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.