Friday night fun - London- August 2012

After work on Friday evening I caught up with my buddies Nicole and Simmone at London Bridge. We had dinner & drinks at a pub nearby then wandered along the river towards Waterloo.

Theres a lot to see while walking along the river. My favourite was stopping at Wonderland on Southbank. It's a cute garden bar set up which leads through to a Magners Maze and then 2 big rides (a rollercoaster and a giant swing). We were going to ride them but the line was too long! Made it through the maze though.

We then went and watched some street performers, Nicole got into it and became a performer.

                                

Then played in a playground until closing time.

A gift to myself

To celebrate getting a new job I decided to treat myself to a new piece of jewellery...a Links of London sweetie charm bracelet :)

I love it. You can buy charms separately and add them on as you like. I plan to buy charms symbolic of my travels and adventures to add to it.

Today I just started with one charm (they are quite pricey so it's going to take me a while to build up the charms!). I chose one of the olympic edition charms, a small love heart with the union jack on it.

Love ❤

More Olympics...The Womens Marathon

I went and watched the women's marathon today. It was a free event so I walked over the London bridge to the north side of the river where the streets of London were shut down and people were lining up waiting for the athletes to run past. The course involved 3 or 4 laps of the same route so I was able to see them run past a few times and I walked towards the finishing line as time went on to see how it all ended.

The crowd was amazing cheering the athletes on and encouraging them all no matter which country they came from. Towards the end there was a girl who started walking - the crowd all encouraged her to keep going and when she started running they gave her the biggest cheer. It was really nice to see.

It was raining during half of the event so got totally drenched, but had my rain jacket on and it was worth going out in the rain to see such amazing athletes. A runner from Ethiopia won in the end and Australia came 17th, 39th and 100th. It was an achievement just to finish the run. They've inspired me to get off my butt and go running again!

The Aussies

The Winner on the right (Gelana)

Working Life

As mentioned before, I have now been off work for 2 and a half blissful months of holidays. But if I want this adventure to continue I need to replenish my funds and start earning some Pounds!

The whole process of applying for jobs is different here- you have to go through a recruitment agent who puts you forward for roles and arranges interviews and all the finer details for you.

I don't like to mention work on the internet so I won't go into details, except to say I've just finished my first week of my new social work job at an acute hospital just out of london. It is about an hr commute each way and is surrounded by farms and forest. It's a bit far but the pay rate is good, and I don't mind the ride or the fresh country air! I have been podcasting Hamish & Andy to keep me entertained which is quite funny as I'm often chuckling to myself while sitting on the train.

The team is super friendly and I've enjoyed my first week- though there is so much to learn! They do things quite differently here in the UK so will take me a while to get my head around how it all works.


Its now Friday and I'm looking forward to the weekend- getting back to full time work has actually been quite fun, but super exhausting! I keep waking up in the middle of the night worrying I've slept in, but once I get into the routine of things I should be fine. So here I am with a 9-5 job now, no more weekday adventures to report on! Plenty of weekend excitement to look forward to though, theres always something happening here.

Ringwood, Hampshire

I went on a day trip last Saturday (28/07/12) to the town of Ringwood in the Hampshire region. It was a two hour bus ride (which turned in to 3 hrs cos of the olympic cycling blocking the roads in london).

Ringwood is the town that our family farm is named after, as my dads family came to Australia from that area back in the day.

The town was quite cute and had a lot of history. They have weekly markets on a Wednesday that have been running since medieval times! I went on a Saturday so it was a bit quieter. Walking through the town didn't take long as its quite small and quaint, so I then took a scenic walk along the town edge and to the river and paddocks that runs alongside it.

It was a cute little day trip and I can see why the farm was named after it, the surrounding farmland looks quite similar to home and the town is on the edge of a thick forest (New Forest).

Pretty horses in surrounding farmland

Town Streets

The London 2012 Olympics

Me at the Gymnastics stadium

Olympic fever has hit London! There was such a buzz around the city leading up to the Games which has continued all week. There were big worries about the transport system not being able to cope but we're a week into it now and as far as i can tell things are all going smoothly. There are volunteers everywhere around London keeping things in order and directing everyone where to go.

I went to the pub with a few aussie friends last Friday to watch the opening ceremony. The atmosphere was incredible as we watched it on the big screen with everyone cheering like crazy.

I really wanted to go see an event but had almost given up on getting tickets as its quite a difficult process. But I persisted as its not everyday the olympics are in the city you're living in!

I got so lucky that one day Gymnastics popped up on the ticket website and I immediately clicked to buy (they sometimes release tickets the night before an event). It is one sport I love to watch on tv every Olympic games, and I never thought id ever get tickets to it.

But I did! I got two tickets to the women's artistic gymnastics qualifying rounds. I didn't really need the two, but after I bought the first one, tickets for the Australian round came up, so of course I had to buy that too! That ticket actually got me into two rounds so I got to see 3 out of 5 of the qualifying rounds. Yaaaay :)

I loved it! It was amazing being there in the Arena. I had such good seats too, 3 rows from the front and right in front of the balance beam. I went by myself but was sitting next to a friendly bunch of American girls- since USA weren't in the round we were watching I convinced them all to cheer for Australia too, very handy with their loud voices.

The Aussie girls did well :) So so amazing to be there watching. Felicity was watching it on TV in Aus and I told her what I was wearing (the only green thing I own) and she saw me on TV in the crowd!!

I'll hopefully be able to see a few of the other free Olympic events around London too. I've already seen some of the cycling athletes ride past in a race- I think they were coming dead last though.

I'll be cheering the Aussies on and hopefully will see a few more Olympic events in the next few weeks if I get the chance :)

My Olympic Shirt

Stonehenge

Nicole and I took a tour bus out to see Stonehenge yesterday morning. It is about a 2 hour drive to get there so slept most of the way.

Actually being there was really cool. The audio guide was pretty interesting...at each stop it said 'we're not really sure why this is here...but here's a theory'. Some of the more out there theories are that aliens put it there, that Merlin put it there or that the devil put it there. Another theory is that is was just crazy manpower and they used levers and pulleys to erect it (I believe this one).

There's also debates over the purpose of it, but it does act as a calendar in the sun so my theory is that it is a monument to worship the sun.

In the paddocks surrounding the stones, there are various large mounds where people were buried. Sometimes it was just one person under the huge mound, and sometimes more. There were some protesters there signing a petition to return to bones back to Stonehenge, as some of them were dug up and taken to a university to be studied.

We spent about 2 hrs doing the audio tour, taking photos and going to the gift shop before hopping on the bus back to London.

I stayed awake for some of the drive and the English countryside was looking beautiful, especially as it was a perfect sunny day. We drove past an amazing field of red poppies which stood out from far away.

When we got back to London I met up with a few friends at Hyde Park to continue enjoying the sunshine. We chilled out in the park until dinner time then headed to a pub for some pizzas. Headed back to the park again to meet some more friends, then headed home.