Game Night!

Our friends were itching for a game night...and anytime I hear there's a game night, I'M THERE! (and AJ comes along, too!) Ha.Ha. Catherine introduced us to Planet Hollywood...which was quite amusing playing with English folks! Here are a couple of photos from our super fun evening!

The guys team!

Some of the ladies' team!

Here's a shot of Philippa and me!

After lots of laughs, great answers and bad answers...I'm sad to say the guys won. Boo Hoo.

An October Walk

On my way to the College (from our flat), we have the privilege of walking through a large beautiful park called The Downs. I snapped a few photos on the way to share with you all! The day was so lovely and inspiring...I could've walked for hours...on second thought, I think I did walk for hours! Ha.Ha.

Our New Home!

AJ and I moved to our very own flat after 3.5 weeks in the dorms (which was a blast, by the way!). Here is a fun little preview of our place, just after unpacking our few boxes from home. Hopefully it'll be more homey when you all come in person!! (hint, hint!) We're on the top (attic) flat of an old stone house, built in 1886, which is quite young for this neck of the woods!

Here's a view of our bedroom. It's the biggest and most spacious we've ever had!...complete with a pink fireplace!

Here's our bathroom...you'll notice that there is no shower!

Our living room!...don't let the bookshelf fool you...it's hiding our third fireplace (this one's peach).

Our kitchen.

And finally...our fridge. It's so cute!!!

Here's a view from our living room. The colors are beautiful!

This is what we see out of our bedroom window, looking south.

From our bedroom, looking east.

I forgot to take a picture of the house we live in...but for now, imagine an old, grey, stone house with bay windows and a red door! :)

Dilemma!

AJ and I need your help! We have the most beautiful flat that has a lot of character. However, there is one characteristic that we could do without...the color of our bedroom's fire place. What do you think...is pink our color? Yikes!

A Potato a Day...

I just realized that I've eaten a potato at least once a day for the past week (including the weekend)...and I didn't even notice until yesterday! These English folk are potato-sneaky! (we get served lunch at school...just like middle school...but the food is too good here, it's dangerous!!)

Chocolate Chip Cookies...English Style!

Anyone who knows me (Andrea) knows how much I LOVE cookies...especially chocolate chip cookies! Yummers! I've been missing baking them...so I ventured out to begin the journey! I found the process so amusing that I just had to blog about it! First, I think it took days and several trips to 3 different grocery stores to find the basic cookie ingredients (by the way, I just found vanilla today!).

Preheating the oven...don't forget that it's Celcius here! Thank goodness I remembered the equation...9/5*C+32=F!! Thanks to Jaylene, I now have the metric equalivent chart! Thanks Jaylene!

First, you must gather a few eggs. Don't go to the refrigerator to find them...they're in the cupboard!

Next, add brown sugar and butter. Brown sugar is hard to find...and I still haven't found butter yet (and we've been here for 1 month!). I really don't know where they hide it! Ha.Ha. I forgot to mention that UK refrigerators are 1/3 the size of standard American fridges...so you may find it amusing to hear that I found a SALE on Utterly Butterly...so I stocked up...which takes up a big part of our space! Ha.Ha.

Next, add the oats. We don't have a blender yet, so I tried using a knife to cut them up. That didn't last long...Also, oatmeal was hard to find...but then I realized that it doesn't exist! It's called "porridge" here. And, it was cheaper buying muesli and extracting the raisins and hazelnuts than buying straight-up porridge at Tesco! (I've since found them plain!...phew!)

I can't find chocolate chips anywhere..which is such a blessing! I have too much of an addiction. So a Cadbury bar sacrificed it's life for our cookies. Next time I'll get dark chocolate than milk chocolate.

Now bake the cookies for 7 minutes in the little oven!!

Waah-la! They're done! They look okay...but tasted very different. We'll try again next time...hopefully they're better!

Until then!