been pretty much the same. Working at Lifesteps. I've started with my new groups. I'm having a hard time separating myself from the kids. Its hard going home for the day and knowing or really not knowing what is going to happen to them when they go home. I find that its been hard for me to fall asleep without scanning through each name, each face, each story and praying over each one. Sometimes I've found that my irritability and my impatience with people after work is because of things that I come across at work. I've never really connected that before, but it makes sense.