Christmas Parties and Snow!

The weeks are speeding up now, both of us working a lot and starting to do a few things after work has really helped to pass our time here in London. This week has been a bit crazy over here with snow falling on and off for most of the week, although none of it has settled in London, it all melts away. They are predicting more which would be nice for Christmas, but makes the already dodgy public transport system even more unreliable.

Wednesday night we had an informal Christmas party at the hostel. This was put on by a couple of the girls, Marie the French girl mainly. She spent a lot of time cooking for us all which was awesome to come home to after working all day. We had a few bottles of wine, the girls dressed up and the guys did the token thing of putting a shirt on! Entrée was grilled stuffed mushrooms, followed by chicken fillets with garlic filling with veggies for mains. Then dessert was an amazing cake of some sort and Baileys Irish Coffees. Was a bit late for a school night, but everyone had a great time.

Thursday night was Damien’s works Christmas party, not sure why it was on a Thursday, but what ever! This was held in a pub near work, lots of pints to go around and a bit of finger food. The night was split into teams for a trivia challenge, I was even able to contribute to 1 or 2 questions! A lot of it was stupid English trivia. It was hard to leave, looking out the window seeing the snow being blown in horizontally, but I had to make a dash to the station before the last train.
By Friday the office was really starting to wind down, with many people taking the day off and more Christmas drinks, games and raffles in the afternoon. We finished up a bit early, for once, on Friday night. Heading back home we had a few drinks at the hostel before heading out to Tuk Tuk, a cheap Thai restaurant near home, the food was spicy but nice. Damien has started enjoying the Asian Soups, bit spicy, but a nice starter after being outside in the cold!
Saturday morning we were up early, as always, for our cooked breakfast. As generally happens we had plans to do things, but by the time we were ready to leave, it was too late to do what we wanted. Christine wanted to go to some Aztec Exhibition at the museum, but unlike most exhibitions in London its not free, so we figured we would go when we had more time. Instead we headed to the Tate Modern. When we arrived we found out that they do free guided tours, 4 a day, so we joined one of these. It was good to hear about the works, some of which were awesome, including one with a fully grown palm tree, how did they get it in the building!?!
We then headed down to SOHO and met up with a Melinda, a Spanish girl we have met since we have been in London. This was good, we were in a nice little pub for a while and then had dinner in an Italian restaurant. We ended up back in the pub, and then heading off to somewhere else to meet one of her friends, but this fall apart when we got to the place, a private Christmas party, that was charging 4pound for a beer!
Sunday we headed down to Brick Lane again. This time we had some money so Christine was able to buy the clothes that she liked. We also ate at the market stalls again, good Mauritian and Sri Lankan foods. After our Christmas shopping spree, we headed to the Borough markets to meet Julia. True to form, as soon as we met her she said, ‘its too cold, lets find a pub!’. No complaints there!
When we got home on Sunday night, our early night didn’t happen as we ended up sitting around the hotel lounge chatting and drinking beers and wine!