More Weddings!

I told you that 2009 is the 'Summer of the Wedding'. Seriously. I went to Drew and Mithi's yesterday, over near Bristol. It was one of my very favourite! This was a party I'd been looking forward to since I got the 'she said yes!' text from Drew.

For those of you who don't know them, they are amazing. Both of them are so creative and so talented (not to mention brilliantly intelligent and stunningly handsome/gorgeous!) and have such a collection of interesting friends. They're both swing dancers and travel around to various juggling conventions. So the reception was a real treat, as it incorporated the best bits of tradition, whilst still remaining true to the quirky nature of their personalities, and, of course, making the fullest use of the particular talents of all their friends. There were a few raindrops during the ceremony, but I don't think a single one of us cared, and the rain did let up in the afternoon, allowing us to move outside. There was juggling, and related arts (including hoola-hooping! I've got to get a hoola-hoop!), and not only by the jugglers. I got a very fabulous lesson by an 11 year old young man, Alex, on how to work a diablo. I'd never worked one before, and by the end of it I could get it started and do 2 tricks! It was so fun. Then, there was a traditional English Cream Tea and a full dinner with fabulous cakes after. In fact, that was another of the wonderful things about this wedding. They didn't do a 'wedding cake'. Instead, they invited anyone who wanted to bring a cake to let them know, so they'd know if they had enough. They ended up with 15 different types of cake! I made one, too. I made my spice cake with cream cheese icing. It was really warm, though, when I was making it. So I had this problem: The icing was running all over the place! So I had to come up with an idea for something that would disguise the rather poor icing job. What I ended up doing was drawing a tree with icing (the trunk was Nuttela. You can pipe it!) and 'carving' their initials into the trunk, inside a heart (that's my favourite bit). Then, I put the 'Tweeter' on the top. Tweeter was the little bird they'd sent out with the invite. You cut him out and put him together, so he was 3D. It was really sweet.

Also fun, they didn't have the normal speeches. Yes, the Bride and Grooms fathers spoke, but so did the Bride's mother, uncle, and grandmother. And the Best Man, Best Woman, Best Nic (yeah... that's so Drew and Mithi!) and several guests. Except, not all of them gave 'speeches'. In fact, several of them gave performances! Here's a video of a bit of one of them.

So, Drew and Mithi - thanks for such a lovely day. I hope the whole rest of your lives are as much fun as your wedding day was. And thank you for letting me be a part. I love you!!

Never A Dull Moment

I had the craziest night last night. I'd made plans to go into London to say hi to a friend from the States who'd just arrived to London for the summer. And I'd arranged with a dance friend to meet at Dover Street Jazz Bar for some live music and dancing after dinner. The dinner was great, we had a grand time, and then dancing was fantastic. Up to this point, everything's going to plan. Around 11.30 I said I needed to head off to Liverpool Street to catch the train home. My friend was like, 'But the music's fabulous and the we don't get to dance together that often, stay. If you miss the last train home, you can crash at mine.' Since I didn't have anything in particular to do in the morning, I decided to stick around. Well, the band finished up about 30 minutes later, so I figured I'd rush to the station and catch the last train. My friend offered me a lift on his moterbike, so we got kitted up and headed out. Missed the train by about 3 minutes. Grrr. Not too much of a problem, though, because my friend had waited to make sure I didn't get stranded. Only problem was, I'd realised that my car was parked in the train station's carpark, and the parking permit would expire before I could get home, if I stayed the night. Not good. So my friend suggested that if I could put him up for the night, he'd take me all the way home. That would be fine, but it seemed a bit silly for him to drive all the way out to Colchester, and then back in the morning. So I suggested I just catch a coach to Stanstead Airport, from where I could catch another home to Colchester. So we had to figure out where the coach left from, and eventually found the right stop for the bus, and got on the coach. I eventually got home, at 5.00 in the morning! Got the car before the ticket expired, though! You know me, never a dull moment!

Wedding Feaver

No, not me. I'm no where near getting married. But it seems that all my friends are. I've just attended a wedding yesterday in York. I'm off to another one next Saturday. There was a wedding in the States that I didn't get to attend last week. I know there's another one in August (also in the States, and I'm a bit hazy on the details) and another one in September. It kind of seems like the whole world decided to get married this summer!

Independence Day

It's the 4th of July. The anniversary of the day that the British Colonies in the Southern half of North America declared their independence and became the United States of America. Now, I live in England and the two most common assumptions for why I live here are that either: 1) I'm and Anglophile and therefore love all things English, or 2) I dislike the United States. In fact, neither of these things are true. I live in England because that's where I can do my PhD in Conversation Analysis under the banner of Linguistics (as opposed to Sociology). Yes, I quite like England, because I've made very good friends here. But has nothing to do with their nationality. I love the United States. I love my heritage. I love that I am an American! To me it's the best country in the world. Is it perfect? No. But it's mine. I always joke that I love being from America, but in order to be from America, I have to be somewhere else. In honesty, though, I don't particularly mind where I live. But I'm so glad I was born American. So, Happy 4th of July. Happy Independence Day. Happy Anniversary of the Day We Kicked Britain Out of Our Country. God Bless the USA.

Evening Cool

Summer's finally arrived to England. This past week has been truly lovely. Every day has been sunny and warm. I've even had to work to not get sunburnt. It's been wonderful. I've been doing my PhD work outside at the patio table. It's been wonderful to work outside, instead of being cooped up in my office. But my favourite time of day is the evening. Around 8.00 pm, as the sun goes low in the sky, the blackbird comes to perch on the back fence, and starts singing his heart out. As the sun sets, a breeze picks up. The heavy humid air is still warm from the sun, but the breeze is cool as it ruffles the hem of my skirt. The breeze also brings with it the sent of the jasmine growing along the fence. The breeze, warm humid air and sent of jasmine is enough to make you forget that you're in England, and not on some tropical island paradise. Evening is always my favourite time of day, and these have been enchanting.

Biggin Hill Air Show

I love Air Shows. There's a fabulous one in Biggin Hill, just outside London ever June. And every year I think, 'I should go to that,' but something always comes up. This year I didn't even know it was happening, because I'd been out of town, in Amsterdam and Germany for the two weeks leading up to it. Mom came back to England from Amsterdam with me, and she wanted to go to Rochester Castle on Friday. So we headed off, leaving Colchester in the gorgeous sunshine. But, as we got closer to London, it started to cloud over, and eventually we ended up being poured on from the heavens. So we turned around and headed back to Colchester, which was still sunny and lovely. Saturday, we headed off again to try and go to the castle, hoping for better weather. And about half way there, we started seeing signs saying 'For Biggin Hill use Junction 4 off the M25'. I said, 'Oooh, I keep meaning to go there.' Mom said,' What is it?' I said, 'It's a big air show, but I don't know if you need to buy tickets before the weekend, or if you can get them there.' She said, 'Well, let's go try.' So we did. And it was great.

Some of my favourite shots (Note! If the photo looks like it's upside down, that's because the thing was flying upside down. All of them.):

Dresden to Amsterdam

So, I spent my week between Munich and Amsterdam in Dresden, Saxony (the NorthEastern corner of Germany). It was completely destroyed during WWII, but they rebuilt all the historic public buildings, like the cathedral, etc. So, what you ended up with was buildings that look like they'er 500 years old, but have sharp corners, clean walls and smooth floors. You know, like they're new. Or, like they would have looked when they were new. We're so used to the 'old' look in our acitecutre that we forget that at some point in the past, it was new! That was really quite cool.

I spent Wednesday-Friday there, and on Saturday took the train cross country(s) to Amsterdam. That was actually kind of fun. I went to the Dresden train station and talked to a booking agent about getting to Amsterdam. She had several suggestions. The one I liked the best (overnight sleeper train) wouldn't work, though, because it didn't get me there til Monday, and I needed to be there Sunday! They had the trains running every night, but they were twice as expensive on Saturday. So instead, I ended up traveling all day Saturday. But, because I said yes I'd do 3 train changes, I got a 1st Class ticket for the price of a 2nd Class ticket! Yeay! 9 hours on the train? What's an additional 45 minutes? Seriously, that was the time difference. I was even more pleased when I ended up with an entire cubical to myself. :-) I slept a good portion of the way (which was good, because I'd been up til the wee hours of the morning talking to Lois!). In fact, I was so far asleep, the conductor had a difficult time waking me up to check my ticket. *blush*

Upon arrival in Amsterdam, I was reminded why I hate the city. Rediculously expensive! Stupidly expensive!! Insanely Expensive!!! I went from 25 Euros/Night
room to 125 Euros/Night room. And you know what? The 25 Euro room was nicer! Seriously, the room was shocking.

However, the 'room' I shared when I meet up with Mom and Grandma more than made up for the deprivations of the first place! I walked down from my place to the collection point for our shared place. What was exciting was, I didn't have a map. Or any real idea of where I was going. Shockingly, I made it without any problems! I had looked at it on Google Maps the night before, but I had no way of printing off a map. So I just wrote down all the streets. Unfortunately, I'd misremembered the tram system, and got off at a completely wrong spot . . . which also happened to be about 3 blocks from where I wanted to end up! I've got quite a good sense of direction, so, even though I didn't know where I was, I knew which direction I still needed to go. And after a couple of blocks, I saw a street sign I recognised. I'd found the corner of one of the streets I needed. And what was better? I was literally one block from the hotel! I rounded the corner of the final street, and just as I did, I looked to my right, and there was a crane (bird) on the roof of the car I was standing next to. And it was about 3 feet from my face! I was really shocked. And then I heard this laughter coming from across the street. Some tourists were sitting outside the hotel, and laughing at my surprised face. I said, 'I so wish I'd had a photo of that!' and they said, 'We wish we'd had had a photo of your face!' Ok, maybe you had to be there.

Anyway, back to the accommodation. I arrived first and asked if Mom and Grandma had checked in. I'd promised that if I got there first, I'd wait for them, but if they arrived first, they were to give them my name and go on to the flat. (We'd rented a flat instead of a suit in a hotel. It was cheaper.) They hadn't arrived, so I sat down to wait. The woman at reception said that the flat had two, very steep, flights of stairs. Since it was my grandmother coming, would we prefer a houseboat on one of the canals? Ummm.... yeah! So, we ended up with a houseboat! It was brilliant! Gorgeous inside (though less than stunning outside) with a spectacular view of the canal out the window. It was the perfect way to stay in Amsterdam.