Destination #2-Stonehenge, Salisbury, and Bath (Destination #1 was and is London...)

Wow. I apologize for how long it's been since my last post! Time is flying by and I didn't realize it had been two and a half weeks since I wrote an entry.

Where do I start? I guess I can start off with probably the biggest venture so far. About a week and a half ago, I visited Bath, Salisbury, and Stonehenge! A few friends and I went on a tour and I have to say, I wouldn't recommend it. The trip itself was cool, the tour guide however was a different story. I felt like I was in school again! If he was talking through his microphone on the bus and god forbid somebody else was talking, he would wait for us to shut up! Nobody says we have to listen to you bud! Among many other things he did, all mainly rude, he glared at this little 3-4 year old boy who walked across the shot when he was taking my picture!! The guy was just brutal. Anyway, we first went to Bath, which was nice but other than the Roman Baths (which I didn't see), it didn't seem like there was much to see. Then we ventured over to Salisbury Cathedral which was pretty cool. I could have sworn the hallways there were filmed in Harry Potter but I guess you can say that about any architecture here. After that, we visited Stonehenge, which was the highlight of the day. Some people say "they're just rocks" but I found them really cool to look at, knowing that they've been there for possibly 5000 years. I got lots of pictures of that (I'm sorry, still don't have the camera cord to upload photo's).

Luckily, one of my friend's can upload pictures!

As some of you may know from Facebook, I have my first trip planned. Well I guess that's a lie since I already had Oktoberfest planned. Anyway, my friend Nicole (girl beside me in picture) and I will be heading to Belgium at the end of August for 3 nights. We're mainly going to be in Bruges but we will be checking out Brussels for a day as well. If anyone has been before and has recommendations, let me know! I've heard I need to brush up on my French.

Like I said before, time is whizzing by here. I'm quite busy at work every day so the days go by super quick and before I know it, it's the weekend. I am enjoying the job, except being on the phone can sometimes be difficult. 

A.) Because the customer's are difficult themselves and

B.) I cannot understand them with their accents! Especially the Irish...they might be Welsh sometimes too...can't really tell...

Some fun things I've done in the past couple of weeks:

-Went to this Fawlty Towers Dining experience, which was hilarious and awesome despite never watching the TV show

-BritBound had a James Bond themed party, however I chose not to dress up because it was simply too hot out to wear a suit

-Went and saw Phantom of the Opera for the first time ever. Not sure I fully understood the whole time what was going on but was enjoyable nonetheless

-Went to the London Film Comic Con in which I waited in line for 5 and half hours!!!!!!!! Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a life long dream to be there but I had nothing better to do that day and I didn't think it was going to be that long of a wait to get in! After waiting that long, I only actually spent an hour and a half in the convention where I bought some Game of Thrones paraphernalia. This is also an event where lots of people dress up so there was loads of people in Star Wars costumes, Game of Thrones costumes, 300, Hunger Games, you name it...all the nerdy stuff.

Apologies for the novel. Cheers! (Now starting to say that a lot) 

Pictures

Almost forgot. There's some pictures as well that I have. I have a lot more but unfortunately I left the cord that connects my camera to my computer at home. So, I'm on the search to find it at a store here. These are just from my phone.

From Tourist to Local

As some or all of you know, I am finally settled in to London with a job and a place to stay. I'll start off with the place. I'm situated in South East London in zone 3. For those that don't know about the London zones, basically zone 1 is the most central and the further away you go from the centre, the higher the zone. Zone 1 or 2 was ideally what I wanted, however, you can imagine how expensive it can get in those zones. The area is not too shabby. I'm about an 8 minute walk to a train station, that takes me right into the heart of London in 30 minutes. Literally 1 minute walk to a beautiful park. I have a pretty spacious room considering the sizes of rooms you'll find in London. The house is with 3 English fellows who kind of keep to themselves and have their own lives. Now, it's only for July and August which is what I want. Ideally, I want to be closer to central London and potentially also share a place with people a bit more social come September.

The job. I apologize if I bore you or just lose you altogether. I've already worked two days and to be honest, I still don't even fully understand the company I work for. The name of the company is called Gemserv, and from what I gather, they're a consulting firm. There are many sectors to it and I particularly work in just one of them. The area I'm in is called the Microgeneration Certification Scheme or MCS for short. Still with me here? MCS is something the government created so that people installing renewable energy source products are protected by this scheme and the installations have standards. One of Gemserv's job is to administer MCS on behalf of the government. My job is to answer customer queries through phone and email and while that might seem super easy, I have to know the answers to the questions they're asking and know what I'm talking about. At the moment, that's taking some time. Luckily, they're putting me through training. The position was given to me as temporary for 2-3 months but they could offer me an extension, depending on how well I do. The company seems fast growing so from what I've heard, I most likely will be offered an extension. It just doesn't make sense to hire and train somebody for only 3 months when the company shows no signs of slowing down. Anyway, sorry to bore you with all that!

Other than starting work and moving in, this last week has kept all of it's fun as well. Tuesday, my Canadian friends and I celebrated Canada Day. There's a Canadian bar in London that we went to go to but it was absolutely packed and lined out the door so we went to another pub, although not Canadian, across the street and it was packed with Canadians. Wednesday night, I went and saw War Horse and it was awesome! Dare I say I teared up a little. Mom, you would have loved it. Friday night, I went and saw a contemporary play called Mr. Burns...and it was interesting to the say the least. Saturday, I went to this food festival in Southbank and I probably could have eaten everything there. It's dangerous too because they do it every weekend in the summer. There's always so much going on in this city, it's hard to keep up. Without being a part of BritBound, I can't say I would be discovering as much as they've shown me and I can't say that I would have as many friends as I do now. I've already signed up with them to go to Oktoberfest in September so I'm looking forward to that. Now that I'm settled in, I'm going to try to do as much with my weekends as much as possible. My not too distant future plans are to go see my friend Robyn in Dublin, see Stonehenge, visit Brighton and other parts of England, and possibly venture over to Amsterdam, Paris, etc. The list goes on!