life, willingly: london: part 2

so we arrived in nigeria last night....it is really scary here and it was a pretty bad experience, but things are looking up. i will save that for a later post. for now, lets go back to the fun stuff and talk about london!

so during the week we had a pretty strict schedule. training started every day at 8 AM and went until 6 PM. the hotel we were at was a mariott and it was AWESOME. we would go down for a full breakfast each morning, then at 10 and 3 during the day, we had a break room near our conference rooms that the staff would come and bring smoothies, fresh fruit, fresh baked cookies, make awesome coffee and cappucinos, and make fresh omlettes. they seriously rolled out the red carpet for us. they also had jars of candy gummies available all day.

we are learning the competency system training, which is 80 slides and takes about 6 hours to present from start to finish. so we were broken into groups and would deliver specific parts of the training to our specific teams. my first morning presenting, i did REALLY bad and was all nervous. but as the week went on, i got more and more confident and by the end of the week, felt great on my slides. (i can't wait to come back and practice on my landmarkers!)

break time!

gummies

our training room

at night, we would either eat in the hotel or try to get out a bit and go see the local area. we went downtown to london on sunday, i ate in my room monday, ate in the hotel restaurant tuesday, and went out wednesday, thursday, and friday. on wednesday night we went to windsor and ate at this really good restaurant. i had the pork belly and it was SO good. and we also had venison for appetizer. made me miss home! then thursday we went to this local place and i saw GYPSIES!!!!!!! AHHHH!!! there was this girl with her family, and she was dressed to the nines in a short white dress, hair and makeup all did, and tanned. i asked her if she had gotten married and she laughed and said "no! i am 14!! i just had my confirmation!!"

umm.

wow. this chick looked like she was older than me! i asked if i could take a picture with her and she instantly got into posing. it was hilarious. the whole family was doing it too. they kept telling me ok take more take more!! and are you on facebook? tag us!! they loved it.

then friday, i went out and got to tour windsor inside and check out three awesome little pubs around it. i went with my co-worker glenn instant connection for me there! i miss you dad!) windsor was amazing. seriously just amazing. everywhere you looked there was amazing architecture, awesome global finds from years and years of history, and just so much opulence and history. i loved it.

after we toured the castle, we decided to stop at the little down at the base of the castle and find a cute local pub to grab a beer. we found this place called the blarney stone and had a local brew. we left there and decided to find one more pub...this one was called two brewers. we had another beer and headed to find a taxi. but then, we came across the third pub, and it was called THREE tuns! we had to stop, obviously. it was a sign!

the three tuns was my favorite. it was built in the 1500's as a public meeting house, and was transferred into the three tuns bar in 1625. it was used frequently by the king in the castle. one king even had tunnels built from the castle into the basement of the three tuns, where he would grab some whiskey and beer mixed (can't remember what it was called) and go next door to visit his mistress. awesome! haha.