Week 9 and Lovely Weather

Monday, May 17, 2010
Golfing in London

This evening we joined two of Tony’s coworkers for a game of golf at an indoor golf simulator. We “played” the Old Course, St Andrews in Scotland. It was an enjoyable evening and it turns out that I am not that bad at golf, at least on a simulator! I apologize for not having picture, but I decided to not embarrass Tony in front of his coworkers by playing Kodak Lady. However…check out the link below to see the how the Londoners golf in the city. To see where we played click on Venues and Urban Golf Kensington.
http://www.urbangolf.co.uk/

My London Learning for the day--Tony’s coworkers cringe, shake their heads, and talk about how “horrible” it is when Tony tries to speak with a British accent. Another learning is that the common/favorite pasty (a pastry shell with fillings such as meat and vegetables) is pronounced similar to the word fast with an i on the end. Tony pronounced it differently and his coworkers had fun with this one.


Tuesday and Wednesday, May 18-19, 2010
Volunteer Work

I began my volunteer work this week. Working at the Family History Centre is perfect for me. It keeps me busy, allows me to be around people, and involves no stress. I really enjoyed my first two days and look forward to more.

My London Learning—cherries are expensive here! I found cherries, which were from the USA, and I was very excited as I love eating them this time of year. My heart sank when I saw the price--₤13.99/kg. This is almost $10/pound! I love cherries, but not that much. I will have to enjoy them next year.


Thursday, May 20, 2010
Routine and Science Museum –Leakage

I enjoyed a performance by the Vietnamese born pianist My Kieu Anh Pham. After the performance I was able to visit with My Kieu. She is a pleasant young woman and was very appreciative of those that were in attendance. She is currently working on her Masters at the Royal Academy of Music.

My plan for after the concert was to finish the last floor of the Science Museum that I have yet to explore. However, this is what I came across…

I asked someone what had happened and apparently there was some type of leakage. So when I got home (after spending a lovely afternoon in Hyde Park) I searched the Internet for more information about the leakage. Dailymail.co.uk confirmed that there was a “chemical incident” and that 22 people were treated (all staff and no visitors), but it was uncertain what the chemical was and how people came into contact with it.

My London Learning for the day is for emergencies call 999, not 911 and that the ER is called A&E here, which is for Accident and Emergency.


Friday, May 21, 2010
News and Reading the Headlines

My post for today is also my London Learning...and I will mention that my dad warned me about this one so when I saw if for myself, I wasn’t totally blown away---but am still amazed. So this morning when watching the BBC Breakfast show, which is like our Good Morning America, the portion of the show featuring the daily news highlights came up and the host went to a stack of today’s newspapers are started reading it to the viewers. No reporting. No summarizing. Just reading. There was some discussion of the news with the co-host, but the reading straight from the papers was…weird. I’m thinking “Seriously, you are reading that to me because?…I can’t get myself a paper and read it on my own?...You can’t summarize it for yourself and report on it, so you have to read it?” Needless to say broadcast journalism is very different here in the UK…no glitz, no glam, no entertainment…as a matter of fact at times they will just read the news to you straight from the papers that you can pick up and read for yourself!


Weekend, Saturday and Sunday, May 22-23, 2010
Lovely Weather and a lot of Walking—Holland Park

The weather has finally reached the 20’s! Okay that’s Celsius for the 70’s. And as Tony said on Sunday afternoon, “It’s a brilliant day!” The whole weekend was brilliant! So we enjoyed a weekend of walking around the city. Though on Saturday we had a goal in mind---buying more casual shirts for Tony. In Tony’s rush to pack and leave for London back in February he did not pack enough the casual shirts or at least the ones we really wanted—you may have noticed the several pictures with Tony in his Harley Davidson shirt. Well, we are planning on keeping the Harley shirt, but we now have a few more options!!

One of the parks that we visited on Saturday was Holland Park. It is a beautiful park with an amazing Kyoto Garden.

My London Learning for the weekend is that the Londoners don’t need a beach or pool to go sunbathing. The parks here were packed this weekend with sunbathers! At times I thought that I was at the beach...until I saw the green grass!