Sheffield

I've just realised that most of my motivation behind writing this blog is selfish; really it's a good way to keep a diary of what's been happening on our trip, as opposed to a polished piece of travel journalism. So there's going to be a bit of crapping on... read on at your own peril.

After a fairly pleasant 4 hour bus ride, we've made it to Sam, Aarti, and Arjun's house in Sheffield.

So yesterday we played in the snow and had a great time. As we mentioned, we awoke to an amazing view outside the windows of a world covered in snow.

The policemen at Hyde Park built this big fella earlier that morning.

We headed into Hyde Park to play in the snow and make snowmen, and after we'd had enough of that, we headed into Leicester Square where we had a quick bite of lunch. We wandered around a bit until we ended up at St Paul's Cathedral. There was a massive crowd outside; evidently the Olympic Torch for Beijing '08 had just passed through, and there were still some protesters and other spectators milling around.

A cheeky squirrel in Hyde Park

We attended the Sunday evensong at 3:30pm at St Paul's. It got off to a bad start, as there were lots of people milling around to go in and mostly not for the service... As I was walking through for the service, the man on the door put his hand up and asked me whether I was going to the service or not (after he'd said to the guys in front of me that he could only come in if he was attending the service); I said "yes, I'm going to the service," and his sidekick next to me said "well take off your hat then!" as she gazed at me with disbelieving eyes, which I took to mean "as if you, you bloody freaky looking unshaven Asian chav, are coming for the service, how dare you, I bet you're just some cheapskate Jappo student trying to get in to our Cathedral for free, and I'm really frustrated because I can't not let you in, so instead I'm going to be a bitch to you, so up yours." Then I took two steps in and had my bag searched extremely thoroughly because obviously I look like a terrorist. Not happy Jan.

As for the service, the choir was pretty good though the organ was a bit overpowering, especially in the Magnificat I didn't like. The Nunc Dimittis was good, as were the responses. The inside St Paul's itself was amazing; I spent most of the sermon just gawking at the intricacies of the roof and walls. Despite the sour note at the beginning I'm glad we went.

After that we went home and cooked Vince and Fel a pumpkin risotto for dinner. Fel made an awesome salad which had strips of mango in it. Yum. I think then we watched about 4 episodes of the second season of Heroes. Vince and Fel filled me in on the last series and I think I'm hooked.

This morning we caught the bus to Sheffield, and then headed to Sam and Aarti's place. Sam had just finished nights, and was fortunately awake when we came knocking on his door. After a scrumptious lunch of vegie burgers and salad, we went for a walk to pick up Arjun, my Twin of Destiny (we share the same birthday) from daycare. Poor fella had a fever of 38.8 and was a bit miserable, but he tried his best to be good and smiled a bit for us. He particularly enjoyed putting a pen in my mouth again and again and again.

Aarti came home after a hard day's work later in the evening, and looked knackered. She had some quiet time with Arjun whilst Sam, Jen and I took the car and went for a drive to the Peak District, about a 10min drive from Sheffield. As we drove up there, it started snowing, heavier and heavier, until it was almost a full-on blizzard. We were intending on going for a bit of an evening stroll but it was too shite for that. We turner around and drove back and the snow had settled quite thickly in the 5 minutes between drive-bys.

We settled for a pleasant evening stroll through a park nearby Sam and Aarti's house, and got home just on dark to find hot pizza awaiting.

Life couldn't be better really.

Here another link to our Facebook album, in case you missed the last one.