Exam weekend

So... Brent took another exam a few weeks ago. If you still haven't caught on to this whole ordeal and are trying to figure out why a guy who graduated from college 4+ years ago is still taking exams, you can read about them here, here and here.

This time he attempted Exam 9, the last one, if he were taking them in order. Which he is not. Mostly because the CAS only offers 7 and 8 in the spring and 9 in the fall so unless you are planning to take a year off in between 7 and 8 (which he can't, Farmer's Actuarial Student policy requires he take one at every sitting unless it is an authorized break for medical, family, etc reasons). He can usually tell right away if he passed or not but he said this time it's a close one. So we'll be waiting until the end of next month to find out. He sure studied a lot. He reached the 250+ hour region so hopefully between that and the trillions of prayers, he passed. Woo!

The Casualty Actuarial Society (the group that does this whole thing) is an American society so his co-workers don't have exams the same time he does, in fact the British exams are set up totally different. Brent and the few other members of the CAS in London take the exams wherever the CAS can rent an office space and pay a local actuary to proctor the exam. This time it was in Mayfair, which for those of you who don't know (I didn't), is the "Boardwalk" equivalent on the UK Monopoly board. Sweet! The office was in a building above a Bentley dealership. I think. I can't remember but there were Jaguar, Bentley, BMW and Mercedes dealerships (the fancy kind where it's just a big office with a few choice models inside, no lot or anything) on that street and I know he was above one of them.

After the exam was over, I met up with him and we ate at a Brazilian run cafe in Mayfair then walked around the area for awhile. We passed the Wellington Arch and walked through a corner of Hyde Park.

After our walk we saw Fantastic Mr. Fox. That was seriously one of the best movies I have seen in a really long time. It was so clever and unique and funny! So good. You should all be looking up showtimes at your local cinema.

The next day Brent went back to work but we met at the train station afterwards and went to the temple. We booked a room in the accommodations centre on temple grounds which we've been wanting to try out for some time now.

After we got checked in, we walked down the street to a local pub. Kind of strange, right? Well, pubs are all over the place and usually have really delicious food and this one was actually more of a family restaurant than a pub. It reminded us of a TGI Fridays or similar place. The food was fabulous and the dessert was big enough to feed an army. We got the "Mega Sundae for 2" and we had to laugh when the waitress brought it out. This thing had 2 scoops each of vanilla and chocolate ice cream, 4 cream puffs, 4 brownie squares (with a caramel/fudge center) tons of whipped cream, strawberry and chocolate syrup and it was sprinkled with Cadbury crunchy nuggets and buttons and had sticks of chocolate poking out of it. Woah, I'm remembering the overstuffed feeling just thinking about it. It was scrumptious and we of course did not finish it.

When we got back to the accommodation, we just enjoyed our great view and went to bed early. In the morning we did a session at the temple then took the train home. We're definitely going to do that again.

So there you have it. Exam, awesome movie, way too much delicious food and the temple. I'd call that a pretty good week. Especially since I get my hubby to myself for a few weeks now.