It seemed to be the week of goodbyes. Brendan went back down to Southampton on Monday and I also booked out trip to Dublin for St Patty’s day - bring it on!! After work on Tuesday, we all headed over to the Temple WalkAbout to say goodbye to Katie how is heading back to NZ for a couple of months. On Thursday I went to Warwick Avenue tube station to meet my best mate Suz (from Uni) and Matt who have just came back from travelling Europe for a month! and will be staying with us for a couple of days. We went home and had a big catch up about their trip and various adventures, and to meet the rest of my flat mates. Friday was the day of achievements. I spent half the day ... read more

Our new temporary flat mate, Rob, moved into Leah’s room on Monday night. While we were chatting to him, I missed a phone call from NZ. I gave James a call back, and while I was talking to him I tried to multitask, and didn’t realised that I had stuck a red-ish top in with the rest of my whites (including my new top from Zara), with the washing machine set to a 90 Deg wash. So my clothes came out pink! After work on Tuesday, me and my new neighbour and work colleague, Carlo, went for a walk along the little canals in Little Venice, looking for somewhere to eat for dinner. Its a cute little area lined with canal boasts and little parks dotted along the edge. Unfortunately, we didn’t find anywhere to eat, ... read more

After big night and only 3 hours sleep, I managed to drag myself out of bed and have breakfast in the hostel canteen before it closed. The whole group had also managed to muster by our scheduled leaving time of 10am. However, our bus driver was running late, and decided to delay our leaving for an hour. We waited around for 11am, thinking ‘I could be in bed right now’, and then we all jumped on the coach and headed out to Stirling. Our first stop was the Wallace Monument, high up on the protruding hill. The monument was built 1869 to commemorate Sir William Wallace, one of Scotland’s greatest hero’s. In 1297, he and his vastly outnumbered followers swooped down from ‘Wallace Pass’ to defeat the English forces at the Battle of Stirling Bridge. We ... read more

There is no public transport on Christmas Day so we all headed over to Helen’s flat in Fulham on Christmas Eve to have a bit of a sleepover before Christmas Day. I said ‘Merry Christmas and Happy New Year’ to Irene, who is heading over to Prague and Paris for the festive season. We finished preparing the Christmas decorations around the flat then started watching a Christmas movie on TV while we waited for the others to arrive. We played Cranium, Mafia and a few other games through the afternoon, and then the boys: Josh, Chicken Little (Craig) and their newly arrived friend Richard, came over for a few Christmas drinks in the afternoon, before catching the last tube home (in the hope they would not get stuck here!) Matt and I went down to the ... read more

I bowled up at the train station on Monday morning to find that the train schedule had changed, I assume to the winter time table. I spent lunch time shopping for decorations to Christmasify my desk at work (although no where near up to my usual standard, but I didn’t want to scare my new work colleagues quite yet). Helen, Heloise and Grant came over for dinner on Tuesday night before meeting Matt at Notting Hill to watch the new James Bond movie: Casino Royale. Unfortunately our quests for a ‘coffee’ prior to the movie was short lived due to the plague of chain coffee houses such as Starbucks and Nero. However, Casino Royale was brilliant! I loved every minute of it!.. Heloise said that she has never been to the movies with someone so vocal ... read more