Xmas & New Years 08/09

Heres an interesting xmas fact for you. Wallace and Gromit was THE most watched show over the christmas period, with 14million viewers. Also the BBC had 9 out of 10 of the top rated/most watched shows on tv over this period. WOW i bet you've been dying to know that.

So anyway this is what's been happening over the xmas/new years period.

I went along to a ceroc lesson a few weeks ago, with a couple of friends - it was a great night. We did a beginners class where you start off learning the moves step by step then putting them together into a sequence. There were probably 30-40 women and 20-30 guys there so a very sizable class, and we had to keep rotating all the girls so everyone got to practice. Then the intermediate class came in for their lesson so we went to another room to practice our newly learned moves, then came back into the dance hall were it was time for the 'freestyle' session. The dj starts up, the disco lights come out, and all the dancers from all classes join in and we spend the next couple of hours enjoying dancing with everyone. Its fun, very social and its good practice because you get to dance with intermediate level dancers who take you through dance moves that you dont know.

I finished work on the 19th Dec.. Myself and a few of my colleagues got our work done by 3pm and a large group of us headed to a pub down the road from work called the Morpeth Arms for drinks. It was a nice wind down and good chance to chat to everyone for a few hours till we all started heading home.

Spent the next few days relaxing at home, we had friends popping around and 3/7 of our flatmates all packing and leaving for their xmas hols so lots of christmas goodbyes and catchups. And of course the pre christmas decorations and shopping.

Tuesday I went to the Tate Modern (Museum) on south bank. It's a converted power plant/electricity station(?) It hosts very modern art exhibitions. There was one room that had a pile of fabrics and materials sewn together - apparantly representing south africa. There was rubber, silk thread, suede, etc all sewn together in a heap and spread around the floor. Was partly fascinating but mostly weirded me out. The museum has lots of fascinating paintings too - my favorite was Jackson Pollock. He pours/dribbles/splashes paint onto his canvas and frames it. Thats more my style!
I left there and walked across the Millenium Bridge and up to st pauls cathedral. Theres something about standing on a bridge over the middle of the river, admiring 360 views of London City by night and all the lights shining on the water.

The next two days my flatmates and I just did xmas stuff- we had a couple of friends round to our house for xmas day, we had a nice big lunch then watched movies all afternoon. (Isnt that what everyone else in the country did?)

Saturday I went to the National Gallery which is a huge and very popular art gallery right on Trafalgar Square. Spent a few hours admiring thousands of paintings. There's paintings by all the famous artists, random pictures of people, landscapes of villages and towns, many made up! There were also many religious paintings with scenes out of the bible - which are interesting when you know even a little bit of the stories behind them.


Monday I went to the London Museum. This is a smaller museum which is solely about the history of London city - right from when it was a small roman village, then a town, then how the saxons came, then about the plague, the great fire, and development of the present city of London. Fairly interesting but the museum focused more on kids so the information was written for children to read and think about, so didnt take much more than an hour to get around. Bought a tube map poster which I've wanted since I got here.
Then I headed over to 'Dali Universe' the Salvador Dali gallery which is on the south bank by the London eye. It is fascinating, interesting and really different. The walls are all painted black and posted with photos of dali and quotes he said. Theres an area with his sculptures and his paintings arranged by theme/subject. It's a real gallery experience -it will gross you out, expand your mind, capture your interest, and expand your imagination.

Tuesday I went to the V&A (Victoria & Albert Museum) which is decribed by the lonely planet guide as 'the nations attic'. It is indeed. It is a huge rambling museum that 'observes no curatorial limits whatsoever' and is just crammed to the ceiling full of things. I saw the whole museum in a few hours, and only stopped to read the information on prominent and interesting things. A chatty museum attendant held my attention for a while and chatted away about some exhibit, and I told him some things about NZ & Australia. Having been thoroughly overwhelmed with crammed display cases, and rooms crammed with statues, sculptures, and objects, I headed home. A great museum if you like objects rather than art.

New Years we had drinks at our house from 4pm, then a group of us headed out to Bar Soho (located in Soho- no surprise.) The streets around Leicester Square were all closed and swarming crowds filled the streets around the whole Soho area.. it was a buzz. Apparantly Trafalgar square gets really packed. The bar itself was really nice and we had a great night chatting and dancing. At midnight we watched the london eye fireworks on TV and the whole bar yelled the count down. Heading home about 3am, we joined thousands of other revellers on the streets all making there way home, jumped on the tube (which was running free all night) and headed home.

The day after new years was a write off as it was for everyone, I'm sure. now its the count down till I start work again on Monday.