Monthly Archives: March 2015

Adventures Abroad

Ongoing horrors of plumbing and dog bites, but London!

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26-3-15

Let’s begin with the crap this time, so we end on a better note than another whine fest on how I feel about our bathroom. Which still sucks. We may have solved the leaking shower/tile/tub issue, but we weren’t able to hang out the various holders as we broke the drill trying to get a pilot hole into the wall. We think the problem is that there is brick behind some of the walls and sheetrock and it was just more than it could take. So, now we have to get a replacement drill to try again, and a special kind of drill bit to deal with it, although with our luck the bathroom walls will somehow be different and something else will go wrong. Is it really so much to ask that there be a place to hold toilet paper? I really don’t feel like I’m asking that much?

It is also still too cold to get the grass to grow in the back garden, so the dogs are constantly giving me dirty looks when they have to take a poop on pavers and as an added bonus, they are tracking in lots of mud from the few bits of exposed ground they can find back there. Poor things. It really will be nice eventually, but it’s pretty abysmal for them right now. I’d feel worse though if Asia wasn’t passive aggressively peeing in the house on a semi-regular basis and Ruffy hadn’t viciously attacked me last night. Yup, that happened. I’m not really sure what happened to set him off, but luckily all he got was my arm, so aside from a small puncture and a large bruise he couldn’t really get a good enough grip to hurt me very badly. And, the Asia peeing thing is improving. I think the curtain that covers the door confuses her, so she won’t scratch at the door as she is trained to, so we’re retraining her to give better signmals for us… and watching her like a hawk in the meantime.

Now, to the good stuff. My resume is freshly updated and I’m going to start looking for work next week, I think I’m also going to start looking for volunteer opportunities in the village. The charity shops are always looking for volunteers, so I figure at least that way I’ll get to get out of the house and expend some social energy. Which I miss, especially since online chatting is actually even difficult here, what with the time difference.

We went to London! This was our first big day outing since my arrival. And, no surprise, it was awesome. We took a bus and then a train into the City, then after a cheap and weird lunch in a little cafe, we visited the British Museum, St. Martin-in-the-Fields and Trafalgar Square.

First things first, the funny lunch: The funny lunch was a hole in the wall cafe/restaurant a couple of blocks from the British Museum, it had a extensive menu and cheap prices posted, so we went in. It had 4 tables and a counter behind which they did some of the food prep (I think the kitchen was in the basement). Of the extensive menu, they didn’t have 3 of the things matt tried to order, so we both ended up getting chicken burgers and chips. The chicken burgers tasted weirdly middle eastern, like falafels. We have not figured out how, but we both agreed that was the flavor. They were also served without any sauce and with cucumbers instead of pickles, the latter of which was kind of funny. We asked for ketchup for the chips and we’re given a bottle of it. What came out of it looked and smelled like ketchup, but was totally as much pink as it was red – like somehow the color was hot pink mixed with red… It was crazy. I’m not sure if this is what UK ketchup is like, as we have only had it in one other place and they called it ‘American ketchup’ on the packet. We’ll keep you posted.

Next, was the main event of the trip, the British Museum. I know some of you have already been there, done that, so you can skip this part if you’d like – I’ll catch you later. But for everyone else, read on. The British Museum is huge, like 17 acres huge, or something like that. It’s ginormous. It’s also apparently home to a collection of like 8 million objects from all over the world. Matt said he heard somewhere that it has a reputation for having the most stolen antiquities in collection of any museum anywhere, so there’s also that. We started with the Rosetta Stone, then went through the Greek, Etruscan, and Roman areas, including the Parthenon collection. We spent about 2 hours total in the museum, but at a fairly quick clip, we actually visited a decent chunk. Especially considering the crowds were were fighting. My favorite collection was of clocks/watches, it was so nifty. I assumed Matt’s fave was probably going to be the one on money… Until we made one last stop at a temporary exhibit named, “Bonaparte and the British: prints and propaganda in the age of Napoleon.” This exhibit was all about anti-Napoleonic propaganda in British media throughout his career. It was fantastic, and, let’s just say, not exactly politically correct. At all. Which is kind of refreshing at this point. If you can’t draw your political opponent taking a dump in a giant pot while being shamed by a tiny demon about the smell, then really, what is the world coming to… I liked the exhibit, but Matt totally loved it. You’ll have to ask him why for details.

Next, we made it over for our first ‘traditional’ English tea service at the Café in the Crypt of St. Martin-in-the-Fields (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Martin-in-the-Fields). The cafe is really in their crypt and I had tea there when I was here for study abroad, the whole experience made a big impression, so I wanted us to go back there and do it again together. It is still such a weird and nifty place and thing to do, though I was disappointed in a few changes this time around. For one thing, we had our first encounter with a super rude Brit. And, imagine this, it was a poor, overworked guy in food service. Which is me saying, you can’t really blame the guy, but he was a total asshole. I’m really glad we didn’t have to tip him. So, their Afternoon/Traditional tea is a ‘homemade scone, jam and clotted cream, double chocolate fudge cake and lemon drizzle tea cake, served with a pot of tea or coffee’, and so that is what we got, but instead of it being a scone, with the cream and the jam on the side, it was a little pre-assembled scone sandwich, which was delicious, but it kind of subtracted from the experience of it, pre-assembled doesn’t exactly scream tradition or classic. Plus, I remember sitting there and assembling my little bites of scone and staring at the crypt walls and it was just better before that little, tiny streamlining (there. soapbox dismounted).

St. Martin church is in Trafalger Square so our last stop was to wander the square and take our selfies with the fountains, the lions, and Lord Nelson.  We had to wait in line and totally frame things carefully to actually get to be alone in the shot with one of the lions, but I think that is just how London goes most of the time, from what I gather and vaguely remember. From there, tube to train, to bus, to home. It’s about 2 1/2 hours to make it from Wantage to London, and unfortunately at least 30 minutes of that is wasted time due to poorly timed bus arrivals/departures, but it’s pretty great that we’ll be able to day-trip there when we choose, without having to kennel the dogs. I think I want to get us set up with a dog-walking/dog-sitting service here in Wantage, so then if we want to be gone longer than 8 or 10 hours we can, without it being abusive to the demon spawn. A few pics are up on Facebook, as I still can’t get wordpress to let me upload them here, but I am working on it!

Observations: The Tube used to scare me in a way that it no longer does after my time commuting in LA, I’m pretty happy about that. But, the Tube system also used to seem so impressive before LA Metro. But, now it seems a lot dirtier, smellier, and more expensive. 🙁 And, don’t get me started on the bus system.

The Brits are really into cake. There’s a whole aisle in the grocery store of breakfast/tea time/snack cakes and tarts and baked goods. It’s a big thing genre here. I still need someone to explain to me what clotted cream is!

Harry Potter (book two) is calling, so goodnight for now.

More to come.

– alaina

Abroad, At Home Abroad, everything

A brief tour is in order.

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23-3-2015

So, for those of you who are curious, I thought I’d offer you a brief tour of our place. Matt  came out here and – with only a couple weeks to find us a place and absolutely (okay, almost absolutely) nothing on the market that fit our criteria and would agree to take pets – managed to find us a place that hit our entire checklist (house or terrace house, 2 bedroom, fenced yard, not terrifyingly yicky) and was within our budget and in a great place. This feat continues to astound me. But, apparently our future landlord found a potential physicist tenant as seductive as I found him suitor… heheh.

Anyways, for those of you who saw it, the place is similar in layout to our townhouse in Fort Collins, except smaller in scale and without the 1/2 bath downstairs. We begin with a fully enclosed front porch, that is smaller than most shower stalls, you cannot actually stand 2 people in it and open and close the door. It also has strange ledges you must step over to enter or exit it. I’m pretty these exist solely to trip me, which they have, repeatedly. However, the mud stops on the porch and packages can be delivered there, as is the mail – through the letter slot – instead of elsewhere outside the home, so that’s nice. Because of the Yale lock, there is no doorknob on the door, which is funny looking once you notice it. The actual front door opens into a narrow hallway, with the stairs to the second floor located almost immediately to your left and the door way to the kitchen ahead on your right. There is a small closet under the stairs – EXACTLY like in Harry Potter.

The kitchen in small, with a ‘hob’ (I don’t actually know what this means) and a sink and washing machine. Oddly enough, it is carpeted. I have no idea if this is a British or Crazy Landlord thing… It’s not full on carpet, more like a fuzzy linoleum, which sounds weird, but I can’t think of a better description. There is unfortunately a decent amount of wasted space, you can tell it wasn’t renovated smartly over the years. But, it is functioning for us thus far, and we’ll continue to figure out how to best use the space for our cooking style. We’ll see what happens when I finally go to bake something… The stove top has electric burners, but they are enclosed under the cooktop surface, I don’t know what this is called – induction cooktop? Below, there are double ovens, one that is only tall enough for about 4 inches of food cooking, kind of like an enclosed warming tray or broiler size and one below that more typical oven size, if you like your oven 3/4 sized. The temperature settings are in celsius and for the most part I just take a guess and hope I’ve got the math right, because – have I mentioned, I don’t have the internet and cannot constantly ask siri to convert the degrees for me? The kitchen is a fully enclosed room, which is kind of weird, but nice when you run the washing machine, which is incredibly loud and incredibly slow. The average cycle is over an hour to run, and more intense cycles are as long as 90 minutes… Due to the limited space the refrigerator is located in the loving room, which is also a fully enclosed room at the end of the entry hallway… We moved the refrigerator to the end of the room nearest the kitchen, so even though it is technically 2 rooms away, it is only a few steps from the kitchen. 🙂 It took us over a week to get an extension cord so we could move the fridge and it was hilarious how used to walking from one end of the room to the other (which the fridge had been) we had gotten in such a short time, it took three days for us to stop walking past the fridge in it’s new home.

The living room is plenty large enough, and contains a dining set, a small tv/entertainment center, and hutch left over from the owner. It is also the room that opens into the back garden. The back garden is in tiers, the first is a large patio, and then there are a couple steps up to the second level, which is partially paved with large stones, but also has a few potential green spaces (though again we will have to plant them because it is all dirt right now) and a small shed. We’ve already sectioned off an area for grass and will do another after this one establishes. Crossing the yard are a couple long yellow cords for clothes drying, which has already helped despite the lack of sunny weather. Everybody dries their clothes where they can around here, you see things hung outside and in windows and door ways, pretty much wherever you look. I think we’ll love the backyard come later spring and summer. A small bbq and a few flowers will make it quite delightful. Hopefully come later spring and summer we’ll be settled enough to feel like doing a little gardening.

Upstairs, there is a small landing and the two bedrooms with the bathroom in between. The front landing is home to one of few easily accessible outlets in the house, let alone upstairs, so that’s where I get to do my hair when I’m so inclined. Luckily, the left a full length mirror attached to the wall there. The front bedroom is the smaller of the two and is painted a medium dark blue. It is a ridiculous color and is even more ridiculous when we notice that half of the room is done in a matte paint, and half in a nice, shiny version of the same color and you can see the roller marks on the walls where they overlap. Our bedroom is in the back of the house and is an equally bold shade of lavender, although at lease it is all the same finish. This room has a whole wall of built in cupboards and wardrobes as well as a vanity table, which is good as there is no storage in the bathroom – as well and no outlets. Seriously, not a single one.

Speaking of the devil, the bathroom is the one room of the house that I have not yet found a way to make myself feel better about. I genuinely hate it. It makes me sad and frustrated – even now that we’ve managed to get the hot water/water pressure situation figured out. The toilet is large and old and looks filthy. The sink is broken and dingy. The ‘shower’ is actually a jury-rigged tub and shower head, which is fine, but it creaks like it is about to collapse around your feet and leave you and the bath water plunging downstairs to your death. Also, everything is a color that you’re probably supposed to identify as olive, but is actually watery baby crap green, there’s just no getting around that. And, the sherbet mint walls just exacerbate that enclosed in mucus type feeling. And, as a side benefit, the perfectly lovely sized medicine cabinet hangs on the wall 1/2 way above the bathtub, which is great if you wanted to submerge your medicine cabinet in steam and/or watch yourself shower in a protrusive little mirrored box everyday. That being said, we’re obviously not using it because of the mold/mildew concerns, and I just wish we could take it down until we leave, but no such luck, unfortunately.

The landlord had left a large piece of rosy carpet (which is used on one of the bedrooms) to cover the linoleum in the bathroom and removing that has improved the look/feel and smell in the room, and the drill bits to install toilet roll, towel holder, and soap tray arrived yesterday, so that will also improve functionality, but I’m not sure anything will ever be able to make me feel comfortable in that room, which is unfortunate. I mean it’s not like the bathroom should be anyones favorite room in their house, but it’s ice when they don’t make you feel dirty and anxious just entering it.

I probably shouldn’t have ended the vicarious tour with the worst room in the world, but oh well. The house has central heat through wall radiators and as a bonus they work pretty well for drying clothes and towels. Matt assures me it’ll never really get warm enough to have to worry about cooling the place, but if we need to there are pretty nice windows in almost every room, which is great for cross breeze and we’re also thrilled with the amount of light we get all day, it’s a great improvement to our place in Altadena, and maybe even the Tiny House. The carpets are also newer, which is nice, though the beige shows the dog fur with very disappointing prominence. All things considered, the place really is pretty great and we’re settling in nicely, having no stuff means we’re using some rather amusing make-shift solutions to things, but it’s been interesting, fun (as well as, frustrating) to watch the place come together. We still really need garbage cans, a floor lamp for the living room and a bookshelf or desk somewhere in the house. Oh, and a better guest bed set-up – the house came with one, but we’re not intending to subject anyone we love to that. Oh, and art: the walls are seriously lacking in personality around here (excluding the colors painted in the bedrooms, but that’s not a personality you want to pay much attention to).

Observations: Lace curtains seem to be the thing here in Wantage, rather than blinds or simple sheers, And, I’m grateful that our place in particular came with them (and regular curtains, no blinds to be found). It’s a nice change, now if only they all matched and were not various patterns and all almost equally hideous…

Along with the expected ‘rubbish’ and recycling cans, small food waste containers are provided here, which is great as we don’t have a garbage disposal, now if only we could get them to give us one.

 

More to come.

– alaina

At Home Abroad

titling things is hard

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16-3-2015

Well, it is Internet day, and as yet (4:30pm), no internet is to be found. Can’t say I’m surprised, there seems to be a certain amount of slowness or negligence surrounding getting much done around here. I can definitely feel the American ‘now isn’t soon enough’ mindset that we American’s are known to have being challenged. I can’t imagine how frustrating it will be if we were to ever apply for a license or loan or anything of that sort here. While being held hostage to being technology-less, I’ve accomplished some reading, a little crafting, and rewatching the same movie twice in one day (three times)… Yeah, I know, accomplishment isn’t exactly the right word there.

As the money transfer service decided to take our money hostage on Friday, rather than transferring it quickly (as they have always done before). We had to abandon our weekend plans of going to London and to the British Museum and a traditional tea service at St. Martin of the Fields’ Cafe in the Crypt. Maybe next weekend will work out for it, we’re more likely to have our discount train tickets by that point anyway. Instead, we spent Saturday shopping, dog walking and starting a puzzle of an antique map of Great Britain. We then spent Sunday doing all of the same things, except in a different order and instead of getting started on the puzzled we got far enough to get stymied by what remains of it. We shall see how much more progress we will make on it before one or both of us gives up.

In graduate school, I made friends with Karyn by offering her my campus map after she mentioned feeling lost – she did all the work after that, and I suppose it is ridiculous as well as lazy to hope that making friends will ever again be that easy. Of our time spent out and about in Wantage, people have been polite and friendly, but also not terribly open to starting a conversation. I suppose that is the stereotypical British reserve you hear about, but I do hope we find a way around it and a way to make friends here, beyond the couple of nice neighbors we’ve met – who, don’t get me wrong, are lovely – but are not going to be game-night or pub-going companions. Perhaps Matt will make friends through work, and despite the commuting to different cities each night, there will be some hope for a social circle. And, perhaps once the damn internet is in place I can look for more social activities, as well as work, in the area. Either way, I just hope we don’t end up as isolated as we were in California. Somehow it’s so much easier to make friends when you’re in school… Or just in Fort Collins, perhaps… Must be something in the Poudre. ;P

In book news, I’ve just finished Shadow of Night, the second in the All Souls trilogy by Deborah Harkness, this afternoon and while I await a used copy of book three to arrive I’m going to work on some crafting (we need some art in this house, particularly to cover the lavender room walls) and tackle Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States – one of only 5 physical books I brought with me on move. I’ve had it since the Book Bin and never read it – because, obviously, non-fiction – but now seemed like the perfect time for it.

Observations: Fairtrade is a big thing here, but also very commonplace, they don’t make huge deal about it, like they do about organic or gluten free in the States. I think it is more prevalent than Organic or Local, as far a consumer catchphrases go.

More to come.

– alaina

At Home Abroad

this post might be as bland as my tea. Sorry.

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11-3-2015 <— Please note, British dating practices. I must get used to this, I keep getting confused when anyone asks me to date things!

Well, the sheep knuckles were a bust, I think I found the building, but no such luck on the actual courtyard where they are supposedly used in the paving. I’m quite disappointed about this. It started to rain after my failed adventure and I headed home for goat cheese and crackers for lunch – so at least there were farm animals one way or another. Our neighbor, Greg (a nickname), who rescued me on my lock out adventure when I first arrived here, invited me over for tea yesterday afternoon, she thought I might want some company, as I’m home alone all day, which was sweet and definitely true. I listened with absolutely no clue when she and another neighbor, Roseanne, discussed British and Wantage politics and then nervously debated what to say when she turned and asked me, “Well, what do you think of Obama?” I think it was a Royal You type situation and I hope I gave a decent answer on behalf of all-of-the-Americans. But, I’m not holding my breath. She also waxed on again about how much we need a car, because being out in the country like this it’s the only way we’re going to effectively see much – I wasn’t sure she was right the first time she said this (a couple weeks ago), but I’m starting to come around to it now, although I’d even settle for a bike, there’s only so far that I’m going to meander carrying what all on my back. Oh well, we’re getting there, the life accoutrement is coming along, so I guess it’s just a ‘be patient’ situation for now. Tomorrow, I’m going to take the dogs for a walk just on the edge of Wantage, Matt said the field views are gorgeous from the rise behind our little close. Close is something akin to neighborhood, subdivision, cul de sac (FYI).

I’m back in the coffee shop this morning and every single person sitting around me has a tray with tea service in front of them. Why? You may not be asking, but I’m gonna tell you anyway. The ‘coffee boiler’ is being serviced and tea and food are the only things they can still serve until they get it fixed. And, many people are leaving because they don’t want tea. I felt rude continuing to use their wifi without buying something, so I bought tea and the most amazing almond goo filled croissant that has ever happened. The farmers market is in full swing in the market square, which is just outside the window from me and I’m going to go check it out again when I leave here, and the charity shops, and the hardware store (if it is open, I’ve walked passed it three times and it has never been open). It’s a little errand kind of day today as we keep finding little things that we hadn’t noticed we needed until now, drill bits, a can opener, envelopes, etc. It’s weird the everyday items that you can go ages not needing and then be totally stymied without. I don’t imagine we’ll ever again do such a start-from-scratch move as this one has been, but I’m glad we did, it’s really interesting (also annoying and challenging, but you…) to be constantly on the back foot reassembling working order in our daily lives. Like, I’ve had the same credit card since I was 18 and now we can’t have one based over here for another couple months because we don’t have enough English credit history or something. And, I no longer know what the political parties are or what they’re about here, so in conversation, when Greg said, “Here’s my problem with he conservatives…” I had no frame of reference for what that meant. It was also ridiculously hard to assemble enchiladas the other night because Mexican food is non-existant here, I’m going to have to order enchilada sauce over the internet if I want to make chile verde at all while we’re here. That would have been unfathomable to me before we got here. But, somethings have proved universal – the Post Office may be just a counter inside a convenience store here, but the lines are still ridiculously long. We moved into another rental that did not come with a toilet paper or hand towel holder in the bathroom. There is nothing on the television worth watching… Please note, I don’t actually know this, I was informed of it by our next door neighbor, Iver, an older gentleman who approves of technology in general but has no use for it personally. I just needed a third universal thing…

Observations: Wantage is adorable, but nothing here opens until after 9 or even 10, this wont usually be a problem for me, but was inconvenient this morning when I was actually out early. Also, everything closes by 6. British people (at least in the small towns) definitely must be head-straight-home-after-work types. Because nothing but a few pubs stay open.

It’s also really not diverse here, which is an adjustment after LA. I kind of miss the challenge of diversity and the opportunities it forces on you.

More to come.

– alaina

Adventures Abroad, At Home Abroad

Sheep Knuckles (hopefully)

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3-9-15

Could I go back to working food service? Not like food-food, but at a coffee shop? I’m not sure, I think I may have gotten too unwilling-to-take-other-peoples-crap for it… But there is a really nice coffee shop in downtown that is hiring and I’m tempted. It’s exactly the part-time, low pressure employment I was considering. Hmmm…

We spent another weekend enjoying Wantage this weekend, we meant to get out and do something tourist-y, but didn’t quite make it happen. Having to arrange things without the internet and in correlation to distance walking and bus travel times makes it a bit more difficult to get things going. But, perhaps next weekend. Our current touristing front runners are the Uffington White Horse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uffington_White_Horse) and going to Wales for the day to see Cardiff Castle again (again for me, new to Matt). Cardiff Castle’s Arab Room ceiling is perhaps my very favorite thing I saw during my study abroad time here, and if it’s not number one, it’s easily top three. The Uffington White Horse is a prehistoric hill figure created by carved out deep trenches into the underlying white chalk of the hills (according to the wikipedia page). It’s been maintained since it was carved out, for something like 3,000 years. It is the reason that our area is called the Vale of the White Horse and I’m super excited to go see it and to eventually participate in weeding it – which is a local tradition and required if the white horse is to remain for another 3,000 years. How cool is that? We learned about the horse and some other local historical hot spots during our tour of the Wantage and Downland Museum on Saturday. Apparently there is also a place in town (Robert Stiles Almshouses) where the sidewalk is paved in sheep knuckles. Because EEEEW. Or because this has been an agricultural and industrial town for a very long time and they really wanted to find uses for everything… And, they meant EVERYTHING. Seriously though, I’m dying of morbid curiosity to see the knuckle sidewalk. I think that’ll be my little adventure after I leave the coffeeshop I’m camped out in at the moment.

This weekend, we also accomplished getting a sofa, going on a major grocery shopping trip, visiting the Saturday farmers market in the village square and learning that coriander is the stand in for cilantro here, and is essentially the same thing. We also established that cooking Mexican food here is going to be almost as difficult as finding it in a restaurant. There is seriously nothing here to work with – I’m not sure Matt will survive.

Laptop battery is dying, so I guess I’ll go knuckle searching now and then there is a sink full of dishes waiting for me at home (oh, the romance of life abroad… I miss our dishwasher (and our dryer)).

Observations: There is a lot more coffee available over here than you’d expect, it’s just that too much of it is instant. Eew. But, at least you can get free wifi in the coffeeshops and the pubs, so you can do morning coffee and afternoon beer and be covered all day long. Also, overly hydrated. hehe

Why don’t they have two outlets per socket? Seriously? Why do the English hate plugging things in?!?

More to come.

– alaina

Abroad, At Home Abroad

Settling In

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3-2-15

My first weekend with Matt in the UK – it was lovely. It was nice to have him home during hours where we could accomplish things, though we didn’t quite make it through all of what we had planned. And, I missed the company last week, more than I realized. I let myself get pretty isolated last week, when I really didn’t have to, I mean I had a good excuse – fear of freezing to death in your shower is a viable reason not to do it often and not going out in public when you are greasy and grouchy is also not a completely invalid excuse, but I will have to do better this week.

Saturday, our landlord came over and helped us figure out the issue with our water pressure and temperature. Which means… wait for it… HOT WATER AND REAL SHOWERS! If this person were not a stranger I probably would have kissed her. I am so over the moon about it. She’s a nice woman, young and energetic, she seems a little spacey, and it’ll be interesting having a landlord who is more homeowner, less property manager, I haven’t seen that before. She doesn’t seem too precious about anything though, so that’s good. She did put a no down on us repainting the bedrooms, so that was both a relief (it was going to be a lot of work) and a disappointment (just wait until you see the color). Atleast she is very responsive to inquiries thus far. After she fixed the shower, Matt went to use the facilities, so to speak and discovered that upon flushing water began to pour out of the lid of the toilet tank and continued to do so until the bowl had refilled itself, which is not quick (it’s a weird old bathroom, lots o’ quirky (quirky is a euphemism for weird and a little awful) elements). We put down a huge bucket (luckily, they had left one in the house, because the only large container we had of our own was my dutch oven – and LIKE HELL – was that going to happen) an emailed her to get some one out to fix it asap.

We spent the rest of Saturday doing some really serious shopping. We walked through a lot of Wantage, stopped at a lot of charity and regular stores and did pretty well for fitting up the place. Charity stores are all the rage over here, they’re like really tiny Goodwill’s, mostly clothes, shoes, textiles and maybe some bric-a-brac and each run by a different charitable organization. We saw one called Debra, whose tagline was, ‘for people whose skin doesn’t work, we do’… I love that one and in no way understand what they are referring to. Skin cancer? Albinism? Roseacea? Anyways, we stopped in a local pub with free wi-fi and had a pint, then we did a load more shopping at the strip mall of discount/generic stores near the grocery. By the end of the day we had way more than we could carry and had to buy one of those roll-y shopping carts to get home. I’m going to use it to pick up a few more heavy things today – hello wine! Also, but less exciting, dog food.

Wantage really is as lovely and charming as Matt said, we had a lot of fun walking around the town square and I’m going to make myself go hang out there and be out of the house in it more often. Especially with our still playing the waiting game for wifi and furniture, it’ll be a nice break from the house. I think parts of the town are really quite old, particularly in the town center, while other areas are much newer, I know some of the developments on our end of town are only a few years old, though we think ours is likely at least from the 60s or 70s, if the bathroom is any indication. It is somehow sort of surreal walking around a place that looks more like a movie set from something I would totally watch than a place that makes visual sense in my everyday life. Does that make sense? It’s a wonderful sort of surreal though, and it doesn’t last too long, as there is a lot of new out there that strikes a much more ‘normal’ chord.

Sunday morning a father and son duo delivered a dresser that we purchased from them on Gumtree (UK’s version of Craigslist). We then spent a lot of the afternoon traveling by bus and by foot to view a few sofas posted online and to make arrangements for internet and cellphone. We got lucky and one couple agreed to deliver their couch to us on Friday as they are already renting a van to move (that’s why they’re selling the couch) and we’re on the way! SO, in 5 days and for a small extra fee we will finally have a sofa! And, as a ridiculous bonus for Matt it is leather. And, it reclines!

Days like yesterday make me really wish we had a car, I definitely wore the wrong shoes for as much walking as we did, but fortune was with us and we didn’t miss any of the not-as-frequent-as-you’d-hope busses, so I suppose I can’t complain. Except about the bus prices – holy crap – they are high. You’re often looking at 5+ lbs for a round trip ticket anywhere nearby and maybe much more if you’re going a few more towns over. Also, there are multiple bus companies that service any given area (we’re not sure what if any affiliation they have with the government) and they do not honor each others passes, so even if you buy the day pass for one company, it doesn’t work if you need to use another company’s bus, because say they have more regular trips to the town where the cellphone store is and the store closes by 4pm. Matt is lucky he’ll be getting a pretty great discount on his annual pass through RAL, because it’s like a 10 lbs. commute each day right now. Not to say nice things about LA or anything crazy like that, but spending a day with the transit system here makes me much better appreciate how awesome LA’s metro/bus system really was. Although, I can’t picture anyone getting into a fist fight on the busses here.

Observations: Everything here is lovely or brilliant, nothing is great or good.

I’ve now been asked more than once, ‘Canadian or American?’ Apparently they can’t pick up the difference, but I kind of like the opportunity to lie and go Canadian… Fun, ay?

Altogether, we’ve been very lucky so far with the kindness of the Brits towards us, they’ve agreed to deliver things, or they’ve helped us with questions, confusions, etc., or they’ve just been very nice to us so far. Thus far, it’s been a really great experience here in that regard and I am grateful for it, we would definitely be suffering a bit without it as the logistics of this move have not been easy.

More to come.

– alaina