Blame it on the....

SNOW.

Apologies for being MIA since Thanksgiving. I'd like to be able to blame it on the snow, but it really is probably more attributable to work lately. Oh well. Here's what you missed: snow, snow, snow, SNOW! What's a Texas girl to do?

I've found that this city shuts down when it snows, just like in good ole Texas, except here you are still expected to go to work/school. So, the snow really isn't that pretty or exciting here. Much better when you can watch it from the comforts of your home. My commute each day was terrible and required a lot of creativity! One day I arrived at my local Tube station to find that it was closed...because of a fire! That's just so wrong, you can't have snow and fire in one day!

So, to catch you up to speed (and I promise I'll have posts all throughout next week!) our little community of foreigners decided to host an early Christmas party the other weekend where we brought Christmas food from our respective countries.

What did I bring? queso. I think it may have been life changing for some people. Although, I had a tough time really recreating it here. There is a store here that sells American staples like Oreos, Kraft Mac 'n cheese, etc. They had Rotel but they did not have Velveeta. Can someone please explain to me the point of Rotel without Velveeta? I am vowing to bring back several boxes of Velveeta with me when I go back home and I am planning on converting these people one by one! Anyway, I had to give them premade queso from a jar from a brand I've never heard of, but it actually tasted decent. Regardless, melted cheese around drunk people tends to go over well!

Let's just say we were not short on food.....

The Belgiums brought tons of Chocolate desserts, the Danish people brought liver pate, the Polish people brought pierogies, the Italian people brought some sort of doughnuts that were appetizers, the Swedish people brought a sort of fish and Swedish meatballs, the list goes on and on!

The girl that cooked Thanksgiving dinner for all of us also brought more of her leftovers!! I secretly mostly ate the Thanksgiving food....I couldn't help it! More American goodies (this girl's grandmother's recipe- made from scratch):

We have a ton of Swedish people in our group. They say London is like their second capital! They shared all sorts of traditions with us like a drink they drink around Christmas time (kind of like mulled wine) and some song we had to sing....before taking a shot of another drink...that kind of tasted like perfume....

They also performed a traditional Swedish Christmas song, lol.

I love our group- everyone is definitely trying to make the most of their time here!