A brief overview of life in Manchester

Manchester

We know that this is a little out of date and a bit backward but thought we should do a blog on Manchester before we leave to come home for Christmas in 3 days.

We arrived in Manchester on the 31st August with a distinct welcoming by the kind of weather you would expect to have in England, cold, rainy and wet. We stayed at a hostel called Hatters where straight away we started looking and applying for jobs due to the fact that our funds had completely run out giving us an option of finding a job in 2 or 3 weeks or ending back up in New Zealand. We honestly had never been so poor then in this stage of our life, counting every "P" and not being able to splurge out on take aways at all (and for those of you that know us, you know how much of a nightmare having no takeaways would have been for us.)
There is no shortage of jobs in Manchester the only problem is that no one wants to employ and train someone if they can only stick around for a year so after applying for a huge amount of jobs between us and having no Joy we decided to just get any job for the mean time cause we needed money asap. So we got a job At Odeon one of England's biggest movie theaters. At the time we did intend to just stay till we found better jobs but by the time we got trained and started work it was the end of September and by this time we had decided we would go home for Christmas and would leave finding good jobs till the new year (Now we have decided not to come back to Europe until Summer June/July 08'.)
Odeon has been a great place to work, everyone has been so welcoming and friendly we have made some great friends and its not a place you dread to go to work.. It has perks that have kept us entertained and helped us in our savings like free movies and half price food. Plus endless hours really I think on average we must work 50 - 60 hours a week. We had our Christmas party the other week feel free to check out the photos. It was a great night filled with alot of dancing and not so much drinking.

Odeon Christmas Party

After about 3 or 4 days of staying at Hatters we found cheap temporary accommodation in Old Trafford that we thought we would just stay at for a week or two... we are still here. Things have improved since we arrived in "Number 23" we now have hot running water in the kitchen sink, carpet, locks on the windows, a wall in the living room and best of all heating. I guess it is something we all live through at one stage in our life.. mind you most people do it while at uni, A crappy, smelly, dirty house, with dirty flat mates. But we love it all the same... well kind off... maybe its a love hate relationship. Loving the price and the location 2 blocks from Manchester United stadium, 1 block to the Met, a small walk to the bus stop and close to work . Hating the condition of the house. We are a multi cultural house here at "Number 23" Czech Republic, Ireland, Dubi and New Zealand it works well.
As for Manchester in general it is a nice city it has a nice mix of historic and modern buildings I think it might be due to the bombings in 1992 and 1996 but I'm not to sure, the city is defiantly not as historical as London anyway. There is concrete every where and all the houses look the same. It seems like almost everybody smokes even in real public areas and even around there tiny little babies...grrr pisses me off. Christmas shopping makes it imposable to walk anywhere fast in the city or at The Trafford Center where we work it is crazy! like time square in New York but in cramped conditions. It honestly starts to get dark at 3:30pm and is dark no later then 4:30pm this feels so unnatural and sometimes just makes me feel completely disorientated. At the moment we live in a steady temperature of 2 - 5 degrees f a r e z i n g! But some how I think we are climatising or we have just learnt how to dress, that being 4 or 5 layers a hood a scarf, gloves and in some cases a woolen hat. It is a strange experience living such a cold winter when your body is wondering why the hang it is so cold leading up to Christmas its meant to be summer baby.
So I think that is about it even though we are not living here as long as planed we are still happy and have the whole "I wonder what it is like to live in England" and "How much money could we make?" questions out of our minds and we are sooo ready to go home for summer.

London's Calling

London

December 10th - 13th
We set of on our trip to London on the 10th of December we needed to make sure that the weather was just as freezing in other parts of England as it is here in Manchester...
We took the 4 hour Mega Bus ride for a giant cost of 1 pound and arrived in London at 1:30pm. Some how along the way in our travels we have become the masters at reading and navigating our way around on metro's, subway's, tram's and in this case "the tub" and got to our backpacker's with strangely no problems at all, dropped of our stuff and headed straight back into the city to the Natural History Museum. The building of the Museum was the first of the many amazing ancient beautiful buildings we were about to see in London with huge amounts of detail in the architecture and massive stained glass windows once again Pictures just don't do size and detail justice. We headed back down to the tube once again with no idea where we were in the world and asked the nearest stranger where the most "touristy" part of London is and we headed that way. As we breached the street we couldn't help but notice the huge clock in front of us "Is that Big Ben?" I asked Matt
"...Is that Big Ben?" Matt said.
"I'm pretty sure that's Big Ben" I said "Go ask someone"
So of Matt went like a small town Maori to confirm that we had finally made it to London like we always said we would since before we got married the look of achievement on our faces priceless when we found out it was.
After this we just kept on banging into historical buildings attractions etc. In the three days we spent in London I think we must have crammed in as much as physically possible. Buckingham Palace (where the Queen was home.) St James's Palace, Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square, Mayfair (We now understand why these houses cost so much in Monopoly.) National Art Gallery, The London Eye, Tower of London, a river cruise and a big bus tour that included sights like 10 Downing street, St Paul's Cathedral and where the Queen buys her undies.
But by far I think our highlight was while taking a free tour with the big bus company called The Royal London Walk. You Pretty much walk around with a guide giving you all these royal facts and then you see the whole process of the changing of the Gard's right from St James's to Buckingham Palace. Anyway we were standing outside the gates of St James's Castle and Clarance house where Prince Charles and co live listening to the whole brake down on who lived where and for how long when Prince William with three of his security guards just walk on by like I am talking 1m max away from where Matt and I were standing. Woooh Baby you should have seen our faces Matt and I both turned to look at each other to make sure we were not seeing things and then just stared the whole time I was holding the camera in my hands and it was like I was frozen in a time warp or something then all of a sudden I was like camera, camera but I had gloves on and was freezing and was so confused I didn't know if you were allowed to take photos cause it was like no one else had seen him I finally turned it on but by this time he had walked by so I ran to the side of the road but only got his back grrr! The lady behind me hadn't even seen him she was asking "was that a Prince?" I think the tour guide was just as shocked as us cause he didn't see Prince William till after he had passed right behind him. Some guys chased after him for photo's after they realised who it was which I thought was shocking cause I am a firm believer in that being how princess Di Died.
Anyway unbelievable! What are the odds of seeing Royalty while your in London wow, I still can't believe it. So when you look at our Photo's and see the four guys in suites Prince William is the 2nd from the left.
So that was what our trip consisted of. It was freezing, way worse then Manchester but at least it wasn't raining for the whole time we were there praise God. The trip was really good we loved it and Matt didn't get sick on the bus... bonus.

Pics for London Trip
http://picasaweb.google.com/mattblairmail/London?authkey=ntDKUmPP7sw