Hi, do you need directions? We're locals

After living here for a month we are starting to consider ourselves locals. Steph's taken such a liking to the local dialect that she has unintentionally given a "'Ello" or "Cheers mate" to British passerbys. It can be awkward, but Stina gets a good laugh. This week we had a special guest which gave us the opportunity to show off our London expertise.

THE Adam Joseph Gaschott touched down in London-town! For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of meeting "AJ", he is one of our best friends who we have known since elementary school. We're going to give a recap of the weekend's activities. Having a male around let us walk around during the late night hours, it was nice.

Friday:

The day started with a lunchtime piano concert in a cathedral. The pianist was a 4-foot-tall Chinese woman who looked 12, but played like Beethoven. We then walked along the Thames River to see St. Pauls Cathedral and the Tate Modern Museum.

The Tate is full of modern art that we may or may not have understood. The picture below is an example of one we did not understand. Please make sure you read the description and let us know if it moves you in some way. Apparently it evokes some sort of emotion because we seemed to be the only ones who didn't stand in awe of the "masterpiece."

We ended the day with tea and crumpets because that's what us locals do in England. (Its actually coffee and we didn't eat crumpets but just humor us.)

(Our local friend, Dave, shown in some pictures above, helped us show Adam around. He has been a local for a bit longer since he was actually born in England.)

Saturday:

Adam (our manly man protector)'s one request was to visit Buckingham Palace and see the Queen. (See why we felt so safe with him at night? Just kidding, he's a total juicer!) We unfortunately had to cancel our tea time with the Queen (we call her Lizzie) but we've rescheduled with her for next week. That Elizabeth, she's a hoot!

You may think that is William and Kate, our future King and Queen, in the photo above standing in front of Wesminster Abbey. That is actually Adam and Stina. They fooled crowds of people. The resemblance is uncanny.

Later we went to Borough Market. The food was incredible. There were vendors from all over Europe selling their homemade products; the combination of scents was a bit overwhelming. We all picked our dessert of choice after contemplating hundreds of options. How do you pick between apple turnovers, caramel cheesecake, tiramisu, and carrot cake? Our mouths and stomachs were so content and thankful after the afternoon trip to the market.

We then walked to the Imperial War Museum. We made it there an hour and a half before it closed and thought that would be enough time to fully experience the museum, but we were very wrong. We all split up and ended up only seeing one section each. Adam went to the World War I section, Stina to the World War II one, and Steph to the Holocaust Memorial. We could have spent hours there, we think we're going back next week, and every week after that. Apparently we have a weird obsession with war. Is that bad?

On the tube map, Elephant and Castle (the tube stop where the museum is) and New Cross Gate (where we live) are about an inch apart, so naturally we thought we could easily walk from one stop to the next. False. After a lot of walking and a long day of exploring we reached our flat feeling as if we had walked miles. Oh wait, we did...SEVEN miles!

We were all exhausted and decided to have a relaxing night by going to the local cinema. We saw The King's Speech which takes place in London and features our good friend Lizzie as a child. It was a great film and although we may have enjoyed it being here, it is definitely still a 'must-see' for anyone in America too!

Sunday- longest day ever:

After taking Adam to our church, we went to one of our favorite parts of town, Brick Lane. We visited Spitalfields Market and saw all the interesting, local fare. We even tried on some new London trends.

Brick lane is known for their Indian food. The dining in Brick Lane can be compared to shopping for a fake Gucci purse in Chinatown. You walk along the street and men from the restaurant haggle with you to get you to pick their restaurant. We picked one with a great deal and nice employees, plus they apparently won some award for being the oldest restaurant on Brick Lane. We learned about our waiter's whole family and background (he's Bangladeshi!) without asking a single question. He was a little too excited to talk to some Americans, but we didn't mind because we were busy stuffing our faces with curry, naan, and other Indian goodies. Steph was skeptical about eating Indian food, but Stina insisted that it was good when made by actual Indians. After the meal, Steph agreed that those Bangladeshis know how to work the kitchen.

Now for all you true, football-lovin' Americans, you know the Superbowl was Sunday night in the States. That means it was in the middle of the night here. We, being locals but still acknowledging our American roots, would not miss this important game for anything. As we walked into the bar to watch it an English man approached Steph harassing her with a million questions about American football including, but not limited to: "Who are the teams?", "What about the Saints, aren't they the reigning champs?" and "Who is going to win?" (I don't know sir, it hasn't even started yet!)

After the Packers won it was 4am in London. We were tired, needless to say. A long bus ride left us back at our flat at about 5am, perfect timing to send Adam off to go back to Madrid (where he is studying for the semester). As we said, it was a LONG day. We had a blast and loved having Adam here. We had some good times on the tube too, maybe too much fun. People probably thought we weren't locals...

To ease our mothers' anxieties about what we're eating, we wanted to share some of the meals we've cooked. We have been making dinner a couple of nights a week in our flat and have become quite the little chefs. We decided tonight that we are going to start taking pictures of our favorite meals to share with you. (This is mostly for Mory and Shannon but everyone else can enjoy our domesticated selves too.) It's whole-wheat pesto pasta with sun dried tomatoes, green beans, and fresh Mozzarella cheese. Yum!

Cheers!