Dynamic Duo Hits Boston

Well E and I traveled to Boston for Ms. Sarah's wedding. We had a fantastic trip! Its always good times when me and my travel buddy are together. This trip was all about E. The men loved her! She got a marriage proposal the very first day. He even offered to give her a diamond ring for each child she has for him. LOL He said he wanted 10, right E? Anyway I'll have to post more pics and more details of our fantastic time together. Feel better E!

New Blog

Alright so I know its been ages since I've posted. Give me a break because I'm engaged!!!! Woo-hoo! I always thought when I got engaged I'd create a site about things pertaining to the wedding and me and my fiance, and so I've done it. Check out www.jemla.blogspot.com Jemla is a name combo you know like Brangelina or Bennifer. I'll still post on this site, but I'll probably concentrate more on Jemla. Remember to comment people. Seriously! The number one Blog commenter is the best Travel Buddy in the World - E! Now Andy checks it the most, but E actually comments. :)

New blog debut

Alright so I have another blog. Still fixing it up. I've had it for a while but never did anything with it so now I'm trying to change layouts and other stuff. Feel free to comment though. Puh-lease!

here

Putney and Salsa Cruise

Its been a while since my last post. Andy was oh so kind to bring that to my attention. Oh in case I didn't say this Andy. You did a fantastic job on your talk!

Now back to our wonderful trip to London. Sunday we woke up and did our Watchtower. Thank goodness Amy had a late meeting, so we were able to take our time and get ready. When we were getting ready to leave it started to rain. Amy's parents picked us up especially because of Amy's cracked ribs. Anyway we arrived early to the meeting and were able to meet a couple of friends. Amy's congregation's name is called Putney. They had about 50 publishers. The meeting attendance was about 60 that day. It was such a small congregation which was very different for me and E since we are use to almost 200 at our Sunday meeting.

After the meeting we drove through the Queen's park. It was very nice. I'll have to post pictures later. Once we arrived back at Amy's we changed to get ready for our salsa cruise. Amy's mom cooked us dinner and it was sooooo Yummy! After dinner Elissa and I went to meet up with Ray. We were able to meet up with Ray at Waterloo and then we ran to the dock to board the boat. Once we boarded the boat we were able to meet up with the other friends. We had a lovely time. We met so many people and enjoyed checking out the lovely sites as the boat sailed around the Thames River. Salsa music was blaring and we were enjoying the company of MOST of the friends. I met a very interesting brother who Elissa had to save me from once she stopped laughing. Anyway the salsa cruise was awesome!

See, I finally blogged.

The British Museum and More

Here we go again!
We woke up Saturday morning to see poor Amy feeling a bit sore and acting like a trooper. We were all able to convince her she should go to the doctor, so while she got ready to go to the doctor we prepared to head to The British Museum for our bible tours. I was the worst person to get any kind of information from in the morning. Honestly!!! Amy's mom would ask me what I'd want for breakfast, and I think I would just stare into space. I got better, but man it was ridiculous the first couple of days. I wasn't really tired when I woke up I just didn't feel like myself. In fact I kept saying to the girls - "I don't like London Tam, she's really dumb." I've never felt so incompetent in all my life. Anyway enough about how I felt.

E and I headed to the corner store and bought our tickets for the day, and then headed to the station. We did really well. We didn't even get lost. It did take us a while to get to The British Museum, but it was well worth the wait. E and I waited around for our bible tour to began. The company that does the tour is called Meander. As we waited for our tour to begin we were able to meet this really lovely older couple. They were from Scotland, and they brought their granddaughter to London for holiday. They took her to Bethel and wanted to do the bible tours while they were in town. I must say that if you want to go to do the bible tour you NEED to schedule it in advice. My travel buddy was great at scheduling stuff in advance. :) Anyway our first bible tour was entitled - Problems Early Christians faced. The brother who did the tour did a really good job. We saw different exhibits to see how how life was back in the time of Paul and the Early Christians. I have notes on the tour, and I'll have to share that later. He brought out some great points. We had a nice size group. We walked ALL over the museum. Bring comfy shoes. I was wearing some fashionable shoes but after a while I had to toss those shoes to the side. Thank goodness they were black, so they didn't look funky like tennis shoes would if I put them on. :) Anyway after our tour we went to this really cute cafe and had lunch. Again I didn't learn my lesson and got a bagel with this chicken avocado salad and I said I want a little mayo. Yea it was just mayo with chicken and avocado bits in it. Yuck! Anyway I ate as much as I could and had some lovely coke to wash it down. I'm not really sure what E had for lunch, but I think it was okay. She said NO mayo on her sandwich. Anyway after lunch we went back to the museum and walked around by ourselves. We ran into some of the friends from our first tour, and they asked where we were from, and whether we were enjoying our holiday. Then he said in the sweetest voice - "Americans have such a harsh brass tone." LOL We were like - Oh, thanks! Anyway after we walked around aimlessly taking photos of different exhibits we met back in the front for our next tour. This tour was given by a french sister and it was entitled - How to survive a famine. We were able to see how Joseph must have prepared for the famine and what he wore when he was going to meet with the Pharaoh. The sister was so animated and did a lovely job. Its amazing how having a guide really adds meaning to the pieces in the museum because we saw some of the same exhibits when we were alone, but when we went with the guide it was sooo much better. Anyway after our tours we were resting and Elissa attracted the attention of some very interesting men. LOL Do you remember E? I say she attracted the attention because I was too busy ignoring them and she was being the nice polite one. I think they asked us about the Bible Tours and then asked if we would like to grab a drink with them. E told them during the midst of the conversation that we were Jehovah's Witnesses and they started asking whether we were allowed to drink alcohol or coffee. We said yes, but anyway they tried to continue the conversation but we able to leave gracefully. I must say the men in England were very friendly to these American girls. Anyway after the Museum we headed to Amy's. Amy was moving and having people over to her new flat. She had most of her stuff in her flat already so we just moved our air mattress and luggage into our other room. Amy's flat is so cute! I'm really happy she was finally able to move in since they had postponed her move date several times. On her first night in her flat she was having a Eurovision party. Let me explain what it is - Its like American Idol meets So you think you can dance but by country. Its actually quite horrible and everyone watches it but just to make fun of it. Amy wanted everyone to pick a country and bring a dish from that country. I chose Spain and we figured we'd bring Sangria but couldn't find any ANYWHERE. The friends brought some very interesting food. I think Jess brought boiled eggs with tomato's on them and they had blue cheese on top. I actually ate that it wasn't so bad. Someone brought blue cheese cake. Yea I wasn't that adventurist. At least Jess' food I could just eat the egg and then the tomato. Someone brought Tolberone, which is now one of my FAVORITE things to eat. Its a chocolate bar with almond nugget and its in the shape of a triangle. Anyway it was a late night, but it was really nice to meet new people. We finished the night with a lovely glass of wine and then headed to bed. Another lovely day in England.

Enjoy some pics!

"We were such tourist"

"At the cafe for lunch"

"Elissa at the museum"


"Eurovision Food"

"Sam in his Eurovision shirt"


"Good Times"

"Some of the gang"


"Everyone watching Eurovision"


"I love this pic! This is E trying to watch Eurovision. Poor dear."


"Way to end the evening."

The Fighting Cocks

After a wonderfully upbuilding day at Bethel we headed to Amy's house to get ready for our night on the town. When we got to Amy's we ate our sandwhichs we picked up at the market. I had an chicken avocado sandwhich - doesn't it sound yummy? Well in actuality it was more like bread with a ton of MAYO with chicken and avocado bits. I like mayo but good night that sandwhich was HORRIBLE. Anyway Rob and Amy made plans for us to go to a cool indie pub called The Fighting Cocks and see a band called Halagoogoo. Rob loves Halagoogoo!

When we arrived at the pub I realized I forgot my I.D. I thought the girls were going to kill me, but the guy who was in charge of entry let me in. I mean I'm pass the age of 18 which is how old you have to be to get in the pub. We met so many friends. Soooo much fun! I played pool with Fabian and Justin and Jason (poor dude had a broken arm). It was really nice to chat and socialize with the friends. E and I learned a lot especially from Fabian right E? LOL He told us what gangs are called in England. They are called firms. Interesting huh.

About an hour and half later Halagoogoo got ready to perform. The band was actually hanging out with us before they performed. Nice group of guys. Anyway when they got on stage I must say their costumes were INTERESTING. Fish nets shirts with spandex leggings. I'm trying to get the images out of my head. It was pretty dark where they were playing but since the stage had such bright lights you got a really good visual of their outfits. The crowd got pretty enthusiastic when they started playing. I was pretty tired so I stayed in the back with E, Justin, Fabian and I think Robyn. Poor Amy was up front and someone accidently pushed her into some speakers. She is such a trooper because she just got back up and continue rocking on with the band. We had a really good time hanging out at the pub. When we walked home we were pretty pumped. Amy was pretty sore from falling over the speaker but she didn't complain much. The next morning she was still in pain so we all urged her to get checked out. She ended up with some broken ribs. It was only our second day and the best travel guide ever was injured AND she was moving the next day. Oh NO!!!

What will the two Americans do now? Stay tuned folks. LOL In the meantime enjoy some select pics from the pub. If you check out my online photo album you should be able to see more pics from that night. I need to arrange my photo album because they are kind of scattered. Anyway till my next update. Later!






"halagoogoo's gig" Check out their clothes!


The boys - Fabian, Rob, Barry, and Jason


"Me and E being silly at the pub"


"Amy and E"

E with Ray and Fabian.

Brits love taking pics.

London Trip - Day Two (Morning)

Wow, another day another blog, so here it goes.

On our second day in London. We planned to visit the branch and have lunch at Bethel. Amy was able to ask her friend Jamie to have us as his guest. Woo-hoo! We woke up and took our showers and got out of the house in somewhat record time. I was moving a little slow that morning, but part of it was due to slight jet lag and the fact that Amy's clock was set at the wrong hour. It was an hour behind, so I kept thinking I had tons of time. Anyway when I realized what the actual time was I picked up my pace. We were able to buy our day pass for the tube and bus. We ran across the street to the bus stop. Elissa and I had to get use to driving on the wrong side of the road, and also looking both ways before we crossed the street. We weren't use to cars coming at the opposite direction when we were trying to cross the street. Once we got to the bus stop we had time, so we made the most of the opportunity and took pics. LOL We took the bus to a tub station, and took the tube for a while, and then we took another bus to the branch. Sounds confusing but its not - bus,tub, bus - got it? LOL Anyway we were running pretty good with time despite the delays when we finally saw our stop. We rang the bell on the bus, but guess what apparently our bus driver was hard of hearing and he didn't let us off. STOP!!! We finally got off and ran down the hill to Bethel. I must say I got a lot of exercise during my trip. Anyway we reach the branch just as the doors are closed for lunch. WAAAAAHHHH!!!! Thankfully Jamie got us in afterward, and saved us a plate. Shhh!!! Don't tell anyone. Anyway after our lunch we were able to see a lovely video of the branch, and then off we went on our tour. It was maintenance day so we didn't see a lot of action but it was still cool. Did I mention the weather was really sunny and gorgeous that was until we left Bethel, and then it rained.
Oh here is a pic of the lovely Bethel secretary. She was so sweet. She reminded me of a Swedish barbie doll or something. Seriously! That was our Bethel experience. We met a lot of really nice friends who were visiting from other parts of England.

London Trip - Day One

Hi guys!
So sorry I've been MIA. I've been so busy since we got back from London with the District Convention and tons of graduation parties on Jeff's side of town.

My trip to England was amazing! Elissa was a great travel buddy. Our flight to London was great. First class was FANTASTIC!!! It makes me sad to think of going back to coach, but hey thats reality. :( I had so much food during the flight, but I did manage to get a couple of hours of sleep in before landing. I guess you could say I was pretty tired because I didn't even hear when they came by with breakfast. Anyway I woke up about 20 minutes before we landed to see Elissa still fast asleep. She woke up about 5 minutes after I did. I promise I didn't wake her. "Oops did I bump your foot?" Just kidding.

We finally land in London early, and we proceed with our baggage to customs. I'm so glad we did carry on even though it was interesting trying to pack a week worth of clothes in carry on luggage. We were able to zip right through customs. We exchanged our money, and I felt poor immediately. Seriously! I had like 218 dollars in cash, and it was less than 100 pounds.

Anyway we try and get information on the best way to get to Putney, where Amy lives, and we buy a pretty decent ticket. The airport workers are pretty helpful in London. We talk to another airport employee and he tells us which platform we need to go to get the train and we see a train. Score!!! We found it and the train is early! Here's a lesson - Trains in England are never early, so guess what we got on the wrong train. We were a bit tired and we're slipping in and out of sleep when Elissa realized we weren't hearing any of the stop we needed. We were headed in the WRONG direction. We had to make a couple of transfers to get headed in the right direction. We had no problem asking for direction. Anyway we got off the right stop, but since we were coming from a different angle we should have adjusted the directions that Amy gave us. We were jet lag okay. It was like 2 in the morning our time. Seriously! Leave the American girls alone! Anyway we get on the wrong bus and head in the wrong direction and then to top it off the bus stops don't have names, so we had no idea which stop we should get off. Everyone has a bus pass and poor Elissa and I have cash but we don't even know what's a pound and whats a pence. LOL We figured it out really quickly though since we didn't want to be known as those "American girls." Anyway to make a long story short we decided to get off the bus and call Amy. Elissa went inside this store and apparently was trying to convince this Indian store owner to let her use her phone for free, while I stayed outside and watched our bags. She's trying to explain she needs help calling a number and I'm trying to ignore the weird British men who keep coming up to me and asking me if I'm on holiday or yelling that they find me attractive while they are driving down the street. Way to make a girl feel good! However I must say that when you are tired and you've been flying for over 10 hours nothing but a good shower makes you feel good. Anyway Elissa finally convinces the store owner to make her use her phone for free. Woo-hoo! We had trouble figuring out our international cell phone. Anyway Amy mom's tells us which direction to head and at that point we decide to walk. We walk for a couple of blocks and run into Amy who was waiting for us. YESSSSS!!!

We head to the Williams to clean up and they were so great! They made us lunch and we had yummy English tea. After we cleaned up Amy took us for a walking tour of London. We saw Big Ben, MI-6, Buckingham Palace, etc. We also hit up a pub and had a blast. At pubs you don't wait for someone to sit you and you go to the bar to put in your order. When we were leaving a drunk fell down and landed at our feet. It was the funniest sight. Welcome to London! After we left the pub we headed home and Elissa and I tried to stay awake till 9 which was 4 p.m. our time. I couldn't last till 9. I think I finally caved in and fell asleep at 8:45 p.m. Elissa and I both woke up around 1 a.m., but fell back to sleep minutes later. Anyway that was our first day in London. Do you see why I haven't blogged in a while. I'm exhausted and I just talked about the first day. :)



Favorite quotes of the day -
Sister Williams (Amy's mom) - "Tam, are you okay dear you look a bit spaced?" That's when she asked me what I wanted for lunch and she got a complete stare.

Tam- Sister Williams do you have spotted dick in a can?
Sister Williams - Umm...no dear it doesn't come in a can. She laughed when I first asked her. It was a totally random question that popped in my head. I once saw it at friends house and they said its an English thing. I promise I saw it in a can. Although Amy and her mom says it doesn't come in a can. I'm sure some of you are wondering what is spotted dick. Its like a custard.