well with a small amount of good news coming in (mom is in good spirits, doctors like her, chemo starts soon, etc) i figured i could move on to a more standard blog and update on the good stuff from the past month or so.
AUNTY TINA'S HAVING CHRISTMAS, LA LA LA
The Holidays, like the actual days of celebration (new years and christmas) were pretty damn fantastic. Christmas was spent at my aunts house where she outdid herself again - i swear i've never seen or enjoyed as man appetizers as I did there. By the time desert came around I had no clue what I was eating because i'm pretty sure I got the look. You know the look. Caroline knows it well anyhow - the glazed eyes, the grumble, the head roll - the i've eaten way too much but there's no hope in trying to make me stop - look.
I don't know why people - like me - have a tendency to only talk about the food, weather and gifts when discussing christmas. Or to open the discussion with it. The best thing about the holidays wasn't the con dvd (hillarious) or the fig and goat cheese (amazing) but it was spending the day at Aunt Tina's surrounded by family. For serious, I love that group of people...you the group..my family. the group of us played guitar hero and wii and sang karaoke and had such a good time that if you were on the outside looking in you would have thought the whole display was a showing of 'we sing in sillyville - christmas special' (which us four Herlihey kids did watch on christmas eve by the by. nothing like watching that elf with the speech impediment make gusty a pair of really really gay looking glasses all the while singing and dancing with some white bread kids and their adopted asian sister who seems able to only speak in christmas rhymes. seriously, best movie ever...but i digress). Anyhow, it was fun and festive and all captured on camera.
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE CHRISTMAS ALBUMTWO THOUSAND ZERO ZERO (photos to be added - BLOGGER IS NOT COOPERATING)
New Years was spent with a different family - yes those crazy kids from hamilton and geneva gathered together for a pretty crazy night out at absinthe where we got a free bottle of champagne, i got a birthday shout out, and everyone lost thirteen pounds from dancing all night in a crowded, poorly ventilated basement club. Even before Gilberto decided to 'baptize' me, my hair was drenched and everyone was oh so shiny. Seriously, that place NEEDS air conditioning. Or something.
Caroline and I wore matching shirts, which at first I was weary of, and later on...well later on I don't think I cared too much. Many pairs of sunglasses were pass around as well, and we all looked kind of ridiculous at times, wearing our shades indoors. But we didn't care, we were being young, having fun, ringing in the new year the best way we knew how - by being crazies from hamilton.
SPICE UP YOUR LIFE (video and photos coming soon)
As soon as I landed in Geneva, I said 'screw you' to jet lag and hopped on a plane 12 hours later to bring me BACK to london (I had stopped there for my layover - poor planning, I know I know).
We had taken easy jet to Lutton airport, which is actually pretty far from the city (even though it says its in London). Luckily we planned and caught an easy bus (seriously this easy brand stuff is magical) into the city. It was amazing getting off the bus and trying to get directions on metro tickets and tube lines and ordering a sausage roll (tasty english snack that didn't cost us 6 pounds - or a million dollars once converted)...for the first time in our travel experience, everyone spoke English - no, they even spoke it better than us with their cute-as-a-button accents! Traveling was going to be easy?! We could read street signs! WE COULD NAVIGATE! Anyhow, it was somewhat calming knowing we wouldn't have to struggle with French, or learn sign language because we couldn't speak Czech or Italian.
We were able to quickly find our hotel (yes a hotel, yes Steph has connections, yes I exploit them for my own good) and once settling, and since it was only noon, we went on a mini tour of the city. First though, we appeased our appetite at a cafe near our closest tube stop. We noticed that a film crew we had seen in the tube was now eating there. We later found out that it was a French film that was being shot - hence why we heard a few of them tossing around French words. (Later on, when returning, they had their craft services table out in the open and I stole a tuna sandwich. I mean come on - who leaves a table of food unattended and doesn't expect a Canadian tourist to steal from it? SERIOUSLY) Anyways, the mini tour, and by mini tour I mean we got off at one stop and walked around, often stumbling upon landmarks "oh is that big ben?" "I found the London eye" "i don't know what that is, it looks important though". We also tried to find out the price for a theatre show (about a million dollars, once converted), but decided that we didn't need that experience at the cost of our life savings. That night we instead went to a fellow Multimedia student's house (Laura, you will remember him as 'john lennon' from third year) who Steph knew. There we ate, and chatted with..get this... MORE MAC STUDENTS. yes yes, we are taking over the world.
The next day we went to the Camden markets - the place where all the cool hipsters must get their kafiya's because you can find them for 2 for 5 pounds, and if you look hard enough, 2 for 3.98. We bought about ten scarves between us. The Camden Market, anyways, was highly suggested to us by the Mac students living in London. And it was a really interesting experience. Just rows and rows of clothing, scarves, punk gear, etc. A street of awesome stores, a dark back alley with a ton of cheap food. I know my mom wanted me to eat traditional English food, but instead we went with the 'when you go there, you have to eat the 2 pound asian food' and so we did. We saw the punks we were told to look out for, I bought a pair of vans (pink and black checkered that I couldn't find in Canada for years) and sunglasses, and scarves, and you know, random crap.
Later that night we went to see Tower Bridge - which isn't London bridge, but should be - and made our way to the reason we were in London in the first place - The Spice Girl show.
Now unfortunately, the only tube line to bring us to the O2 - the concert arena (which is MASSIVE by the way) was down, as well as three other lines, so after some confusion we had to bus it for an hour to O2. Luckily we had a lot of entertainment on the way. In the form of some girls Frankie's age with some sort of mp3 player, who were all singing a long to the hits of the Spice Girls. A woman beside us videotaped some of it (as we didn't bring our cameras for fear of them not allowing them - unfortunately they did and we have no proof of our attendance), but I don't have a copy of that video...this is all very unfortunate.
Anyways, we made it to O2, and luckily the fifteen minutes it took us to walk around to where our seats were was just enough time to get settled and see the show begin!
Now let me just say, simply enough, that the show was great, incredibly entertaining. I don't know if its because the girls were actually good at what they did, or if it was because 10 years ago seeing the Spice Girls would not have had the same fun nostalgic atmosphere as it did this time around. I think everyone there was old enough to have appreciated that these songs and ladies were not only massive hits during the time of their release, but that they themselves - the audience - were, pretty much, children when they last clutched onto a new Spice Girl record. So it was a lot of fun, kinda like being super excited and dancing to fred penner or something...but only if he was in a short sequins skirt and had a bunch of back up dancers and could fill a huge stadium and get everyone dancing and singing along for an hour and a half to pop hits from the 90's....ok nothing like fred penner.
Then we left London. (you know, after hours of switching buses and sleeping in the airport for our early monday morning flight.)
I must return, however. MUST.
My little sister and my mom, durring the hallway dance party. What is the hallway dance party, you ask? While in Switzerland I burned my mom a couple of cds - one of which was a dance cd, full of oldies and goodies and fergie. Tired of waiting for doctor calls, we threw it on and danced the afternoon away.
If you scroll up and down really quick, its almost like you were there!
Whatever the song, and whatever the dance move, it all required concentration and punching movements!
In order to be a true guitar hero, you need a back up band!
The Spice Girls...or something like that.
The missing Spice Girl
considering how much mom loves 'don't forget the lyrics' it looks as though she has.
standard caro and dana at absinthe - hand clapping versus hands in the air. WE NEED NEW DANCE MOVES PEOPLE
Note that all these pictures are pre sweat soaked hair and Gilberto's 'baptism'.
hey hey - lookit me! i'm in London!
This is to ensure tourists don't get themselves killed while crossing the street...they KIND OF help.
meeting the queen! (just outside Buckingham palace)
