It's 2011 and I'm 27!

Hello world! I want to apologise for my lack of posting...although for those of you who have been devoted readers you know that I am not very good at consistently posting- especially when work gets intense! My intentions are always good though and I have a few future posts lined up and in the making, so hopefully I won't disappoint (again).

Anyway, let me tell you about my birthday, which was last week! I truly had a wonderful birthday thanks to all of the friends near and far who made it special for me. I was definitely thrilled at the cards I got and all of the thoughtful messages! I do have to say though that it was the first time here that I felt homesick- I was surprised to find that my birthday of all things would be the thing that made me miss home. I even listened to country music every day of the week of my birthday!!

For my birthday I had a big bash, Fun Bobby style, at a bar. I picked a bar in an area south of the Thames river called Clapham. In order to find a bar, I googled "best bar in London" and came up with some slim pickings. However, this particular bar had one a "Timeout" award (which is basically a company that rates everything here), so I figured it might be good. It also looked trendy, you know, had to pull out all of the stops for my first birthday in London! The bar was called the Loft. I wanted to make sure I had a nice area for my friends, so I reserved an area of the bar (basically a couple of couches). I was surprised to find that I didn't have to pay any fee or minimum tab to reserve a spot in the bar. I suppose there are so many bars in London for people to chose from that the competition is stiff!

On the night of my party I actually ended up arriving an hour late thanks to infamous London transportation problems....coupled with some of my own poor planning. I didn't know that Clapham was such a large area of London- there are actually 3 or 4 train stations in Clapham. Silly me had ventured to the party without looking up directions because I had been to one of the Clapham stations before and I thought that it was the only one! When I arrived to the wrong part of Clapham and realised I was pretty far from the other, we hopped on a bus....however traffic was horrendous on the bus so the whole thing ended up being an ordeal!

Luckily I had some friends that had arrived earlier to claim my spot at the bar and once I had a birthday drink in hand all was forgotten. I definitely had a great time that night and was flattered to have so many people make the trek to come help me celebrate!

My group of British friends

My group of expat friends