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Lunch with the German Ambassador

Today I was invited to a lunch at the Hilton in Cardiff. Afonwen Laundry (company I work for) was sponsoring the Business meeting. The Ambassador of Germany - Georg Boomgaarden was the special guest. The reason we were sponsoring it I believe is because a German company Kannegiesser supply the laundries washing machines and tumble dryers.

Embarrassingly - They had a massive billboard up with my picture on it as before I started working for Afonwen I did some modeling for their website. 
This pic was on a huge billboard
It turned out to be a bigger event than I expected, the Welsh secretary of state was there too. It took me ages to decide what to wear - I'm not good at dressing up too smart! I had two dresses to chose from, a comfortable, more casual one or an awkward, walk like my legs are stuck together dress which looked smarter.
Went for this dress - the uncomfortable smart dress (excuse messy room)

 Anyway onto the more important part - the food :) Unfortunately, it wasn't the type of place I could take a photo of my food so I will have to describe it instead.

For starters we had Goats cheese on a bed of sliced beetroot, goats cheese is not my favourite I think the taste of the cheese is exactly like the actually smell of a goat - yucky!
I still ate it all because I was hungry and had a crap night sleep the night before and when I have a bad night sleep, my tummy punishes me and makes me eat a lot to make up for it! I also had 3 bread rolls :) naughty!

The main course was a lot nicer, stuffed Guinea fowl with a special mash potato (it was a yellow/brown colour) and veg - green beans and courgette. The veg was cooked how I like it - nice and crunchy, the mash was delicious and the Guinea fowl...interesting! 
The first bike was amazing - so juicy, a lot like chicken but more tender and more flavour. The the more we ate, the more people slowed down to take note of the colour of the bird, it was getting pinker and pinker the closer to the centre we were getting. Me being me wouldn't care and kept eating however an old fart on the table called someone over to ask if it was cooked properly, we were then told the pink colouring is from the stuffing they put in... hmm it really looked like they had stuffed it with raw meat! I cleared my plate anyway. It did surprise me that there was not dessert on the menu except coffee. So I was pleased to see that following the coffee came 'petit fours' in the form of mini ice cream cones with delivious fillings, some of ice-cream, some of panacotta, some with passion fruit. I had 4 (shhhhh don't tell Ryan) They were very small in my defense and none of the oldies on my table wanted any - more for me then hey!

A quick picture whilst waiting for people to arrive at meeting
The speeches went on from there, as much as I wanted to pay attention, I did have to yawn a few times and remind myself to stay awake. We then stayed for a drink before heading back home.

As I had mentioned before I had a crap nights sleep so I desperately wanted to have a short nap before I headed to the Gym. I managed 20 minutes, 20 minutes of heaven I must say! I loveeee a good nap.

Quick cat nap before heading to gym.
Because of extreme lack of sleep (had about 4 hours last night) I told myself not to worry too much about what I do today but just to do something. I decided an 800m run to start would wake me up. I managed it in 3.58mins with an average speed of 12.5, I was please with this as I have worked my down from 4.25mins. The only problem is my shins were absolutely throbbing by the end of it :( Yup the bloody shin splints are back!

The worst ever pain - only just started running!
followed this by stretching;
  • Dumbbell Shoulder press 3 x 10 (8kg)
  • Bicep Curls 3 x 10 (8kg) 
  • Delt flies 3 x 10 (6kg)
  • More stretches
By this point all I could think of was the pain in my shins so I limped out and headed home. As soon as I got in, I got Broadchurch on and sat with a frozen bag of rice on my shins. I really hope this doesn't halt my progress as I have only just started out running :(

Broadchurch
I'm sad it is over as I have enjoyed watching this series - I sooo guessed who killed Danny from like the 3rd episode. Was between Jo or the son so I was half right! Was a bit disappointed as my lovely little sister told me what happened before I watched it - Facebook can sometimes be a bad thing!






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