Can you feel the love tonight?

Hello everyone :) It's been a while since I've written but I've just been so busy ending the term and getting ready for parent teacher day tomorrow BUT I have a free night tonight on this 2013 Valentine's Day and am feeling quite lonely and sad so thought I'd cheer myself up writing this blog entry.

Last weekend I went to London for the second time. My main purpose of the trip was to go and see 'The Lion King' musical but just by chance a friend from school spotted a post of mine on facebook and is living in London so we arranged to meet up for lunch.  I met Thomas and his girlfriend, Sarah. Thomas is a good friend of Kim's (Kim is my oldest friend) and her family and he had his big break in London a few years back doing animation work on the last Harry Potter film. I guess he's fallen in love with the big city life and I don't know when or if he'll go back to settle in NZ. He has a British passport so is lucky and doesn't have to decide anytime soon. He was the first kiwi I'd seen since I got here so you can imagine how I excited I was! We had lunch at 'Mother Mash', supposedly the best place to get bangers and mash in London and I'd agree with that, my meal was delicious.

It was a dreary day in London and the soles of one of my shoes split as I was walking to the station from Reading so I had one very wet and cold foot for most of the day. While I was waiting for Thomas in 'Mother Mash' I dashed to the bathroom and whipped off my sock, wrung it out and then attempted to dry it under the hand dryer. I had warm feet for about an hour before I had to venture to the theatre. While I was doing this though I was thinking of how bizarre it was meeting up with Thomas there because London is so far from the Orongoronga Valley where Kim, Thomas and I hung out in their family bush huts as teenagers. One thing he said he misses dearly about home is the bush and the way trees grow in New Zealand (apparently trees in England are very straight?) After lunch we missioned through Chinese New Year celebrations to get to the Lyceum where my show was. The crowds reminded me of Vietnam but the cold, rain and wet feet quickly reminded me I was in London. If it wasn't for Thomas I doubt I'd have made it to the theatre in time because there were so many street closures and I didn't find this out until I'd got home but one closure we'd walked past was where the Baftas were been held that night.

Me and Thomas, we're not in Vietnam but Chinatown London! Happy Chinese New Year!

Thumbs up for 'The Lion King'

I got to the show JUST in time (had no time to purchase a programme or snacks) and was very pleased with my seat. I'd opted for a £45 ticket instead of the £90 ones so was worried it wouldn't be that great. Turns out it was in a great spot though and all I had to do was sit there and watch, I didn't have to move my head at all because I was smack bang in the middle and had no one in front of me. I have always been a huge lion king fan so knew all the songs and thought it was as good as everyone had said it'd be. I had high expectations and they were definitely met. My favourite scene was when Mufasa came back, I thought that looked really amazing.

Sweet seat

Can you feel the love tonight? I can :)

On the whole I'm not doing too bad, two musicals in my first month in England and I'm already booked in to go to see 'Monty Python's Spamalot' in April with my housemates. That's sure to be a great laugh.

I have been teaching my class all about NZ for the last three weeks and finished the study with the kids today as tomorrow is just me meeting and chatting with their parents. This week has been a real blast with them. Highlights were making poi, watching them make up their own poi dances to Michael Jackson's 'Beat It' and perform them and seeing their faces today when I gave them some of my precious Pixie Caramel bars that Simon, Mum and Nana have sent me. They were all very excited to eat some of Miss Anderson's favourite chocolate ALL the way from New Zealand. It was a VERY hard task cutting up the bars at 7am this morning, they're hard enough to break up in NZ but imagine trying to cut them in -2 degrees, I'm pretty sure they were frozen. It was totally worth it though :)

Last day of term tomorrow (YAY!) so I guess that means only... 4 more sleeps until I'll be Rome. I bought myself a pocket sized travel guide so have been reading that to figure out the must dos but to be fair, all the times that I've watched 'Eat, Pray, Love' (50+ times at least) and watched Julia Roberts stroll the streets I feel like I kinda already know the city already ;) It'll be a very fascinating time to visit with the resignation of the Pope and all that jazz so I really can't wait, I'm getting more and more excited as I write about it!

Watch this space! X