New Year, Frivolling in Canterbury, Fish & Chips, Birthdays, and a bit of snow

Here in the studio, 2012 has continued busily where 2011 left off, complete with guest masterclasses, excursions to London, Canterbury and Dungeness and, of course, our usual steady diet of practice and class.

 

We rang in the New Year after a curry dinner at Trevor and Dot's by visiting the local establishment, The Bowl Inn.   If I haven't mentioned it yet, the Bowl is a cozy little pub owned and operated by the cuddliest, most lovable, gigantic, Viking-like, bearded and tattooed ex-Hell's Angel biker you could wish for.  His name is "Big Ron" - it just doesn't get better than that.

The festivities at the Bowl that evening were pirate-themed, and since most of us had entirely neglected to pack our pirate gear (or just feared what might happen to it at customs), Big Ron was kind enough to lend us some.

I get into the Piratey spirit of things - in every sense of the word "spirit."  No, this seasonal cheer did not result in any ill-advised New Year's kissing.  It was all very sensible kissing.

After the New Year celebrations had been cleared up, we dutifully returned to our practice rooms, but were periodically allowed subsequent time out for good behavior.  Among our outings were:

A spot of shopping in Canterbury -

"Look how cute we are - please take us to Canterbury!"

      I know what you're thinking: "Kristin, that does not look like Canterbury.  Granted, I've never been to Canterbury, but I'm pretty sure it looks like you're still out in the middle of the countryside somewhere."  And you'd be right!  We ran into a spot of trouble when we showed up at the appointed spot (see above) to catch the the local Saturday morning  bus service to town.  Charming, right?  Turns out part of the charm is that sometimes the bus doesn't show up.  At all.

      Fortunately for us, and what you cannot see in the picture, the "bus stop" is opposite a block of renter houses, and just as we were about to give up on the bus and Canterbury, we were rescued by a very nice (looking) young man who happened to be taking out his trash at a very opportune moment.  He insisted on driving us to the station at Wye where we could take the train to Canterbury.  Very sweet of him - especially since he also afforded us the opportunity to speak to a real-live cute boy for a whole 15 minutes (sorry, Adrian, you know we love you!)

Fish & Chips at Dungeness on the coast -

No, we are not running toward the sea in hopes of escaping via the nearest boat to France.

And an "inning" to celebrate Ko-Yu's birthday -

The Birthday Girl and me . . . and Adrian.

The feast - Japanese "hot pot" style seafood soup.  An amazing creation where you take the raw ingredients you'd like in your soup (seafood, veg, noodles, etc) and cook in right at the table in a lovely simmering pot of broth.  YUM.

And at last, we even got a long expected bit of snow:

At the Old Dairy

If you look very hard, you can see So Yun and I trudging excitedly making our way to class through the new layer of snow.