I wasn't exaggerating!

There's been a few requests for pictures - so take a look. These are even AFTER I went and got it fixed (to the extent possible). I refuse to take a picture of my whole head while my hair is down... way too embarrassing. It's like a femme-mullet, but only on half of my head since the other is long with barely any layers at all. I'm now straightening it every day (imagine what those short pieces would look like curly) and wearing it in a ponytail with a headband.


Okay, enough of me complaining. This week, Bobby has a break at school - yesterday he had "sports day", which is an entire day of PE. Today he taught a class on "how to brew beer" for his classmates to work on his presentation skills. He even called up a local brewery (they make London Pride, if you've heard of it) and got them to donate a bunch of beer for a tasting!

Work is not too busy for me this week. Tomorrow night we're going to a PwC American Halloween dinner where full "fancy dress" (aka dressing up) is required. Friday night we're going to see the play "Avenue Q", which is a comedy that's like a crude sesame street for adults. Its supposed to be hysterical...

But, seriously, does anyone have any home remedies for making hair grow faster?

We set a date!

October 3, 2008 at Gibbet Hill in Groton. YAY! Here's some pics...

Haircut from hell

I got my haircut yesterday afternoon. I was wandering around the part of the city near my office to try to find a decent salon with reasonable prices. Well, I learned my lesson the hard way - there are some things in London you just don't try to save £10 on.

My ignored warning signs:
- When I walked into the salon, they seemed very excited to have a customer
- When I explained I just wanted a trim, Yana (my stylist from Latvia) brought out a magazine of short and spiked haircuts asking to point to the one I wanted

Now the nightmare. First, she trimmed the bottom. Okay. Second, she combed all my hair into a pony tail directly on top of my head, twisted it until it was really tight, and proceeded to cut from the bottom up. I yelled - I scared her (she had to open the door for some fresh air) and the receptionist asked if I please wouldn't scream anymore. I couldn't help it! I thought she was cutting the whole ponytail off! She didn't end up cutting the whole way through, but instead just cut the ponytail about 1/4 of the way in and worked her way up. There was panic on my face. It was definitely the weirdest haircut I've ever received, including the time when someone cut my hair while it was dry. Why am I so nice? I should have just left. And then I paid £35 for it! What is wrong with me?

The result - Since there was no rhyme or reason to how she cut my hair, it is completely uneven. There's tons of short layers on one side, but barely any on the other. And in the front, there's a big piece that's cut to right above my ear (so I can barely put it back). Also, it's about half as thick as it used to be. I think I'm still in shock. Do I get it fixed or let it grow out until xmas and make an appointment in the states? I am not going to cry....

A little bit of everything

This week has been very busy. I was working up in Reading (ha - I left Reading, MA to come to Reading, England) on a new client and Bobby had his last week of his "Block 1" classes - only 3 more "blocks" to go. Time is just flying by here. Work is getting better, but busier. My new team is great - very friendly and we have a lot of laughs in the audit room. And Bobby's doing so well in school, of course... Last week he gave a group presentation and the professor said they were the best group by far! He's also been doing a lot of networking by going to at least one career fair a week.

I went to a PwC "survival" course for secondees this week. Hysterical. It was for all the people who started in my group within the past few months from overseas. They handed out a list of "You can tell you're a Londoner if"... here are my favorites: you've mentally blocked out all thoughts of the city's air/water quality and what it's doing to your insides, your door has more than 3 locks (ours has 4), and you're paying £1,200 a month for a studio the size of a walk-in wardrobe and you think it's a "bargain". All so true...

Also this week, our phone line stopped working. All of a sudden - nothing. So it was back to calling BT and staying on hold for hours at a time. Why is this important? Because you can't get broadband without a phone line. Apparently cable internet is a thing of the future over here. I can't complain, though, because we have been enjoying our TV! I have 2 wedding channels (which I have going in the background right now) and Bobby has the Discovery channel.

This weekend Bobby is at Sean & Tina's wedding in upstate NY. He booked his ticket last minute (he wasn't sure if he could get the time off school), and ended up having to fly from London to Germany to Chicago to Syracuse, NY. WOW. He made it though!

My weekend was surprisingly full, considering Bobby was gone. One of his classmates, Nina, invited me to a London Business School event (right around the corner from our flat) on Friday night. Her husband goes to school there and they have company sponsored events every 2 weeks. Free drinks - I'm in! It was a great crowd. Then last night was the rugby championship - England vs. South Africa. Every pub in the city was PACKED. I met up with Nick & Tara at a pub in Fulham and we couldn't see any of the game - it was like every 6'6" guy in the whole city decided to go to that pub and stand in a line directly in front of us. So we headed to Erin's flat (another PwC person I met at training a few weeks ago) at halftime, watched the game and ordered pizza. Perfect, except that England lost. Oh - random sidenote - I learned that England's national anthem "God save the Queen" has the same melody as "America the Beautiful". At first I was very, very confused... :)

Now off to go grocery shopping with the biggest backpack I can find. I learned my lesson a couple weeks ago where I just tried to carry the bags normally on the 3/4 mile trip home from the store and almost lost circulation in my wrists/hands. More updates soon and I really am trying to get Bobby to do another post. I'm sure he'll have some interesting story from his travels!

We have tv :)

The engineer from Sky came this morning and set us up with cable! We didn't want to get our hopes up since they missed the appointment on Tuesday, but they did end up coming today and restoring some of our faith in the British customer service system. Now its just a matter of ordering broadband (I've been on hold for almost 45 min so far)....

This weekend was great. Friday night we went out with some of Bobby's classmates near Bond St. Some highlights: finally meeting Takeshi - one of Bobby's friends in his "small group" who previously was an investment banker in Japan, Tom explaining to us how the British political system is setup, getting advice on where to vacation in India from Rav, convincing Nina from Columbia to only speak Spanish to Bobby to help him practice, and watching Ping-Ping distribute a tray of Tequila shots to the Chinese classmates that had never tasted it before. Such a great group! Here's a picture of Bobby with Bingqiong, Rav and Voon.

Yesterday while Bobby went to his first intermediate spanish class, I cut up through Regent's Park and explored Camden Town. It brought back memories of when I went to visit Kim DiReeno and Katie Ruigh while we were in college... There are great markets up in that area and there were tons of tourists out and about. Bobby and I are actually heading up there again this afternoon! While I was in the area, I ended up buying new blinds for our place (since the landlord hasn't made any attempt to fix our broken ones in over a month), and had to walk back almost 2 miles with an 8 foot long box that had the headrail in it. I couldn't even fit on the bus!! Needless to say, I got a lot of stares and some old man in the park yelled "hope you catch a lot with your new fishing pole!". I wish I had a picture - it was ridiculous!

Last night we met up with Andrew, Katie & Steph to go to the BC alumni sponsored BC vs. Notre Dame game event. Finally - Bobby had some American sports to watch! It was a great turnout from both BC and Notre Dame alumni. The coordinators setup a projector on the roofdeck (you can kind of see it below) and we all hung out, drank beers, played beruit and watched the game. Turns out we ended up seeing 3 more people that we knew from BC at the party and there are 7 of us total from the class of 2003 over in London! Small world.

Off to Camden to get out for a bit - its been gorgeous fall weather lately. Oh, and still on hold for broadband.....

Megan & Rigo's Wedding

I got back on Monday from Megan & Rodrigo's wedding in San Francisco... I had the best time! Megan looked gorgeous and they were the happiest couple. I teared up a lot (and then quickly was reminded to get a hold of myself)! It was truly a beautiful day all around.


Now back to the real world.

Random London updates:
- Still no cable (we broke down and ordered the basic package) or internet
- Royal Mail has been on strike for over a week (Bobby may write a blog about this later)
- Bobby's taking spanish classes on top of his MBA program

Another Rainy Day

I had such a great time with everyone in Boston last week! It made it really hard to come back... and then just to top it off, I went from sunny 90 degree weather to rainy 50 degree weather. But such is life here in London!

While I was back, I got some requests for pictures of the outside of our flat, so here they are! Here's the front door and a little grassy area in between the blocks of flats when you walk out...

and the back patio (now we just need a BBQ).

Right now I'm waiting at home for the guy from British Telecom to come and install a landline so we can get phone and internet. Get ready for this - it's the third appointment he's missed, I have been waiting a total of 5 hours and 23 minutes for this guy to show up and have been on hold with the Company on the phone for 2 hours and 10 minutes. (Dave, thanks for chatting to help pass the time) I'd choose another provider, but there's a monopoly on the phone lines here! I'm starting to think there's a conspiracy against Americans having any means of communication here in the UK. At least we have skype for now!

Here's a quick update on Bobby's end....Even though he has the day off today, he's been at school all day working on a group project. He took a read through the group's rough draft last night and had to call an emergency meeting today. I guess people were quoting Wikipedia (for those of you that don't know, this is a website where pretty much anyone can go on and put information up as "fact") so he had to have a talk saying that its not really acceptable. Good luck with that...

More updates to come soon!