Locked in.

Even after 6 weeks in this country, I have a hard time remembering that you cannot lock or unlock doors from the outside OR the inside without a key. I don't like this. It makes me feel claustrophobic and stuck. Yesterday, a package came from my mom and I ran downstairs to buzz the parcel delivery man into the gate and then he knocked on the door and I tried to open it but it was locked! I had to run back upstairs to my room to get my keys and then back to the door to unlock it. I try to remember to keep my keys in my pocket but since I don't go out all that often, I'm in the habit of leaving them on my night stand. Just one of those quirky things that's not my favorite. I mean, isn't that illegal at home or something? Aren't you not allowed to have doors like that at home because it's a fire hazard and it would be really bad if someone couldn't get out of the house in an emergency because they can't find their keys? I think that's the case.

The good news is that I got a late grad gift from Mom yesterday and it's beautiful and I love it (red wool coat with silver buttons) AND today I got letters from Lena and Steven. I feel so loved. Oh yeah, more good news, I made chili yesterday and I'm about to have some for lunch : ) Yep, super exciting day here. Mostly, I just had to tell you about the strange locks.

I'm going to Oxford this weekend so I may or may not be on a computer. Probably you won't hear from me again until Sunday night or Monday though. Have a great weekend!!

Steph

Windsor up close.

I spent Monday afternoon walking around Windsor. Kimberly had purchased a travel card for the day so that she could get around on the trains but she passed it off to me when she was done with it around 2:30pm. I figured I needed to take advantage of the free transportation so I hopped on a train.

I walked over the Thames river towards Eton College. There were some really pretty buildings and lots of young guys walking around in their school clothes -- black pants and shoes, white shirt and long black coat. It seemed so formal and I was definitely very aware of the lack of females in that area. Makes sense, seeing as how it is a boys school.

There's not a whole lot in Windsor unless you're going there to shop or see the castle. It's pricey to actually go inside the castle but it's cool to walk around the outside. It's huge. I couldn't really grasp how huge because from right in the center of town you can only see pieces of it at a time and it seems like it's all spread out.

This isn't the greatest picture because you can't see just how crooked this little building is. When I go back I'll take a picture from a different angle. I didn't stop to look but I think there's a little cafe or restaurant in there. I want to drink tea in the little crooked building in Windsor. Maybe next time I go.

Fortunately, I wasn't in a shopping mood but it looks like there's lots of shopping to be done in Windsor. It's a very touristy town, as is expected with the castle being there, and it seems to be focused on tourists. It was the first place where I had seen lots of gift shops full of odd T-shirts and everything you can think of with the British flag plastered on it.

I can't imagine living somewhere like this. It's so strange to have a huge castle just hanging out. You're just walking around and around every other corner there's this ginormous building. And sometimes the Queen lives in the ginormous building. That just seems so strange.

This is how bizarre it is. When you walk out of Starbucks it's just like "oh, yeah, there's the Queen's house. Wonder if she's home today?" Of course, I had to actually go into Starbucks to get this full experience.

It was a really pretty little town and I particularly enjoyed all of the leaves and trees everywhere that were changing colors and the fall sunlight was really quite perfect for taking pictures. Sometimes I take loads of pictures of the same thing simply because the light keeps changing and I find that captivating. You have to take all the pictures so that later you can decide which light was the best or maybe there isn't a best at all because they're just all different. Of course, my wonderful little camera doesn't always capture things exactly how I see them but that's okay, I love it anyway.

I need to go on more outings like this. I had my book with me the whole time and had some difficulty not pulling it out and reading it while I was walking around (East of Eden, you'll understand when you read it) but it was nice just to walk around some place new.

I'm amazed

...at how many homes function without basic kitchen necessities. Why is it that most people don't have a rolling pin? Seriously? A rolling pin! How do they make pies and sugar cookies and cinnamon rolls and pizzas and ravioli dough for goodness sake?? This house does have a pastry cutter so that's good. I'm considering buying them a new vegetable peeler as an early Christmas gift. The one they have totally mutilates the carrots and I don't even try to use it on potatoes -- I'm worried I'd lose part of a finger in the process. A food processor would be handy but I suppose that I can pretty much do with out. A garlic press? I need it almost on a daily basis! I've gotten really good at chopping garlic cloves into tiny pieces. I miss my Kitchen Aid mixer and all of my wonderful kitcheny things. Thanks to Mom and Grammi for raising me is the most well equipped kitchens ever that now I'm frustrated with anything less : )

London with a friend.

Well, Wednesday was an exciting day for me. I got to take the train into London and meet up with Victoria (she's a camp friend of Steven's and Paige's and Chad's and I have adopted her as my friend because I like her. And because I need a friend here and she's a good one). It was so exciting just to have something to do but then the fact that I actually got to hang out with a friend was absolutely marvelous!! I'm so people starved these days.

Since I've been feeling all "grown-up" lately, I took the train into London all by myself expecting it to stop at Vauxhall where I could catch the Victoria line on the Tube and meet up with Victoria at Victoria Station (yes, lots of "Victoria"s in that sentence. One is a friend. One is the name of a train line on the underground and the other is the name of a station for buses, trains and the Tube). Of course, the train bypassed the Vauxhall station and I ended up at Waterloo. Cool. I found the Tube station, got an Oyster card (this is basically just a card that you put money on so that you don't have to buy individual tickets every time you want to use the underground--it supposedly saves you money by always giving you the best rate or something, which is good), and navigated my way underneath the city to Victoria Station. Then I talked with Victoria on my mobile and said "I'm by the Starbucks." Well, just like Seattle, that sentence isn't incredibly descriptive, is it? I had also told her what theatre I could see from there but, alas, she could see the exact same theatre from yet another Starbucks that was quite close by. We managed to sort this out rather quickly.

Though I try to avoid looking too much like a tourist, Victoria insisted that I allow her to take my picture in front of various interesting sights that we came across -- here's Westminster Abbey. We walked around that area, towards the House of Commons, through a park along the river and then crossed over the Thames. And here we are with the House of Commons and Big Ben sprouting out of our heads...

I was thrilled to have a picture of me with a friend instead of just, you know, me, or, some buildings or something. It was really nice and made me happy.

We walked along the other side of the river for a bit and passed through a park where there were at least half a dozen people dressed rather oddly who had little baskets out so that people could pay to have their picture taken with them. There was Donald Duck and a man sitting underneath a table with his head all painted like a puppy or something and poking up through a dog kennel on top of the table and there was an odd sort of tin man and some butterfly woman and it was just bizarre. We were both a bit confused. We crossed back over the river again and just sort of started walking without much of a plan. We ended up in Trafalgar Square -- I was both surprised that we were there AND that I remembered what it was called.

That big building with the columns is the National Gallery. We went in there and walked around for quite a while looking at paintings. The museum is bigger than it looks but it's really just a maze of rooms filled with paintings. There were at least half a dozen different groups of kids on field trips there. I cannot imagine taking a bunch of little kids to a place like that (some of them looked like they were 6 years old). First of all, I can't imagine that they even care about the paintings, secondly I wouldn't want to keep them quiet for all that time.

****

The paintings were pretty cool to look at. It's crazy how old they are. I can't believe how bright some of the colors are and I wonder if they have faded at all over the hundreds of years since they were created. I can't imagine them being any more vibrant than they are now. I like the still life paintings and the scenery paintings. I'm not so into all of the paintings of people. Doesn't mean a whole lot to me. Anyhow, it was great because Victoria had never been in there before either so we were exploring it for the first time together.

The picture above is the view from the steps of the National Gallery looking out over Trafalgar Square with Big Ben in the background.

****

After we'd had enough of the old paintings (did that sound disrespectful?), we walked on toward Piccadilly Circus and found a little cafe type place to have lunch. It was about 3 o'clock at this point and neither of us had realized quite how hungry we were getting.

****

Following lunch we walked on (Tara, this quote is for you) and we were "merrily on our way to nowhere in particular." We came across this super fancy sweet shop and decided to have a look around. It was the size of a department store and had such interesting things in it! There were all sorts of candied fruits like pineapple and kiwi and oranges (you can see the tiny candied mandarins dipped in chocolate in the picture below) and lots of different Halloween candies and just, everything really. We were looking in a case of desserts and noticing that the little cakes cost more than our lunches did. It was fancy and it was fun and it would be kind of cool to be able to shop in a place like that for special occasions.

It turns out that Victoria doesn't know the city a whole lot better than I do : ) Okay, well, that's not true, she probably does know it way better than I do... We pulled out the map quite frequently just to make sure we knew where we were and that we were headed in a direction that would get us somewhere that we thought we wanted to be. That was vague, but so was our plan. At the risk of looking like a tourist in her own country, Victoria donned her rain jacket and took charge of both map and camera. What a trooper.

This is, well, something. I'm not sure what exactly, but it's big and I'm standing in front of it (or rather, behind it, as the front is around the other side) with my cute little umbrella.

It didn't start raining until later in the afternoon. Anticipating the rain, I wore my tall black boots. This seemed logical at the time because my Pumas soak through very quickly and I just don't like walking around with wet toes. Plus, I didn't want to wear my rainboots in case we went into any museums--I didn't want to look like I belonged on a farm or something. So, I thought, alright, not the greatest walking shoes but at least my feet will be dry. Wrong. So wrong. after 5+ hours of walking my feet were both sore and wet. Turns out I've had my boots long enough that they have a leak in them. Darn it. This happened to my last pair as well. I just wear them too much. I think it's really the 24 nights of caroling through the mall that wares them down so much, but anyway, I really need to find some different shoes! I can't believe I have 5 pairs of footwear here and nothing that meets these three simple requirements simultaneously: comfortable, stylish and waterproof. Bummer. I didn't really notice until I was on the train headed back to Virginia Water so obviously it wasn't that bad. I got off the train and walked back to the house in the rain with my umbrella pulled close to me and the Garden State soundtrack playing softly on my ipod. That seems like a very appropriate rainy day soundtrack, don't you think?

****

I had an absolutely fantastic time in London with Victoria and I cannot wait to go visit her in Oxford next weekend. Hopefully we'll get to spend another day in London together again soon -- there's just so much to see!

Walking in wellies.

Today was the first day that the weather was worthy of wearing wellies. (I love alliterations. They're so cheesy and fun.) It's nice to know that my rain-boots are going to be put to good use here since they took up precious space in my suitcase. Yesterday it was raining so I waited all day to walk Nelson until it was barely sprinkling anymore. Today I decided that I just wanted to get it over with and that I would walk him before I took a shower. Good. Choice. Thank you Grammi for my lovely raincoat that kept the top of me dry and thank you Tara for my lovely rain-boots that kept me dry from my toes to about mid-shins. The rest of me, my jeans basically, got soaked. It's a good thing it wasn't cold or I would've been miserable. After about 35 minutes of walking when I could tell that the rain had actually soaked through to my underwear (TMI? Sorry, that's what you get for reading my blog!), I decided it was time to head home. I do love wearing rain-boots though. Splashing in puddles without getting your feet wet is just really great. I like walking through the puddles instead of avoiding them. Now if I could just find some waterproof pants... I'd be good to go. Maybe I'll have to take an umbrella next time. Now I'm all showered and dry and cozy and I'm about to go make myself some tea.

I've had a very exciting morning. I booked weekend trips to both Paris and Brussels. In fact, all of my weekends are starting to fill up with plans, which is really nice. Tomorrow I'm going in to London to meet up with Victoria. I think we're going to do a little sightseeing and maybe some shopping. The looking kind of shopping though, not the buying kind. I think. We'll see. I'm just excited to have a reason to go somewhere and someone to hang out with!!

It's 3am at home... hope you're all sleeping soundly and that I don't wake anyone up too early with one of my eager phone calls. Dear Paige: I am going to try my best to wait until 7:15 at the earliest to call you. I know you'll read this after I've already called but I wanted you to know that I had good intentions : )

Lots of love!
Steph

Windsor from afar.

I hung out with Julie and Peter yesterday (aka Tara's friend Hannah's grandparents) and they took me to Great Windsor park. The park is huge and great for walking or cycling or... horseback riding!! I'm going to see if I can go on a guided ride through the park sometime. I came across some horseback riders and the lady from the stables gave me their phone number so I'll have to look into it.

It was a rather cold and exceptionally windy day but it was beautiful and I was definitely glad to be outside. The leaves are all turning colors and it's really quite nice.

That's Julie and I (I'm the tall one though we both look tiny) standing in front of this statue of King George. I'm not sure which King George though. The statue is huge and it's just all by itself way up on this hill (A hill! Amazing! The first one I've seen in this flat country!!) and on the other side from where we're standing, it looks down onto this walkway that takes you to Windsor Castle. We were pretty far from the castle (at least a mile) and because of the clouds, it's rather difficult to see but I got a close up of it later that night when we went into Windsor to celebrate Lauren's birthday at a Japanese restaurant. I would've taken an up-close picture of it for you then but it was dark and wouldn't have looked like much anyway. I like Windsor. I'm looking forward to going back there and walking around the town and seeing the castle in the daylight.

After our walk in the park we stopped at a pub called Fox and Hound. It was really nice. The country pubs are cozy with friendly people and a nice quiet family atmosphere. We just sat and had drinks and talked for about an hour and then headed off to Virginia Water lake. We came went towards the totem pole. I had come across this earlier in the week and thought it looked really out of place but it turns out that it was a gift to the Queen from Canada. That makes a bit more sense. It did seem very North American to me.

It was so sweet of them to drive all the way over here to pick me up! They've offered to come back sometime soon so that we can go walk around the grounds of Windsor Castle together and have also invited me to visit them in their town called Guildford (I think). It's so very nice to have people I can call and get together with!!

****

I'm starting to plan my weekends a bit more... I'm about to buy train tickets for a weekend each in Brussels and Paris. At first I was trying to choose between the two but it really doesn't cost all that much to get there and if I was in Seattle and I decided I wanted to spend the weekend in Paris... well, that just wouldn't be possible. So, I decided, that I just have to do it now, while I'm here, and when I come home I'll earn the money to pay myself back for all of this crazy stuff : )

****

It was another beautiful weekend and I'm really looking forward to making the most of my next couple of months here. I feel like I'm really starting to get into the swing of things.

Hilde the night owl.

Hilde is a champion. I just finished an hour long phone conversation with her. It was lovely. I sat at the kitchen table and drank peppermint tea with a blanket over my shoulders and talked with Hilde and got the Seattle scoop. Yes, it is 4:30am in Seattle, true story, but Hilde was wide awake. I wouldn't be surprised if she went and baked cookies after our talk. For the rest of you, I shall wait until you wake up and the sun is out : )

I'm off to find some lunch and then go for a lovely walk around the lake with Tara's friend's grandparents who live here in Surrey and have offered to meet up with me for a visit and take me sightseeing later this week. New friends! I can't even wait. Isn't networking the greatest? It's amazing how being alone can drive you to get in touch with people who you have only the most remote connection with.

Hope you all have a fantastic weekend!

Thanks again Hilde!