update on driving situation

well, after couple of months I have gotten much more comfortable driving on the opposite side of the road. I almost always remember to drive on the left, unless I am turning onto a road that is empty - I have a few times caught myself driving on the right in those instances - oops. One road here by the library is as wide as a one lane road, but it has a line painted down the middle indicating 2 way. One mom commented, "just because you paint a line doesnt mean there is room for 2 cars". The road is about 8 feet wide - come on! It's a one way road - which ever way I need it to be going - thank you very much - but a one way road!
One thing I just can't get used to is getting in on the right side to drive. I have walked to the left side so many times. Even after all this time, I actually got in on the wrong side again yesterday. When will I learn? Then when I do get in on the correct side, I always reach over the wrong shoulder to fasten my seatbelt. The kids just laugh and laugh as my hand is flapping around in the air looking for the ghost seatbelt.
I havent taken driving lessons yet because I have to take the driving test and it is something you have to study for and I didnt want to take time for that yet. My US license is good for a year. Also, a major deterent is that you have to put this obnoxious "L" sticker on the front and back of your car (read L for loser) and drive around for a few days (or weeks). Most US moms try to time it so their Loser time is when they are on holiday or visiting the States and they wont be seen driving around that way. I have to decide when is the best time to be humiliated. I'll let you know.
I have hit the left side of my tires so many times that if they had been white wall tires, they would now be black and blue tires, but I proudly have kept my hubcaps on. I was sitting at a red light a couple weeks back and I felt my car tilt. A huge construction truck scraped the side of the car and I didnt realize what was happening until I heard the side mirror get bent all the way forward and snap back - it didnt come off, but I was left with lovely yellow and blue paint marks, scratches and dents all down the left side. They drove off so quickly in the other lane that I didnt get their license number, but at least it is a lease car. Maybe all those things will happen before we get our car in May (things take a long time here!). On second thought, maybe this would be a good time to have the L sticker on my car. The combo of L sticker and paint marks and scratches may allow me a wide berth as I drive through town, something to consider.

The trains

Public transportation in the UK is a wonderful thing. It is fairly convenient and takes you most places you need to go. One thing that cracks me up is that the locals basically RUN off the train. I pick DA up at the station every afternoon and within 45 seconds (i timed it) the platform is cleared, the cyclists have ridden off and the people who parked their cars have left - all of this BEFORE DA even walks off the platform. I mean deserted within 45 seconds. I get a kick watching everyone in such a rush. of course, DA in his slow, meandering way, follows up behind them all. I bet they curse him as he stands on the escalators in the tube instead of running down the stairs. you just wait - when you come visit you will be amazed at how fast people walk in and out of the stations. and beware, you need your ticket to exit the tube stations, so dont get in their way looking for yours.
DA has had other train issues too. there are 3 trains stations in our area that he can use to ride home. Depending on which train is leaving next, he decides which to take and then calls to let me know which station to pick him up. well, last week I am on my way to station X, he calls to say he missed getting off! he was standing at the train door, waiting for the door to open automatically like it does on his tube line and low and behold, you have to press the "open" button to open the doors. the train rolls away with him still standing at the door looking at the platform. fortunately, I had my map in the car and was able to find the next station on the line in the next town.
A few days later, he calls to let me know his destination, and then calls back to let me know got off at the wrong station. he was concentrating on a difficult Suduko puzzle (yeah, right), the people around him got up and off the train, so he just followed them off - looked up and he had exited at the wrong station. I was lucky to have my phone with me and knew where he was or else I would have been patiently waiting at the other station. ( Dont tell anyone I wasnt using a hands free device - mobile phone use while driving is a huge penalty)!
But all this will be his problem starting next week - we bought a scooter(yes a scooter, not motorcycle - cheaper to buy, own and park) for him to drive himself to the station so he will have to remember which station he left from and get back to at night. I hope he has a camera phone to take picture to remind himself. He can check it when his alarm goes off to wake him up when it's time to get off. It will be a sight to see, briefcase, suit and shiny work shoes under his helmet and rain suit riding down the road on a scooter. I'll post a picture soon.

I'm Back! well, sort of

Hello, all. Yep, been exactly a month since my last post and we still dont have internet service at our new home. I am at the public library on one of 5 computers that you can use for 1 hour, and believe me, it is hard to get one available - and that is after you have to pay to park to come in.
We moved into our house and are getting settled in. the unpacking didnt go quite as planned. the movers are more interested in unloading the truck, setting up the beds (incorrectly I might add) and filling the beds, countertops and dresser tops with unloaded boxes and then telling you they cant put items in any cupboards, so they are done since there are no more surfaces on which to set things. None the less, we are in the house and life is much easier. We are close to school so that the kids and I can walk. takes me 15 min., takes the kids 20 minutes while kicking rocks, throwing sticks, chasing rabbits and all other good kid activities. we walk through a heath and over a tiny bridge to get to school. very picturesque. the house has a wonderful back yard (garden as they say here) and a heath out front. it is a private road, so there is very little traffic and the kids can run around outside.
some things i have learned (or havent learned as the case may be):
- life is different without a garbage disposal - and a 6" deep kitchen sink without a sprayer. hmm. may even invest in one of those myself and install it.
- got a larger hob (cooktop) than most houses, except that the largest burner is about 6" wide so cooking meat or fish has to be done one at a time. Not really what the US pot makers had in mind when they made my 15" skillet!
- STILL dont understand the oven! i have burned every single thing i have baked and I even have the manual. i heard you needed cooking lessons to use an aga oven, i dont have one of those, but i still need cooking lessons!
- 2 weeks without any tv is brutal. fortunately we got satallite tv now with Lost, Prison Break, Disney channel, and a movie channel plus many other British shows we have yet to discover. now if DA can figure out how get American sports, we will be set.
- thought they would set up internet service, phone and tv all at once since using the same company, and ordered it all at once - no such luck. have to call and que again for each additional service. no mind, we are going with a different company and hope it will work out better.
- since we've been in - garage door opener broken, back door handle broken, master bath leaks to lower floor, movers destroyed part of yard unloading items and on and on. very nice thing is, I just call someone and they come and fix it - one of the great benefits of leasing.
- Best news of all - daughter B decided to ride her bike again without training wheels. first time in over 2 years since broken leg. we are very proud of her and now go for 2 hour bike rides after school.
- time changed here, didnt know it cause I dont get the newspaper (to those who know me - that is killer!) so we were 1 hour late to church! but days are longer and so nice to have sunlight until 7:30 pm
gotta run. computer time is up!

Stop the Presses - Sunshine

It is truly hard to believe but we had nearly a full day of sunshine.

Much like California, there is no need to watch the weather news. Everyday is exactly the same, but the opposite of California. It is partly cloudy, with light showers throughout the day, and with a few minutes of sunshine in the early afternoon. I am officially pasty white. D.A.

Finally, a house!!!!

6 weeks after leaving our lovely home in Dallas, we have finally found a place here to lease. woo hoo! I am so excited about having more space so that we can all sit in one room at the same time, or better yet have our own little space away from everyone. Either way, it will be a good thing. It is a great house and has several elements on our wish list. The papers were signed on Friday. We get the keys on Monday and our air and sea containers will be delivered on Tues and Wed. Busy week. The wonderful thing is that the packers will unpack everything and haul off all the packing materials. This will ensure that we will actually be unpacked before next year. My two favorite parts are that it is a 20 min walk to the kids school and that it has a huge conservatory (pronounced "conservatree" here in the UK). For those who don't know what that is, it is a glass room attached to the house, window walls and glass ceiling to ensure you get the maximum of the very scarce sunlight. It looks like something from Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. There is a beautiful yard, so I think I will be spending all my extra time in the conservatory. We are trying to get the TV, phone and broadband figured out. We hear it takes about 4 weeks for them to come out to set things up, so we will be living in a nice, quiet house for a while - just put your ear to the ground and hear the whining about no TV. I'm sure the sound waves will be carried over the ocean water.
This weekend we went into the city to see Mary Poppins for B's birthday. It was a great show and we really enjoyed ourselves. There is one weird, scary scene where the toys come to life and have a loud courtroom session, but it was over soon enough as not to ruin the show. The leads were very similar to Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, so it was fun to watch. Bicycle rick shaw's were all over the place and all ringing their bells when the show was out. It was quite a spectacle. The red lanterns were hanging all down the streets for Chinese New Year. Another new site for kids who have never seen Chinatown.
Sunday afternoon fun was walking through the woods around town. The kids loved it. There are tons of people walking and riding horses through the woods. It was pouring down rain and we were running through the mud. I just cant wait to do all that muddy laundry in my 5 shirt maximum washing machine. Others riding their bikes on the path were covered in mud - in their hair, helmets, shirts, coats etc. That activity might have to wait til next week - US style washer and dryer in new house - cant beat it.

newest observations about UK

I know people are basically the same everywhere, but it is funny how we come up with different solutions for the same issues.
1st item: I cant find cupcakes here. I went to a bakery to order some for B to take to school for birthday celebration. And no, they don't make cupcakes and didn't even act like they knew what I was talking about. I asked another US mom, "nope, don't have cupcakes here unless you make them yourselves" (not possible in our temporary apt.). I asked local realtor, she said ask for Fairy cakes with butter cream and I might get something like what I want. I have a feeling they will be more like petite fours, which are great, but not what a young girl wants to take to school.
Also all birthday cakes I've seen are made with that smooth fondant icing - which looks cool, but tastes bad. It's weird with all the US families living around here that you cant get just regular ole grocery store basic white cake with sprinkles birthday cake. I tried to talk B into taking rice crispy squares, but that isn't the same as a gooey cupcake.
next item, front door handles. None of the houses have front door knobs! When you go out the door, it locks like a hotel room behind you and you must have a key to reenter. The front of the door has a keyhole and that is all. No knob to turn, isn't that weird. We asked the realtor and she said for safety reasons, no front door would ever have a door knob. I mean we lock our doors in US too, but knob is a basic something to hold onto as you push door open. I know some blog in the future will be about me getting locked out of the house, I can already see it.
funny side note, when looking at a house this morning that we are trying to move into, DA picked up a little remote thing to figure out what it was for and just like a kid who has to press all the buttons, he set off the panic alarm. You have to have key to turn it off. Luckily the realtor found a key. It was a nice, relaxing tour of the house. DA then turned around 5 min. later and got locked out of the house - hence the lesson on the front door knobs.

Last observation - TRASH. I know there are millions of people who live here, but they do not under any circumstances want you to have trash or want to deal with your trash. On the entire High Street in our town, I think there is 1 "litter bin". In our apt. there is a trash can in each room and bedroom about size of Big Gulp at 7-11. Kitchen has one trash can with one bag. They only take out trash once a week, so one bag full of trash per week is all you are allowed. In the very busy, public train station, there aren't ANY trash cans. You eat somewhere, and there is no where to throw your cup or any trash away! none! Businesses don't want to handle your trash and there aren't any public trash cans. DA said in the lunchroom at his office, there are 7 choices of recyclable cans and no basic trash cans. and talk on the news is that they want to start taxing people based on weight of their garbage. Restrooms - no paper towels, so no trash can. They are totally into the global warming thing and I guess this is an extension of that. It's funny, while traveling in Paris, one of my thoughts while walking around all the beautiful sites was "hey, they actually have public trash cans here!" that proves how scarce they are in UK.
I mean of all the crazy comforts of home to miss - the lowly trash can!

Paris in the winter time!

Well, forget settling in, we decide to go on vacation. We pack from our suitcases which we have now been living out of for 5 weeks. My poor kids look like they never change clothes, but really they do. Since they are wearing their uniform pants from home of which they had a few pair of same pants, in each photo it looks like: same pants, 1 of 5 shirts, same coat, same shoes. I laugh at our pictures - they all look exactly the same. I digress - we went to Paris over the mid term school break. It was a fun trip. Since many of you have been there and know the basics, I'll just fill you in on a few funny things.

- to start our journey off with a bang, L gets on the train and no more than 15 minutes later is throwing up while standing in the middle of a commuter packed train. Just what every commuter wants to deal with. It wasnt pretty, but he recovered and we continued on.

- Eurostar train ride to Paris was nice, except when your son has just been sick in the other train, it isnt a good situation for a 2.5 hr trip to be flying down the track in seats that face backwards. Actually, He made the trip ok other than getting mad at me for asking him how he was feeling over and over.

-15 minutes in Paris, I am stuck in the turnstile entering the Metro. It was a funny sight. Tried to take my suitcase through turnstile, not understanding that the little slide-through on the side was for luggage. I thought I couldn't read French signs, come to find out, it was a very legible picture that DA read just fine. There is about 1 foot between the turnstile and a gate you push through. Bag was tangled up and I missed the 2 second window to push through gate - it's a timed thing. I was stuck between the two. Had to crawl on my knees back under turnstile and go back to ticket counter cause my ticket wouldnt work again since I hadn't actually come out through the exit. Yes, I embarrassed my fellow Americans (and children), but finally got through.

- you know the tiny apartment we were leaving behind in Surrey, well we hadn't seen anything yet. The hotel room was TINY. We could sit forward on the toilet, but you could touch the toilet from the bed and touch every wall too. room was about 2 feet bigger than a double size bed. Kids had to stay in separate (and not connecting) room. B not too sure about that. L loved it.

- shock to the children - all TV shows are in French! And once again, only 4 channels.

- shock to the parents - you have to pay a fee everyday the TV is turned on. Lovely.

- another shock - all the statues, and there are hundreds of statues in Paris, are of naked people. Come on. I know Napoleon didnt go to war wearing his armour while naked. that is crazy. but statue after statue after statue - naked men and women. Interesting trip when your 11! B even got an education.

- under no circumstances should you walk your family from the beautiful Sacre-Cour church to the Moulin Rouge. It is through a red light district. didnt really realize what the Moulin Rouge was, I guess. more education for the kids.

- Night time boat trip down the Seine River at night to see the city of lights, beautiful! But B missed it, she fell sound asleep after 5 minutes. had to walk about 1/2 mile to metro and take 3 trains to return to hotel. DA had to carry her the whole way back. Next time, we'll go during the daylight hours.

-tried to go to restaraunt on Valentine's evening for dessert and coffee. We had eaten earlier in the day expecting large crowds at dinner. We were actually told they would not serve us after we had already been seated at the table. It was 8:30pm and 6 tables out of 50 were full, but they were going to be "too busy" to allow us to just have dessert. Hope their dinner crowd finally arrived. In case you're wondering, we enjoyed our candy bar dessert and water just fine in our hotel room. So much for fine French Cuisine!

-yes, the snow globe you searched for in every cheap souvenir shop for hours will break when dropped. We made a wonderful deposit of glitter in the Louvre metro station. Surprise, surprise there was another souvenir shop just above ground that happened to have an exact snow globe to replace it. Tears dried and for only 5 euro!

- and finally to cap off our journey, the local train to our town was out of service for the day, so they put us on a BUS. We knew we were in trouble when what normally is 3 minutes on the train takes us 40 minutes on bus. After 1 hour and only 3 stops met (ours was #10). we hopped off and hailed a cab. No matter what the cost! We only had Euro in our pockets, but thanks to our shiny new ATM card, we could get money from ATM and pay the cab driver. Whew.

-Think that's it? not yet. perfect week finished with B deciding she would run away so she could go back home. She even packed a map in her bag so she could find her way. I think it was too soon for her to go on vacation!

The kids in front of Notre Dame.

Logan having a conversation at the Louvre.

The kids just before going to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

B in front of the Arc de Triomphe