Ambz & Hayles Awesome Adventure - Episode 12

Hiyaa,

First off, the whole "hiyaa" thing is very popular here, but it's not pronounced the way hillbillies say it all, "HIya!" It's more like "hiYAA" which is said very softly. Again, I should just do an audio clip and attach it to this entry since I'm not making any sense.
Second, gosh I'm terrible at updating. I have so much to tell you all!

Let's see...well I'll start with Bonfire Night (Remember, remember the fifth of November). Since I had already gone to a bonfire on Halloween in Stockton, I pretty much already knew the drill as to what was going to happen again on the actual day. This time though, I went to Long Itchington, the town over and went to the bonfire that was being hosted by the Green Man, a local pub. What made it different was that there was actually a "Guy Fawkes" sitting on top of the bonfire. How twisted is that?! Yeah, it was made out of stuff you make scarecrows with and just sitting there, burning away. Whenever a part of its body would burn up and fall off, everyone would be all "Ohhh!! Ahhh!!" like the it was the greatest thing since sliced (gluten-free) bread. Poor Guy.

Okay now I'm going to skip to Edinburgh cause I'm sure that's what you've all been waiting for! And, seeing as I'm going to London next weekend, I should really just tell you about my last trip before I dive right into my next one.

Sooo, I got up super early to take the train to Edinburgh where I was to meet Ambz at the train station. We stayed with her cousin Rob and his wife Laura who live in the city there. They're super nice and we all got along really well so we'll definitely be going back to visit again. Plus, Edinburgh was really awesome. If I had to choose a place to go to university there (like on an exchange or something) I'd probably choose Edinburgh. Anyways, Ambz and Laura picked me up from the station and from there we went straight to Edinburgh Zoo which was tons of fun and brilliant cause it's November and it's not busy at all. Unfortunately though, since it's not summer time, the camels were not out and about so I was pretty choked. Instead Amber and I hung around the penguins for quite a while cause let's face it, they're pretty awesome and hilarious.

Here's some videos of them:

See Penguins Jumping

See The Penguins in a Parade

Oh and here's a video of a cute baby deer. It's not that exciting, but it's cute nonetheless:

See A Cute Baby Deer

Yes, there really was a penguin parade! How fetch is that?! (Like how I used the word "fetch" there? Yeah, I'm totally into this Brit thing lol)

So after our little afternoon at the zoo, we decided to to the house and just take it easy for a bit. Laura made us dinner and we then we hung out for a bit all in preparation for what was to be a very scary night. I don't know if you know this, but Edinburgh is one of the most haunted cities in Europe. It's been featured on all those Most Haunted television shows and whatnot and when you walk through it, you can definitely feel some eeriness to it. Anyway, each night a bunch of tour companies offer all sorts of ghost tours so of course Amber and I decided to go on one. Well, not "of course" cause I obviously don't like scary movies or ghosts or anything like that, but I was feeling pretty courageous and well, when in Rome...

Off we went to meet in the middle of the Royal Mile (the High Street) along with about 12 other people. Our tour guide was pretty awesome and cold really tell a story so the whole thing was well worth the 9 quid we paid. (That was the only tourist attraction we paid for cause the museums were either free or we got free entrance cause Rob and Laura are cops and get all these free passes!)
The scariest (and main) part of the tour was definitely the vaults. I think they were made in the 16 or 1700s and used as bank vaults, but after a while they were abandoned because they always leaked so much. Yeah, it rains a lot in Edinburgh. Although from the weekend we had, you'd never have guessed cause it was so beautiful! Anyway, the abandoned vaults were of course just waiting to be filled with criminals and homeless people to stay in and do all their criminal stuff in. So of course, killing went on and whatnot for many years. They said that many a time someone would go in there and they wouldn't come back out. OOOOOooooooo! (My attempt at a creepy "ooooo" sound.)

There were many different vaults and so different people stayed in different rooms back in the day. My favourite vault was also the "safest" as the tour guide explained, cause nothing bad ever happened there in terms of bad ghosts and whatnot. Apparently, if you were to ever see a ghost, the only one you'd see in that vault room was of a shoemaker who would just be sitting at his desk making shoes and smiling at you. Being a shoemaker, he's very interested in what kind of shoes you're wearing and since nowadays we've all got crazy looking shoes, he'd be quite confused. The ghost shoemaker sounded so cute! lol And apparently he's very nice.

The next day was jam packed with cool things. First off, we started off the morning at Edinburgh Castle which was absolutely beautiful. The castle overlooks the entire city so you can just see for miles wherever you are. The rest of the castle, well, was a castle, so very cool to look at but very similar to all the other castles you will see in your lifetime. It did feature the Scottish Crown Jewels though, which was pretty cool as I don't really know that much about Scottish Royal history.

After our trip to the Castle, we decided that we were in dire need of a Christmas drink from Starbucks. The closest Starbucks to me is in Leamington and that's about a 20 minute drive away, a bit unnecessary. And since it is Amber's (and Blythe's) and my tradition to go for a Starbucks Christmas drink, we headed to the closest one and ordered a Toffee Nut Latte - yum! And to follow every good Christmas drink is of course, shopping. Ambz was on the lookout for some Celtic rings and I wanted to find a Claddagh. A Claddagh is this:


It's actually an Irish ring but is very popular in Scotland as well and depending on which way and which hand you wear it on, it can symbolize either a friendship or wedding ring. The hands mean friendship, the heart love, and the crown loyalty.

Oh! Speaking of a heart, the night that we went Ghost Hunting we also spat on the Heart of the Midlothian which is basically just along the Royal Mile and it's a bunch of stones in the shape of a heart. There are many reasons one can spit there, but Rob told us that if we spit and make a wish on the heart, it will come true. So there you go!

Okay back to Saturday. After a bit of shopping, we went into the Museum of Childhood which has all sorts of toys from the past. As you may have seen in the photos, there were golly wogs, Japanese dolls and tons of other cool stuff that was a little older than my time, but easily recognizable. Oh and there was Lego and Duplo too lol.

The whole day was pretty much spent walking around here and there seeing what we'd like to do and all. Oh and eating Pizza at Pizza Hut, cause let's face it, Amber and I both miss fast food as much as we miss Japanese food. I sacrificed my gluten-intolerance for pizza for goodness sake.
We walked all along the Royal Mile and through the shopping areas, and of course, the Sir Walter Scott monument which is absolutely spectactular to look at! You really MUST see it! It's a shame that it's in the middle of such a busy area though because you can't really get a good look at it then.

It was a really good day and we were pretty exhausted, so when we headed back to the house with the intention of going out again later, we ended up falling asleep for 3 hours and waking up at 9:30pm which was too late to get ready and head out for the night. I think we were both glad of it though cause it was a little exhausting so we ended up watching X-Factor (Brit version of American Idol except waaaay better!) and playing Wii...and eating After Eights.

Sunday. Sunday morning we got up and packed my things a bit then headed out because my train wasn't until late afternoon. Rob had free passes to this science exhibition called Dyanamic Earth. It basically took us through from the Big Bang all the way up to the present day Earth, as well as potential futures for our Earth depending on what environmental actions we take. It was fascinating and quite the eye-opener, so I would also definitely recommend going to see that as well!

Finally, as Amber and I have always tried to do, we went for tea. Cream tea at a cosy little tea place for lunch and it was fantastic. A very nice way to end the weekend. We've decided to go for tea every place we go, and next stop is London next weekend so we'll be on the hunt for cream tea all over again.

Ambz and I will be going to London next weekend to see a Canadian band (yes, Canadian not British. We travelled all the way across the Atlantic to see Canadian bands!) called Wintersleep. We figured we might as well make weekend of it so we're staying at a hostel by night and going out and doing all sorts of Christmas activities and other things that are free because we are poor and saving up for our trip to Cardiff after Christmas with Cathy and Maria. So far we've got planned to go to the German Christmas Market because there's all sorts of stuff going on there. Cherry also recommended going to Somerset House because they have an outdoor skating rink there. Actually, there's like 8 places in London that have an outdoor skating rink, so we've got our pick! Other than that, I'm not sure what else we have planned, but it'll be fun! Nancy might be joining us as well which would definitely be fun.

Okay that's all for now folks! No wait, I forgot to say that I went to Coventry this weekend! Not actually, cause I didn't explore it whatsoever, I just slept over at my friend Louise's flat as she goes to the University of Coventry. Oh and I had McDonald's after a 3 month drought!! Ohh! And on Sunday I went with Aurore for sushi in Leamington and it was actually good! It might just be because I haven't had it since before I left, but it tasted pretty good and the owner was a Japanese guy so it seemed pretty authentic! Greatest.Moment.Ever.Eating.Sushi.

Ciao mein!

H-Pizzle

The Pudding County - Episode 11

Hey All,

First off, apologies for no updates in 2 weeks. The internet was down last week and I've been sick this weekend as well but now it's all good and now you can continue to live vicariously through me on my European adventures!

Let's see, I guess I'll start from the beginning. Two weekends ago was my birthday of course! It was a Thursday, so I was to continue doing my job that day anyway which was fine by me. But, as it turned out, I ended up having a lovely birthday day and weekend! For the day of, I got a delicious English Breakfast and later on when the kids came back from nursery, we went bowling and for dinner in Coventry. And guess what? I won! lol Okay, so I know that I only won because I beat two toddlers, but still, I never win at bowling so it was pretty awesome. Plus, M is actually pretty good at bowling cause she uses that granny helper thing, I don't know what it's called, but it's like a slide that you just push the ball down?? Anyone? Names? Okay, well you know what I mean anyway. Oh and we had bumpers, which helped. But still, I won, sooo, be excited for me.

The following day, we were off to North Yorkshire to a town called Bedale where Grahame's mum and sister live. It was a nice weekend and the family is very nice too of course. On our drive to Bedale, we made a stop in Knaresborough where Mother Shipton's Cave and the Petrifying Wells are. It's a beautiful park to walk through and yet very very creepy cause when you get to the well, there's all these hanging teddy bears that are half stone, half teddy bear. What happens is the water that falls over it has bits of calcium in it so over time - a couple months or so - the hanging objects eventually turn to stone. Crazy right?! Just behind the petrifying well, you can walk in and make a wish on the wishing well. Apparently it's known to have made a lot of the wishes comes true so of course I made a wish. M wished for bubbles, which is interesting because when we finally got to Bedale, her grandma brought out the toys and some of the toys consisted of making bubbles. She later had a bubble bath too. Coincidence? I think not. Gosh, don't you wish all our wishes were as easy as THAT?!
Next to the well(s) was the cave where Mother Shipton was supposedly born. By the way, Mother Shipton (aka Old Mother Hubbard, etc. etc.) was this woman who supposedly foresaw a bunch of stuff that actually did happen, like the Great Fire of London, the Spanish Armada and the Great Plague of London. Coincidence? Probably.

Here's a little Wikipedia info on her:

Mother Shipton

Guess who else was born in Knaresborough (but not in a cave)? Guy Fawkes. Of all the places I'm to visit, I of course end up in the town of the guy who's holiday I'm totally excited about.

On Saturday we decided to head off to a mock town called Beamish. It's like Barkerville in that it's now a historical town except with Beamish it was never actually a town. They brought in all original buildings, furniture, etc. and set it up so that it's now an open air museum. I believe it's supposed to take place in 1913 so the museum is similar to what you'd see at London Farm, except of course on a larger scale. It was really cool actually cause I'd never really seen something so in depth like that. Oohh! And it wasn't just a town, there was also a little carnival too so I got to ride an old school Merry-Go-Round.
Here, you can see it:

See Hayley Ride An Old School Merry-Go-Round

Cool eh?

Our lazy Sunday consisted of Sunday Roast, which of course consisted of Yorkshire puddings. This, of course, resulted in my feeling sick but really, eating 2 yorkshire puddings filled with gluten was soooo worth it.

It was an excellent birthday weekend.

On our drive home, we drove through the lovely dales as we weren't going home right away, but towards Blackpool as we had to drop M off with her grandparents since they were all going to Spain for half-term break. For the next two weeks, little J and I would be hanging out just the two of us.

I decided to take J to Cadbury World in Birmingham. And I'm not gonna lie, I was pretty excited. Chocolate WORLD! World of CHOCOLATE!!! Do you understand how amazing that is!? I knew it was going to be good right from the start because the minute you walk through the doors to the tour, there are two guys that hand you free chocolate. What's even better is that they show up again half way through the tour to hand you even more free chocolate. It was fantastic!

See Hayley At Cadbury World

I didn't really take any pictures of the actual place since I was a bit preoccupied with the chocolate, so just imagine a factory of chocolate and you're all set. Actually it was quite interesting, they make something like 126 tonnes of chocolate a day, how crazy is THAT?

The rest of the week was the same old working week, until Friday of course, when it was Halloween! I had dragged poor J around trying to find a pumpkin to carve and after unsucessfully finding a local farm with a pumpkin patch, I found some baby pumpkins at the Sainsbury's in Rugby. So yeah, apparently Halloween isn't that big of a deal, which makes sense since Guy Fawkes Day is right around the corner. I'm pretty sure our house was the only one with pumpkins in the front, how lame is that?! But of course there were lots of kiddies trick or treating so it's okay I guess.
Friday night was the night that Stockton decided to hold its big bonfire and fireworks so after the trick or treaters came by, we walked down the street to what was a HUUUGE bonfire. It looked like people just threw in whatever the heck they had - there was a bed frame and quite possibly a mattress in there.
This Wednesday night will be the actual Bonfire Night for Guy Fawkes Day so we're all heading to Long Itchington (the town over) for a big bonfire and fireworks again so it should be good. I'll be sure to take photos since I didn't of the Stockton bonfire and put them up on facebook.

Anywho, that's all I'm going to say for now cause I'm still a bit under the weather and hence quite tired. I'll be sure to post again soon to tell you all the random things I've observed since some of them are quite funny...and embarassing.

Ciao mein!

H-Pizzle

Lazy Sundays - Episode 10

Currently Listening To:

AC/DC - Thunderstruck, Highway to Hell, Back in Black, TNT, Born To Be Wild, Hells Bells, etc.
Coldplay - Lost!
MGMT - Kids
Sia - Soon We'll Be Found
The Kooks - Sway (Yes, I'm still listening...)


Plans for my Birthday:
Bowling with the familia on Thursday night and then dinner. Perhaps going out with friends after, but I haven't really planned anything. Then on Friday we're all off to Yorkshire to visit Grahame's mum!


Funny thought of the day:
I have been here 6 weeks and only used up 5 quid of my Pay-As-You-Go (called "Top Up" here) cell phone plan. I have 15 quid left. Crazy right? I've been very stingy when it comes to using my cell phone, and it's all paid off! But now that I know that's how little I've spent, I'm probably going to end up using it a lot more because now I know.


Fun Thing of the Weekend:

Went to a mansion yesterday where the Wilkinsons have friends there. I think it was in the town of Crichley or something like that. Anyway, the family lives in the stables area of the mansion, which is still pretty huge, but of course they have access to the entire grounds which happens to include a little lake and a gigantic field and garden and well, just awesomeness. I only took a few pictures unfortunately though cause my camera ran out of batteries. So, if you have trouble picturing what the place may have looked like, picture Pride and Prejudice! Yes, it was that awesome.


New Words & Pronunciations:

"Leg it" - it means "book it" in Canadian, which means "go quickly" in adult
"Reckon" - we all know what it means, it's just used a lot more here
"Shish ke BAB" - as opposed to us saying "shish ke BOB"
"Bear Bear" - M's bear which is not pronounced "bear" but rather, "b-air b-air" (think a snooty peson saying their "A" words lol

I have so many more but whenever I have to write them down, I can never remember them!

OH! Their version of the Hookey Pookey is so weird! I don't like it! lol It's called Oogie Boogie or something and it goes like this:

You put your right arm in
You put your right arm out
You put your right arm in
Out, In, Out
And you shake it all about
You do the oogie boogie and turn yourself around
That's what it's all about

OOOOooooo oogie boogie woogie
OOOOoooo oogie boogie woogie
Etc.

It's the "chorus" that's just weird lol. I will sing it for you on camera one time so you can hear it and agree with me!!


Peace Out A-Town,

H-Po

Canadian Invasian - Episode 9

Happy (Belated) Thanksgiving!

So I was a bit worried that I wouldn't get to have a proper Thanksgiving what with being in the UK and all, but this year it turned out to be absolutely fantastic. Of course I missed having it at home, but this was a pretty good substitute because I was spending it with some of my favourite people!

Here's how it all began:

Ambz and Mick left London from Norwich and made their way to Manchester around the same time as me - 1pm - except I left from Rugby of course, but we both got there about the same time and as I walked up to them in the food court, I was so ridiculously excited to be seeing them because really, what are the odds that 3 people from all over Europe (well, 2 from England and 1 from Denmark) would be meeting in Manchester? Not to mention the fact that all of us are really good friends and we'd be staying at our best friend's sister's flat? Pretty awesome, I know.
Anyway, we arrived at Manchester Piccadilly around 4pm and looked around for Chris, Nancy's boyfriend. (Nancy is Cathy's older sister. She came here a few years ago on an exchange for university and found a boyfriend. She then came back to BC to finish school and has since moved to Manchester to live with her bf.) When we found him, we made our way to Salford, a town that's just outside of Manchester and is defined by the river that divides the two cities. They live in a really awesome flat that's so nice, I loved staying there! It's great too because you can just walk anywhere. We didn't use the bus or tram once, we'd just walk wherever and it was all good.

Since Chris had to go to work and Nan was still at work for a couple more hours, us 3 Canadians hung out at the place trying to get some energy back. Actually, I was pretty energized since my train was only 2 hours, but Mick and Ambz had a bit more of a journey since they had to take a train from Norwich to London (2-3 hours), followed by 2 tubes to the next train station and then another train to Manchester (3ish hours). As it turns out, Nancy and Chris have another roommate, Ed, whom we met while the two were out. Lol Ed had forgotten we would be there, so it was a bit awkward at first but really funny since he's a cool guy. Actually, the whole lot of their friends are really cool and we all seemed to get a long well. I guess that's what Thanksgiving does to you - besides putting you to sleep and giving you indigestion.

Finally Nan came home and after ridiculously excited hugs, we decided to go out and walk about the city, stopping first at an Italian place for dinner. I forget the name of the place, but it was really good. You really should try it sometime. Afterwards we walked over to an area called Deansgate. It's part of a street that has 6 or 7 bars lined up one next to another. It was great because they all have different atmospheres so we would just go from one to the other to see what they're like. We didn't go into all of them though since some of them charge a cover and we are too cheap to pay for something like that! The first one and probably my favourite was called "Baa Bar" LOL. I thought it was "Bar Bar" for a while and thought maybe it was owned by Japanese people who worked in the stationery industry because they couldn't translate things properly, but I was wrong. Too bad. But yea, Baa Bar was pretty awesome because they had about a million different kinds of shots and even though I'm not huge on shots, they were pretty fun because they just had funny names and funny combinations and tasted pretty good cause they're not really alcoholic. It was like being in one of those ice cream shops with a hundred flavours. I think I had one called "Dave" which I don't really get why it's called that but it was pretty good lol. Funny story, me and Ambz walk into the bar and we're like, "Geesh there's a lot of guys here" which is really surprising because most of the time there's more girls than there are guys in bars and clubs - at least it seems that way in Vancouver. Anyways, we start to get really confused and wonder what's the deal here, but when we ask Nan about this, she just replies with, "Yeah, it's a gay bar at night." Oh. Right. I knew that! Geeshkabob. This would really make sense too because guys would be staring at us not in the way that they would be wanting to talk to us, but more like "What the heck are you doing in here?" sort of thing lol.

All my guy friends were being checked out. Awkward for them, funny for Ambz and me!

After Baa Bar we went off to another bar, but I don't actually know the name of it either (people just take me to places and I go without bothering to ask what it's called, it's actually really bad because I'll never be able to go back there since I don't know anything about it!). All I know is that the name isn't nearly as cool as Baa Bar, therefore I didn't really care for it. It was fun though and we got our picture taken by some group called Galaxy Music. By the end of our time in the bar, we decided to go home and go to sleep. We had a big day ahead of us!

Pictured above (left to right): Ed, Amber, Mick, Nancy, Me.

Saturday was so much fun and if I had to do it over, I totally would! We started off kind of late in the day (12ish) and went out around the town. Ambz and Nan went shopping at Primark while Mick and I went to the Science and Technology Museum. I had just gone to Primark the other day anyway, and I wanted to see the museums and as much of Manchester as I could. It was a pretty interesting museum, actually all of the places we went to were quite interesting and just so beautiful to look at. We walked around the city for a couple hours and found ourselves in two libraries, one intentionally and the other unintentionally. On our way to the main library of Manchester (that's in the shape of a dome and is absolutely marvelous to look at) we went to the John Ryland University Library which was built a little over a hundred years ago (1890) but is in the style of a Gothic church so it was really fantastic to be in. It also holds some of the oldest remnants of the New Testament which I found kinda interesting. But man, you should have seen the study hall. It was absolutely brilliant. If I were a student living in Manchester, I would be sooo smart just cause I'd be going to that library every day to study.

Exterior shot of John Ryland Library (I didn't take this photo obviously, since I didn't get a chance to take many pics of buildings.)

The study area of the library. Exquisite isn't it?

The other library wasn't quite as cool. I mean it was great in architecture, but it's a fully functioning library, so there's not much there for you to look at except for the people and I don't think they appreciate being stared at.

Manchester Main Library

By mid-afternoon, we were all getting pretty hungry so Mick and I met up with the girls and we went for high tea! We were originally going to go to the Midland Hotel which is very very hoity toity but when they didn't seem to be giving us the time of day, we made our way to the Radisson just down the street and had an amazing tea experience! Both Mick and Nancy have never had high tea so it was exciting for me to introduce it to them. Only I would get excited over something like this lol. After a great experience, we've converted them into the great High Tea World and they want to do it all the time. Mick has told his girlfriend back in Canada that they need to go for tea when he gets back, and Nancy has decided that she needs to go for High Tea every month. ("Come to the dark side...we have cookies.")

It was a bit silly for us to be having high tea right before we were going to have turkey dinner, but it was also something that we really had to do! Besides, we didn't order the full thing, we only ordered it for two, which turned out to be more than filling for the four of us, so I can only wonder what it would have been like had we ordered it for four people. Fortunately we were able to walk it off on our way back to Nan's flat which happened to be in the drizzly rain again. But that's England for you.

Turkey dinner! YUM!!! Chris made most of the meal with Nan helping and it was deeeliiicious! Oishi desu indeed! It was actually the greatest thing ever cause Chris made everything, we're talking the real deal Thanksgiving dinner, and he's not even Canadian! There were even yorkshires! I say that with great excitement because I haven't had a yorkshire at all this whole time I've been here! Crazy right?

Just when I thought I wanted to go to bed or watch a movie, the whole gang of us decided that it would be a good idea to go out. Chris and Nan had invited 4 of their friends to come over to eat dinner with us, so it was quite the crowded bunch but they were all really cool and we all hit it off pretty well. One of them, Morgan, is also an exchange student from Boston so it was cool to hang out with her cause now there's talk of going travelling together since we all have the same ideas in terms of places we'd like to see. Anyway, we ended up going to a club called 42nd Street and it was tons of fun. It's funny though cause it's not a super fancy club and yet it's probably one of the most fun-filled. I guess just cause it's so lax, so you can just hang out with your friends and have a good time, which is exactly what we all did. I have now discovered a new type of cider too called Hummingbird. I was getting a bit tired of Strongbow cider so it was nice to have a change!

By the time the club closed at about 2am, we had all decided to go back to the flat and just hang out cause none of us were actually that tired, but hungry, yes. We went to one of the guy's flat who lived just in the next section of flats but first, I grabbed the turkey carcass from our dinner to snack on. There's pictures of me in the album, that's why I'm explaining this to you because I know you'd all be very confused as to why I enjoy taking pictures with the remains of cooked turkey. After about an hour though, I realized how tired I was and went to sleep. Like I've said before, those Brits have endurance! They stay up all night, it's craziness!

Sunday was a pretty chill day of course. We were all really tired since most of us had only gotten a few hours of sleep. Basically we just packed up our stuff, went walking for some breakfast/lunch at an Aussie pub called Walkabout (where we had the full English greasy breakfast) then walked Amber to the train station cause she had to leave earlier. Oh actually, before we walked her to the station and after we went to Walkabout, we also stopped at another pub called the Temple which happened to be at one time the public toilets. Haha YES, the public toilets! It was very small and just underground and well, it still sorta smelled like the public toilets. It was great though cause the atmosphere was fun and well, a pub's a pub! There was no Strongbow (nor any other type of cider) though so I had a white wine - not exactly something you want to drink after a greasy breakfast, but if I ordered a water I would have been hassled. Then again, ordering a white wine in the public toilets is kind of hassle-worthy as well so...

Finally, we went to rent a movie (Elf starring Will Ferrell) and watched it back at the flat while eating pizza. Can I just say, that Elf is probably one of the greatest movies ever. I've seen it a million times and it never gets old. Oh and plus I saw Brenda Crichlow my old acting coach in it, I forgot that she was in it.

Well, that's pretty much my whole trip in great detail! After the movie, Mick and I got a taxi to the train station and caught the same train since we were both headed in the London Euston direction. It was sad to say goodbye to everyone but also a door opener because now we've all got plans to see each other on other trips now. I really miss them though.

The good part is that Amber texted me the other day inviting me to go to Edinburgh for the weekend. She has family there so we can stay with them. We'll be heading up there on November 6th to 9th so it should be good! I'm so excited! I've really gotten into the swing of cheap travelling. Just yesterday actually, I was trying to book a flight to Sweden to see Yvette through Ryanair. It would have cost me a total of 36 quid too which is pretty amazing I must say. Anyway, I'm hoping to go see Yvette in late November or something like that, but I'll be letting you know!

Apologies for the long entry, but I know you secretly love it lol.

xoxo

Gossip Girl

lol just kidding!

H-Po

Mission: Failed! - Episode 8

Wow, so I clearly failed at updating my blog every couple days like my last post said. Sorry! But now I'll just tell you about my trip to London and Leicester anyway.

This past weekend I made the trip to London on Saturday after a full day of planning the day before. I was literally on the computer for HOURS researching places to go, costs, underground maps, etc. etc. all for it to be kind of useless in the end! I even set up an itinerary to follow which lasted for only a couple hours before I decided to just do whatever.

Sooo, I took the train down to London Euston in the morning and got there by about 10:30am. I had to catch the 2pm rehearsal at the Barbican so I made a quick trip to the National Portrait Gallery before running off to see the dress rehearsal. First off, the NPG was pretty awesome cause I got to see all the portraits that you see allll the time whenever you're doing research on say, Shakespeare or Queen Elizabeth I, but this time they are the originals. The real deals.
Like this one:

Or this one:


I spent about 2 hours there and then caught the tube to Barbican. Unfortunately, a bunch of lines were down (Victoria Line) and certain trains going in certain directions, particularly the ones that just so happened to be the only ones to get to Barbican (Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan). Woot woot. So what should have taken about 25 minutes to get there took an hour and 15, but that's mostly because I got lost...again...and again...and again. Apparently I can't read signs very well. It must be the speed at which I walk (which is very slow) because I must just zoom right past them so that the lettering becomes the opposite. Anyway, I took the tube to Moorgate, which is actually just a 5 minute walk from the Barbican Theatre but since I exited the station in the wrong direction (and can't read signs with clearly marked arrows) I went the opposite way, thus finding myself incredibly lost in what seemed to be a completely deserted area of London. Barbican is, I suppose, the "business district" so there's only skyscrapers and whatnot there and since no one works on a Saturday, no one was there. It was crazy, and very very creepy.

I found myself at the Barbican eventually and managed to get into the theatre at exactly 2pm, which I must say is pretty impressive on my behalf. The rehearsal lasted for about 40 minutes, which is shorter than I had scheduled, so I made my way to the cafe for some lunch. This, of course, turned out to be a fruit salad since everything else was glutenous. Oh and I had tea, of course. Overall, the performance was very impressive and very different. I'm glad I saw it because now I can say I've seen the real deal AND Merce Cunningham. Yes, he was there in the orchestra pit. Here's a poorly taken picture of him to prove it:


Jealous? You should be.

Next stop, Leicester Square. I took the tube there and decided to go to Covent Garden to check out the street performers. I love those guys! lol And I don't care that Covent Garden is a total touristy place, it's fun to go to anyway. Afterward, I started walking around hoping to find Oxford Circus, but ended up at Trafalgar Square, which was fine by me. I'd never actually stepped foot on the Square since the last two times I'd seen it were from one of those London tour buses. Actually, I'm pretty sure I've stepped foot on the upper part of the square because there's a gallery up there, but not in the ground level main one. Lame, I know. Took some pictures, stared at the fountain and the people around and then headed off in search for Oxford Circus. I was determined to do a little shopping, particularly at Primark. For those of you who don't know what Primark is, it's a ridiculously cheap store that's huuge. It's the size of a department store but has prices waaay cheaper because they don't advertise or do any of that showy stuff, etc. The clothing is cute, probably not that good quality, but it's cheap and that's fine by me!

Of course I didn't find it though. Or I did, but not until 7:30pm when it had already closed.

I walked around for a good 5 hours actually - voluntarily - I'm not THAT ridiculous that I can't find an obvious area like Oxford Street and the like in London!

Leicester Square, Covent Garden, Soho, Chinatown, Oxford Street.

I'd never been to Soho or Chinatown before so it was nice to actually see new places. Cherry said I'd know when I was in Soho when I saw an adult store and surely enough, I did. There's neon lights on that store, there's a guy with make up and a shiny outfit on, yep, I'm in Soho! I didn't really do anything in Soho though except walk through it, and before I knew it, I was in Chinatown. And of course I found myself in a supermarket looking for kome (Japanese rice) but that didn't happen. And then I couldn't find any actual supermarkets around London, so I couldn't buy my rice anywhere. This was incredibly uncool because secretly the whole reason I wanted to go to London was to buy the rice, not even to see ol' MC Choreographer. Oh well, I filled up on sushi and teriyaki don for dinner so that will have to do for a good month until I go back to London.

I bought Chinese coconut buns at the bakery! ...Just wanted to point that out.

The Japanese place was called Wasabi and it was okay. 2 pieces of kappa maki for 1 quid. 1 freaking quid! 2 pieces of inari sushi for the same, except they weren't pockets filled with rice like they normally are but rather some rice with a bit of inari on top. 1 "mochi" which was actually manju because it had un in it (Is it just spelled "un"?). Finally, chicken teriyaki don. Not bad. Man I miss Japanese food from back home.

After dinner I was just plain exhausted so I caught the train home and fell fast asleep, only to wake up the next day with a message from my friend Aurore saying that she'd like to go shopping in Leicester. Of course I went.

Leicester is about 45 minutes away. It's quite a big town (bigger than Leamington) and has a huge mall and shopping square. Since I hadn't done a lot of shopping the day before (I didn't feel like lugging shopping bags around wherever I went), I decided to actually purchase stuff and to my delight, a Primark was just around the corner. It was brilliant. You really don't know how awesome it is to find a cheap place like that that has really cute clothing in the UK. It's wonderful!

Our shopping day ended with a drink at Starbucks (tall non-fat chai latte please) and a hang out session back at Aurore's. She had brought along a new friend from her English class named Jennifer who was also from France and we were all getting along quite well. I think she's going back to France now though because even though she was supposed to be an au pair like us, it turns out she got accepted into the school she wanted so now she's leaving. Aurore and I are still set to go to some pub in Rugby and do some salsa dancing. That should be interesting since I haven't salsa danced since grade 8 PE class and I didn't try very hard because it was really awkward dancing with my brother's friends who were in grade 11.

More awkward stories to come,

Hayley

Post script: I'm off to Manchester this weekend for Thanksgiving!!!

London Bound - Episode 7

Ello Ello!

So I realize that my blog entries are ridiculously long and that no one realllly wants to read something like that in one sitting. Heck, I wouldn't! Therefore, I'm going to try and update either every day or every second or third day. Probably every second or third day since nothing too big happens to me during the four days I'm working and I think I'd loose readers if I updated you on what little M and J ate for breakfast in the morning or what time I changed J's nappie. (Even my mother would abandon this blog!)

Tomorrow I'm off to London! I figured I needed a full day away from everything around here and what better way to spend a day than to spend it in London! I'm taking the train out tomorrow morning and arriving at London Euston around 10:30. The whole point of me going to London actually was because this guy, Merce Cunningham, is putting on a show at the Barbican. I studied his work last semester in my theatre class and since he's pretty spectacular and this would probably be the only time in my entire life that I'd get to see him, that hey, maybe I should go. There's a free rehearsal that the public is allowed to sit in on so I'm going to that in the afternoon and then if I really want to see the actual performance, I'll just buy a ticket for the evening. If I don't though, then maybe I'll just go buy a cheap theatre ticket from Leicester Square and watch "Wicked" or something. I have to catch a late night train though, so we'll see. I don't really feel like being mugged so...

I'll be eating Japanese food in London! And buying Japanese rice! Then, when I come home, I'll be making kaikai!

Next weekend I'm off to Manchester!! For Thanksgiving!! And I'll be meeting up with Nancy, Amber and Mick!! Then in November, Yvette will be flying in to visit me from Sweden!! Jealous!?

Okay well I'm off to go shopping at the local Hospices in Southam. I miss my days shopping at Value Village so I have to make do with thrift shops for the time being.

Ciao mein!!

Hayley

Post Script: I now have my headset for Skype so you can all talk to me now! I'm usually online in the evenings so I guess that's 12pm to 2:30pm-ish?

What Happens In Blackpool... - Episode 6

...Is then posted on this blog.

So this past week I went to Blackpool with the family. It was Cherry's cousin's 30th birthday so they were having a big celebration. Pleasure Beach during the day, and a big party at night.

We arrived in the area by late afternoon and were staying with Cherry's parents' house in Poulton, a town that's just outside of Blackpool. The immature person inside of me laughed to myself every time I heard the word "Poulton." Haha, it sounds like poultry!

The whole family is really nice and I got along with them quite well. It's funny cause the grandmas and great grandmas are all into the party scene, so when it came time to go out on Saturday night for the party and clubbing afterward, they were all into it and filled with drinks to prove it lol. (I don't think they'd mind if I said that too.) Overall, they were very fun.

So let me tell you what I did on Friday night. You know the fireworks that we have every year in Vancouver? Symphony of Fire or something like that? Well, they have that here too. Actually, it's exactly like the one we have in Vancouver because apparently it's a traveling show. The four countries competing were Canada, Germany, UK and China. China won of course cause they're crazy good like that so we got to watch their winning performance at the finale on Friday. Yeah, they definitely deserved to win. It was GOOD. M thought they were too loud, but J really liked it. It was really quite cute.

As we were driving back to the house, we drove along the promenade which has all the illuminations. Every year Blackpool has this "festival" that features all these tableaus that you can drive or walk by. Some of them are really quite good! There was one with Postman Pat! And My Little Pony!

Side note: Matt, every time I think of Postman Pat, I think of that Mr. Bean episode where he puts that random baby in the Postman Pat machine with a like 60 quarters and leaves him there while he goes on the rides. lol Oh and also saying, "Postman Pat, Postman Pat, Postman Pat and his jolly grey hat" and you correcting me with "black and white cat."

...You know I hang out with kids too much when I'm as excited to see a picture of My Little Pony made up of lights.

Saturday: I went to Pleasure Beach! And I went on roller coasters! Yes, ME! The family bought me a ride pass so I couldn't exactly let it go to waste. I started out with the "Wild Mouse" ride which happens to be exactly like the mouse ride at Playland - dangerous, scary and a complete wonder it's still around (let alone made duplicates of in other countries!). Then I went off with Cherry's cousin and her friends for a good ol' roller coaster of a time. But first Grahame took me on "The Big One" because we were walking past it. He's all, "Oh let's just go on it while we're here" and I'm all, "Oh yeah, heh heh, sounds good." *Nervous laugh as I'm about to throw up*

This is it:


Yeah. I went on THAT. "See Hayley Die."

I'm not gonna lie, I was definitely cursing the entire time going up that first "hill." I could not believe I was on that thing! But once it was over, I realized just how fun it was and I decided to go on all the other roller coasters and crazy rides. By the end of the day, I no longer had that terrible nervous feeling in my gut but rather a pretty relaxed feeling of excitement. Geez louise, I totally conquered my fear of rides! Awesome? Oui! Oui! I think it's the fact that I went skydiving this past summer, which is way more dangerous. After that, I could do anything! ...Except eat gluten.

Unfortunately there was only enough time to go on five rides before we had to go and get ready. That's pretty much the end of my weekend too cause I babysat the kiddies in the evening and next morning while the adults dealt with their "fatigue."

Oh wait no! Sunday afternoon we had a Sunday Roast! Outside in the garden! How English is THAT?! It was actually the perfect afternoon outside - sunny, good food, surrounded by lots of chatty people, and strawberries. English strawberries are sooo good. And heck, they're still around! They're not quite as good as Richmond ones, but I suppose I'm just happy to be eating them "out of season." I was gonna take a picture of all of us eating outside, but I got a little caught up in the event. Instead, here's a video! ...But it's not of the lunch, cause that would be boring.

See Hayley Talk About Blackpool

Anyway, I'm uber uber tired from this weekend so I'm just going to go to bed now. Good night!

H-Po