Days 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157. Dang Weekly Recap.

Days 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157. Dang. Weekly Recap.

Day 150. Sunday. At church I was asked by a lady, "Are you alone?" I thought it was pretty creapy question. "I mean did you come here to London with friends or family." I thought that was weird to. "Um I live with [landlady] so I am not living alone if that's what you mean." "No I was just wondering if you had a place to go for dinner." "Oh, well why didn't you just ask that in the first place?" She had invited her third cousin over for dinner as well and his friend, so she thought that a fourth at the dinner would be good. I agreed even after the strange intro to an invitation. I headed over to the V&A after church to work on my chocolate paper. If I am not in my home surroundings I seem to get things done better. I left the required word count at home, but got two full pages done on the history, manufacturing, and developers of chocolate. I got that done in enough time to go to dinner. She had given me her address 853 Blah Blah Road. When I got to the road, there was no 853. I called my landlady to get the address as I never got the ladies phone number or name before. "Oh her house is quite posh." was the response my landlady gave when I told her my predicament. Turns out it was flat 8 number 53. I would have never found it. Landlady was right, it was quite posh, very minimalist and modern apartment (the building is very old victorian). There was a statue in the living room, placed in a position I didnt know if I was to start a conversation about it or ignore it. I chose the latter. Dinner itself was lovely. Great conversation and a good time. Her job is something to do with family history for the government, she had her computer on, so I asked her if she had any ideas about my Tarwater line, as there are some discrepancies on information about his parents. She looked at familysearch.org with me and said that it was a brick wall, and until we get info on his posterity we would not be able to get info on him. Dang.

Day 151. Monday. Woke up not feeling the best, so tried to stay in bed as long as possible. I did manage to get out of bed and go to the US Embassy, but I did not even make it past the gate of the ugliest building in London. Seriously late 60's architecture was not flattering on the building or the surrounding area. I went with the intention of asking someone about the possibility to stay in the country for work. I dont know what i was thinking going there as the US cannot decide if I can stay here, but shoot I got to see the ugliest building ever. The security man gave me a card and told me where I needed to go, according to citymapper, it was an hour from home and I was not feeling up for an adventure like that. I did some grocery shopping on the way home, did some school work, and then met up with my Charlie friends Tamara & Vanessa (sans Mindy :() and we saw Billy Elliot. It was really good. I didnt do any research/plot spoilers before seeing it....those kids can dance. And no children were stalked this time around. Dang. 

Day 152. Tuesday. Woke up still not feeling the best, so again stayed in bed as long as possible. I met up with some friends from school, Indonesia, Brunei, Jerusalem to go to a market in Brixton. I had never heard of Brixton, but was up for a new market. It was indoor/outdoor flea market type. Stalls, selling mostly food, and mini restaurants from all ethnic backgrounds. We got pizza....much like bianco's back home. We talked for awhile before wandering back to the tube station. I am pretty sure I did school work, and ironed the rest of the day. Dang Exciting.

 Day 153. Wednesday. Back to school. Day one of Chocolate. We were divided into teams of three, except me and my partner, Canada. There are 14 in the class, so we were down one person to make six confections that the other groups had 3 people to do them. I thought we did pretty good for being down one person. We split up the chocolates, and each did two on the first day. We did molded chocolate prailines with ganache, and orange chocolate truffles in the morning, and got ginger slab ganache and spiced logs half done by the end of day one. Oh I did not mention that we also had to temper our own chocolate and keep it in temper for the day during different uses. Yep, its busy and time consuming thing to do. And annoying to get chocolate on the uniform that you only just ironed yesterday and cannot wear a dirty uniform tomorrow. Dang. After class I was going to go get a scraper with Indonesia, but Dehli offered to get us some at the hardware store near her house. Indonesia was going to run some wedding errands, so I tagged along with her as I wasn't in the mood to do laundry right away. We grabbed some lunch at a vegetarian place that was so good.... I got roasted veggies that they had tossed in a dijon like mustard. Yummy. Never thought of doing that, but will give it a go sometime. After that I headed home to find flights home [gulp] more school work, and more laundry. Dang.

 Day 154. Thursday. Day two of chocolate. We finished the chocolates we had worked on the day before, this time, Canada and I switched off on finishing each others chocolates, more or a team effort that way. I redeemed myself with raspberry marshmallows, and Canada made sour cherry fudge....sounded gross but ended up being a favorite of the day. And yes dad, its your worlds combined into one. We will have to make it. It was a lot of work, I didn't feel rushed or overworked, but we were able to get things done. They tasted great. The beauty of the day was that we all got to take each others home at the end of the day....thirty treats....oh yeh. I went around collecting all the non alcoholic ones, and was surprised to end up with 26/30 treats. Yippy. Hong Kong2 invited me to go for Vietnamese food after class, and who is to pass up a food find with Indonesia, Hong Kong2, and John from Hong Kong? It was in Shoreditch. Another place I had never heard of, but apparently is not to be missed and quite the party place on the weekends. We arrived at the place at 310, and the sign on the door said closed at 3pm, and would reopen at 5pm for dinner. A lady outside the place heard our sad plight and said "Go on in and tell them I told you that you can eat." She then followed us in the place, talked to the workers in Vietnamese, and as soon as we were seated, she left. We felt a bit bad, but relieved we did not have to find another place to eat. "Since the kitchen in closed, the only thing we can give you is Pho." the waitress said. Looking at the menu, it had meat choices of beef, chicken, pork, or tofu "all served in a beef broth." I questioned the waitress if the tofu version was still in beef broth as I did not eat meat. "Oh yes, they all come in the beef broth, but tofo is vegetarian." Um what? Not in a Pho with beef broth its not. We told her I dont eat any meat product, and she said she would check with the kitchen to see what I could eat. "Um we can make you a bowl with noodles, pickled cucumber, and vegetable spring rolls kind of like a salad, would that be alright?" Sure. When it came out, it was so pretty, bright green veggies on a bed of noodles and crispy spring rolls. It was really good, and my lunchmates were impressed with it and wished that they had gotten it too. :) Hong Kong2 mentioned a doughnut place near by called Dum Dums that did cronuts, so we decided to go there on the way to the tube. Got cronuts to go, only after I gave one of every kind of our chocolates to the cashier, kind of hoping for a "trade" but no such luck. Once home, laundry was started, talked to mom, and school work was attempted. Dang attempts.

 Day 155. Friday. Every term we have a meeting with our mentor chef, only its really usually just a ten minute sit down to talk about whatever we want. This time around, it was with head chef, the one that we have spent the last four class segments (plated desserts, entremet, tea party, and chocolates) with. For some reason, we are really chummy with each other, she likes me, and for that I am grateful. I was the last one to go in my group, and I had lots of questions. A lot were resolved, and it was nice to talk to her outside of a kitchen. I told her I was not doing my best, I wish I could do better, but in the kitchen I clam up/get nervous when I see others plates and think that mine could never be that good. She told me I need to stop being so hard on myself, and that I am actually doing really well in the class. I was shocked. I thought I was one of the worst, and she was telling me I was doing good? I thought her critiques are very detailed, and showed me my flaws, but she said critiques only help us be better in the future. We talked about my entremet, and how it needed major improving. I showed her my ideas, and together sketched out something I am excited to try pulling off. Our conversation went good, she gave me some tips and I was happy by the end of the chat. I texted Indonesia to see if she had lunch plans #apparentlyieatoutalot and she said she was at Dishoom with HongKong2 and were just sitting down. Dishoom is one of the top rated Indian food places that for dinner has wait lists of two hours that I have wanted to try. She texted me the menu, I gave her my order, and when I got there, the plate was in front of me ready to eat. It was the breakfast menu, and I got herbed cheese toast with fried eggs. I didnt know what I had ordered, as I read the first few things running through the streets to get there. In front of me I thought that the toast was a tempeh like substance, as it was thick and dense. but it was oh so good. I headed to the kitchen supply store to see if they had some ring cutters for my new and improved entremet. I decided I needed to solidify widths of circles before making any purchases. I went home and sketched out my ideas. I had made dinner plans with Michelle from church, so I met up with her at her tube station, and hit her street looking for food....and ended up at an Indian place. Lunch at Dishoom was modern fusion indian, and this place was classic indian, with the dishes all coming out in little silver trays. So amazingly good. We went back to her place and talked for a bit. Her husband was at a youth activity with the ward, so we had ample time to sit and chat.

 Day 156. Saturday morning, Landlady had warned me the night before that the furnace man was coming at 8am, so I needed to be up/out by 930/10am. That was fine by me, I was ready to shop for my ring cutters and was meeting school peeps at 1130 at a market. Got my shopping done, the cake decoration store sales clerks remembered me and I did not need to show my student ID to get the discount. The street market was amazing. A bit off the beaten path as it took a tube ride, and a bus ride to get there. It was more locals than tourists, more foodie and frills, and lots to choose from. I was headed for a halloumi burger when a hungarian/turkish/something tortilla like bread was filled with spinach and cheese caught my attention, and it was eaten, and I was stuffed. It was then discovered an adjacent school yard had more food stalls, including an old delivery truck fitted with a pizza oven, that I could have eaten, but was too full to eat anymore. There was a crosstown doughnut stall, and we all pitched in and split one. So good. I went home, talked to HGA on facetime. She said she missed me, I asked why she doesn't call more often. and she said that she is "so busy." Ok ten year old Hannah Grace. Never too busy for me. :) I had to cut the conversation short, as I was meeting up with Tamara, and seven others to go to an activity in Cambridge. We met at a car rental agency. I was 15 minutes late, and thought that was bad. I was 4/9 to get there. The guy renting the car forgot his license at work, and was on his way to get it and the others were yet to arrive. We left an hour after our original start time, and got stuck in London Valentine traffic. What takes an hour by train took us two hours by car. It was a good car ride. Eight countries were represented, France, Italy, Brazil, Columbia, England, Argentina, and somewhere else I can't remember maybe Portugal. When we got to the activity, there were about 30 people there. Tamara said that the one the month before had over 100 people at it. Our nine passenger van increased the party by 25%. They turned on music, the nine of us and five others danced, people that were there before us moved into the hall to talk, and we would go inbetween dancing, standing, and trying not to move one step to the left, and one step to the right. The beat on all of the songs was the same, so not much variety. There was one slow song (seriously mr. dj, you can clearly see only 6 people dancing, and only two are guys). I turned it into a group hug/hold hands red rosies kind of dance.....it was a good laugh. We were almost back to London, when we in the back seat discovered that the front seat navigators were not so great. There is a huge beltway around London, if the beltway were a clock, getting to/from Cambridge is a one o'clock direction. On the way back we had somehow made it to the 10 o'clock segment of the beltway before heading into London. The tubes were closed by the time we got back to drop off the car. Brazil told me the bus number I needed to take, and where to catch the bus with Italy. When we got to the bus stop, the bus was a day bus, and only the night buses were running. I had no idea which one to take, and my phone needed to be topped up for me to have 3G. Italy found on the bus map what bus he needed and jumped on. If I were smart enough, I should have jumped on it, as we were headed in the same direction. But nope. I waited for the next bus to come and ask which bus to take. It was the one Italy took, and the next one would be there in 22 minutes. I wasnt too worried as this was a very popular bus stop and lots of people were waiting at 1250am for a bus. It was not the usual bus routes near my place, so I had to walk a bit in the end, but I knew where I was and did not worry. Its taken me 156 days to get comfortable with navigation. Dang.

 Day 157. The family history lady emailed me during the week and asked me to drag myself our of bed to play the piano for RS. I thought it would be no problem earlier in the week, but that was before I knew I would be walking home at 2am the night before. Miraculously, I made it, for reverse church time and played. After church, I met Tamara in the hall. The night before we had made plans to go to the flower market (again before I knew about the 2am walking) as it is only open on Sundays. I was tired, but I went. It was amazing to see how many flowers were out for sale, and the shoulder to shoulder people walking the streets. There were lillies of all kinds, daffodils, tulips, peonies, pink pineapples, cherry blossom twigs, potted plants, herbs, everything. I got the most unusually beautiful bunch of "Everlastings" bouquet. Tamara got cherry blossom branches and tulips. We got a treat from Lilli Vanilli (had to laugh at the name as it remined me of my second cassette tape purchase of all times, Milli Vanili) From the flower market, another street lead to Brick Lane Market, which lead to another, and another, and another. I had to call it quits at this point as I was borderline too tired. Came home, made duner, did some school work, talked to mom, and now living off of limited sleep managed to add to the saga of all novels. Dang. Goodnight.