Two of my favorite things.

So far, since we've moved into our new flat, we've been trying to settle in as much as possible. For the most part this hasn't been too difficult. We've found a grocery store, a book store, a place to rent DVDs. But there have been two locales noticeabley missing from our weekly shopping routine, and subsequently two items much missed: comic books and slushes. That is the case no longer. Yesterday, during our explorations with John, we were able to partake in both of these rituals.

Slushes. Despite John's insistance that they do exist in England, I had searched high and low and not been able to find slushes anywhere. I even resorted to a search on www.google.co.uk for 7-11, which, sadly, returned only a large number of webpages containing events happening on july 11th, or november 7th. Nothing about slushes. On Sunday, though, we found a small stand selling British slushes. They suck. They're the type of iced drink that you get at a fair. They come only in fruit juice flavors and have chucks of ice floating (floating!) in a syrup.

Comic books. This was a more perplexing problem. I knew that comics existed and were sold in the UK (my favorite comic writers are, in fact, British). There is a large comic shop in London on my list of attractions to take in. My problem was mainly finding somewhere closer and more accessable to shop at. Comic shops are a lot more rare over here, and Bournemouth, while not a small city, isn't quite large enough to warrant it's own comic store. When we went to Poole yesterday, however, whilst looking for a copy of Carcassonne for John in a mall, we were advised by a geeky store clerk to check out the local comic shop just down the road. My heart literally skipped a beat. Of course, we proceeded there immediately. The store didn't sell Carcassonne, but that's okay. It turned out to be one of the best comic shops I've ever been to. It should be enough to get me through a year without slushes.

I can finish settling in now.