Apartment!

We got the keys to our apartment today, and the movers come tomorrow with everything that came over on the boat. Hooray! It feels like we've been here for three months already, and I'm sure that our transience hasn't helped.

So, without further ado, here are some pictures I took of the inside. Please excuse the awful lighting.

Kitchen (bigger than the one we had in Colorado). There's also a separate water closet on this floor.

Living Room

Bathroom (there's a shower to the right of the toilet)

Bathroom storage

View from the bathroom. I'll definitely be closing those blinds!

Big kids' room, with built in wardrobe

Baby's room (tiny!)

Besides being tiny, the baby's room also has a built in desk. We'll just have to make it work.

Master bedroom

Master, much roomier than it seems here

There are three built in wardrobes in the hall, and that's where Matt and I will put our clothes. I'm excited about all of this storage space, because it's not uncommon here for there to be no closets or wardrobes included with the dwellings.

So after the movers drop everything off, I'm guessing we will be spending most of our time unpacking for a couple of weeks. Then we'll be settling into a routine, which doesn't sound that fun, but I'm looking forward to.

Bits and Pieces

Two small accomplishments recently:
1. I gave a guy directions. They were insanely simple, but directions nonetheless.
2. I am now used to looking to the right first when I cross the street.

In the UK, the word pants means underwear. I know this, and still can't stop saying pants.
On a related note, the kids are picking up British words and phrases pretty quickly. Miles corrects me when I say certain things (like pants instead of trousers), and yesterday Lily told me that Miles "had a go" on something at the park.

The family is now enrolled in the National Health Services, so we can now see doctors here. Clara and I had our first appointments this week, and it was quick and easy so far.

I'm meeting many other parents at the kids' school. I can only remember about 5 names, but everyone is so welcoming and willing to start conversations. I haven't once felt excluded.

A standard getting around here is, "Are you alright?" I was very confused until I figured out that it basically means, "How are you?"

That's it for now, just some random thoughts.

Ripley Castle

We visited our first castle today. It was a surprise for the kids, and they were really excited. 

We did a family tour, which is geared towards kids aged 5-16 (close enough, right?). We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but it was a pretty cool experience.

The castle is inhabited by the Ingleby family, who have been there for around 700 years. I won't get into the family history here, but you can check it out on Wikipedia if you're curious. How strange it must be to live in a house with such a steady stream of public visitors. 

A few highlights of the tour:

- We only saw one little area where the servants would be. But it was the hall where the bells ring, showing which room they are being summoned to. (Just like the opening of Downton Abbey, only fewer bells.)

- We got to go through two sort of hidden doors, which Miles and Lily loved. One led to the knight's chamber, which was built in the Tudor era. This hidden door contained a steep and narrow spiral staircase that was once the only access to the upper level. I can't imagine carrying anything up or down!

- Throughout the knight's chamber were artifacts related to war and conflict. There were actual pieces of armor, weapons, and medals of honor. There was also a hidey hole where Catholic priests could hide to avoid being captured and killed. Just the bits of history we learned on the kid's tour were fascinating.

- Sometimes I see little things that remind me that we're not in the US, and a few of these happened on the tour. The first was that on a tour aimed at kids as young as 5, the guide openly talked about children dying, and a man being hanged and drawn and quartered. The guide also invited us to walk up the steep and narrow staircase (at our own risk), and let the children touch the tips of sharp arrows meant to pierce chain mail armor. That seemed like a lawsuit waiting to happen if we had been in the States.

After the tour, we walked the grounds a little bit. 

In the next picture, there's a small building at the end of this part of the stone fence.

This is the sign that's on the building.

More pictures of the grounds.

Next we went to the teahouse for lunch and ice cream. 

There was a church with a cemetery across the street, so we wandered around the tombstones for a few minutes. 

It was hard to read in person, but the guy in that grave died in 1700! 

How cool to have something so old and historical basically in our backyard. We will definitely be going back.

Keepin' It Real

I feel like overall I've kept a pretty positive attitude with everything we've gone through so far, but I'd be lying if I said it's been easy. Here are just a few of the difficulties.

A random picture of countryside to break up the text

Not having easy access to public toilets. Especially with a 3 and 5 year old. Most restaurants or businesses have been really understanding if one of the kids really needs to go, but the reality is that many shops just do not have bathrooms at all.

Inconvenient restaurant times. Since we are still in temporary housing, we haven't been able to do much cooking at all. And it's not always easy to find a place to eat. There are sandwich shops, which are open late morning to late afternoon. Then the proper restaurants usually open around 6pm for early birds. There are a few fast food places, but not many (and no drive thrus). Also, if you don't have reservations for weekend dinner, you're basically stuck with takeaway.

We stayed in the round building for two days

Not having local friends. I know I will make friends, but it does get a little lonely not to have someone to text or hang out with. It's hardest for me in the mornings, when I feel chatty but it's still the middle of the night in the US.

Language barrier. Of course people from both countries speak English, but there's a wide variation of terminology. I'm trying to use the English (England English) words and phrases, but I haven't caught on with certain things. I say pants all the time, which means underpants here. Trousers. Trousers. Trousers. Someday I'll get it.
There's also a wide variety of accents. Not a big deal, really, it just can take a moment for your brain to catch up with a conversation including multiple people.

An actual key to one of the apartments we stayed in

Bacon. What they call bacon here is not what we're used to. It's thick and more hammy than bacony. We're still new enough that we get a little disappointed after ordering food with bacon.

Electric showers. Yes, these are real. It's supposed to be a more efficient heating method, as it only warms the water being used. Maybe we have only experienced awful ones, but it started out with a few minutes of ice cold water, followed by a few minutes of super hot water. And adjustments to temp in between take some time.

Park day

Moving around a lot. This has by far been the most difficult part of our move. The town we're in has a lot of festivals and events, so there hasn't been room for us to stay in one apartment/hotel until we get our own flat. We've been here four weeks, and are now in our sixth temporary residence. We've never unpacked anything since the longest we've been in one place is a week. Plus it's been really hard on the kids. It's bad enough that they don't have their toys and other things, but to be uprooted so many times has made them even more homesick. I'm really looking forward to settling in to one place and staying there.

I know that a lot of these things are either temporary or will improve with time (except the bacon). And once we are settled in and used to things, I'm very confident that we will really like it here.

We Found an Apartment!

Well, we found it a couple of weeks ago, but I didn't want to jinx anything until I knew it would be ours.

It's a three bedroom flat in town, within walking distance of the school. It's very spacious, with lots of built in storage throughout, and a private patio. There's no designated parking space or garage, but that's really the only thing it's missing.

Oh, and it's directly across the street from this...

As soon as we walked through the place, we knew it was just what we wanted. We walked outside and Matt called the agent to make an offer. Basically, this just meant that we told the agent the length of lease and rent we would pay (which was the amount of rent they asked for), and told them how many people would be living there. Then we waited.

A few days (!) later, we received word that our offer was accepted. Then we had to submit certain fees and a bunch of information so they could check out references. They called Matt's employer, the guy who owns the inn we're staying in, and checked credit history and income. Stuff like that. This morning, after several days of anxiously awaiting news, we were told that the flat will be ours. Phew!

Oh, and the shipping container carrying all of our stuff has arrived in the country and gone through customs. Yay!

We have to wait to move in until the 28th of September, so we still have a little hotel/temporary apartment living. But we will move in soon, and have all of our things available immediately.

Off to have a pint or two of cider to celebrate!

Driving Test

I had to take a written driving test yesterday, or I can't legally drive starting next week. I read through the Highway Code, and although there's a lot of common sense stuff in there, there's also a lot that differs from the US. This test was hard, man. There were several questions that I hadn't remembered seeing mentioned in the book at all, so I guessed. And I guessed well, because I passed (yay).
There were about 6 of us taking the test at the time. We waited outside for our results, all talking about how we were certain we had failed. Matt was there too, since Clara couldn't take the test with me. When they called me in to tell me my score, he told the others that they'd be able to tell my results from how I came out of the room. If I looked all mopey, then I had failed. If I had passed, I'd try (and fail) to keep a straight face so others wouldn't feel bad.
And he was wrong, because I was just too excited. I jumped out of that room and yelled, "I passed!"

Illness and Embarrassing Moment

 Over the past week, each of us has been sick, one right after another. Luckily I had it last, and with Matt's flexibility with work, he was able to take some time off to take care of me.
We haven't done much this week, but since there's a pool at the hotel we're at this week (more on that later), we took the kids swimming yesterday.
Now, I'm hoping I don't come across here as a complete country mouse. Any of the US hotels we've been to courtesy of Matt's job have been very casual, like La Quinta Inn and the like. So, as we would have done in the States, we all went through the lobby in our bathing suits (Matt had a t-shirt and I threw pants over my bottoms).
When we stepped out of the elevator, we walked through a crowd of wedding guests, which was a little embarrassing. Once we were in the pool, we noticed that everyone else was coming into the area in street clothes, and putting their bathing suits on in a changing room.
At this point, I didn't want to get out of the pool, but Lily saved the day by pooping in her swim diaper. Matt ran her upstairs to change it, and brought our clothes back down for us.
Looking back, I guess I should've figured it out. I had never seen anyone running through the lobby half-dressed. I mean, it's not a very formal hotel, but everyone at the breakfast buffet was already dressed and ready for the day. Oh well, even if we'll be living in this town, we'll probably never see these people again, thankfully.

House Hunting

We've been looking at different houses and apartments since we arrived, and, you guys, this is hard.

We started out with a strong desire to live in the city (it's not a huge city, but we're definitely not in the country). We wanted to be within walking distance of the kids' school, in a three bedroom apartment. From our research, we knew that we wouldn't be able to find American sized rooms, but we were used to a semi-small, one bathroom house. Plus we got rid of a lot of stuff before we moved. Shouldn't be THAT big of an adjustment, right?

Ha. HA. There are three bedroom apartments in the middle of town, within walking distance of the school. And they are tiny. And expensive. Within about five days of arriving, we had to up our housing budget (honestly we were trying to get off cheap). I felt like we were on an HGTV show with a long list of must haves and a laughable budget.

We did find one place we liked. It was a plain set of buildings with modest apartments, but we could deal with the size. Plus it came with a garage that we could store things in. The best part was that it was about a 10 minute walk from the school. I emailed the agent with an offer, and the landlord basically said no because we have kids. That was a huge disappointment.

Miles took this picture

Since then, we've widened our search a bit to include some suburban type properties. These offer much more space, as well as small yards (gardens). And with three young kids, a detached or semi detached house sounds more favorable than being on the second floor of a small apartment. My kids like to run. And squeal. And run. But I admit to feeling disappointed at the thought of living in the suburbs.

So we just have to make up our minds. Do we want to live in the city or suburbs?

City:
Close to everything
Access to the lovely park, which has a huge play area, and events throughout the year
I can walk the kids to school
I can walk nearly everywhere (this is important because driving in the middle of the city terrifies me)
I can easily meet up with people
Wow, this driving thing influences me more than I'd realized.

But the cons are there too.
Very small accommodations (seriously, it's not uncommon for a third bedroom to be 7'x8', or sometimes smaller)
Some places haven't seemed well suited for young children
It's more expensive
It's not like we're going out to eat a lot once we move in, so how close do we have to be to restaurants?

Suburbs:
Larger living spaces
More for your money
More families (with more than one child)
Quiet
Storage space
I don't have to walk around in horrible weather

And the cons would be...
There aren't stores and restaurants around. Just houses.
I will have to learn to drive quickly, and drive much more often
I will have to drive into town for everything
We will need two vehicles
Will it be harder for me to make friends?

We have a few more places to look at, but we really need to decide asap. Cross your fingers that we make the decision that's right for us!