What does settled mean?

Well friends, I'm back. From where? The US. You read it right. I made a quick (well, 8 day) trip back to the desert to attend to some family things. Everything is fine now, but unfortunately the situation necessitated an emergency trip back to Phoenix- much different than a quick trip from OC, let me tell you.


I had always thought my first trip back to the US would be spent eating all the foods I missed, shopping, and of course seeing friends. Unfortunately this trip was spent more or less in bed- I got sick on the plane and it followed me the whole time home! Double the misery was the fact that I went to spend time with my Dad who was in the hospital- a little tough when all I wanted was to be admitted myself! Oh well- I can happily report that all 5 of the Menendez's are in good health thankfully.



The good side is that I was home for Thanksgiving. The bad side to this was watching USC ruin the hopes of all Sundevils for a near flawless football season. I hate USC. Truly, I hate them. Now that I am not a recruiter for EY anymore, I can be honest here. I love my USC friends, my USC recruits, my old USC co-workers. However, I hate USC. I especially hate their football team. The first ASU game I've been able to watch since I moved, and it just had to be that one. Maybe my kids one day will see ASU beat USC.



Enough hating- this is a time for thanks, right?!



Here is a partial list of what I'm thankful for:

- A healthy family (those of you who know my family the best know good health is fleeting, so I'm going with this as long as I can)

- An awesomely spectacular husband. He is truly the greatest thing ever.

- Grey's Anatomy- I'm addicted

- Strongbow cider- makes the long hours at the pub so much better

- A wealth of good friends we've met here who make the transition so much easier

- Having the experience and motivation to interview and be considered for such cool jobs. I may not have a job yet- but some of these companies are so cool.

- Having friends at home who still email and call us to tell us random happenings. (special thanks to you Mary for the last few gems you've sent our way)

- 50 pound round trip fares to bascially any large European city we want to visit

- Starbucks, for red cups, patient baristas, and uninterrupted broadband service

Finally, I'm thankful for that settled feeling we've been waiting for for months. Although I don't have an official routine, or broadband service (that is for another blog posting), it is nice to have our stuff unpacked, know where we are going and how to get there, and have plans for travel in place.

Until next time friends, enjoy the week! Next posting will include pictures of Nice and Paris, France!

The little things...

Happy Sunday everyone!

Here we are Saturday night at our friends house. The reason I chose to post it is that JP insists on making funny faces like this instead of smiling like a normal person. In response to this, I will insist on posting these pictures until he learns to smile and look normal again. :)So, we are official. We have a phone line everyone. Yes, you read that correctly, we have a working phone line! You may ask, why is she so excited? Until 6 weeks ago I haven't had a phone in my house in years, I always used my cell phone. In London though, your phone line is your life line. Without it, there exists no internet service, no cable TV, and most of all, no viable way to call family and friends without spending countless pounds on calling cards.

Why did it take 3 weeks? I would need another blog to devote to the circles I ran around in to get to the conclusion. However, on Saturday morning at 9:00am promptly our buzzer rang and some guy from BT (British Telecom) was at our door ready to fix our problem. This was great except for the fact that my hangover from the night before was just setting in, and I couldn't even do a little dance when we had our phone line up and running, for fear of further exacerbating my excrutiating headache. Note to self (and others, since this blog is public): I'm too small to imbibe a whole bottle of red wine by myself. I have nothing to prove other than a wasted day on the couch with a terrible headache and bouts of naseau. I digress, the news is that we have a phone, and I'm so happy.

JP is still not sure he has to go back to Amsterdam next week, so we are waiting for the call. This week brings another dose of very good news - our shipment from the US arrives on Tuesday. I can't wait to get more clothes (I've been wearing more or less the same thing for 6 weeks) and my bedding, and pictures, and our bikes. It will be great and we'll be one step closer to feeling more settled.

I promised some pictures... here you go:

So, Saturday night was our friend Andy's 29th birthday. Andy is pictured left above with his roommate and my movie partner Chris. We had fun, partook in a little flat party before spilling out 15 deep in an attempt to find a restaurant to seat us and feed us at 10pm. By the way, restaurants here are small- there are no Claim Jumper or similar monstrocities that can get big groups in. Anyways, here are some fun pictures from the night:

Note my handsome hubby and his road soda. We are at a bus stop waiting for the bus to take us to our friend's flat. You can really drink anywhere here... which makes the bus rides more tolerable.

Here is my friend Kate (who we went to Bath with) and the birthday boy. He was incredibly happy to be surrounded by so many stunning trailing spouses on this night- it was the highlight of his birthday.

This is some of bigger group of us- from left - Troy (visiting from the Richmond EY office), Chris, me, Kate, Stewart, Becca (8 month secondment in London- from Connecticut), David (former EY Australia, now lives in London, works at Credit Suisse), and Andy- EY GEP'er from Chicago.

Now that we are all more or less settled in our flats, and day to day life, I can sense the dynamic shifting a little in terms of the whole GEP/EY group and the natural dropping off and allegiances that form. It is hard to organize almost 30 people to go out all the time, and so we've found ourselves spending a lot of time with this particular group of people. There are a lot of other fun people in the group, it just takes a little more effort to congregate due to the distance between us all in the city. It is tough to explain, but it all makes sense, you see your friends most when you live closer to them. We are incredibly lucky to have made such good friends in a short amount of time. We've been told that not every class of GEP that comes over hangs out and gets close- that each class is very different. That said, these people have made the bad stuff more manageable and are a lot of fun to be around. It also makes me miss my friends back home even more!

Tomorrow I have two job interviews (it never stops, I love it!!). One is for KPMG and one is for a company called Framestore CFC- check out their site: http://www.framestore-cfc.com/. This job is for a Graduate Talent Manager- so managing the recruiting process for entry level peeps and then also their development within the company. It looks like a supercool company, nothing that I've ever really been part of before. I'll let everyone know how it goes.

Until next time, my red cup is empty and I'm getting chilly. It is 3:19pm and dusk will be here soon! Enjoy your week everybody.

Back to square one

The weekend is right around the corner! That means JP comes home, and I am extremely excited. It has been a slower week than the last few and the weather has definitely changed. It is now winter! The streets are being decorated for Christmas which is just awesome. It looks very festive right now. Also, because we are so far north, it gets dark at around 4:00pm. That is a little different, it messes with your appetite for sure. For instance, it is 6:32pm and it has been dark for quite some time. Although I had a perfectly normal lunch today at around 1:00pm (or 13:00), my body is already starving and wondering why I am not eating dinner already. I will soon feed it with Indian food. There is Indian food on every corner here. Good thing I like it! Other yummy food we've tried and eaten over and over again includes Thai food, Turkish/Greek cuisine (they love the kebab here) and Lebanese food. There are many more ethnic food places to try! I think the brits would really like Mexican food if they had the chance to try proper Mexican. Here you get some "tex-mex" sprinkled in with other types (and everything comes "Con Carne" what is up with that?). JP and I wish we had the resources to transplant some people here to start up a taco stand. It would be a huge hit!

So, as the title of the blog notes, I am back to square one in my job search. I turned down the role for Credit Suisse and did not get the job at AMS. Oh well, I was starting to miss interviewing. I have a few prospects and just spent a couple hours on Monster.co.uk to find viable roles to apply to. Hopefully the mobile phone will be ringing again with interested recruiters. (Remember, they can't ring me at home b/c I don't have a home phone line yet!!)

JP is looking at another week in Amsterdam, which is not what we want but it is what it is. Next week will be packed full of Starbucks visits and interviews- and looking forward to it! The red cups are now at Starbucks, and it just puts you in a cheery, holiday mood- right?

This weekend we will be hanging out at the flat and on Saturday night going out with the GEP group to celebrate our first birthday. Our friend Andy turns 29 and we'll be heading out in Notting Hill for some ridiculousness. Should be fun.

On another note- for those of you who care at all about the fashion choices of the average Londoner- for females they include boots. Lots of boots. High boots, low boots, ugg boots (that was for you Susie), slouchy boots, combat boots, riding boots. You name it, a woman in London is rocking it. I took a step towards being more official today and purchased my own pair of boots. How I will rock them, I still haven't decided. Most of you know I am not the fashion forward one of the Angie/JP union. With my husbands support and advice though, I assume I'll be wearing these suckers over my jeans, with my skirts, with some fun tights, and all the other ways these creatures of fashion wear them here. It is all part of being in the city, right?

Do you know what is hard to find here? Candles. I searched low and high and finally found some today. It is the little triumphs that get me through the day. I sure miss Target.

I've picked up some more words and translated them for you, enjoy:

UK Version US Version
Ring you Call you
Chase up Follow up
Hens party Bachelorette party
Courgette Zucchini
Salad Lettuce and tomato on your sandwhich (there aren't a lot of salads here)
Brilliant Great! Awesome! Nice!
Mate Dude (for us So Cal peeps)
Chips French fries
Crisps Potato chips
Love Honey
"Your phone will be on in two days" Your phone will never be turned on. Stop calling us.

I'll post pictures from this weekend next time so you can get to know all of our friends who keep us busy over here. Until next time, enjoy the weekend!

Weekend in Bath

Well friends, our first weekend trip went off without a hitch! We travelled by train to Bath and had a great time. Here are some pictures and details interesting enough to share... (or so I think). We took the trip with Kate & Stuart- another GEP couple.

Accomodations: We stayed at a bed and breakfast called the Hunters Spinney. Check out their website: http://www.huntersspinney.co.uk/. I've stayed at a couple B&B's in the US, and each time they were very cottage-ey like places where I had private access and my own key. This place was a little different- we stayed in the home of this nice couple! The room we had was very nice with a cozy bed and our own bathroom. Every morning we'd hop downstairs for a proper English breakfast to fuel our day of walking and exploring. (English breakfast = eggs, toast, baked beans, hash browns, fruit, tomatoes, mushrooms, tea, coffee, and OJ)

Here is a picture of the house:

On Saturday we awoke and walked down to town- about a 15 minute trek through some back roads. We visited the Roman Baths: http://www.romanbaths.co.uk/. It was super cool to go through these- helped transport you to another time a long time ago. We learned a lot about the Romans and their impact on the UK's history. Here is what the Roman Baths look like from the lower level... Cool huh!

After that we enjoyed a pub lunch and some rest. Then we hopped a big red bus (this country loves the big red bus!) and did some sightseeing. It was a chilly autumn day- but we were lucky because it was sunny and pretty. The best part of the trip was that we hit it at the perfect time to see the changing colors and the gorgeous brass and yellow trees and leaves.

The town is very picturesque. It also had a ton of hills and views at every turn, which I realized I miss a lot about home. London itself is pretty flat, and there aren't really views anywhere unless you hike up to the London Eye. This little town afforded some incredible vistas.

After all that sightseeing we headed back to the house to rest before dinner. On Sunday we did more walking around and sightseeing. Here we are in front of Queen Victoria's Park:

All in all, it was a relaxing trip. Many of you know that JP loves to take some neat pictures- I shared two below I thought he did a good job on:

For those of you interested in seeing all our pictures from Bath- here is the link to our album in Shutterfly. Just a note- you do not need to sign in to see the pictures: share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AaOWLNy4bN2N4

Finally, it is Monday. JP is back in Amsterdam for hopefully the last week. I'm back to my normal, a few hours at Starbucks, work out, then find something to do outside to interact with people other than the baristas and other computer peeps at Starbucks. I'll post later this week when I have something else worthwhile to chat about! Until then, enjoy your week!