Settling In

Cinco De Mayo aka Suze's Birthday!
On Suzette’s birthday, Cinco de Mayo, we decided to celebrate in true style. We invited our friend Zoe to come with us. She is an occupational therapy student from Oxford Brooks University and is originally from Mozambique (that’s in southern Africa for those of you who are geographically challenged). We went to the Texas Embassy Cantina per the suggestion of Melissa and Jenna. The restaurant was inspired by an actual Texas embassy which was established in London when Texas was its own independent republic. Since people do not seem to be too big on Mexican here in London nor do they acknowledge the existence of Cinco, we thought it would be no problem. However, when we got to the restaurant we were told it would be a 45 minute wait for a table. Since we had traveled by tube about 20 minutes not to mention the walk to the tube station, we decided to wait it out. We enjoyed chips and salsa and margaritas. However, overall the food was not quite up to par. It lacked the overall spiciness and taste that we have come to know and love back home. Especially Bekah who just came from Texas. After dinner, we went out to nearby Trafalgar Square. There is supposed to be a large fountain there, but they were doing construction on it so it was dry. However, there are these HUGE metal lions in the square. Before we ate, we had noticed many people climbing onto their backs and decided we too would do this after dinner. The lions are so massive that we required a boost in order to sit on their backs. With extraordinary effort, we were able to accomplish our goal and even sit near the lions face in his paws. We took many pictures here. It was only later that we learned that apparently this is illegal and we could have been carted off.

The land of Tolkein and Lewis:
On the weekend, we ventured to Oxford to visit with our friend Zoe who goes home on the weekends. The bus we took, the Oxford tube, has free Wi-fi so we were able to finalize our future adventures. Upon arrival in Oxford, we missed our bus stop. Luckily, we realized this and got off at the next stop. But we then had to lug our baggage up this gigantic ridiculous hill. Since we had bags full of bedding not to mention the computer, this was not fun. We met up with Zoe and had a true English brunch. This consisted of scrambled eggs, sausages, hashbrowns, a grilled tomato, and toast. There was also a side dish of what pretty much amounted to spaghetti-Os but with straight noodles –weird. After eating, we headed into town. We visited the Bridge of Sighs which is a replica of a Venetian bridge and was very pretty. We went to the library which we were not allowed to enter, much to Suze’s dismay as it is the largest library in Europe and she was really looking forward to it. We then attempted punting. This is basically poling down a river…kinda like the gondoliers in Venice. It is a lot harder than it looks. You have to propel the boat as well as steer with a long metal pole that is cold and heavy. We each took a turn during the 1 hour trip. Suze was pretty good, but Bekah was not so much. Zoe was best of all, but then she had done it before. After our boat outing, we visited one of the colleges in Oxford. Confusingly enough, Oxford is actually made up of many smaller colleges. We went in one called Magdalene’s College, which they pronounce Maudlin. We don’t know why. It was pretty and historic with lots of wisteria on the building giving off a heavenly fragrance. There is also a large deer park there. The deer are smaller than those back home and an uglier brownish color. We left the college and headed back to Zoe’s where we met up with some of her friends for dinner. We decided to go to a Brazillian restaurant. It was kinda like the churascarias in the States, but slightly less fancy and without polenta, which Bekah was very sad about. The food was overall very good. And we both ate chicken hearts!! It is not an experience we will soon be repeating. The flavor was not bad (like spicy chicken sausage), but we felt we could feel the ventricle and valves as we were chewing. The next day, we did a bit of shopping in Oxford after going to church that morning. We hopped back on the Oxford tube to London and were home at a decent hour. We were very grateful for this as we had spent the previous night on the cold hard dorm room floor.
Physical Torture:
On Tuesday night we went to kickboxing. This class is held once a week in our gym on Drapers ward. The instructor is Marvin, the aforementioned PTA on our ward. He is a cage fighter, or what we in the US would call ultimate fighter. He was even on a reality TV show in London called The Final Eight. He did not win, but the chap that he lost to did. The class was brutal. Even during the warm up, Bekah thought she might not make it. We did sit-ups and push ups galore. With some frog jumps, calf work and kicks thrown in for fun. The class in total was an hour and a half. At the end, we got to do some sparring with Marvin. Don’t worry, he wasn’t really fighting back. We are not able to move today, Wednesday and are going out of our way to avoid stairs!

Word of the Blog: jumper - sweatshirt. While we were in Oxford, Suze purchased a new jumper to ward off the English chill.

ps -- new pics are up: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/album.php?aid=2073111&id=34104915&ref=mf