Northeast London

Village green

Near the deer sanctuary

I turn 25 in six days!! *gasps* I can hardly believe it! It's not necessarily the most monumental of birthdays, unless you're in the US and you've just been ACHING to rent a car for forever, in which case you really, really need to get a life. In my case, I wouldn't even dream of renting a car over here...drivers seat on the opposite side of the car, stick shift, opposite side of the road....yeah, I wouldn't last to see my 26^th birthday. As it stands  at age 25 life is probably about 1/3 over if you assume you're living the average lifespan and will die at 75...or if you're “lucky” (a very relative term taking into consideration quality of life factors), you're only a ¼ of the way done and you're going to live til the ripe of age of 100, when you'll be a real stunner...a saggy bag of bones, always in some sort of pain, and probably wishing you WERE dead. So either way.

Epping Forest

For the past few years my birthday days have been a bit crap. I’m either not at home and I’m alone at school (because apparently I never make good enough friends to celebrate birthdays with), or if I am at home some “friend” manages to ruin it. But honestly I’m not complaining. In fact I really don't care much...if anything we should be celebrating our mothers and fathers on our birthdays, am I right?!? If it weren't for them, well, there wouldn't be a YOU..or a ME, in this case, since it's MY birthday.

around Loughton

Anyway, this year turned out to be quite different. I’m on a completely different continent, to start, but I also got 2 frickin' awesome birthday presents. The first is actually an event ON the actual day. Turns out a load of my favorite bands from the US are doing a Warped Tour-type show (which I’m shamelessly addicted to) on that day at my friend's school just north of London. So I'll be getting out of London for two days to flippin' rock out to seriously awesome music!! More to come on this when I return!! This will be a story in itself, guaranteed.

The second birthday present technically isn't a present at all. It's more just, well, good news and a change in circumstance, and for all of your who've followed this string since I've been here you'll know how badly I've wanted this. So here it is: All in one day I got a job AND a place to live in London!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was so happy I could've cried, but I didn't because I gave that up three years ago ;)

Birds eye view of my new home location come July, with Epping Forest on the upper horizon

But seriously, for real....I will be living and working up in Loughton, an absolutely gorgeous part of Northeast London where, it turns out, a lot of the “new money” people live. You know, like football players and their wives, TV stars the equivalent of Kim Kardashian who don't exactly do anything but are famous and rich nonetheless. That's what I was told, anyway, and had I been familiar with these stars I would've have recognized several on the street that day...we passed them and they were pointed out to me but as I never watch TV I was clueless. But wait, I’m painting a poor picture of this place....it's actually beautiful, with a London-Old English feel, combined. There are miles of trails through Epping Forest (I put some photos up here, as I'm sure you've seen....I stole them, they aren't mine...I haven't had a chance to take any of my own yet) and horses and families and open space and grass and trees and tiny streets with old buildings and little shops and British people! I've only been up there once but I’m already in love with it. That could partly be due to the fact it's my dream come true. It's finally happened and all my searching and planning and hoping paid off. 

 

Orcs filming in Epping Forest!!

A less Orc-y shot

 Also, it's very near Olympic Park, which is in Stratford, just a few stops earlier on the Central Line. All the water events, meaning the river rafting, kayaking, etc., and not swimming, are taking place right there in the Loughton area. Driving past, I got to see the course under construction.

Stratford Westfield

The day after that was settled and agreed upon I went back up to Stratford to the new Westfield shopping mall, built very recently, I believe, for the Olympic Games. Not that they're introducing a a new event called the “Shopping Marathon”, though that would be totally awesome and and they'd have some serious competition from the female group in London. No. More along the lines of they built a mall to accommodate the need to shop til you drop in close proximity to the games.

4 floors of shopping!

I'd heard many, many times how amazing these Westfield malls are and that I just HAD to go visit if I liked shopping even at ALL. Well, since it is a guilty pleasure...I mean honestly, what girl can resist shopping in London?...I finally got around to going when a buddy suggested we meet there, as his train from Essex stopped there. Unfortunately, neither of us was too impressed despite the fact it is brand new and cost a whopping 1.4 Billion (with a B) pounds to build and is now officially Europe's largest shopping center. BUT it looks just like most US malls, the big ones on multiple floors. Guess I’m just too used to that super-sized lifestyle. Plus, all the store were exactly the same as the ones on Oxford St in central London. Nothing new. And my friend didn't like it because it was too crowded and loud, which I'd have to agree with. See?? Look:

Literally, sitting across from one another in Costa we had to yell at each other to be heard at all. It was a bit ridiculous. So instead of doing much shopping, and since it's also my policy to make guy friends shop with me as infrequently as possible so that they don't hate me, we went to see 'The Dictator'. You know, that new Sacha Baron Cohen film. Got a few laughs, for sure. Although this movie was his first with a full script since 2002 in 'Ali G', it was decently entertaining, particularly his speech at the end when he cunningly compared the USA to a dictatorship. I had every intention of sharing that speech but I couldn't find a clip or a script anywhere so, yeah, forget it.

Mall in the foreground, Stadium in the background