gelato, jenga, brighton, salsa dancing.

This past weekend was probably one of the best yet! On Friday night, I didn't really do much of anything. I made myself some dinner down in the kitchen and then a few of us began talking about wanting some kind of dessert. We finally chose to walk together down the street to the gelato shop on Portobello Road. I got the chocolate and the cookies and cream flavors. I must admit that it was some of the best gelato I have had (minus the genuine streetside gelato shops in Italy, of course.. there is no comaprison to those.) We ended up walking downstairs in the shop and we found a table to sit around - then someone went and found that they had a shelf with a few games. We decided to play Jenga. Oh man. It started out as an innocent game where we were all just kind of goofing around - but with time the game got really serious! Haha :) It was so much fun - we were all really intense with our choice of which piece to remove from the tower. At one point, I was so in the zone and concentrated that any kind of noise distracted me.. which of course was the point where my friends took the given opportunity to distract me and ask me random questions so that I would make the whole tower fall over. They did not succeed, though! :) I am happy to say that I was not the person to make the tower fall over for any of the rounds we played!!

Shifting to Saturday, I had a lazy morning and then around 10:30, a few of us met to make our way to the train station. We booked 2-way tickets to Brighton beach for the day. I was really excited cause this was the first trip that I have taken outside of London itself. We arrived and the first thing I realized was that it was QUITE a windy day by the beach. I gave up on trying to keep my hair looking nice almost immediately. We found our way out to the pier where we walked to join our friends for lunch. I ate fish and chips for the first time! It was really good but it was also really greasy. Coming from America, this shouldn't be too much different than basically all food that is cooked.. especially in the south. However, since being in England, I have not really eaten any fried food at all and therefore it was a bigger shock to my system than I expected. I ended up having to dig through all of the fried parts to try and find the actual food inside, haha! After lunch, we walked around the beach and even ventured out onto the pebble beach. It was really windy, though, so we didn't stay out there too long. We walked back away from the beach and found some little shops. They were all quite unique little shops and I ended up buying a couple of artsy pairs of earrings. We walked around some more and I found a few more shops that intrigued me. It was a fun and relaxed afternoon! One special shop we found was a cupcake bakery called the Angel Food Bakery. They make these gourmet cupcakes that are simply divine. :)) I ended up choosing the Red Velvet Cupcake that had red sparkley sprinkles on top. The best part of the whole day was that I was able to take a lot of pictures with my new camera. I am still playing with all the different settings my camera has on it, but I am having a lot of fun doing it!

Saturday night, the girls and I went out together and a few of us went out dancing afterwards. We went to a couple of different places and just danced around, being completely silly :) I left a bit early because I was getting really tired, though, and I ended up crashing pretty hard when I got back to my bed. Sunday was a day of relaxation and I had a chance to do some homework while cleaning up my room a bit. In the late afternoon, I went to church at Hillsong for the 6pm service. It was a great service, filled with such uplifting and powerful music. I must say that the term "saving the best for last" really came into play this weekend, though. After the church service, a few of us all met up to go salsa dancing. Oh. My. Gosh. It was SO much fun! I had such a great time getting to learn the steps and then throwing myself into dancing with guys who knew a lot more about salsa than I did. I want to go more often so that I can get better at it! This form of dance is different than anything I have ever studied before, and I am intrigued by it. I am not used to having to follow someone else's lead in a dance that isn't necessarily choreographed steps. After letting go a bit and letting myself relax into the movement, I found that the steps came musch easier.

That's all for now. School is going well and I am loving every minute of my classes, even though the commute wears me out. More to come later. cheers :) mk