It's still dark and cold outside and is a bit wet, but who cares! I am going to France today!! Since I have my camera with me, I took a few pictures!

Left to right: Suraj, Mark, Reed, Mike, Mikhael, Marcio


Left to right: Mikhael, Mike, me, Suraj, Reed, Mark


Left to right: Mark, Charlotte (my boss) and Mike


Left to right: Tien, Stephan and Suraj


Left to right: Dawn and Miriam

There, now you have seen my office and some of the people who work here. This was quite a challenge to get them to pose!!!

Well it is dark and cold today and looks like rain.... I guess it is more of what I expected London to be like. I have been so fortunate with blue skies that I almost got used to them!!! We checked the weather for Strasbourg for the weekend and it looks like it will be pouring rain on us the whole weekend!!! I am sure it will be wonderful though, rain here, rain there, the only difference is we are somewhere new. Still very strange to think that I will be in France this weekend.... because I LIVE in England and can fly there in less than an hour..... very odd....

Istanbul is (or was?) on my list of places to go....so awful...so sad.....

So it appears President Bush has arrived safely and is now having breakfast with the Queen. The big news here is all of the protests going on, but the news also points out that the people who support Bush being here don't really have a way to show it. They can't really organize a march like the protesters here. They took a poll and more British support him being here than those against it, it's just that those against him are more vocal. That's pretty much the case with everything though.

So you know how much I miss people and my cat, but I thought I would share with you a few THINGS that I miss. I desperately miss Mexican food!!! The first thing I want when I get home is a carne asada burrito and the second thing I want is a beef enchilada from Joselitos with rice and beans on the side.....oh I would pay £50 for a good Mexican meal right now! I would even pay £20 for Taco Bell!!!! I also miss Gatorade (yeah, surprised me too.) And Daphne's and Portos and even the EDC!!!! Shocking, I miss the EDC!!!!! Oh well, the 5 large jars of salsa my mom brought me are helping but... I miss going to the EDC on Friday afternoon and meeting with Carolyn and Katherine and talking about Survivor. I miss wasting half of the day sitting at Sossi's desk (well not half the day....) I miss my BBQ and sourdough bread. I miss Survivor, American Dreams, NYPD Blue and ER..... I miss walking outside and being warm!!! I miss my convertible.

You may be sitting there thinking I am miserable and that is not true at all!!!! There are things here that I am really enjoying and will eventually take the place of some of those things above (well probably not but maybe I will miss THEM when I go back home!) I love Doughmasters and Nandos! I love custard cookies (biscuits) from Safeway. I love being able to walk everywhere. I love taking the train into London and spending the day walking around and not having to mess with the 101 or the 405. I love wearing a scarf every day and going to the gym and getting all hot and then walking home in the cool, crisp air. I love sitting on the couch under my Carolyn blanket and watching Little House on the Prairie.

I remember at holidays, looking at all the people that flew home somewhere and thinking how neat that would be. That it would make Christmas even more special. So in conclusion, I love most of all looking forward to coming home in 4.5 weeks!!

WELCOME PRESIDENT BUSH!!!!!

Hello everyone! Sorry about the delay, I know you all hurry into work just to check my blog! As you may have seen in my email, we did not have access to the internet or any work related stuff except outlook all of yesterday and today. But as soon as everyone left, the internet came up!! So here I am at work instead of in a cold, dreary internet cafe! I have had a busy week and two very busy weekends.


But before I start talking about me, I have some wonderful news to share. I know this will break hearts at Nestlé but my trainer, Luke, has gotten engaged to his girlfriend Vicki!!! YAY for them! It was a very romantic proposal from what I heard and involved a very swell car as you can see in the picture. So congrats to Luke and Vicki!!!

Now back to me... The weekend before last I opened up my book of 25 London walks and chose one that looked nice. It ended up being in the area called Chelsea. I spent about 4 hours and followed the route. It was probably one of the best days I have had so far on my own. It was not full of tourists and a bit of an overcast day so I found myself on the streets alone most of the time. I was mainly walking through neighborhoods and just got to see some lovely streets. Here is my favorite picture of the area and the link to more pics.
Chelsea
I then saw the Matrix and called it a night. I spent Sunday wandering around Croydon and doing some shopping. The week of class was also pretty uneventful and I am sure you don't want me to go on about Business Warehouse so other than saying I am SO VERY GLAD I don't have to take 2 trains and a bus for 1.5 hours every morning and night I don't have much else to say about the week!!!

This past weekend was also very good! I was very daring on Saturday and made an appointment with a guy in SOHO to color my hair. I was very nervous and scared and thank goodness he did a good job. That was one of my biggest worries before I left!! What would I do about my hair?!?!? I then walked through an area called Carnaby street and made my day by finding these:

Oh you can only imagine how happy I was!!!! Wearing my new pink, flowered docs, I travelled back home with a smile on my face. :)
On Sunday I went to the famous Camden Town Market. It is basically a big hippie swap meet that is along the canal in Camden. Instead of being in a big field or a warehouse like a swapmeet though, it is in all these windy alley ways and buildings, so you just wander around like you are in a maze. You are completely surrounded by hippie clothes, silk-screened t-shirts and incense assaults your nose whenever you turn around. I wouldn't say it was my favorite place but I might like it better if I were with someone and could laugh at stuff with someone else. I decided to go a bit mor upscale and hopped back on the tube and made my way to Oxford Street.
Christmas in London
So I went from £2 t-shirts to £80 t-shirts at Selfridges!!!! I couldn't believe it! Once I saw a dress I liked and saw that it was £890, I decided I was way out of my league and stopped looking at price tags. Needless to say, the only thing I bought was a £1.50 7-up(lemonade).
Yesterday and today we spent our time betting on when the computers would come up and tossing around a balloon...It was actually very boring! But it looks like tomorrow will be back to normal!

6 weeks from now I am on a plane home!!!

Mom and grandma are in a taxi to the airport. Amazing that they leave at 12PM and will be in LA at 3PM, but then they have 6 hours of traffic to get home!!! It was a good week with them here and I think they enjoyed it too.

I am out of the office all next week at a training class for SAP BW near Heathrow airport so I won't have access to a computer. So my next Blog update will be Nov 17th. Have a good week everyone and go see the Matrix!

George is on the left and Big Snowman and Little Snowman are on the right. They came to say Happy Birthday to me! Thanks to everyone for your warm wishes on my birthday yesterday. I started to get a little sad but it helped tremendously having mom and grandma here, but it just wasn't the same without having plans with you to look forward to!!! Since I don't come back until Feb 2005, you will all just have to come out here (or Switzerland) for my birthday next year!

Mom and Grandma had a fantastic time at Hampton Court yesterday, they even took the train there by themselves! They are really world travellers now! Today is Leeds Castle and tomorrow they fly back home. Please keep them and their flight in your prayers for tomorrow. Thanks!

Hello from London!! Can you imagine mom and grandma waving? Here they are near Buckingham Palace on Friday. This was before getting all worn out! We crammed a lot into Friday... Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Liecester Square, had dinner at All Bar One, went to a show "Wait Until Dark" then wen home. Whew!! Saturday was a bit more if you can believe it!! Grandma opted to stay home and recoop, so mom and I set off on our own; however, we didn't get to leave until 12 as they both slept in until 11am!!! Mom and I went to London Bridge station, then walked...... to Tower Bridge, Tower of London, the Monument (everyone keeps asking me what this is, it is a tall round monument that has gold flames at the top. It is 202 feet high and if you lay it on end, it will touch the place where the bakery was that started the Great London Fire. Anyway, you can climb all 311 steps to the top and then you have a wonderful view. I highly recommend this!)... we then took the tube to Covent Gardens. There was a huge food fair going on so we had a lot of fun trying all the different breads, cheeses, jams, etc... we were than just in time to catch the beginning of a street performers act. Mom and I then went to Picadilly Circus and then walked to Oxford Street. (On the way to Oxford street we accidentally took the long route and went through Soho and some rather unsavory alleys.....)

Sunday was all about St Pauls and Harrods, what else goes together like religion and shopping? Isn't shopping a form of religion?

Monday and Tuesday were Bath and they were wonderful. The weather tried very hard to be good for us and only really rained as we were driving home (Yay, my second time driving and still no deaths!!)

Anyways, here are all the pictures, I hope you enjoy them!

Bath
Stonehenge
London for Tourists

Last but not least, for those of you that know Vivian, here is a picture of her and the family at her birthday celebration :)