London trip - World Skills

The original reason for CJ to go to London last week was the World Skills competition. It's a huge worldwide trade competition, where finalists (young kids) from all countries around the world come to represent different trades and compete to be the best in the world in their trade. Apparently that can help you get into a really good school and then into a really good job. Leading up to the Wirld Skills fair, each country has regional contests, then a national one (the US one is in Kansas City) and the winners get sent to a select location somewhere in the world where the final final round is held. This year the finals were in London.
By trade I mean chefs, servers, beauticians, massage therapists, carpenters, plumbers, IT  or robotics specialists, and automechanics.

IRWIN Tools was a sponsor there. Here is their booth.

CJ gave me his all access sponsor pass to the ExCel Halls where World Skills was held so I stopped by there on my way back fromt the Museum of London. It was really cool to see some of the kids at work. Here are some of the trades represented. I even spotted a boy from the US representing the HVAC trade.

What I really want to know is how you get the job of a food taster, who gets served by the trainee waiters/waitresses... That would be cool. If the food is edible, of course. Now, being half naked and subjected to a massage treatment in public... not so sure about.

Also, what I thought was interesting was how different the service skill trade areas were from the more technical trades... See for yourself.

London trip - Grosvenor House

The hotel we stayed in while in London was a thing of wonder. It deserves a post of its own so here goes...

It was a gorgeous JW Marriott called Grosvenor House, in Grosvenor Square overlooking Hyde Park.

Very posh.

Very English.

I was in love!

It is actually a famous historic site and the story of the Grosvenor House and Grosvenor place is pretty interesting.
The hotel as it stands today was built in 1920 on the site where Grosvenor House, a former residence of the Dukes of Westminster, used to stand. At the time, Grosvenor House was the largest Townhouse in London's exclusive Park Lane.
According to Wikipedia "The Great Room at the Grosvenor House is the venue of many prominent awards evenings, charity balls and the like and is often seen on British television. It is one of the largest ballrooms in Europe, with a maximum capacity of 2,000 seated (200 10-person tables) or 1,100 theatre style. Although now not used as such, the Great Room was originally built as an ice-rink and much of the machinery lies dormant under the current flooring."

Here is a sketch of the original buildings.

Pretty cool!

As soon as you walk into the lobby you see this luxurious opulence mixed with coziness. Gorgeous. And the place is FILLED, literally filled with the sweet smell of fresh flowers!! The color of the day was hot pink and the primary flower was a lily. The centerpieces were amazing. There was a huge one on a table in the center of the lobby, and multiple smaller arrangements scattered everywhere.

Everytime time we walked into the hotel CJ would tell me "Take a deep breath... that's right!"

We got upgraded to a fabulous suite and I just had to take all kinds of pictures of it. It felt like a beautiful, cozy, English apartment. I could live in that place... Here are some photos.

 We even had some antique books to read...

Who wouldn't want to relax there, right?...

I love CJ's platinum status!

We're team....

It's a baby GIRL !!!  I can't believe it! The little lady had me all fooled all this time! Talk about completely wrong maternal intuition! Haha! And the Chinese gender chart obvioudly CAN'T be trusted as it was predicting BOY for us...  CJ is gloating because he was guessing GIRL all along and was clearly correct!

The ultrasound went so well which is the REAL important part in this process. We saw all her little parts, her head, brain with its perfect hemispheres and shapely cortex, little feet with tiny toes and cute hands with all those baby fingers, her strong thigh bones and spiky spine. Her heart was beating really strong, we saw all 4 chambers very clearly, all working in perfect order, and got to hear her strong heart beat.

She was measuring 3 days ahead, so at 20 weeks 6 days which is perfectly normal.

She also has a big head, which is without doubt my fault, hahaha. CJ has a perfectly proportional, cute head. My noggin is huge, and looks like she's going to have one too.

At one point we saw her stick her thumb in her mouth and suck on it. Her little cheeks and mouth were moving as she was going at it. Soooo cute... Almost made me cry. It's crazy that you can see things like that on an ultrasounds. Crazier yet to think that a 1 pound, 1 foot long baby already does tricks like this... Hopefully this means she will have no issues learning to eat once she's out.

Again she was positioned with her back up, head under my right rib. The doc said that they flip upside down and move all the time, but somehow this one is ALWAYS positioned this way when we see her, so I have my doubts.

The doc said everything looked perfect and right in the middle of all the expected parameters. We are just so happy that everything is fine. Can't wait to meet her in a few months. I'm sure she will have her Daddy wrapped around her little finger in no time.

Thank you all for voting in our poll and your guesses. Most of us (me included) were wrong. Great job those who guessed girl. It was fun to wait for the big reveal.

London trip - Sightseeing

Last week CJ was on another bsusiness trip (shock!), this time to London, and for the first time I was able to join him for the weekend and we turned it into a trip for both of us.
I am loving this being in charge of my own time thing... I am bummed that we were not able to o this kind of thing sooner. His trips were always falling on the beginning of each month when my busiest time at work was. And since his flght and at least part of accommodation would have been covered, this would have been a perfect way to see a lot of places. But we still have time to go on trips before we're tied up with the little one.

He came to London on Wednesday and I flew in late Thursday night. He was there for this huge worldwide trade competition called World Skills, I will come back to the details later.

While he was still working on Friday I went to check out the Museum of London at Docklands which fearures a really neat exhibition about the history of London with special emphasis on commerce, trade, transportation and development of the Docklands areas, from Roman settlement times through today. I spent good few hours going through all the different floors.

After CJ's work was done we checked into the hotel where we were spending the rest of the weekend and set out to walk around and see the sights. The hotel was very centrally located, right next to Hyde Park, and we could pretty much walk to everything within Westminster and Central London.

We watched the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace - it is only done every other day in the Fall and Winter so we were lucky it was scheduled for Saturday.

We followed the guards back to their Guard House and took more pics on the way...

Then we went to check out Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. It turned out it was a day of protests of all kinds. All along the road leading to the HoP and where Downing Street is (where the Prime Minister lives) bands of protesters for every cause imaginable gathered. We saw groups representing anything from angry Mothers to militant separatists, to anti-Afghanistan groups. There was police everywhere, side streets were literally lined by dozens of anti-riot police vans, cops in bright yellow vests were everywhere surrounding and separating each group. Crazy.

After that we walked to Trafalgar Square where more protests were taking place - just out luck I guess.


We walked through the National Gallery.

Then had lunch at a cool pub.

We also hit up Piccadilly Circus.

Both of us have been in London before and we have seen those places before, but I had to go take pictures for the blog right?...
As the last point of the day we decided to go see a movie. Getting a movie in English is next to impossible in GVA, plus stuff is SOOO expensive here. And CJ has been wanting to see the Rise of the Planet of the Apes for a while, so that's what we did.

Then on Sunday we went to check out the other Museum of London, this one next to St. Paul's cathedral, and more focused on the city itself and its significance throughout the ages. Really neat.

Then we walked to St. Pauls...

Then over to see the London Eye... we skipped the ride for this time as we were starting to run out of time.

And finally we headed back to the hotel to pack.

It was a really cool trip.