Cardinals Opening Day

There has not really been a day since I have been in London that I wish that I could be somewhere else(apart from my good friend Ann's wedding), but today is that day, and the location is without question.  There is nothing like the feeling of sitting at Busch Stadium in the afternoon sun, cold 16oz bud-light in hand, waiting for the Cardinals to come charging through the dug out on opening day.  It is the sea of red, the smell of peanuts and hotdogs, the sight of the pristine and untouched diamond and outfield, and most importantly, sharing the camaraderie and passion of everyone around you.  It is the official welcoming of Spring and most importantly, hopefully the first step towards another World Series Championship.  I have missed it every year since I have been out of St. Louis, but my thoughts are always there, as they are again today.  My good friend Gallagher and I would already be setting up our tailgate in the parking lot of Al Hrabosky's, and yes, it is just 6am in St. Louis right now.  To all of my friends in St. Louis today, and to all of Cardinal Nation, Go Birds!!!!

The Lone London Baseball Fan                

The Peeing Dog

Well, as it is Tuesday night, it was Yoga night.  We did about 10 straight minutes of "Peeing Dogs," and let me tell you, if I knew that it was that difficult, and would have worked my abs that hard, I would have been out in the yard with Jack peeing these last 7 years.  Granted, dogs physiology is quite different, but that is one hell of a workout balancing on 2 hands and one leg and sticking your other leg out in the air and holding that pose for an extended period of time. 

Peeing actually brings up my other fear about yoga.  As it gets quite relaxing at times, and then you contort your body in some ridiculous way, I am waiting for the moment that I just let a huge fart rip right in front of my co-wokers.  Don't tell me that you have never thought of this.

Cheers
Kevin

Our One Year Anniversary Weekend

Hey Everyone,

First, my apologies for the lack of entries the last week or two.  We have just been here in London working and seeing more of the city.  We set out on a really fun adventure this morning. We rode the tube to a station near Regents Park in northwest London.  It is a beautiful park with vast green spaces, huge ponds and fountains, and blooming flowers everywhere.  It is also home to the London Zoo as well as Regents College.  We made our way north through the Park and out into an area called Camden Town.  Camden is known for its fantastic market.  You can find everything from food to antiques to vintage clothing.  It is absolutely a must see if you make it to London.  It is such a cultural melting pot of people, food and products.  The famous poet Dylan Thomas spent the last 2 years of his life there.  Charles Dickens was also a resident and used Camden as the home of the Cratchit family in "A Christmas Carol."  Amy Winehouse was born and raised in Camden and frequents the markets.  If you are familiar with Samantha Brown and her travels shows, Camden is always a stop for her in London as well(Camden pics below).  Anyway, we had a great morning wandering through the market and taking in the sights.  The weather has been fantastic as well.  We have seen the sun almost every day for the last 7 or 8 days and there has been no rain.  This city is so incredible when the weather is nice.  It is great even when the weather is crappy, but the energy of Londoners when the sun shines is spectacular.  Londoners love to be outside rain or shine, so when there is sun, the parks are packed, the sidewalk cafes are full, and the pub crowds spill into the streets.  I have seen many cities in the sun, but it is really beyond description here.

This weekend is actually our first wedding anniversary.  It is so hard to believe that a year has gone by.  It seems like just yesterday that we were talking about wedding details.  If you would have asked both of us a year ago what we would be doing today, we would probably have told you that we were maybe expecting a baby and being excited for another MN winter to almost be over.  WOW, life can change quickly.  Regardless of destination though, Ann is incredibly lucky to have such an amazing husband.  I am smart, funny, and incredibly good looking!!!!  I am also very skilled at writing about myself.  I am just kidding.  It is me who is the lucky one.  I could not have asked for a better friend and and person to share my life with.  We continue to learn more about each other every day and we continue to challenge each other to be better people.  We are so thankful to be on this dream journey together.  I told her that if this first year is any indicator of excitement for what is ahead in our life, we are going to be worn out by 35;)  It has been a great anniversary weekend though.  We had an amazing dinner last night at a new restaurant in London called Nopi(HIGHLY RECOMMEND).  It was actually opened by the husband and wife team that own our favorite bakery, Ottolenghi.  The menu is comprised of small plates.  We started with a butternut squash pure to put on bread.  We then shared a potato gratin fondant with savoy cabbage.  We had seared scallops with a green apple relish.  My favorite were the beef brisket croquettes with an asian slaw.  The beef just melted in your mouth.  We also had a Japanese eggplant and then finished with slow cooked pig cheek.  I know that Pig cheek sounds disgusting, but it was some of the most tender and succulent meat that I have ever had.  It was a great evening, and a great celebration of our year together.  To top off the weekend, we just got home from a 60 minute massage.  Life does not get much better than this.  I did have to add a quick comment.  If you read our posting following our weekend in Madrid, you will be glad to hear that the Sr. Director no longer has to rely on the sun or her shabby old watch to know what time that it is:)

I did want to quickly add an amazing experience that I had on Friday.  The iPad 2 launched here in the UK and Europe on Friday at 5pm.  It was my first product launch at Apple.  I am fortunate because our market support offices sit just above our Covent Garden Store in London.  I have heard plenty about the energy and excitement around product launches and have seen some videos, but this was crazy.  It is unlike anything that I have ever seen before.  I took some video on my iPhone, and I am attempting to attach it to the blog, but I am not sure if I can.  Regardless, when we opened the doors to the store at 5pm on Friday, there was a que(line) of more than 1000 people(which is relatively small in comparison to the iPhone 4 launch or an actual new store opening).  People had started to line up on Thursday morning.  It was insane.  I will be involved in some of our new store openings this year in England and Scotland, so I am really looking forward to those. 

I guess that is it for now.  We are both here in London this week and then Ann flies to Cape Town, South Africa on Friday night for a week.  I am really jealous of that trip.  We hope that everyone is well.  We miss you all and are looking forward to our first visitors in May!!!  Ann did get her dress this weekend for the big wedding, so she is feeling much better about that.

Kevin   

                   

Marta is Evil

I hope that everyone is having a good Tuesday.  I just had to blog quickly about the voluntary torture that I subjected myself to this evening.  If you have read one of my previous blogs, you know that I am doing Yoga on Tuesday nights at our Apple offices after work.  Anyway, it has become something that I am really enjoying, but it is getting increasingly more difficult each week.  Tonight, the evil was delivered at the hands of Marta, our maybe 85lb instructor.  She had us going from trees to downward dogs to planks to cobras to grasshopers to backward planks to full boats to open boats with partners to triangles to warriors to chairs.  If I had to be another animal or one more inanimate object, I was going to die.  I never realized how painful a still pose could be.  She kept telling us to smile too and all I wanted to do was throw her out the window. 

The Day Pursuit of Science

On Friday night at about 8:00, we decided that we would make a day trip yesterday to Cambridge, and what a fantastic last minute decision that turned out to be.  Cambridge was absolutely everything and more than one could imagine, and it was a simple one hour train ride from London.  While Oxford is recognized as the University of the Arts, Cambridge is known as the University of the Sciences.  The city itself is just an amazing image of turrets and spires, small winding streets, ancient bridges over the Cam River, huge University green spaces, and unknown to us before the trip, "Punting," which I will explain in more detail later.  So, the City and University of Cambridge consists of 31 separate colleges.  It is just one college after another, all mostly built in the 13th or 14th centuries where Kings and Queens attempted to show the extent of their wealth by outdoing their predecessor with a new college.  There are essentially 5 or 6 main colleges (St. John's, King's, Trinity, Corpus Christi, Queen's, and Magdalene) along the river that are the most famous and were the places of education for something like 80 Nobel Prize winners, 13 British Prime Ministers, Scientists, Mathematicians, Authors, and Poets of the likes of Darwin, Newton, Watson, Crick, Wordsworth, and Hawking.  We stood in the courtyard of Trinity college where Sir Isaac Newton first calculated the speed of sound.  We had a pint in a pub called the "Eagle" where Watson and Crick announced their discovery of the DNA Double Helix.  This Pub is also completely graffitied from WWII when the British and US Air Force Pilots stationed nearby would come and drink and try and forget about their bombing missions from the day.  One interesting fact shared with us was that Magdalene College was the last college in Cambridge to finally admit women, and that was in 1988.  It is just a city steeped with the history of education.

So, "Punting."  Punting is essentially the Cambridge version of Venetian gondaliering.  As you will see from some of the posted pics, some of the best views of the colleges were from the river on the punts(boats).  They are powered by a guide using a long pole to push off the bottom of the river.  You can also choose to punt yourself which provided for some good entertainment.  We saw a girl completely take a plunge into the river.  This river is fed from the North Sea just 50 miles north, so you can imagine how cold this water is in March!!!  Also of note, each college on the river has their own punts, so students can hit the river whenever they want.  As should be expected of any university student, drinking and punting have been combined, so apparently the river can take on the aura of a good old fashion float trip at times, albeit probably a little more proper than most of the float trips that I have been on!!!  Anyway, we had an incredible guide who Punts to make some extra money, but is currently a student at Trinity getting his Masters in Industrial Design.  As we punted down the river, he gave us a great history of each college along the bank and also shared some fun trivia and facts.  Even thought it was a bit chilly yesterday, the sun was shining most of the day, and it was so much fun to have that experience on the river.

Well, that was our fantastic Saturday.  We are planning on a Sunday of rest today.  We may try and go for a run in Hyde Park, but we awoke to a typical chilly, rainy London day, so we shall see how motivated we are.  We are both here again this week.  It doesn’t look like Ann will travel again for work until the first week of April when she is flying to Cape Town, South Africa for some meetings, and I am tentatively heading to Glasgow and Edinburgh for work that week.  Amazing, our 1 year anniversary is 2 weeks from today.  Wow, what an incredible 12 months of marriage, and we say to each other all of the time we would never have guessed 12 months ago that we would be celebrating our 1^st anniversary while living in another country.  Life has a strange was of happening sometimes, and we are so lucky for that.  Now we are trying to figure out how we are going to celebrate our anniversary.  We started talking about it last night over dinner in Cambridge.  I suggested that we had the flexibility to celebrate our anniversary “anytime,” and that is when the conversation turned lively.  That was definitely not an appropriate answer, and I am still hearing about it this morning.  Ann, of course, played on my answer by asking if we will celebrate sometime this summer. Even though our anniversary is on Sunday, March 27^th, we will be celebrating our anniversary on Saturday, March 26^thJ 

****Scroll to the bottom for some new pictures****

2844 Florida Pending!!!

We are one step closer this week to not being homeowners in the US, actually anywhere!!!  As most of you know, we left an empty house on the market when we left Minneapolis in December.  Ann's company has provided us with great monetary assistance, but we were still left with the task of selling our house in an absolute rubbish market, to say it in plain British.  Up until this week, besides for not selling it, we have really not worried about it much.  We have had great traffic and knew with Spring around the corner, it was just a matter of time.  We have also had great neighbors(Rebecca and Darrin) keeping a fantastic eye on it and also checking every few days to ensure that the heat is still working.  The last thing you ever want to have happen is your heat to go out in the middle of winter in Minneapolis.  We had contracted a great snow removal guy for the continuous snowfalls, so that has been easy.  Finally, we have some great friends in Minneapolis that we miss dearly.  Despite being ridiculous Jayhawk fans, Patrick and Susie have been huge lifesavers for us in this endeavor.  Patrick has re-painted our living room and dining room for us since we have been gone, and Susie is not only our friend, but also our attorney.  She was so kind in helping us get our wills and assets in order before we left for the UK, and she has also graciously stepped in to act on our behalf when our house does close.  They are coming to the UK in September, and we are all going to Ireland, so they will be compensated with more pints than imaginable!!

If you noticed in the first paragraph, I said that this house stuff had been easy until this week.  Crappy market and price concessions aside, it has been a ridiculous process of back and forth negotiations.  We are obviously 6 hours ahead, and the potential buyers have been less than cordial in their communication and understanding for us being in London.  Furthermore, we awoke this morning to an email from our agent, after the inspection yesterday, to find out that the ice dams(very common MN winter obstacle) have caused some leaking on our sun porch.  We are in the process of getting quotes for a company to come out to melt the ice dams.  I had never heard of this before moving to MN, but these companies come out with steam hoses and melt away all of the ice.  Anyway, the great news is that the buyers were willing to close very quickly, so we have a potential close date of April 1.  I am just praying that everything else goes smoothly.  Becoming a life long renter at this point in time does not sound like a bad option:)

Happy Wednesday

Happy Sunday

Hope everyone is having a great weekend.  Kevin and I are enjoying a weekend around London.  Yesterday we both got hair cuts and then we continued on with a mini pub crawl.  We then came back to our flat at the end of our night to skype with both of our families.  It was so great to see them and catch up - we feel so grateful to have skype to help us stay connected.  Today we are being lazy and we had pizza for lunch.  We would do anything for an Imos Pizza.  Last week, Kevin asked me if I could  have any meal from the US right now, what would it be and I said Imos.  Of course, that was his answer too! 

By request, we have posted some additional pictures towards the bottom of the blog.  I unfortuately left our camera in my hotel room in Madrid...we were presently surpised to call the hotel to learn that they had it and that nobody took it.  We will add some pictures from Spain once we get our camera back!!! 

Enjoy your Sunday!

Local Cultures and Behaviours Through a Yank's Eyes

Wow – where has the time gone?  I can’t believe we have been away for 2 months.   It’s been awhile since I have added a post to the blog so I thought I would share some of my experiences and observations from my travels the last few weeks.  Since arriving in London, I have travelled to Shanghai, Frankfurt, Paris, Rome and Madrid for work.   I have learned so much from each visits – taking in the cultures, learning traditions and understanding local behaviours.   Here is a summary of it the highlights...or lowlights:

Germany – The first night that I got to Germany, the leader had planned a team outing.  We were going bowling!   I showed up to the bowling alley and there were all kinds of American symbols such as football helmets and Budweiser signs.   I knew immediately that I would not be getting good German cuisine for dinner that night.  And I was right...the menu was full of pizza and cheese burgers.   There were about 20 employees there and nobody had ever bowled before.  And to be honest, none of them were really interested in bowling, most of them preferred to play pool. 

Overall, there is not much in Frankfurt but it is considered the financial capital in Germany.  I really didn’t have much time to see the sites but I did get some good sausages before I left.

In Germany, business relationships are very formal – well at least at MoneyGram.  One of the leaders was explaining to me that there are 4 different formal ways to address somebody in the workplace (In the US, I guess you consider we have 2 ways – first name only or “Mr./Mrs”) .  By default, employees in Germany use the most formal approach with their boss, until they are told differently.    If leaders address some employees less formally, it is offensive to the other employees who are still being addressed more formally.  I was told that employees get used to dealing with American companies and as a result, they will follow my lead based on how I introduce myself.  For example, because I introduce myself as Ann, they will introduce themselves with their first names but as soon as I leave they go back to the formal names. Very different.

Paris – My trip to Paris was pretty quick and I was primarily in meetings.  I did learn that employees get a lot of fringe benefits such as vouchers for lunch and reimbursement for transportation to work.  The vouchers are worth 8 Euros each, and the employee only contributes 3 Euros worth. They can use to them whenever and wherever they would like.  If they want, they can save them and use them to pay for an expensive dinner with their spouse!    

I had two wonderful French lunches whilst I was in Paris but I really struck-out with my dinner.  It wasn’t necessarily bad but when I got back to the hotel room with my take-away, I realized they didn’t give me utensils or napkins so I had to eat with my fingers.  I was exhausted and hungry so I really didn’t care!!!   

A trend that I have noticed is that when I am with the MoneyGram leaders or employees for lunch or dinner, they take me so some exciting and good restaurants.  However, when I am alone, I am tired and just want something fast, so I am usually lazy and get room service or some quick take-away from a local cafe/shop.  So I am usually less than satisfied.  But I can say that I have been enjoying at least one or two local cuisine meals during each trip, so I can’t complain.  I am sure for those of you who regularly read our blog, you can see that Kevin and I are foodies.  We base our trips and tourist activities around food and drink!!!   So, if you are ever looking for recommendations in any of the areas, let us knowJ

Rome - From a logistics/lodging perspective, this was a great trip.  I was staying at a posh hotel and I was in heart of Rome.  Each day during my trip back and forth to the office, I was able to take in the incredible sites including the Colosseum.  Looking at these sites never get old.  

I typically have drivers that pick me up and take me to my destinations.  This is usually cheaper and more reliable than taxi drivers.  The Italy drivers were not very good English speakers.  My driver who picked me up from the airport was trying to have small talk with me.  The weather was incredible that day and the sun was shining.  Just as we were driving by the colosseum, I thought the driver asked me about the weather.  In response, I said, “it’s beautiful, how long is it (weather) supposed to stay?”  He responded, “Oh, it’s been around for thousands of years.”  He was not talking about the weather, but rather the colosseum!!!!!  I am sure he was thinking, “Stupid American - she doesn’t even appreciate or know the history of the colosseum.” 

I had some great Italian meals, vino, gelato and coffee.  After my trip to Rome, I decided that I could get used to drinking Espresso.   At least the Italian way – which is where they stir in one sugar packet, sip and enjoy.  The coffee beans are definitely a different quality there.

Madrid –Spanish people are passionate and they love to socialize and eat late.  Typically employees work from 8 to 5ish but they don’t take lunch until 2PM and they eat dinner at 10PM.  I don’t know about you all, but Kevin and I are usually in our PJs and in bed at that time!!!  It’s pretty crazy how quickly your body adjusts to the different habits and routines.   One day, I went to lunch with 6 of our leaders...now, they don’t do this every day but they made a big ordeal on this lunch.   We left at 2 and didn’t get back until 4:15.   They all ordered in Spanish so I was shocked when the waiter came back with my Coca-Cola Light and their beers and bottle of red wine!!!   I had noticed the day earlier, when I was at lunch with my employee, that all the tables had some sort of alcohol – I just figured none of them where with their bosses.   Obviously, I was wrong and it just a custom to have alcohol during business lunches.   Our lunch was about 6 courses – 4 tapas, one entree which was a filet and dessert – finished with coffee.  I was so tired and exhausted after such a big meal.  I was also so full that I didn’t even have dinner that night.  

I also learned about the last name (or Sur name) tradition in Spain.  Spanish people typically have two last names.  The first one comes from their father’s last name and the second comes from their mother’s last names.  Then when a couple marries, they don’t change their last names.  When they have a baby, the baby takes the first last name from the father and the first last name from the mother.   Essentially, families they have 3 separate last names so it is hard to tell who belongs to who!!!

So, now I am back in London and I think it will be a few weeks before I travel again for work.  I have had a blast but I am looking forward to having a routine for a few weeks and to have a husband againJ  Poor Kevin has had to maintain all the household chores – but as we all know, this fits well with his anal personality!!!!!

Hope you are all well.  Miss you.