28 October 2009

Oktoberfest

Did I forget to mention that we went to Oktoberfest? Oh yeah, we went to Oktoberfest (at the end of September, which is when Oktoberfest takes place- don't let the name fool you).

We flew into Munich on Friday Morning and left on Sunday afternoon.

I wish I could tell you all about it, but to be perfectly honest, I don't remember much of Friday and I was so miserably hungover on Saturday that I didn't have that much fun. Those beers are MASSIVE. I woke up Saturday morning having realized that I lost my cell phone and had a HUGE bump on my head that turned into a nice bruise later. I did, however, gain a much-coveted stolen beer stein (if they find you stealing one at Oktoberfest, you can get a fine and kicked out!) so I guess it wasn't all a loss.
From what I remember, Oktoberfest consists of sitting in large tents with lots of very friendly Germans, eating surprisingly delicious food (Ox meat, pickles, pretzels, chicken...), and drinking the LARGEST BEERS YOU HAVE EVER SEEN. You also sing Germans songs, the words to which we never actually learned- even after having our new german friends say them over and over again to us very slowly. We went all out and bought lederhosen and dirndls- everyone thought we were locals!
Enjoy the following pictures and help me try to piece together the weekend......


Us in our dirndls and lederhosen


To be a waitress at Oktoberfest, you have to be able to hold A LOT of those HUGE beers at once.

Inside and outside at Hofbrau Haus- one of the main tents at Oktoberfest.

26 October 2009

We're Moving to the Virgin Islands!!!

That’s right people, we’re abandoning Europe for the beautiful beaches of St. Thomas!! We plan on leaving London in mid-December, spending Christmas at home and being in the Virgin Islands for new years.


If you’ve every hung out with bobby, you’ve heard him talk about his best-friend/life partner, Jacob. Well, a few years ago Jacob started a computer company which he recently re-located to St. Thomas (for tax reasons). Jacob’s been trying to get Bobby to work with him for ages, but it took moving to a tropical paradise to entice us to leave London. Right now, the plan is to be in St. Thomas for 2-3 years. I’m not exactly sure what I’ll be doing down there yet, any suggestions in that area are welcome.

Obviously, we’re super excited about living on St. Thomas. I’m looking forward to a much more laidback and healthier lifestyle. However, part of me is really sad to be leaving London. I adore this city and everything it has to offer. Hopefully we’ll be back some day.

We plan on getting a place big enough to have a guest room, so visitors welcome!!

The fate of the blog is, as of yet, unknown. Now that I’ll have a US telephone number again, I feel like it will be easier to keep in touch with people without it, but we’ll see how things go.

24 October 2009

Laura Update

I'm not sure how many people actually read this blog (you all are not great about commenting), but I've had a lot of people asking about how i'm doing so I thought I would give a little update.

I feel AMAZING!! The surgery went better than I could ever have hoped. I had a little bump in the road about a week after returning home from the hospital which landed me back there for a few days, but that was my own fault. I got a little excited and introduced new foods into my diet too quickly. I now have that back in control and am feeling great!! I'm already months ahead of where to doctors said I would be at this point. So yay!! If British people weren't so stand-offish and afraid to show emotion, I would give my surgeon and big hug and kiss next time I saw him.

Also, thanks to nationalized healthcare, it was all FREE!!

18 October 2009

Bodies in Urban Spaces

This weekend a performance came to London that was simply fantastic. A photography group I've joined alerted me to Bodies in Urban Spaces, a group of dancers that cavort around the city and form crazy sculptures with their bodies. There were probably 200-300 spectators that trailed behind the performers for about an hour as we walked along the south bank of the Thames.

I'll let the pictures below speak for themselves. I've uploaded a bunch to Flickr, so you can check the full list out if you want to see more.




11 October 2009

Phantom of the Opera

We finally got around to seeing Phantom of the Opera in London. I have little to say about it other than that it was FANTASTIC!!!! I mean, SPECTACULAR!! I'm listening to the soundtract as we speak and haven't stopped singing it for the last week. If you've never seen it, you must go!


I was really keen on seeing Phantom after seeing Wicked and being somewhat disappointed by it. Everyone said that Wicked was the best musical ever "next to Phantom of the Opera" so I thought that it may pull through for me where Wicked failed- and it did! We saw it performed at Her Majesty's Theatre in the West End and it was the perfect experience. The theatre is actually quite small, which means that every seat gets the full spectacular experience. The cast was beyond words- their performance was truly perfection.

A big thanks to Kim for buying us the tickets! I would go back and see it again tonight if it weren't so darn expensive!!

I'm still a huge fan of Avenue Q, and it might actually remain my favourite musical, but if you want the true West-End experience, nothing beats Phantom!

10 October 2009

Stonehenge

Now that I’m home from the hospital and recuperating nicely, time to catch up on what we were doing for the few weeks leading up to my operation.

My friend Sarah (who I met in Kenya and subsequently worked with in DC) came out for a visit, so I was able to explore some new parts of England with her. She wanted to go to Stonehenge, a place I had yet to visit, so I was happy to join her for this day-trip from London.

We woke up early and took the train from London’s Waterloo station to Salisbury, about a 2 hour ride. Once we arrived in Salisbury, we paid to take have one of the touristy buses take us out to Stonehenge itself. The mystical monument is only about 25 minutes from the town of Salisbury, but a taxi will charge you £35 for the round-trip ride and doesn’t include the informative and mood-setting dialogue that the £17 tourist bus gave us, so I would definitely recommend the bus choice.

On the way to Stonehenge (“The most impressive stone circle in the world” according to the tour), we learned important information like the fact that it is super old, nobody knows why the hell it exists or who built it, and that its probably not as mystical as all the rumors and folk lore make it out to be. There is little information on Stonehenge not because of its mystical nature, but because its just too old for us to hazard a guess as to its use. I have to say, I was a little disappointed in this aspect of Stonehenge. I would have been much more impressed if they would have just played up to the fantastical rumors. Instead of “early people of England built this stone circle a long ass time ago probably for some boring purpose like a calendar,” I would have liked to have heard “we don’t know why this stone circle is here- it was probably aliens or some kind of druid human-sacrifice altar.” It may be historically inaccurate, but it would have been much more worth the £6 entry fee I paid.

I was also a little disappointed by the scale of Stonehenge. I mean, sure, those rocks are big. I mean, I couldn’t move them and according to our tour the biggest one weights as much as 25 elephants, but they didn’t actually look all that impressive in person. Maybe its because you can’t get that close to them (the circle is fenced off), but pictures I had seen of Stonehenge made them seem much bigger.

The thing I WAS impressed with from Stonehenge is the fact that the stones from the inner circle came from the mountains of Wales- 250 miles away. They managed to move stone pillars weighing nearly 6 tons 250 miles without the use of modern machinery. Historians are still not sure how they did it.

After we finished our tour of Stonehenge, we headed back to Salisbury to explore the town a bit. I would call it a fairly typical British town. One item of note is that the Salisbury Cathedral houses one of the few original copies of the Magna Carta.

So, would I go back to Stonehenge? No, probably not. In the end, it was just kind of underwhelming. I’m glad I saw it once, but that’s definitely all you need. If you have an extra day in London or if you’re driving by Salisbury anyways, it might be worth your trip, but I wouldn’t go out of my way for it. There are much better day trips from London that I would recommend first.

07 October 2009

LAURA IS HOME!

Hooray!!!!

06 October 2009

Recovery Update

Hooray! Laura is feeling quite well and starting the road to recovery (and is even eating some food now).

She will be coming out of hospial on Wednesday, less than a week after going under the knife. I will be very happy to have her back at home and resting.

01 October 2009

Surgery Complete

Laura is out of surgery and recovering nicely. She's already been up walking around, but is (obviously) very tired after the ordeal.

Thanks for all of the warm wishes, I'll keep updating the blog as we progress.