Weekend in Edinburgh

Hey guys,

Last weekend I went to Edinburgh to see my sister. It didn’t start off so well though as I just missed my flight so I had to take the train from London to Edinburgh which took like 5 and a half hours and my mom still doesn’t know about… I was happy when I got there though and was made lasagna for dinner as well given peppermint fudge, truffles, mars bar cake, and a chocolate ganache cake. I played with the dogs a bit, Alfie and TC, and went to bed. The next morning my sister and I went horseback riding on a hack. I made it about 15 minutes and then as we were trotting along I hit a tree branch and my glasses came off and went over my helmet and got lost somewhere in the mud. I tried looking for them and same with the lady leading the trail ride but we couldn’t find them anywhere. Other than that the hack was a lot of fun. My sister and I walked back after the ride to try and look for my glasses but we couldn’t find them anywhere. I then also realized I hadn’t brought any of my contacts to Edinburgh with me because I left them in London. We then decided to take the dogs for a walk and later that night we went to the bowling club to see Mr. Onkel which was a lot of fun. For a soul singer he’s a lot more funky than we thought he would be. He sang to my sister twice which I got on video then he decided to sing to me which she thought was hilarious and got on video. He then tried to make my sister dance with him which was fun to watch and later that night he asked to take a picture with us and my sister and I decided to take a selfie with him. On Sunday we went into town and did a bit of shopping and met up with some friends and saw the Christmas lights get turned on and some fireworks. By this time my sister was getting sick and I was really hoping to not get sick so I was taking Cold FX.  I came back to London on Monday and now am super excited for December as I was given an advent calendar. I am also now getting sick so today I have been sitting in bed most of the day on the internet just feeling sorry for myself and coughing while listening to Christmas music. I have also been watching a lot of Christmas movies already and I went and ordered new glasses which should hopefully come by Monday. For the first time ever I am also having to deal with the insurance company. After coming back from Edinburgh and staying in a house with four people again I came back to London and realized very quickly just how lonely London can be. I realized though I won’t be by myself for very long though as my family is spending Christmas together and I still have my cousin in London until he goes home for Christmas as well.

Anyways I am now sick and tired and my throat hurts. I have girl guides again tonight and will have to stop and pick some stuff up before I go for my throat. Last night I watched “The Holiday” which was super good and just had me thinking they were kind of in my situation but only for two weeks although it was different. I am supposed to see my cousin on the weekend so I need to get this cough under control because I really want to see him and just not feel so alone. So I’m trying to come up with a game plan of getting lots of rest and drinking lots, which I’ve already been kind of failing at but I’m going to try really hard to keep it up. Ya so I really don’t have a lot going right now. I was supposed to see Backchat last Tuesday but that didn’t work out so I am going another time with another girl from Canada. I also learnt just how expensive meat is over here. For two packs of ground beef I paid like $25 Canadian or £12 which is ridiculously expensive.

Well I’m going to leave it at that for now and I’m going to probably have a nap and eat before I have to go out again. I don’t know how people can live alone and deal with being sick, it’s a struggle to make sure I eat and everything as I don’t want to have to get up. I’ll try and post something again at least by the end of the weekend or Monday, hopefully by then something half interesting has happened.

Thanks,

Ashley

  

Home Sick

Hi guys,

So this week I haven’t done a whole ton. On Sunday I met up with my family friends and got to play with their very cute dog named Gerry. On Monday I finally got my wifi whoo!! On Wednesday I started volunteering with Girl Guides. I was asked quite a few funny questions by the girls. First I was asked if we had caterpillars in Canada haha and then told you can get maple syrup there. I was later asked whether or not there are spiders in Canada haha. They played a game as well where they would be in pairs and run to touch one body part to another, such as elbow to knee. One of them was foot to face which most people had their partner touch their cheek to the top of their foot, but one group had the one girl’s foot in the air and the other girl’s face against the sole of her shoe. The whole thing was very cute and funny. When I was about 5 I did a year of Girl Guides, I was in the pink shirt group, and all I can remember is eating doughnuts off of a string and selling cookies at family dinners.

I was not very busy this week but I have a busy weekend ahead. In my next post I will let you know how my weekend goes. On Saturday I am taking a cupcake class which I think I mentioned before and am excited for. You get 12 cupcakes to take home! On Sunday I am trying out a new stables to see how it goes so I have a flat lesson that day. I feel like I am going to look so funny on the tube in my riding clothes in pretty much rush hour. Oh well.

Since I haven’t had a lot to do this week I have been a  bit more homesick. I have been listening to Canadian radio and just craving home cooked food and people to be with all the time. I thought since I wasn’t feeling great I would treat myself to a Christmas hot chocolate, I got the black forest hot chocolate, from Costa and the cups are so cute. I wish we had cups like that in Canada. I love seasonal drinks, I just want to have them all. My mom sent me a box of sauce mixes and salad dressing as well as butterscotch chips which I am so excited to use. This week I also made a recipe I found off of Pinterest for mash potatoes with melted cheese and I added broccoli and it was so good.

I was crossing a round about today and it was a very small one in a residential area and I almost got run over twice. All I could think of was my cousin always saying please don’t die and always make sure you don’t get run over. I might just text him tonight telling him I almost got run over twice just for fun haha. I spent most of yesterday cleaning and the most embarrassing thing was I had never cleaned a toilet fully before so I had to YouTube it just to make sure I would do it properly. I also learnt that if you don’t even buy that heavy of groceries you still shouldn’t buy a drink if you have to walk home because that walk home will be brutal and your fingers and hands will die a slow and painful death. You may also get a bit of your drink down your sleeve… It sucks. I also am slowly learning how to use the bus instead of always having to walk from the tube station. I learnt that bus drivers aren’t always the most helpful. I also went to Nando’s for the first time which was very good and I totally want to go back sometime. I saw the poppies with my cousin a while back which was super pretty.

I have no idea how to end this gracefully so here we go. Thanks for coming with me on this adventure and if you guys have any suggestions on buses or things to do in London or anything really I would love to hear them.

Ashley

A Little Update

Hi guys! So this week I went to a photography class that I had found and it was very interesting. I just got a new camera which is a D3300 before I left Canada and am super excited to learn more about it. I have also signed up for a course on cupcakes which I am excited for because I am such a foodie. I also talked to a barn about volunteering so things are moving and coming into place now. This week I haven’t done a whole ton but I saw on Facebook that apparetly a woman gave birth in a tube station, not sure if that is true or not. It’s been super rainy here all week after like a month of nice sunny weather. Also the weather app lies to you; it may say its 8 degrees but I went outside and could see my breath and thought I should have worn a hat and mitts. I also found out apparently horse chestnuts keep away spiders but I was too late to find them. I am terrified of spiders. I bought rubber gloves and tons of paper towel to learn how to kill bugs. I told my cousin if I saw a huge spider in my flat I was going to call him and he would have to train for an hour to come and kill it for me. He told me if I call him for that he’s going to pretend he has bad reception and hang up on me. I feel the love.  I am also scared of birds which isn’t really helpful in a city full of birds. I have gotten slightly better at walking past pigeons but they still terrify me and they fly way to close to me. I thought I would also let you in on some of the things nobody tells you about when you move to the UK. First it is super hard to get a bank account over here but since I went through BritBound it was much easier to get one. Next is you need a TV license if you have a TV but you also need one if you don’t have a TV. If you watch anything live on your phone or laptop you need a license or they can fine you. You also need to pay council tax, which is like property tax, for 10 months out of 12 but you are basically still paying for 12 months worth. My cousin in Canada told me about the story bucket because apparently I tell story bucket stories. Basically the way the story bucket works is when you tell a crap story somebody will open their arms like a bucket and then close the bucket. This means that the story has gone in the bucket and is never supposed to come back out again. Most of my stories go there… My family friend told me I should  write a journal about my adventures and if it was good then maybe one day maybe it would be published. My cousin then told me I should write a journal of my stories and I told him oh my family friend just said that too and maybe one day it will be published. Well he then told me “No. I meant if you write a journal you will get your stories out that way and then I won’t have to hear them.” Ya once again feeling the love haha. Well that I will admit that was a story bucket story in itself, but those are they kind of stories you guys will hear lots of. I will apologize in advance for that. Once again in other news I am going to Scotland for a weekend this month. Yes this is how my brain works I flip subjects very quickly. For instance now I am once again thinking about how I would love pasta for dinner. I had also thought of making a YouTube channel but I am not sure what I would want to do with it yet, so if you have any suggestions I would love to hear them. I will hopefully be posting more pictures of my journey as well, as I start getting better at using my camera. If you have any suggestions on what I should be seeing in London or Europe in general let me know because I am always looking for something new to do. On another subject though if you haven’t noticed I don’t take myself that seriously and neither does most of my family so most of my stories if not taken the right way may sound like we are just being mean to each other but it’s all out of love just trying to have a laugh. It took me a while to figure out how to watch Canadian Netflix here but now I have and I swear I’ve watched everything there is to watch already. I feel like I try not to post super long blog posts but it never works out. I’ve titled this a little update but by no means is this little or that much of an update… Close enough haha I tried

Life so Far

Hello,

I am a Canadian who has recently moved to London and am going to tell my story about this up coming year as it comes. So to tell you a little more about myself I am 18,  just graduated high school in June, love telling stories, and am on a GAP year in London before going back to school next year. I am known for my stories some people love them others mock them. My cousin tells me they aren’t stories they are just sentences of facts that have happened to you. I have now been in London for just over a month and I have some family friends here and one cousin for now. I am not 100% sure why I chose to come to London or what my whole plan is while I am here so I’m kind of just taking things as they come. I have always had a fascination with London and I’m not sure if it is because I truly love the city or if its just because the one cousin I’ve looked up to lives here. When I came here I joined a group called BritBound and met some other Canadians as well as Aussies and Kiwis.

My life for the past month has kind of just been a world wind. My mom came with me to get me set up and stayed with me for just under a month and recently went back home about a week and a half ago. When she was here I had my sister visit us from Edinburgh for a week, she is on an exchange there until Christmas. We went to Cambridge as well as Windsor which were both beautiful. I also got a flat and moved in while both of them were still here which was an experience on its own. There was so much to learn about moving to England, nobody tells you that you need a tv license when you live here or you need to pay council tax even if you are renting. Since my mom has left, yes I’ve had a little cry about it, I’ve been trying to find different things to do. I have been to the Chelsea Football Club and had a tour, I saw Alan Carr: Chatty Man filmed live, I went to the British Museum, I saw the poppies with my cousin at London Tower, we also walked across London Bridge, along the Thames, and went to Borough market. With my family friends I have been to see the outskirts of London and many parks and another market.  I learned about 15 minutes after my mom left how much I miss having a car and how heavy 3 bags of flour can be even if its only a 15 minute walk home. The one thing I miss a lot is my dog, Madeline, and my horse, Justin. The first thing I did when I got here was put pictures of them on my bedroom wall.

I don’t want to make this too long but I hope to post at least once a week and we’ll see where this takes us. Thanks for taking time to read this and come on my journey with me. Hopefully you found it somewhat interesting and I promise after this one things will be more interesting and fun.

Ashley