Just Touched Down in London Town

It's so nice to actually live in a foreign country for a while rather than always being on the go. Here, we are trying to do more "everyday normal life" kind of activities and not as many tourist attractions.

We are living in a 1 bedroom flat in Kentish Town, just north of central London. It's a wonderful neighborhood that is quiet but just two blocks off the main road with plenty of restaurants, shops, and the tube station. In fact, most of London seems pretty quiet and clean and nice compared to many other big cities we have visited. Adam describes central London as a modern day ancient Rome - the architecture and statues around in every day life are majestic but normal here. (anyway, pictures of our apartment are below)

The weather when we first landed was pretty cold! We couldn't believe it was July and we were wearing long pants and sweaters. Since then, there's been a heat wave where it topped 100F for two days. But, it's back to cool fall type of weather.

Something really special is that a couple of Clare's friends decided to vacation in England at the same time. Emily was already nearby for a wedding in Ireland. So, she and her brother Andy ended up spending a few weeks hanging out in London as well. Tanya and her boyfriend Mickey came to roadtrip around the UK but also visited London a while to hang out with the crew. Unfortunately, Adam came down with a moderately bad case of COVID. So, he was at home for a whole week while friends were visiting.

Le Cordon Bleu Culinary School

Clare started her 6 week culinary school program on July 4th. It was WAY more intense than she expected. It was mostly 6 days a week, often 12 hours a day, with hardly any breaks to even eat. She has made really good friends in the program though. Many are still in college, only two are in their 30s, and then three are much older. Clare has especially made friends with a young architecture student from Saudi Arabia, a recently done with residency anesthesiologist from Los Angeles, a Lutheran Theology professor on sabbatical from Germany, a British Professor and former dean of the business school at Washington University in St. Louis, a retired eye surgeon from Memphis who is the oldest person to ever be enrolled at this school at 81 years old, and several others from Nigeria, the Seychelles, and other parts of the USA. Only 2 out of 32 people in the program actually want to be chefs. Most people are doing this as a summer learning program for their own lives.

The school is mostly set up in a way where you watch a demo of someone cooking and explaining a dish and then you go to the kitchens, cook the dish yourself, and present it to a chef for feedback.

Clare has been learning knife skills, how to carve a whole chicken, how to make sauces with lots of butter and prevent them from "splitting", how to make puff pastry and noodles, how to perfect an omelet, how to cook steak and lamb, and how to present things to look really fancy.

She especially thought it was intimidating but really cool to filet a whole fish.

One perk of this school is that the pastry students often lay out their creations on a common table by the locker rooms so that the culinary students can try recently baked cakes, pies, chocolates, and breads. All the benefits of the patisserie program (eating sweets) without the work!

There are still two more weeks and a final exam to go! Wish Clare luck in passing the tests.

Adam's Adventures

Unfortunately, Adam was sick with COVID for the first week of Clare's cooking school. In fact, he pretty much lost his sense of taste and smell the day she started bringing home fancy dishes, which was unfortunate timing. But, once he recovered, he started going to the British Library to work on coding programs. And, he walked and explored a lot of neighborhoods. 

Adam tested into the second level of beginner for a Spanish Language course at the Cervantes Institute in London. But, not enough people were signed up for level two. So, he had to enroll in level one. It's still a lot of good review and some new content that he enjoys practicing on walks with Clare in the evenings.

The program is put on by the government of Spain, so the teachers have accents from the country of Spain rather than from Central and South America. The teacher calls it "standard" Spanish even though a tiny fraction of the world speaks with that accent. For example, in Spain they pronounce Cs and Ss with a "th" sound. So, instead of "cinco de mayo" they would say "thinco de mayo". 

There are a total of 8 people in the class, all of whom are British besides Adam. So, Adam gets to also learn how to speak British English in class as well as Spanish. Clare and Adam love to laugh at the way British people say things. Once, Adam struggled to find "zucchini" in the self check out at the grocery store because they call it "courgette" here. "Aubergine" is their word for eggplant. But even beyond foods, "full stop" means the period at the end of the sentence and "knackered" means tired. It's like a whole other language!

Sightseeing

Adam and Clare have been doing some sightseeing in London even though there's barely any time with the schedules. They visited the British Museum, which is home to the Rosetta Stone. They went to a Sunday service at Westminster Abby, which is really a cross between museum and church. The service is beautiful and traditional, but they really usher you out quickly instead of allowing you to look at the graves of Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, etc like a tourist.

Adam and Clare saw the musical Wicked! They had a traditional afternoon tea, and they went to Harrods - a super famous and ritzy department store.

Fun Activities

Other than the sightseeing, the couple has also been enjoying a huge variety of well manicured parks in London, a comedy show, walks along the canals that have a bunch of nomadic houseboats tethered to the side, and some local meat pies!

They happened upon a really fun "chess fest" where there were many tents set up with dozens of chess tables for the public, life-size chess pieces, and also human chess shows where famous games are "reenacted". 

They also tried their hand at "pub quiz" or trivia. But, so many questions were related to British pop culture or geography of the UK that the couple came in dead last! It was still fun to try beers on tap and "Pimms with Lemonade", a drink the queen herself is fond of supposedly! Clare loves it.

Well, before we get too "knackered" writing this blog post, we will end it here with a "full stop". :)