Sorry...it's a long one!

Well, let's just see here. I have so much stuff to talk about, I'm not too sure where to begin. I guess I'll take you back to time not so long ago, when my sanity was slightly more intact...

It all began on a dark and foreboding Friday morning. I was up before dawn's early light; 4 a.m. to be exact, and I wasn't sure why. All was quiet, save the screaming in my head: "I DON'T WANT TO TAKE A TEST! PLEASE DON'T MAKE ME! WHAT'S A PAST PERFECT PARTICIPLE? AHHHHHHHH!" Oh yeah...that's why. It was final test day. My legs felt like they weighed more and more, every step closer we got to school. I don't think I've ever really dreaded anything so much before. Well, maybe the time we ran out of Guinness on a Thursday night, and I went to Bob's on Friday knowing we were out. Anyway, the test consisted of two 90 minute parts. The first part was the grammar portion, and to be fair to myself, I didn't do badly -- I did far worse than that, I know it. I was pretty upset after the first part; and yes, that means I shed A tear. Let me just say that I hate English. I feel that we are completely ill-prepared in the rules and regulations of our own language (or something like that). I've decided that I'll probably end up teaching Spanish (since I suck at English grammar), for I seem to be able to randomly bust out some Espanol every now and again. The second half of the test was easy-breezy goodness, so at least I had some positive thoughts about the test (besides being positive that I was going to fail). Don't get me wrong here; I'm not feeling sorry for myself, I'm just trying to prepare for the worst case scenario. That way if I do poorly, I won't be surprised.

Moving on... After the test was over, we all waited for each other downstairs. We took our bottles of champagne (we each got one at the end of the test), and went to the park around the corner. I felt kinda bad though, because we decided to pop the corks all together; the old lady on the bench next to us nearly had a heart attack. Actually, to be quite honest, I didn't really care. The popping of champagne corks is one of my favourite sounds in the world--what's better than hearing 7 pop all at the same time (besides maybe 8)? It was a beautiful day, and we sat and laughed and laughed and laughed. Finally it was time to depart. We made plans to meet for dinner at a restaurant called the Hairy Ghost (LOVE IT!!!), where we had the best pizza ever. After dinner, we met Teacher Mila (or ex-teacher), and went to a great ex-pat beer garden that we all went to a few weeks earlier. We had a fantastic time; in my opinion, the highlight was watching Mila change out of his shorts and into jeans under the table...and yes, of course I watched (hey, he's not my teacher anymore). It started to get cold and windy, so we moved to a different bar where we stayed until Shiela, Coco and I had to depart for the airport. We were pretty tired, but held it together to make our flights to London. That's right folks, we stayed out all night long. Sorry Mommy...I was forced to, I swear it! It's hard being the responsible one; they all overpower me and force me to do things I don't want to, like staying out all night. I just have a weakness for that mischeivous, impish band of Pucks (as in the pagan trickster/half tamed woodland sprite who lead people astray in the nighttime woodlands). They can be changed, I know it!

Our flight to London only lasted about an hour and a half, and I have to say I was glad when we landed. Sky Europe may have cheap tickets, but the seats are ridiculously close together. Our friend Iain picked us up from the airport and took us to Dartford in the county Kent, which is about 45 minutes outside of central London. He was kind enough to let us stay there Saturday night. He took us to Greenwich Village and to his favourite pub/restaurant/beer garden called the Gypsy Moth. Greenwich Village is a super cute college town full of bookstores and street markets. It was a perfect day out too, which made it even better. We sat in the beer garden and talked and laughed and soaked up the sun for hours. Later in the evening, we headed back to Dartford for a delicious Indian dinner. YUMMY! The next morning, I was up early (as usual), and decided to take a walk around Dartford. It's a quaint little town, and I was rather pleased to stumble across Central Park. It's a gorgeous park that spreads out for miles. It was completely a-bloom (is that even a word?) in flowers of every color, all laid out and landscaped perfectly. I was the only person there, so I decided to sit on a park bench and do some much-needed writing. It was so peaceful and perfect, and I got to see the most beautiful sunrise. It was like I got a private viewing of nature's finest moment. Amazing!

When I finally got back to the house (for I got lost), I found that Coco and Iain were awake and semi-ready to go. We decided to head off to London so us girls could check into the hotel. We got to London around noon, and stopped to eat at a great pub called The White Hart. I had the best fish and chips ever, and Iain and Coco both had burgers. By the time we were done, I was so sleepy. We walked to the hotel, said goodbye to Iain, and went upstairs to take a short nap. When we awoke, we decided to walk around to see what was near the hotel. We stayed in Euston Square, which is about 10 minutes or so by Tube to central London. We wandered around; it was really a gorgeous day out, so that made things even better. Later, when we started getting hungry again, we found a restaurant called Green Man. It was a fantastic place, and we both fell in love with it right away. It was packed full of people (most of whom ran the London Marathon that day), and we met some fantastic people. The bartenders, Alex and Roberto, were pretty fantastic too (not to mention cute), and they took good care of us. We have so much fun always, and are so lucky to meet cool people. When everyone was being kicked out at 11 p.m., Roberto said if we stayed and finished our drinks, he and Alex would sit and have one with us. So we stayed and got to hang out after hours. It was so much fun!

Monday, we ended up sleeping in a bit because we were pretty tired still from Friday night. We finally left the hotel and embarked upon a quest to find a bank who could give me a cash advance on my credit card. For whatever reason, my bank put a hold on my debit card, so I couldn't withdraw any cash. Both our credit cards only worked in certain places, which really sucked because we couldn't take the bus or Tube. We finally found a bank with helpful people in it, and we were promptly informed that I would be needing my passport as well as my drivers license in order to get a cash advance. We walked all way the back to the hotel, got my passport, and returned to the bank only to find it was closed. As a matter of fact, all the banks we found closed at 4:30. SUCK! We decided to find a place to roost, since we told Iain we'd meet him somewhere, so we chose the Greene King. We had dinner and a couple of Guinness. Our bartender was very attentive to us (and go figure, very attractive), and Iain remarked that we must be pretty special, because he's never seen a bartender pay so much attention to a particular table before. In England, the bartender never waits on tables. We had to go order food and drinks at the bar ourselves, and someone else would bring out the food. We felt special, but we called it a pretty early night. The next morning, we ate a fantastic continental breakfast, packed up and checked out. We decided to leave early, because we didn't know how long it would take to get us to the airport.

Before we left the hotel, I had asked the manager if he could tell us which Tube to take that would get us to the airport. We wanted the most direct route possible, because we get lost all the time and wanted it to be easy. He assured us that if we took the Tube to Waterloo Station (where they filmed part of the Bourne Ultimatum), we could catch the train directly and we'd be on our way in no time. Sounded fantastic, so that's just what we did. When we got to Waterloo, we decided we'd better ask someone just to make sure that we were on the right track (literally and figuratively). The lady was very kind in telling us that we were told wrong. "That's ugly," she said, meaning that the manager at the hotel lead us astray. She reassured us that our tickets were good to get us to the airport and sent us back one stop to London Bridge Station. When we got there, we realized that we were definitely in the right place, and right on time, for we only had to wait a few minutes for the train. We boarded safely (and made sure Coco's 90 pound suitcase was stowed properly), and we were finally off. Sweet relief! The country side was beautiful, and we made about three stops before the station agents boarded demanding tickets. We showed David ours.

"Where you going?" he asked.

"Luton Airport," we replied meekly.

"Not on these tickets."

Ah shit... "But the lady at the station told us these would get us there," I said trying my best to sound fairly pathetic. "Where can we get the correct tickets?"

"See that station?" he asked, while pointing at the one we just left.

"Yes."

"That's the last place you could have gotten tickets."

For a split second, I really thought he was going to throw us off the moving train. But he ended up being very nice and selling us the proper tickets.

"From now on, be sure to check your tickets. You don't want to get slapped with a twenty pound fine," said he.

"Oh we will." We gave him our best innocent faces, and he smiled and went about his business. I have to say that our sigh of relief would have blown a small chihuaua away. Could anything else possibly go wrong? I didn't dare ask myself that question. And, nothing did. We ended up at the airport a good two hours ahead of schedule, ate lunch, went through security and waited until our flight was called.

It was actually nice coming back to Prague. Even though it's not really our "home" per say, we have friends here that were happy to see us, and that meant a lot to me. Really the only depressing part was knowing that we had to go to the old apartment and finish moving our luggage out. I hate stairs! Alas, it was the last time we had to climb that particular five flights, which is actually a great feeling. We got all settled in to our layover apartment, which we share with a gentleman named Marco. He's from London, and has been teaching English for about six years now. He's been extraordinarily kind enough to let us stay in the extra room in his flat for a few days, until our apartment is ready. I'm excited to finally have not only a real bed, but my own bed as well. No more sharing!!! Yay!

Now we are all about settling in to our own comfortable place, and beginning to look for jobs. Joy of joys. It'll turn out all right though, so we're not terribly worried. Right now, though, I'm exhausted and in need of some sleep. I'm off to Neverland tonight, and can't wait to meet Peter Pan! Oh the adventure!

Okay, so that was really random, but to be honest, I'd love to meet Peter Pan and live forever in Neverland.

Don't judge me people...

LOVE YOU ALL!

I'll be writing more soon. The continuing saga of the pigeons is never ending. It's war I tell you...war!!!