Pre Holiday Festivities

So! I officially survived my first session of school with UMUC and I couldn't be anymore excited to have this month break. I will be even more excited when I am done with my degree. We decided against going to the markets this year and in turn I am going to Greece to meet little miss Artemis. Three weeks until I get to go! Until then, we plan on doing much relaxing. Jayson is off Christmas he just has to go in Monday before and Friday after. He his then off all week for New Years, which we will be celebrating in London. We are having dinner at some place, I don't know what the name of it is, or really where it is? It was pretty much the only place we could find that wasn't booked for the night. The night should be eventful nonetheless.We are going over to our friends house for a late breakfast snack on Christmas and then going over to our other friends house for dinner. A small group of us are trying to go to a team room down in Ely called Peacocks. THIS I am very excited about! I've not yet been to "proper" tea yet. So I'm excited to see how the Brits do it compared to Aunt Karen's get togethers at her house and Miss Molly's, for the record, tea parties at Aunt Karen's will always be better. Good night everyone!

A little here, a little there.

We haven't been up to much lately. No fun adventures or anything. I started school back in October and got caught up in homework and papers. We did a Thanksgiving dinner at our house for our friends. We do have a few plans coming up. We are hoping to go to a Christmas market down in London either this weekend or next weekend. There is another market that I really want to go to, it's the Traditional Dickens Christmas Walk and Lights of London on the 21st. Keeping my fingers crossed! Jayson's squadron Christmas party is the 20th. We are going to London for New Years which, I cant say for Jayson but, I am absolutely beyond excited about this! Oh! A friend and I are going to a country festival in March. It's called Country to Country and it's two days of concerts down in London. So, other than that not too much going on. I finish class on Thursday and then I'm off for a month. Hopefully going to Greece to get to meet the newest addition to the Harrington family! But other than that...not much going on. Good night!

Lessons Learned

This past weekend Jayson, Van and I took our first trip down to London. It was AMAZING!! The only reason I wanted to leave was because I wanted to sleep (not even the rain could keep us away!). We stayed in Bank which is where most of the corporate and bank offices are at. We parked at a tube station called Epping right outside of London and took the train everywhere else. The tax to drive through London can be pricey and after riding in a taxi there I never want to drive there. Our first learning experience when we got there is even the people that work at the train stations don't necessarily know where everything is. We told the ticket agent where we needed to get to and they told us to get off at a particular station so we did. Once there we realized that we were 2.5 miles from the hotel and walked all the way there to pass the train station we switched at (if that makes sense?) Anyways, we looked at it as a good sightseeing opportunity! We walked around the the area near the hotel for the day and had dinner then we went to check out the nightlife...and wow... It is definitely way different then in the states. I believe Jayson and I agreed that we are more of small pub people and not clubbing people. Yet again, just another learning experience. Jayson had two of his own learning experiences that night. The first being him and our friend Van had to use the bathroom and went to the first bar that had no line to get into. Well...they shortly realized that it was a drag bar and they weren't quit sure what to make of it at first but did their business and got out. His second was yet again needing to use the restroom and he had gone into a building nearby and told the person at the door he just needed to use their restroom. He went upstairs and some lady comes and knocks on the door and asked if he "wanted a good time", at this point the girl he had passed on his way in, wearing lingerie now made sense. So our lesson learned in the bar/club hopping, scope it out first. We had met two locals (David and Tom) that were on a mission to find a dumpling shop they had been to before but couldn't remember where it was. Unfortunately we were not successful in finding the dumpling shop. All in all it was a fun night. The next day Jayson and I went and go breakfast, he had a traditional English breakfast with sausage, baked beans, tomatos, mushroom, eggs, toast and hash browns, I had a panini with chips :) The first stop we made on Sunday was to Kings Cross tube station. This is the station where Harry Potter was filmed. Like in the movie, they have a platform 9 3/4 with a cart going into the wall that you can put on a Gryffindor scarf and have your picture taken. Our second stop was to Westminster to see Big Ben, and we had walked over to the London Eye. Unfortunately we were not prepared enough to go on it but it is a must for next time! After spending some time there we hoped on the tube to go to Hyde Park. We walked through the Princess Diana Memorial Walk on our way to see Buckingham Palace. It was absolutely gorgeous there! By far one of my favorite places so far! The park right across from the palace was so pretty. And the palace is huge! There wasn't a changing of the guard ceremony for the day so we missed that but it was still worth it to just go and see. Once we were done there we got back on the train and went back to Bank, picked up our bags from the hotel and headed back to Epping and back home. It was a wonderful trip that I cant wait to do again and explore more!

Fun and more fun!

Orange and ginger snap cheesecake at one our favorite pubs here, The Walnut Tree.

Celebrating Oktoberfest in England!!

And the unpacking began!!

The Nutshell is a very very tiny pub in Bury St. Edmunds. There were too many people inside so we didn't go but it is on our "to do list"

Recap!

I finally got it up!! Okay, so I suppose I will have to do a quick recap of the last few months..

On June 21, Jayson and I got married! It was definitely one of the best days ever. The weather was perfect, our family and friends made it amazing! After the wedding we hung out at my parents for about another week and a half and then we drove back to North Carolina. We were there for about a month and then we made our trip down to Tampa to see Jayson's parents. They took us on an awesome trip to Disney, the resort we stayed in was amazing! Favorite part...the lazy river :) Right before we left there we had to drop my car off to have it shipped to England and then we flew back to North Carolina. We landed in Raleigh around 1 am, our movers were coming later that morning and we still weren't completely ready for them! So they came and our stuff went. We stayed in the hotel on base for 3 nights and then FINALLY left for England on Saturday the 17. Almost didn't make it...the Air Force never officially paid for our tickets so that took about two hours to clear up and we finally got to our gate 30 minutes before the boarding time..but we made it that's all that matters. The flight wasn't too bad, but by time (6:30 am here, 1:30 am stateside) we got to London we were exhausted and there are no information booths so we had trouble finding the shuttle to get to the base. After and hour and a half of walking around we realized we had passed it three times. We made it to the base around 12:30pm and we got settled into our hotel room and we were out until the next day.

Since we have been here we have gone down to Newmarket which is basically the horse racing capital around here. We have gone down to the market and shopping in Bury St. Edmunds and I absolutely love it there! If it wasn't so far from the base that's where we would want to live!

We found our house the first week we were here and it took another month before we could get into it. We are living in Red Lodge, about 10 minutes from the base and another 10 minutes from Newmarket. We have met two of our neighbors, the one family is American/Military and the others are a British couple. As of right now our furniture is unfortunately  not here yet, we do have my car already and that is a lot better then driving the rental car. I actually like driving my car on the opposite side better then driving their cars on the right side.

Other then that not too much Jayson is in a different shop then he was in North Carolina so he is still adjusting at work, waiting for our furniture to get here, I am starting school through UMUC for my associates next month and I am also working on trying to get into the dental clinic on base volunteering through the American Red Cross. So everyone keep your fingers crossed that it all works out and smooth sailing!!