Second Week

So, the house is coming together, Emma's loving school, we are feeling a tad bit more settled. There is a neighborhood just around the corner called the West End, with a large park, two ponds and lots of trails in a setting similar to Minto Brown Island (the paths are great for walks or for running, so I'm planning to make use of them.) We've discovered Garson's Farm, which is a 5 minute walk from our flat: http://www.garsons.co.uk/. It's a huge nursery/gift shop/cafe/pick-your-own veggies in the summer. We've got a great neighborhood pub, th Prince of Wales, and a community hall where we've enrolled Jake in preschool five days a week (the government pays in this country!)

I was very impressed by the type of houses in this area, and in all of England. Think of a cute Tudor house you see in Portland, but multiply it by the hundreds and connect them together. It's like that everywhere. Small, winding streets lined by flats, houses, stores and restaurants. There are only small portions of land that are natural, and even those are covered in public footpaths. There is no wilderness left here, which is something I'm sure I'll miss as time goes by. What I didn't expect, however, was that there are also CARS everywhere. You'd think people would walk more or take the bus or train, and plenty of them must, but there is still so much traffic, even in these small towns further away from London. I think we are still considered to be a suburb of sorts to London, but still. I pictured picturesque, quiet streets. I think we have to get much further from London for that. As it is, I spend a lot of time driving, Emma to school in the morning (no buses and it's about 2 ½ miles to her school), Emma home from school in the afternoon, over to the cheaper grocery store rather than the more expensive one nearby. You can understand how I hate it, given that I would watch from my front porch as she walked across the street to Grant School last year. And you can't just drive to school, you have to weave in and out and over and through and around a round-about or two, and eventually you can meander your way to wherever it is you want to go. The roads make no sense, but I guess that's what happens when you turn shepherd's paths into roads for cars. But luckily I can walk Jake to preschool, and I can walk into Esher, about a mile away, if I just want to go for coffee, to the library, or whatever. And did I mention that gas is about $8.00 a gallon here?

On Thursday, Laura, Jake and I visited the Hampton Court Palace (http://www.hrp.org.uk/HamptonCourtPalace/) Amazing that this fantastic palace is located only 10 minutes away from my house! It was built in 1514, and King Henry the Eighth lived there. It is the largest Tudor structure in England and has 60 acres of river-side gardens and a 300 year old shrubbery maze. We couldn't get through even a third of the palace, but I bought another family membership, which also gets us into several other palaces, so we can visit often. They have lots of children's activities, scavenger hunts, and holiday activities like caroling and interpretive tours. I think it will become a sort of Children's Museum/OMSI type of place for us when we need something to do. So while those you with kids go to the library or the carousel park on a rainy afternoon, we'll be hanging at the palace of Henry VIII.

Westminster Abbey Trafalger Square
Saturday was our first trip into London. We took the train from Esher to Waterloo Station. We wanted to see it all, but because we had the kids, and a very crabby Jake, we rode some double-decker buses, quickly visited Trafalger Square and Westminster Abbey (amazing!!!) and then toured the Tower of London. (Also saw London Bridge, which looks like the bridge from Salem to West Salem, highly unimpressive.) The Tower of London was a ton of fun, as it is really a castle-like structure with lots of buildings inside, so there was a lot to see. They have interpreters walking around in costumes putting on interactive plays, which the kids loved (the one we participated in involved "stealing" the crown jewels from the tower and then capturing the bad guy.) We didn't get through everything there, either, so will have to visit again. The nice thing about being here for a year is that we don't have to rush to see it all. I do have to say, however, that I do not really love London. Hard to put my finger on it, because there are neat places to see, but it just didn't grab me. Good thing there are lots of other places to go.

Tower of London

First weekend

Our first weekend trip: We drove to Stonehenge and the city of Bath on Sunday. Stonehenge, of course, very cool. Really quite unreal. We kept looking around going, wow, we're at Stonehenge? The place that's only on my computer screen-saver or on the History channel? How is this possible? I blame it on the jet-lag. Anyway, it's only about a 45 minute drive from us, so for those of you who want to visit, that's easily a morning trip. We purchased a membership to the English Heritage foundation, which will get us in for free to tons of places throughout the UK. It's well-worth the cost.

We wandered further into the countryside and made our way to Bath, where, obviously, the Roman baths were once located. It's a beautiful city, lots of Roman architecture, right on the river. We didn't spend much time there because the kids were getting tired and we had a long drive home.

We hit our first castle ruins on the way back. Cool stuff, but a bit creepy in the crypt with coffins of really old, really dead, people laying right out there.

Day 4 and 5

Emma started school on Thursday, two days after we arrived in the UK. We bought the required school uniform and book bag and sent her on her way. Erik's co-worker has a daughter in Emma's class, so she was eagerly awaiting Emma's arrival. According to her teachers, she has slipped right into her place and is doing wonderfully (except for not knowing cursive handwriting, which they apparently start teaching their children in preschool here…I don't think in the states they learn until 2nd or 3rd grade.) By Friday afternoon, Emma was already talking about 3 or 4 of her "best friends." Amazing how flexible children are. I don't have any friends at all yet!

On our fifth day here, we made a long drive to IKEA so that we could get some cheap stuff for the house, as everything here is ENTIRELY TOO EXPENSIVE. (Think of anything you can buy in America, and double (if you're lucky), triple or quadruple the price, depending on what it is, and that's what you have here. A McMenamin's-type burger and fries, close to $20 here. Beer, luckily, is about the same as the states, but I am sad to report that I haven't had anything I like as much as our northwest brews.) It was exhausting driving in the dark and we got horribly lost for about 30 minutes but we did get to see two foxes run in front of our car, not to mention broad swathes of neighborhoods and countryside that we shouldn't have seen had we been going the right direction but that nevertheless were cool.

Day 3

Day 3

The flat came "furnished" but we needed to do some stocking up (linens, soap, food, dishes, etc.) and I felt like getting those things and making the apartment feel more homey would be a step in the right direction. (Unpacking was low on my list at this point.)

So the very next day, we decided that the most brilliant thing to do would be to get in our British Volvo and drive around on the wrong side of the road, in a place we've never been, while jet-lagged, to find whatever stores we could for the things we needed. Very long day, lots of miles, lots of turning around, lots of navigating the round-abouts…and on that note, if you know what a round-about is: They are everywhere here, instead of stoplights. So traffic never stops, it just zooms for mile upon mile, which doesn't give you much time to stop and think. So you get to a round-about, and it splits off in three or four or six or twelve different directions, and you need to be on top of your game to know which split to take. Laura has been an excellent navigator, reading the map while I drive. And I use drive in the loosest term. People don't drive here, they fly. No one brakes, no one moves over for pedestrians or bikes, and TRAFFIC NEVER STOPS. So if you don't know where you're going, you sometimes have to drive for miles before you can find a place to turn around. (I have, only once, driven around and around a round-about until we figured out which off-shoot we actually needed. I only recommend that when there's no traffic, though…) But driving has gotten much easier, and I pretty much don't have to think about which way to turn or which side to drive on any more.

Random kid pictures

Day 2

Day 1, continued:

We got to the flat, which was not really as I had imagined it from the pictures we were sent (the arrangement is different than I had pictured, and the ceilings are 20 feet high in every room, somehow the scale of things was not conveyed in the pictures.) We do have some great yard space for the kids to run around in. And all the bedrooms are quite large, so even with five of us here, we don't feel too squished. Two downfalls: a tiny, half-size fridge and no dryer. We hang dry everything on the radiators and on a drying rack. I guess I'm very American, because I find it to be a real pain in the behind! Also, their clothes-washing soap smells weird. Erik thinks I'm dumb, but Laura agrees. That is smells weird, not that I'm dumb. I'm noticing it less and less, but it really was disconcerting. So I'm on a quest to find something that smells normal, or at least doesn't smell at all. So far, no luck.

Anyway, it was overwhelming to be dropped off with our luggage in an apartment that wasn't really mine yet. I think we were too tired to comprehend much of anything. We rested for most of the day, put a few things away. The kids slept for close to 12 hours that night. I think it took me at least four nights to recover enough to function manageably.