Hey Everyone!
Happy Canadian Thanksgiving! I wish I was eating some turkey tonight with some dressing and pumpkin pie..but I'm not! hehehe.
I have SOOO much to be thankful for this year:
1) My family..thanks for supporting this big trip!
2) My friends at home. You know who you are, I think about you ALL often!
3) The people who read this silly blog! I love finding out who's checking it out but even more..I LOVE COMMENTS!
4) The opportunity to do this big trip!
5) My friend who is here with me. I'd be lost without her.

Anyways....My Friday to Sunday in a flash!

First thing Friday morning we had a meeting with Protocol, another teaching agency like SMART. We decided that it would be good to go through two agencies, that way if one didn't have us work that day, hopefully the other will! After our meeting we bummed around having some burger and a beer at a local pub. You guys do not even KNOW what I'd do for a jug of Clam, If you told me if I hopped up and down on one foot down a street naked, I'd do it! Beer just isn't the same without some juice. During dinner time, we decided to flip a coin for rooms at the new flat. Marlee called it in the air, as the quarter landed, it landed in this big thing of salsa! I dug it out, turns out I won...weird, I NEVER win! Anyways, I ended up with the master bedroom, complete with a fire place and beautiful bay windows (once we get the net i'll post some pics) Marlee's room is SO cute (I'm jealous) she's got it decorated so darn cute!

After dinner we went to our hostel and picked up our stuff then headed to our new flat! YAY! I was so excited I nearly peed my pants (I held it in though, don't worry) We got into our house around 4:30 and had a meeting with our agency lady. By this time it was around 5 and although we had a flat, we didn't have ANY bedding! We then mapped out a close way to get to IKEA, boy were we WRONG! hahahaha, it seemed we traveled 18 days just to get there, but boy let me tell ya, once we got there, we were in business. We got blankets for cheap, we got plates for like 20p (thats like 40 cents), and garbage cans and all those essential sort of things. IKEA is super cheap here because it is a company from Sweden, we loaded up! After IKEA we made the big trek home with all of our belongings and then got to set it all up! YAY! I could sure spend a pretty penny OR in English terms a pretty "pense" at that store.

Saturday:
Saturday we slept in and really did nothing for the first part of the day. Around noon, we decided that groceries MIGHT be a good idea because our cupboards looked worse than mother hubbards. We hit up the bus and started going then TA-DA we found this HUGE grocery store called "LiDL" and right beside it was the "pound stretcher" YAY! We were SOO stoked! First we went to the pound stretcher and loaded up on cheap one pound items that we needed. Then we hit up the grocery store. Groceries are cheap here, which was so amazing to see! All fruit is so cheap, Banana's are like 10p a pound...20 cents a pound..and like apples are 6 for a pound. It's sweet! We overshopped, no doubt about it, and we failed to think that whatever was loaded into our cart, WE had to carry home! AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! We loaded the bags and realized we could hardly carry it all! Quickly decided that a cab would be in order to get home. It was only 8 pounds...like 3 pounds each for a ride home.. THANK YOU FARMER! We got home and unpacked and Rochelle was knocking on our door! WOOT WOOT WOOT! It was AMAZING to see someone familiar and was also experiencing the same things we were. We laughed for hours at the things that are different here. It was amazing, then we went for supper and laughed some more. It was great!

Sunday:
I thought I slept until 10:30, but it was actually noon. My bad? When 2 in the afternoon creeped up on me, I commented to Marlee that it seems i've been only up for like 10 minutes, she then informed me i got up at noon! whooppss! We then hit the streets on a midly rainy day to explore our neighbourhood. We went one way and had a great time figuring out things. We finally found a store called Wilkinson's. It's like Englands Wal-mart. AMAZING! I want to work there! We found a hairstraightener..and a toaster (FOR 4 pounds!) Pretty darn cool I think. We also then mapped out a quicker way home, I was TOTALLY pumped for that! We got home and had a sandwhich then me and marlee made some little brain break kit to start teaching with. I'm uber nervous about teaching (hopefully tomorrow) not about the actual teaching, but getting to the school! Navigating here is sooo damn hard! wish me luck! AHHH, I'm sure if I do teach tomorrow I will have many a story to tell.
Now, I sit here in an internet cafe writing this blog and thinking, yup, life is good!

Now a little about our flat:
I wish I could just post some pictures to explain it..but thats not happening until i have internet at home! It is a two storey, three bedroom masionette. The bottom floor has a sweet living room with leather couches and the kitchen has everything a kitchen has + a washing machine. We have clothes hanging in every possible place around our house because there's no dryer! What a show, I created a clothesline in our backyard, but it rains so damn much that that is almost pointless too! Upstairs are the three bedrooms and the bathroom. My room is the master bedroom with nice big windows and a fire place. I was wondering..does anyone have a bear skin rug they could send? My address is 76 Elthorne Park Road, London England, W7 2JD. Ok. Thanks. Marlee has the babe room but its super cute. Meaghan has the middle size room, which is also cute. Anyways, this is really pointless. I'll post pics asap.


Things I learned in THREE days:

1) All the women here drink wine with every meal. All the men here drink beer every meal. Does that make me a man?

2)Their is a national shortage of ketchup here. Everywhere you go in a public place you can NOT find ketchup. On Friday we ate at a pub and they only had little little packages of ketchup, between three of us we went through I think around 30. People look at us like we're crazy. Then we had supper at IKEA, no ketchup to be found even. I am seriously contemplating carrying around a ketchup bottle in my purse!

3) Here the electricity is a "pay as you go" system. You pop into your local conveniece store and get a five pound electricity card. You then take it home put it in the electricity outlet box and it gives you a credit. I think thats pretty damn sweet. She said five pounds would last a couple weeks. I'll keep you informed. Just my luck, our card will run out when I'm in the shower at ten o'clock at night.

4) I LOVE MY CAR. It's so hard to get used to the fact that at a store, if you can't carry it- you can't have it.

5) Here you have to pay a yearly TV license to even turn on your tv. 142 pounds a year for this license. If you don't pay this license and the "television police" knock at your door, and the tv is on, you end up with a thousand pound fine. nutso!


I'm sure over the past three days I have learned a million other things, but I fail to remember them thus far.

Happy Thanksgiving momma and dadda and ashley and the rest of my fambam! Love you!

I get the interweb hopefully on Thursday so then I will be wanting to msn chat with anyone and their dog. BE READY! I'll probably wonder to this little cafe again soon, so look for another post soon!!

Love you all and think about you often!!!

Cmjw

Janelle...leave a comment already.