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!