Another Long Post

Right now it's Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 in London, and this is my 4th week of studying abroad. Yesterday was my first day of actually studying this semester, and it went well, aside from being obscenely tired from my community service work earlier in the day(involves trimming trees and brush, swinging a big ax/sickle tool at brush, and various other things). I was studying for a marketing quiz I had today, which I didn't do too bad on(17 out of 20), so overall it went pretty well. At the moment, I'm procrastinating on doing a paragraph summary for a marketing assignment, as well as a journal entry for the community service project. We'll see how they go.

I'll talk about the food here for a bit. Right now, the exchange rate is about 1.82 dollars for every British pound. When I first arrive here, it was about 1.79, or something. Anyways, not as bad as it once was, but it still puts pressure on us American students to spend wisely. Our host family is supposed to feed each of us breakfast, but the meals for the rest of the day we're responsible for. Deciding on either to buy food from the local grocery store and thus saving money, or indulging and eating out at a restaurant are some of the things we have to think about.

Here where I live, Muswell Hill, there are plenty of a different places to eat at, almost catering to every type of food you normally eat. So far I've found some places other good value, others not. The first place my roommate and I ate at, called Giraffe, offered food styles from all over the world. Both of us got different pasta dishes, and needless to say, were a little disappointed. I got nowhere near full, dish wasn't that great, and I paid 8 pounds for it, or around $15. But then last night my roommate showed me this place called the Slug and Lettuce; I wasn't in the mood to spend money for the time being, but decided to give it a go. As we got in he mentioned that everything on the menu was half off; that's why he has been there every Monday so far. Observing the menu, I could see why. Delicious sounding sandwiches, paninis, and pasta dishes all over, and at half off, excellent deals. I then observed the dessert menu(I'm a sucker for dessert; Mom would know), and saw a 2-for-1 deal, where you buy anything on the regular menu, and you can get any two dessert's for the price of 1. Sounds good to me! My sandwich, which was only 3.50 in pounds, was delicious(BBQ sauce and chicken pieces, all on this long, toasted/grilled bun; mmmmm); my two selected desserts involved raspberry-covered biscotti with ice cream, and special cheesecake with ice cream. Aside from the biscotti bit, everything was absolutely delicious, and both of those only totaled 4.75 pounds!

We also found this little Italian place called La Porchetta that serves big portioned, cheap pasta dishes. Delicious as well, so we'll be back for sure. Knowing the exchange, I thought it'd be all doom and gloom over here, but so far I've been shown otherwise. To keep costs down my roommate and I have been buying groceries mainly from this place called Sainsburys; mainly bread, sandwich meat, cheese peanut butter, cereal, milk, and for myself, juice and cookies! Mmmmm. For small snacks I've been snacking on Skittles, Starburst, and dark Dove Chocolate pieces my Mum brought over when we met in Dublin. Big Thank You to her, as those have provided much refreshment while lounging in my room.

One last bit. Instead of having booze burn a whole through my wallet, as many, if not most, of my fellow London group members are doing, I've set a goal of eating at this place called Gaucho. Basically it's a fine dining restaurant, mainly serving premium Argentine beef dishes. I'm a big meat guy, and this place sounds absolutely delicious. Meals run about 25 pounds, which is near $50, but in my mind, sounds totally worth it. Here's a link to check out Gaucho's website:
I better get back to work. I'll try to post pictures on here soon, and make this blog overall look a little more spiffy.
Later
Thomas