fancy

I've rather taken a fancy to (AKA I am obsessed with):

 

 English school children,

 

astronauts at St. Paul's,

 

 statues! 

(this one was sculpted by Victoria's daughter!)

Honestly, they're incredibly endearing!!

Along with...

Visiting my art idols (like Millais and Turner) W H E N E V E R I W A N TTTTTTTTTT.

And this new husband phenomenon. 

Really, it's remarkable. When I'm in class he makes me lunch. When my feet are frozen he sacrifices his crevasses to be a human feet warmers. When I vow to never eat another carbohydrate he takes away the rolls at dinner and only gives in after my third or fourth cry of outrage.

And he's really very cute.

Sometimes we feel like we never get out and about around the city, especially compared to all of our busy bee little students. How they manage to make so many shopping trips and frozen yogurt stops and attend class and finish their assignments I'll never understand. But the heavy weight of our respective dissertation/ thesis ever confines us to our computers, and the bitter, bone-biting cold outside makes our darling little hearth into a sleepyannamagnet. WHAT DO WE DO? It's London outside and our fiscal futures/ corporeal warmness inside. And it's London outside. Like, THE London. Like, the one in England.

Ah, well. Any wisdom?

Stay warm if you can. 

(And pray for my toes-- deplorable circulation, you know).

Banana

The Royal We

One of the best parts of living in London

 is that we live in London.

Oh, and in case you mistook us for Victoria and Albert, it is, in fact, us.

(I'm just sitting in Victoria's chair)

You see? I'm the one in front. Victoria is right behind me, and right behind her is her house.

I can see how you got confused, because we actually live right next to her house.

This is me inside of her house, but it's on the Georges' side where Jacob and I worked our way up to be very prominent courtiers. Indeed, I was in charge of testing King George I's eggs for runniness, and of wiping his Royal *ahem*.

Jacob was His Royal Highness's personal physician, but let's not compare. 

...At least I make 30 pounds a year.

These are the signs for the royal toilets in which I complete my courtly duties.

This is my courtly husband. THAT'S RIGHT, FOLKS: H U S B A N D.

We like visiting Kensington Palace.
We like that we have to walk through Hyde Park to get to church.
We like meeting people from all over the world every day and getting to know our wonderful students here and we like being married and we like living together [finally].
We like it when Kate (mostly Hoffmire, sometimes Middleton) visits us from Oxford/ Utah.
We [mostly I] like running through the mist in the dark, early morning.
We like living in London.
We like learning.
We like each other.

All settled in, gov'nuh!

And as regal as ever.

We are as happy as clam chowder in our new little London flat, all married and ready for adventure-- maybe once I can get out of bed, that is.

We have eaten the best food since we got here two days ago. I guess I forgot there would be an abundance of french influence... I thought I was safe from french pastries this time. NEVER. Oh well, I'm married, right?

Oh. Maybe I'll get around to saying a little something about the wedding too. I guess that's important.

Until then,

Cheerio (or something)!
England is a place to be happy, as I learned a year and a half ago: here.
Happy husband. Happy wife. Happy fish and chips. Happy West End. Happy Sound of Music cape coat. Happy students everywhere. Happy little teeny kitchen that is smaller than the closet. Happy spider that crawled out of my blow dryer and bit me. Happy teeny leaky shower. Happy jet lag. Happy Greek grocer. Happy synagogue. Happy tourists. Not happy locals. Happy happy happy. Happy biscuits.

Oh yay, this is very exciting.