My weekend in Brighton

Home sweet home. It's been a short while since my previous post, as I spent my weekend in Brighton :D I'd expand, but a picture tells a thousand words so hey! At 23.25 in the evening, I think i'll take that shortcut!

On the far right is my uncle billy who is sat next to Inken, a newer family member :) Then there are a couple of random bald guys who photobombed our no-longer-family photo. Oh and next to me is Katie :3 We're in some pub, of which I can't remember the name, drinking some kind of home made cider of which I can't remember the fruit flavouring- my memory is great by the way. 

Here is the award winning all Vegetarian restaurant that we had dinner at one evening.

Horrendous picture, I know, but Katie was adamant that I had gold coloured eyebrows and so I took this picture to find that I did not have gold coloured eyebrows. Moving on....

Here I am playing a 'street piano' which is one of two pianos that can be found in St Pancras station in London. Most genius idea ever. Whoever decided to place a piano in a station is just awesome. They need pianos in airports too, then I'd be entertained for hours! 

Again, picture order isn't great but my internet decides to turn off when it reaches midnight, which is approx. 6 minutes away. So i'm on a tight schedule :S  We're at the Veggie restaurant here

My entire life seems to revolve around food. For brunch we went to a Jamie Oliver Restaurant. I actually live in Jamie Oliver restaurants. 'Actually' being not quite literally, but you get the gist. 

In Recipease, you can see the chefs cook your food and the atmosphere was nice. I seem to talk about the atmosphere of places a lot, but only because I find it important!

There is a TV series called 'Choccywoccydoodah', which is based around the Chocolate/Cake shop in Brighton. It's actually a really tiny shop with a Gothic décor. You're currently looking at a cat, made from modelling chocolate- quite cool

Teppan Edo - One of my favourite restaurants. & DISNEY WORLD recap 2011

SO there are about 6 people sitting on these special tables and at the front is a hot cooking surface. Each table is designated a chef who takes your order and proceeds to cook it right in front of you. It gets cooler. See, the chefs cook in a showy/flashy way...chopping things incredibly fast, making little steam volcanoes out of the onions, speedily preparing prawns and flicking the tails into the top of their hat! Oh and there is a lot of throwing and spinning of the utensils too. AND to top it off, the food tastes sooo good! You can find this place in the Chinese part of Epcot. Highly recommended.

Writing about this has reminded me how awesome Disney World is. Much to the point where I feel sad that i'm not there at this very moment. I love the parks, the rides, the happy atmosphere, the friendly workers, the nice food, the wonderful hotel I stayed at.. Everything, basically.

What even are those things on Alex's feet, seriously bro. I have
such a good posture. Please bear in mind that i'm two years younger in this photo :P

You cannot go to Disney world without hugging a character!

The happy bubbly atmosphere here is unlike any place I've been to before

Fabulous almost 'family' photo, my eyes can't handle the brightness! haha

Erm, i'm not sure why they are so happy about these acorns, but hey! This was at the bus stop - our main mode of transport around Disney which was a pretty good way of getting around. The buses were super air conditioned, which was nice to step into after walking around in the heat! Although, I ended up getting chilly by the end of the journey. 

I would like to share with you 'The Kitchen Sink'. There was an ice cream parlour at my hotel and their speciality was the a kitchen sink. If one person could finish the entire sink in an hour, then they get everything they ordered for free. Obviously, there was 5 of us, and after visiting the same hotel and ice cream parlour for the second time - it had to be done! We finished it (i think) but only just! How on earth could one person finish this in under an hour. I'm not sure what size or amount it looks like to you guys, but I can assure you that there was a hell of a lot of ice cream, toppings, brownies, oreos, cakes and sauces in this sink! My usual from this ice cream parlour was Butter pecan ice cream, with peanut butter and chocolate fudge sauce. mmmmmmm. I still like to recreate this now at home, but it's not quite the same! I also like the way that americans pronounce 'pecan', it took me a while to realise that 'P-khann' meant pecan. :L

That's Katie and Alex and we are standing on the Boardwalk, looking across the lake at our hotel 'The beach club' :'). The Boardwalk is so cute. There are sweet shops, souvenir shops, sports shops (that alex liked) and there would be people performing on the board walk too - magicians etc. 

America's interpretation of England. I quite liked it actually and i'm sure that there are some places in England that look quite like this ...but unfortunately, my dear american friends, the majority of England is not even remotely as cute and wonderful as this set up. I'm also pretty certain that the streets wouldn't be this clean either. The things that they placed in 'England' were: a Fish and Chip shop (which was popular and expensive :P), a castle, a little place where 'The Beatles' performed,  a shop that sold tea  (predominately) and the odd english sweet that costs 10 times more than they do in the real England. Oh well,

Well don't I look hideous here! haahahaha. I'm sure this picture wasn't intended for me (slight photobomb) Everything in America is bigger, even this ice cream is big enough for three people!

This was the Boardwalk at night, all lit up and wonderful. The chairs that you see at the bottom of the picture are placed on the 'beach'. I say 'beach' like this because it is actually artificial, made to complement 'The beach club hotel'. Again, nice idea. The beach didn't usually have many people on whilst we were there, unless they had one of their arranged events - Movie night or a campfire. My Mom and Dad were very eager beaver in going to the camp fire, and i enjoyed toasting marshmellows but my siblings and I are not ones to join in with any over cheesey singing and dancing. My parents however..... we caught it all on camera! mwahaha.

i'll just leave this picture here

I'm 'driving' and Alex is on the left

This is so much fun.  Its a little speed boat... awhh I miss this. When there are huge boats you have a moment of panic like 'ahhhhhhhhhhh, which way do i go? i'm heading for a huggeee boat full of people ahhhhhhhhhh' then you're all good again.

Custom controller

This is what I did for a very small proportion of my day, it's Alex's controller (not mine, lol) and he badly started to decorate it.. So I attempted to fix it

Mmmm.

Apologies for the blurry image, I just love this! I don't know about you, but green tea and a bowl of fruit with mint is a delicious and refreshing snack! Mmmm

Might as well introduce Alex too then!

Meet my little brother, Alex. Excuse my flick of hair!

Katie

I haven't really mentioned any of my family on here besides my mom, so I thought I'd show you one of my sister's talents. Katie is looking into Design Universities and her design work is so good. I know she's my sister, but there is no bias in saying that I don't know anyone who has a better eye for design, presentation and image than Katie. Basically, she's really good at making things look awesome. She's also really good with food - especially cakes, sweets, macaroons, cakepops, tarts..i could carry on for a while here. (oh and please click on the pictures to make them larger... detail is everything!)

This is her Spring Afternoon tea spread. Everything you see has
been baked, decorated and arranged by Katie. 

I'm pretty sure you can guess, but this was last Halloween

Katie gets a fair amount of cake requests. This is one of my
favourites!

My relatively stereotypical British Wednesday

I think i've embraced my Englishy-ness today. For the last few weeks, Wednesday has been a Mother-daughter day and so we usually try to do something nice. Today we went to a Fruit farm and picked strawberries, raspberries and gooseberries. The sunny weather was an added bonus too.

Aww. 

I'm so photogenic. really. no sarcasm. what.so.ever

This is actually near where I live, but we stopped and took a picture because we thought it was quite pretty

Lunch: Afternoon Tea

Then for Lunch, we went to a Cottage tea room close to home and it's our second Wednesday visit there. It's so cute.

Action shot ;) This tea was really delicious, and we liked that they put a little piece of chocolate fudge on the saucer

There is a mini gated garden at the front where you can eat

See? Cute.

Momma

I look bad but I still like this picture!

Confession - I love collecting different shaped pasta. I dont know why, okay?

Erm, I was in some supermarket in Barcelona and found the pasta aisle. Can I make it clear that I don't display the pasta like trophies...I just like to cook with it :L Just in case anyone had a mental image of a Trophy cupboard filled with pasta.

Sunday Entailment and PRACTISING GERMAN for my visit in a few weeks

Okay, so my Sunday kinda went like this:

• mmmmm Breakfast
• Then the family decide 'Let's go on a bike ride in this super hot weather!'. I ended up riding a 30 year old bike with one dodgy brake, where my feet didn't even touch the ground. Yay for health and safety!
• I watched a film. 
• Had a BBQ
• Sat outside on the swing chair and listened to: Dolly Parton, Eurhythmics, Dexys Midnight Runners (yes, Come on Eileen), Lisa Mitchell (she is so cute), Mumford and sons!, Eminem, YM@6, MCR and I cant remember the rest. Interesting mix

I need to stop doing boring posts like this. I'm sorry. Tut mir leid. Ooooooo that reminds me, I've also started topping up my german on 'Duolingo' which is super useful. It's this language learning website which isn't hideous or boring. In fact, it is quite cute and has little cartoon trees and owls and awwww.

Basically, I'm heading to Germany in a couple of weeks to visit my awesome German Exchange, Lisa. Lisa came over to live with me for a week in February and we had such a cool time and so i'm going to see here again at her place.  But this time the trip has nothing to do with the school, and it'll be summer holiday for everyone and so I don't have to sit through German classes! It also means that I am flying alone. Well not completely alone, I'll be with Jade who is visiting Monja..however Jade has only been on a plane a couple of times so yanno. Same thing.

I've started from the beginning as i'm a little rusty and these are a few phrases I may use:

•  Nein, alles ist gut! - No, everything is fine!
• Du sprichst schnell!- You speak fast! :3 (in other words, I have no idea what the hell you have just said!)
• Gehen wir?
• Wahrscheinlich nicht! - Probably not!
• Ich bin praktisch Perfekt!- I'm practially perfect! (I'm kidding people)
• Entschuldigung, bitte! - Excuse me, please!
• Ich bin Voll!
• Nein, Ich bezahle! - No, i'll pay! 
• Es reicht, danke - It is enough, thank you

 KLAVIER spielen!

Jazz Festival

Yesterday evening I went to a Jazz festival at  the new Ab Dab school with Burton Borough band, Ab Dab Bands, and Lawrence's Quick time Dixie Band too. I wasn't planning on writing an essay about it on here, however I did enjoy it and thought I better take note of it on my blog just in case I forget about it

Sixth Form Induction Day

I had been asked to be an 'ambassador' at my school's sixth form (external students only) open day to give them a tour of the school and help them get to their different classes and so on. I actually really enjoyed the day and I'm happy with the new batch of sixth formers coming to the school - so many lovely people. yayyy!

Despite being at the school for 5 years, I still struggled with escorting people to their classes and finding where study 15298 was. So I ended up walking this one kid all the way round the school, only to find that the classroom was about 5 metres from where we originally started walking. Oopsie, I'm sure he didn't notice.

Birthday in London

It's been a few days since my last post as i've spent the weekend in London, followed by a day with the Kelly Family for Timmy's Birthday :)

THE WEATHER IS STRANGELY, UNUSUALLY GOOD HERE IN ENGLAND. The car told me it was 30 degrees yesterday which is unheard of in rainy, cold, pathetically-weathered England.

Anyway, here are some pictures from London (click on them to make them bigger):

I like this picture of my mom, we're on the London Eye here

The tube is so handy for getting around!

These pictures are a bit jumbled, but on the train 

I can't remember what this park was called, but it's near Buckingham palace

My shoes! :D

London Eye again

We we're thrilled with the view from our room window

This is that same park that  I can't remember the name

Why is my face shiny? :S

Just before our meal

That's where are room was, between the trees.. not the top bit though :L

interesting face, BREAKFAST

Motherduck in the Mall

How to prepare for a concert...

I've found that these are the pieces that general listeners like me to play most, clearly not everyone wants to listen to Chopin's Nocturne Op.9 No.2 ( I don't see why not but hey ho). So, instead I thought I'd do little sections of these pieces and link them together. These are pieces from modern composers,  which are easy to learn, memorise and entertain. This is my list of easy modern pieces that I recommend to other pianists! 

P.s I was in costa whilst organising this, but I did transfer it to a post-it note before the concert :L I must admit that I was tempted to just take up the napkin. Haha