Green and Blacks

Currently I am in London and will most likely not return to London for sometime or maybe at all. Since this is the case, I am trying to make this a weekend full of touristy activities. All of my other weekend stays here in London have not really had any tourist type adventures built into the mix, although I certainly did try to do some things, they just never happened. Today I was able to go to many different places that I have been meaning to see. I went to the Tate Modern Art Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Globe Theatre, and the Green and Blacks Chocolate Company corporate headquarters.

I have recently become addicted to Green and Blacks chocolate. They have a wide range and assortment of flavors when it comes to chocolate bars which have all been good or exceptionally good. I have become quite fond of their dark, white, and butterscotch bars. Tonight, I tried their Cherry bar for the first time. Cherry is Charlotte's favorite, but I cannot say that it is mine. That did not stop me from almost consuming the entire bar, however. Because of this obsession that is currently guiding my thoughts, I have been on a mission to try every flavor of chocolate this company makes. After looking at their UK website, I took notice that they have a caramel flavor that I have yet to try. I absolutely love caramel and since I have not found this flavor in any store in the UK I decided that I might as well go to their corporate headquarters which just so happens to be here in downtown London. I figured, if I was was to find this caramel bar anywhere, it must be at their headquarters. Alas, their corporate headquarters is just that--a corporate headquarters. Essentially it is just an office that they work out of and not a place to actually buy their products. Apparently the caramel is a discontinued line of chocolate and they do not distribute it to retailers any longer. The only way I can get my hands on one of these bars is to order it online. Pity.

Anyway, starting next week in Scotland, I will be traveling around the UK going where I please. A week from today I will be on a train heading up to Edinburgh. Once there, I will be taking a 5 day guided tour of the whole of Scotland. It is an area that I have always wanted to see and I am looking forward to it. I am not sure where I am going to go after my tour of Scotland. I may end up deciding that there are places and things in Scotland that I want to see more of, in which case I may end up hopping on a bus or train to get back to it. I will be traveling for at least three weeks. After that I may return to Jerry and Charlotte's house in Seaton, or I may continue my travels. I need to sit down and put some time and energy into trying to figure out some places that I really want to see, but that really does not sound like fun as most of my time lately has been on the computer helping Jerry with the development of his Neuropsychological Test and research into places to travel means more time on the computer. Just the other day, Jerry and I made it to an important milestone in the development of the test. There is still much to do though and I want to help as much as I can. This may be a project that I can work on even while I am traveling, although having Jerry there to oversee the things that I am working on is key, and would be difficult if we needed to collaborate long distance.

I have also been putting a lot of time into the development of my CV. If you have never heard of a CV (as I never had until I got here), it is essentially the worldly equivalent to an American Resume. In the hopes that I will be accepted to a school here in London, I have been developing my CV and looking into what I would need to do in order to obtain a Student VISA. If things go well, and I get accepted into the school that I have been looking at, then I will have to travel back to the US in order to apply for a Student VISA. I was hoping that I would be able to continue my time here in the UK and just get my VISA changed over, however, that does not seem to be possible. Hopefully soon, I will be invited down to the school for a week long introduction and by that time I will hopefully have a better idea when and if I will be coming back to the states. One plus about coming home is that I may be able to attend a couple of weddings that are happening this summer that I would otherwise not be able to attend. If I do end up getting accepted into this school I would start in late August or early September and the school goes until late July. I am keeping my fingers crossed that things work out. The more I read and learn about this school and its founder the more I want to go to it.