Grow Through What You Go Through: Sep 17 - Sep 24 and my London Trip!!

Another great week with my kiddos!! Some of them were a little sick this week and so they were fussier than they usually are. I have been trying to work a lot more on the language so that I can communicate with the children better :)

My little boy got back from the hospital so this week I was able to get my daily hugs in again! :)

Some of the other kids have started to come up randomly to give me hugs as well! I already love hugs but those precious kids I just love them ten times more!! This week was our now 3-year-old girls’ birthday!! She is the girl in our group that is a little quieter and shy, so it was so fun to see her so happy! We had cake and presents for her and she loved the presents! So cute and I loved seeing such a big smile on her face!

Nicole and I are trying to do more of the speech therapy exercises with the children and this week I could already see the kids progressing! They are becoming more comfortable with us and they also are learning more, so this week they started saying more words and are becoming more vocal!! Makes me so happy!!

I also love the caregivers that we work with in the apartments!! They are so sweet!!

Unfortunately, this week, even with all my efforts to stay away from all the sickness (with the kids and with people in my group), I still got a stuffy nose! It started off as just a head cold with congestion, but it has now moved to my throat. The nice thing is right now it is just my throat and not both nose and throat so that is good.

This week we only worked at the apartments Monday-Thursday because Friday-Monday was our first Vacation!! For our first four-day vacation we chose to go to London! London was so amazing! A lot better than what I was expecting!

We woke up at 5:30 on Friday morning so that we could get to the airport here in Iasi by 6:30. Our flight left at 8:30 and we got to London at 9:45 (It was a 3-hour flight, but London is 2 hours behind, so we gained two hours which was nice!) When we walked out of the plane the fresh air felt so nice!! I did not realize how much I missed fresh air that smells like the ocean! London has similar weather as Seattle which I really liked! It was also about 68 degrees when we got there which was so nice compared to the 80 degrees that we have been having in Iasi. Another thing that was so refreshing as we entered London was that English is the primary language!! I was excited about the language before we even got to London, but I did not realize how refreshing it would feel! As we walked into the airport we realized we had not mapped out how far away our hostel would be from the airport. Luckily we were able to ask around (because people spoke English) and found a good price group ticket from the airport to the train station and then from the station to the general area our hostel would be in. While we were on the train to our hostel I felt like I was in the trains in the Harry Potter movies because of the scenery and also because of every one’s accents! (I love the British accents!!). Everything was so green and clean looking! The air was super clear!!

Our train stopped at “Elephant and Castle” around 12:30 and from there we started to look for a place to eat! We found a place that looked like it had fish-n-chips called Leños and Carbón. It ended up being a Colombian food restaurant and did not have fish-n-chips but is still had fish so that was good. All of our meals were so good and very filling! My meal was called Frijoles and Chicharron (I’ll add a picture at the bottom). My friend got salmon and couldn’t finish it, so she let me have some of her fish too! It was all so yummy!! I wish they had a place like that here in Iasi! But then it is probably a good thing that they don’t because then I would really be broke!

After Lunch we walked to find our hostel. On our walk we were able to see a lot of apartments houses and they were all so pretty! I love architecture and design the buildings have in London! It is so elegant, antique and pretty! The hostel that we stayed in used to be ab old boarding school, so it was pretty big! Our room had 3 bunk beds and there were 5 of us so each night we had a new random guy in the room with us but luckily they were all pretty nice. After we got all settled in we planned to go to the “ London Bridge” but we didn’t want to walk all the way there because it was a little ways away from our hostel, lucky for us there were some bikes that we could rent and they had parking stations all over the city so we rented those for 2 pounds each and rode around London, it was so much fun!! The London Tower Bridge was so pretty and there was also the London Tower (more like a castle) that was right next to the bridge! I was kind of sad that we were not able to take a tour of it because it looked super cool, but it did cost money and we had a pretty full schedule of other fun stuff for the weekend. There was a free Jim Ripper tour that we were going to go on Friday night, but we couldn’t find it and it was getting pretty dark and cold, so we came back to the hostel (ridding our bikes most of the way) and got a good night sleep, the beads were not spring beds, so they actually were more comfortable than my bed back in Iasi!

Saturday was full of so much fun activities!! We woke up around 9 and headed out for some breakfast, we found this cute little café and it was actually really good! I got banana nut bread, an egg and bacon sandwich, and a green smoothie! Saturday was pretty rainy the whole day, so we choose to walk most of the day instead of riding our bikes so that we could hold our umbrellas. This actually worked out pretty well because we were able to see more things as we walked rather than riding past them fast on our bikes! After Breakfast we walked to Big Ben and some souvenir shops, sadly Big Ben was under construction so all you could really see was the clock part of the building. The buildings surrounding it were really pretty though, and as we walked across the bridge there was a man playing the bag pipes so that was super fun!! After Big Ben we went to Buckingham Palace and the gift shop there! I just love the art and architecture on the Buckingham Palace grounds! It was so pretty, and I love old fashion things, which made it even more breathtaking and unique!! On our way to Kensington Palace we walked through Kensington gardens which was super pretty and relaxing because it reminded me of home!! I will always choose nature over a big city so that was so fun that I was able to find such a beautiful garden in London! There were lots of trees, green plants, and flowers! When we got to the palace there was a beautiful pond in front of it with tons of swans, geese, ducks and other smaller birds.

After we explored around Kensington palace grounds we made our way towards the Churchill Arms Pub where my friend Kendra really wanted to have dinner at. It was such a beautiful building covered in all different kinds of flowers and then on the inside they had all different kinds of things hanging from the ceiling like baskets in one room, lanterns in another, and in the room that we ate in there were tons of hanging plants! It was so cool!! The restaurant at the Pub was actually oriental food which was surprising but was really good! After then Pub we went on a search for some dessert. We had talked about wanting to go to M&M world, so we bought a train ticket that would take us to M&M world and then take us home. We took the tube (which is like the subway) to an area that had M&M world and tons of other small shops and restaurants. It ended up being a popular square and there were lots of people there. On the street next to this square there was a china town street that we walked down and explored too! Sadly, the tickets that we purchased were just one-time tickets, so we ended up walking the rest of the way back to our apartments. In total we walked about 15 miles Saturday!! It was so much walked but so much fun and I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way!

Each day in London just got better and better!! Sunday we bought all day tube tickets because the places we were wanting to go were a lot more spread out and we were on a time schedule. Our first stop was to Platform 9 3/4 to take a picture by the Harry Potter wall and go through the gift shop! It was really busy when we got there so we actually waited for 40 min to get a picture by it, but it was totally worth it and so fun! Next, we took the tube to Abbey Road and got pictures of us on the sidewalk and we also got to look through the gift-shop there as well!! That was pretty fun as well! After our adventures at Abbey Road it was lunch time we found a restaurant called K&M’s Fish & Chips and it was SOO good!! I got battered Cod and Chips (which are like thick fries) and Ginger Beer! I was in Heaven!!

Once Lunch was over we headed over to the Venue where Halsey would be preforming and waited there for 2 hours before the doors opened. Several weeks ago, when we were planning our trip to London we saw that Halsey was preforming and bought ticket to see her! The concert was absolutely amazing and was the first real big concert I have ever gone too! We were standing from 5:30-11 though so by the end of the night my feet were dead!

On Monday we woke up and packed up all of our things from our room in the Rest Up London Hostel and headed off to The Breakfast Club for breakfast. When we got there there was a 30 min wait so we walked across the street to a big market they had there. At this market there were lots of small shops with samples of olive oil, tea, cheese and fruit!! There were also several other food shops and I just which we had more time and more money there because it all looked so good!! For breakfast I got an eggs benedict dish and it was pretty good, I wanted fried chicken on it, but they were all out, so I had to settle for chorizo, haha. The other girls got blueberry and granola waffles though and those were super good!! After breakfast we got on the tube to find our way to the airport! After a lot of asking directions, back tracking and some great promptings from our loving Heavenly Father (thinking to look at the departure times for the train to the airport) we made it on a train to the airport and when we got to the airport we still had 2 hours before our flight left! Good thing we did too because one of the guys in our group booked the wrong flight, so we had to go through the process of helping him get the right ticket! We all made it safely on the plane and got back to Iasi at 9pm, sad that we were not in London anymore but so happy to see our kids the next day!!

PICTURES:

If you know me you know I love food! haha, London spoiled me!