Poppin' Bottles!

Just a quick posting- I can finally rest easy. Not only do I have a new role in this newly formed HR organization here- but I was promoted and will be doing a role that is actually much more suited to what I like to do!

What is it? Well, effective Monday I will be a Learning & Development Manager in our central people team. I will move to our other London office closer to home (but, not as nice as this one!) and will be joining a new team. This new role does not sit within the business like I currently do- which definitely has its drawbacks... but I'll be involved in designing cirriculum and facilitating training- two things I really have wanted to do since coming to the UK!

So, to celebrate, I imagine we'll have some fizz and some sushi - which will basically cost the amount of the meager raise I got- but who cares? Finally, a manager title (it is about time!) and a little more job security than I've head since I joined. Life is good... let's pop some bottles!

Taco Bell, Mel Gibson, and Glaciers... our trip to Iceland

Well... here is an overview of Iceland:

Accommodations: We rolled Real World style (everyone has seen at least one episode right?!) and rented a flat on the main street in Reykjavik. It had five bedrooms, black and green decorations, a magnificent and stocked kitchen and plenty of space for all 7 of us. It was right on the main road and had loads of nice touches- big plasma screen TV (with 4 channels), comfy beds, and a big patio to relax on. Just picture your last IKEA catalogue for further visuals- but it was really nice.

Cast of Characters: Aimee- regular travel buddy & GEP from NYC, Oggie- helped represent the west coast, GEP from SF, Brian- new to the group, GEP from NYC, and then JP's friends Jared & Sarah who live and work in Geneva, Switzerland. JP & I rounded out that group.

What did we do? We arrived on a Thursday night and took the drive into Reykjavik and set to work on getting to know one another over some duty free Jack Daniels and vodka. After a few and an entire bag of Cool American Doritos (or, as we know it, Cool Ranch) we decided to go check out the nightlife. We rolled out a tad late (2:30am) and found that Thursday night is not the night to go out. It was a ghost town. No worries, we needed to rest up for Friday...

Friday we did the Golden Circle tour- http://www.randburg.com/is/golden-circle/index.asp We rented cars to do this on our own and we are so glad we did. It was a really fun and long day- we saw gorgeous valleys, hiked some great hills, saw geysers and waterfalls. It was really fun to go from spot to spot, not sure what to expect and then you are confronted with a gorgeous waterfall or vista view. It was also nice to be at our own pace and not sharing a coach tour bus with a bunch of tourists.

After returning to our flat we ordered up some pizza and headed out to sample the bars. We were warned that the people were fun but ignored all personal space and were quite rowdy. What this means when you are 5'2" is that they just knock you out of the way, dance right into you, or grab you. I mean it, it is rowdy. You have to go with it or it can get ugly- but for such a nice group of people, they can get crazy when they go out! We did our best to hold our own- we danced and hit up a rock bar close to our flat. Some of the singles stayed out past us old married couples who retired at around 3am. The mess of people and energy were just unreal though- these people enjoy to party.

Saturday- after waking Saturday with no real plans, we hit up the Taco Bell for lunch and headed out to drive the south coast of the island. Let me just say- for those of you who are thinking- what?? Taco Bell?? You are talking about 7 Americans who have not seen a Taco Bell in anywhere between 9 months and 2 years. And guess what, it tastes the same in Iceland as it does in the US- Delicious! After that we drove around in search of puffins (native birds) but were unable to hike out to see them due to some pretty nasty winds. We found the Continental divide which is where the two tectonic plates from Europe and North America meet and played around there for a bit.

Upon our return back to the flat, we made dinner reservations at a steakhouse in downtown and set out to enjoy some steak and potatoes. We sat down to our table, ordered some drinks when JP leans over to me and says- hey, is that Mel Gibson at the table next to us? Sure enough- it was!! He was sitting literally 8 feet away from us having dinner with we think one of his sons and grandsons. He looked great, kind of cranky really but we all were a bit starstruck and kept sneaking peeks over in his direction. Oh, and the dinner was great too!

Sunday we rose early to go play around on the glaciers and see waterfalls. We took this tour: http://www.mountainguides.is/English/Tours/39/36/120/default.aspx and had a great time. They outfitted us with cramp-ons and ice picks and we set off for a 3 hour hike around the glaciers. It was gorgeous, great weather for it.

Sunday night we enjoyed one last night together in the flat and cooked a big meal... meaning the girls cooked and the boys drank beers and did the dishes.

Monday we went to the Blue Lagoon http://www.bluelagoon.com/ which is easily the most popular tourist spot in Iceland. We soaked in the water, enjoyed the steam room and the massaging water falls before eating lunch and taking off for the airport.

All in all, a fabulous trip, would have been incredible without a Mel Gibson sighting and Taco Bell- but has to be one of the best trips we've taken since we've been here. I highly recommend this to anybody with a love of outdoors and hiking as it really does have every type of land- lava, desert, lush mountains, etc. The people of Iceland are fantastic, super friendly, all speak English and all are very eager to share facts about their beloved country. I learned more from quick taxi rides or talking with the flat manager than I did from our tourbook! I can't imagine a better way to experience Iceland and left yesterday wishing I had a few more days to see more.

Pics are on our site, enjoy!

A Recap...

The last few weeks here have been eventful to say the least. Let’s recap:

Work:
Without going into terrible detail, the firm here has implemented a new HR structure- which is resulting in some “rejigging” of the teams. What this means is that in the next couple weeks I will more than likely have a new role here. The worst possible outcome will be that I’ll be jobless, but I’m surprisingly optimistic that I will be fine. It is a funny exercise in human psychology- tell someone that they could possibly lose their job and regardless of what they felt about their job- they immediately go one of two ways- elation over a chance to take the severance and run or complete indignation over the fact that the firm would deem their role as “not fit for purpose.” I have fallen in both these camps in the last few weeks- but most of all, I think because I am not permanent here- I just hope that I get placed in the new structure. More to come on this subject…

More exciting social front:
Since I last wrote we’ve enjoyed a couple weeks at home and enjoying the summer by staying local. Two weekends ago we stayed close to home, enjoying the last few weeks with another GEP friend who will be returning to the US soon. This last weekend we, along with a few of our friends, hopped the train south to the city of Brighton. It is a seaside community and although nothing like the beaches we know (there is no sand, just large rocks) I’ll take any excuse to be by the water. We arrived in time to stroll the streets, have a quiet lunch, take in some rides on the pier and relax at a local pub. We then enjoyed a great seafood dinner before we caught the last train home. Brighton isn’t the first stop in a UK tour by any means, but for us it was a nice way to get out of the city for the day and enjoy the sea air. It was a big day for baby Alex, who joined us and did beautifully… http://www.visitbrighton.com/

As an aside:
Life here is not all peaches and for the last couple weeks I’ve been going through a major- “only in London” frustration. One example to illustrate: Our toilet is leaking. This isn’t earth shattering nor terribly serious- but as responsible tenants we thought it would be good to alert our flat managers to ensure they get to the leak in time and fix it. To us, this simply means they send out a handyman, who then fixes things, and we move on with life. Not in London dear friends. What this really means is countless emails and phone calls to get someone to take notice. Then a handyman who says he is coming and doesn’t show. Then four more days of calls and emails wondering where the hell the handyman is. Then he shows unannounced, takes apart half our bathroom, gets crap all over our walls and doors, leaves the job unfinished with a toilet still leaking and the tank exposed and the handle just hanging off… It takes the most precise measures to flush the toilet now. There is no note to say he will return, or a call from our flat manager to say what the next step is. I mean, why would they do that? We call the flat managers on Friday night- livid that our house is in disarray and that we can’t flush the toilet… to hear that they can’t get anybody out to fix until at least Monday… and hopefully we can make do with what we have (ummm, a barely working toilet??). Also, they are short staffed, so terribly sorry for any lack of or miscommunication.

WTF??

So, it ain’t all peaches, I promise folks. I can say with great certainty that this will continue on for at least another month. Mark my words- our toilet will not work until at least mid- August, I’m sure of it. This is what living here is like- no consistency or accountability when things go wrong. And people just take it! They just accept it! It is enough to leave you pulling your hair out.

But in the end…

We leave on Thursday night for Iceland with 6 other friends- we plan on hiking, trekking, cooking and drinking our way through some gorgeous sites. Then we return next Monday and next Friday we leave for a weekend in Prague with another group of friends. Finally, I just booked a weekend trip to Wales in later August to see some more of the UK and maybe even go to the beach. So friends, while I bitch and moan, I’m not neglecting the fact that the weather has been nice, we get at least 16 hours of daylight right now and we are soon travelling almost every other weekend!

Enjoying the summertime in London

What an amazing couple weeks... at the risk of sounding too cheesy, I'm so grateful for the great experiences we have been enjoying- and for some great weather too!

Let's start with a quick overview of the last couple weeks:

Upon my return from Lisbon, I promptly entered into HR busy season hell. I have my "day job" which is busy enough, but with our staff down and a hiring freeze going on, it is all hands on deck right now. What does that mean? Roundtables... and lots of them. We have roundtables once a year- and basically it is a forum where the managers and senior execs get together and discuss the performance of the staff and such. It is quite involved and being in HR means we moderate the discussion to ensure it is fair and bias free. In the US it was intense but people are generally PC enough that we don't have to step in too much. Here in the UK is another story. There is yelling. There is conflict. There is overt bias ("She spends too much time talking about her kids on the job, He was raised really wealthy and doesn't know how to communicate with others, This guy is like 40 and can't take direction from people younger than him") Yes, I'm serious. And, it is a total exercise in maturity and conflict resolution- how to figure out how to encourage more fair discussions of people that don't automatically favor white men with no families... all while being American (which they already don't like) and from HR (which adds to the fuel). I come home exhausted most days simply because I have to moderate or interject at almost every non male/white discussion!

So, on to summer... we've had a great couple weeks. The weather is great, the sun is shining and not setting until 10pm. Last weekend we had a low key weekend at home, just hanging out with friends. This week we saw Jack Johnson and friends in Hyde Park. Who were his friends? Well, we saw G Love and Special Sauce (throw back from the college days!), Ben Harper, Jack, and then Jimmy Buffett took the stage for one song during the encore. It was a great night, we took our friend Jamie and one of my co-workers Kelly. We enjoyed the great music, being outside with the sun shining, and cheap beer and wine. The one great thing about the UK is they don't mark up their drinks at big events, our beers and wine cost the same and almost less than the pub prices. From left to right- Kelly, Jamie and me:

Then, on Thursday night we crossed our fingers, went on to Ticketmaster, and scored one pair of 500 Wimbledon Centre Court tickets they release each evening. Talk about luck- our tickets, which incredibly pricey, enabled us to watch two huge matches yesterday- Nadal and Federer both clinched the two seats in the finals. It was a great way to spend the afternoon. Wimbledon stadium is great, most the seats are decent, ours were just fine. The tennis etiquette was super nice, people were polite and quiet during play, the access was regulated so people were not getting up every five minutes. Here we are during the break between matches:

After the matches, we had spent 5 full hours watching tennis- it was great but we were hungry. So, we headed over to our friends Darren & Nicole's house to enjoy a proper 4th of July BBQ. Darren recently got a new grill and we were all grateful for actual BBQ food. That is not a big thing here in London- in fact you really only see the Austrailians BBQ. Anyhoo, we filled their fridge with Budweiser, Coors Light, and enjoyed burgers, corn on the cob, mac and cheese and oreos. We even downloaded every American type love song on the ipod and sang along to greats such as God Bless the USA and some Bruce Springsteen. It was probably the most patriotic July 4th any of us have ever had, but not being on US soil really makes you appreciate what you left behind.

So that is it! It is Saturday and tonight we are hosting some people at our flat. We are making tacos and enjoying some champagne. It goes together as much as PB&J right? we all have champagne to drink, and JP and I wanted to cook at our flat- so put it all together and that is what you get.

I'll leave you with a short video from Ben Harper at this week's concert, it was such a great night- this is especially for Rachel who used to listen to Ben constantly during our years as roomies...

Lisbon

We just returned from yet another trip... Lisbon (or Lisboa), the capital city in Portugal. What a fun weekend! I am a bit embarrassed to admit that we didn't see much of Lisbon itself due to the short duration of our trip, but what we did see (the great nightlife!!) we enjoyed...

We arrived Friday night and met two of our friends who had been there for a day already. We enjoyed dinner in the area of town known as the Docas or the Docks- which is a waterfront area lined with bars and restaurants. We enjoyed some traditional Portuguese food (like tomatoe rice with prawns, steak, seafood, etc.) and then four more of our friends arrived and met us out for a night of drinks and fun. We started out at the Buddha bar, which is a popular bar with cool cocktails and ended the night in a waterfront bar drinking beers and talking to the patrons. Before I knew it, JP had gone over the edge, was ridiculously flirting with all passing women and making his presence known to all hen do's around (those are the European version of bachelorette parties) so when it hit 3:45 I put him in a cab and took him home to the hotel... :) It was a fun night out with our friends.

After dinner before the drinking really started...

On Saturday we embarked on a side trip with a couple of our friends who were able to drag themselves from bed before 1pm to a little town called Sintra. http://www.indigoguide.com/portugal/sintra.htm

It was a forty minute train ride from the city with a lot of gorgeous hills, greenery, castles, palaces and cute restaurants. We wandered the town and spent a lot of time exploring the Moorish Castle remains at the very top of a high hill. It was a fun way to spend the day.

This pic is in the castle - it was so cool to explore the grounds!

We returned to Lisbon to rest up for our second night out. On the suggestion of our hotel, we booked a table at the really cool restaurant called Cafe Luso : http://www.cafeluso.pt/ and had a great dinner while taking in some Fado music, the regional music of Portugal. It was great, the food was fabulous and the performers were incredible. After our dinner it was already 1am, just time to hit a few bars in Portugal. We headed up the street in the neighborhood of Barrio Alto where the streets are blocked to cars and the streets are lined with bars and discotechas... everyone is spilled out on the street drinking and having fun. It was a pretty cool scene. We stayed out for most the night again and headed home after enjoying some capirinas made by a very talented and friendly bartender.

Here is a pic of the street scene in Barrio Alto- very busy and this was at around 2am!

This is our second trip to Portugal, and I gotta say the country is great. The people are friendly and warm, most of them even speak English, the weather is great, the sights are really pretty. I would recommend a little trip over there if you are ever looking for European cities to visit.

This week will see JP & I head off in various directions work wise. My work week mirrors my old days- night events most nights this week. We are hosting 20 Swedish EY peeps in our office on this week and yours truly is responsible for their "learning agenda" and social events. That includes a river cruise on the Thames and dinner at a very traditional English restaurant. That is one thing JP and I haven't done much of - eat actual traditional English food. Should be interesting.

Welcoming the newest member of our GEP family...

On an unrelated note to my other post- I wanted to give a little "shout out" to the newest member of our GEP group here in London... little Alexandra. She was born a few weeks ago on May 23 and I promised to post pictures. She is a little gem and mom and baby are doing just great... here she is just 6 days old with JP... making her officially the smallest and youngest baby either one of us have held!

Going home

We just returned from our return trip home and had an incredible time. We recently reached the halfway mark of our stay in London, so the timing of the trip was perfect. We spent a few days in Phoenix visiting my family and then spent about a week in OC catching up with friends, work and getting in some much needed sun. The hightlights: Meeting many new babies who were born while we've been away, seeing the Angels beat the Devil Rays during Wednesday's game, catching up with friends during happy hours, going to the beach, learning two of our close friends are pregnant and watching our soon to be London friends Susie & Glenn say "I Do."

Here is the happy couple... Susie just got accepted into the Global Exchange Program and they will be joining us in London in September!

Overall, the trip went fast and before we knew it we were heading back here. I know you may not believe me, but the trip home made me officially homesick! I haven't had much homesickness while we've been here, but I think seeing everyone and the weather being so great just really added to the feeling. At the same time, being home reminded me how lucky we are to have this experience and such a great life to return to.

Some overall musings and thoughts and experiences over the last week to share:

- the people of OC are just incredibly good looking. Much better looking than the lot here in London... Take the case of some of our incredibly handsome friends for instance (at happy hour on Thursday night):

- as much as things change, mostly things stay the same

- those friends of ours who are parents have produced some incredible kids! Here is little Ellie, daughter of my friend Rachel at her first "girls lunch"

and my friend and fellow blogger Laurie & her three girls when we go them standing in one area for 30 seconds to take a pic: Adia, Ruby & Chloe:

- the weather in CA is hands down the best... and I appreciate it more than ever when we came home to typical London weather- overcast and chilly. We took in a day game and got some great seats... so I could watch my fave pitcher Frankie warm up and go out and get a save for my fantasy baseball team:

- I miss US TV! I can't believe I went 9 months without the Food Network

You can see more pics from the wedding and such on our link. We are home for four days and this weekend we leave again- this time for Lisbon in Portugal with a group of our friends. I think it is the perfect antidote to homesickness- get right back on the travel horse and be reminded of why we are here- friends and travel!