American School in London

Many of you know that we were unable to get both Dallin and Madeleine into the same school; Dallin's school did not have a spot for Madeleine and likewise Madeleine's school did not have a place for Dallin. So for this first year Dallin is attending a private British school, whilst Madeleine is attending an international school, The American School in London. It's a school comprised mostly of American expats in London from kindergarten to twelfth grade, but also has students from all over the world. This year Madeleine is in what's called kindergarten 2. There are two years of kindergarten at this school, and kindergarten 2 is equivalent to kindergarten in the US.

Kindergarten has been an instant hit with Madeleine, love at first sight. She nearly bounces out of the flat each morning. We are lucky enough to live right next to the school, literally. My breakfast table window overlooks the school's roof. We use the rear fire escape for school drop off; the commute takes all of 90 seconds. She is having fun making all kinds of new friends and loves her two teachers, one British and one American.

Here's a peek at our kindergartener's first day . . .















Can I go in yet?


The pressure's on!

New Friends

While we miss our friends back home dearly, we are making great new friends here. We spent a fun summer's end afternoon playing at Hampstead Heath with some of our favorite new people:

Dirty Puddles

A dirty puddle. A dirty puddle with floating cigarette butts. I see these everywhere. It's not what most people think of when they think of London. Things like Big Ben, red phone booths, the theatre and palaces might normally spring to mind. But puddles, dirty puddles are most definitely London. And if I'm being honest, straying a bit from the fantasy of life living in London, my new life here often feels just like a dirty puddle. I thought about taking my camera out and shooting one of these oft seen dirty puddles, but right now the last thing I need is a homework assignment. I get why there are adverts to places like Cyprus, Tenerife and Spain just about everywhere you look here. I wanna get away too. I sit now in a cafe (don't get carried away with this romantic notion of European living lounging in cafes; I'm only in this cafe because I have a bit of time to kill between a teacher conference and back to school night and nowhere to go in the rain). So I sit here watching passersby all wearing the same overspent, soggy expressions. They are overladen with umbrellas, bags, purses and parcels, like some kind of acrobatics. Will they smile when they arrive at their destination? Will I? Why did we come here to the dirty puddle! Maybe tomorrow the sun will shine, but real life in London is hard, sometimes painful. So for all of you who are somewhat envious of our new supposed "cool" life in London, now you know the dirty truth. We left paradise for dirty puddles! What were we thinking!

Okay, thanks for indulging me in my vent session!

The Canterbury Tales

Our tale doesn't include a pardoner, a knight or a miller, but it does include a pilgrimage to Canterbury. We don't get Labor Day here, but we do get a three-day weekend near the end of August in the form of a "bank holiday." We decided to use one of these three days to take a day-trip out of London, and to take a break from settling in! We took a 90-minute train to the charming town of Canterbury in Kent located in south eastern England. It was an uncharacteristically beautiful, sunny day (these are rare in the UK, even in summer!).

Our day began here






We raced up to a hilltop monument






We walked the old city wall




And then stopped here for a snack


We made it to the town's focal point (note the sole photo of yours truly)




I love this kid; he's so much fun to tour around with. He takes such interest in the detail of the places we see.




Turn your screen upside down to see what this is :)


Madeleine is finally able to pick a nose in public without reprimanding


Beautiful scenes of Canterbury










Visiting an old Norman castle




This is what I think of when I think of Canterbury

My Raison d'Etre

Kew Gardens

A couple of weeks ago we went here



This is Kew, a lovely leafy village in outer London. In Kew is this unbelievable garden, really a massive green space with endless varieties of plant life, everything from a redwood tree grove to a bamboo forest to rare flowers in old victorian green houses. It's huge, and very nearly makes you forget you're in one of the world's most hectic cities (if it weren't for the Heathrow air traffic overhead). Kew Gardens doesn't make sightseeing agendas for most tourists, and this is a shame.

Sweet Boy

Peace.

Quiet.

Comfort.

All things I crave right now. We are a week into our new flat, far from normalcy. Still bunking on air mattresses, we slowly make progress to creating our new life here. Yesterday we had a break through. The internet arrived! Unfortunately it met the demise of our not yet three-month old desk-top computer. Getting life settled here is very much a dance, one step forward two steps back. Hopefully we'll get there soon enough, but right now it feels very much like being trapped in a slow-motion dream.

A Date With Ben

Thank You For Smoking, Prepositions, Jumbo, Diet By Budget--A Few Random Thoughts

If you haven't been to Europe in the last five years, you'd notice a big change. Europe, though woefully behind the US, is making strides to clear the air. They have a long way to go (just go to Greece, you'll see what I mean), but no more do you have to suffer in a smoke-filled train compartment in Italy, or a smokey cafe in Paris, and likewise here in the UK all indoor public spaces now carry a ban on smoking, including the pubs! Good news? Sort of. There is a major downside. Try walking down a street in central London for instance. It's a veritable gauntlet of smokers. And I have yet to encounter a courteous chimney, not even in the presence of children! Smokers are everywhere on the streets now. Either huddling outside a pub, strolling past storefronts, waiting for buses, dining al fresco at a cafe--everywhere! In the five-minute stroll to our nearest tube station I worry how much second-hand smoke I'm exposing the children to. So I wonder if this new anti-smoking legislation is really doing non-smokers any favors. Aren't we all better off if all the cancer sticks are corralled in a smokey pub?



Something happened to the use of prepositions when the British colonized the US. They got all mixed up! I'm trying to adapt, but it's like learning how to drive on the other side of the road (I won't even go there yet, literally). So if you've got something planned on Saturday or Sunday, you say "at" the weekend. If you have a gathering planned at 7pm, you say "from" 7pm. And it's not "leave it to me," but rather "leave it with me." It's driving me nuts. Just so long as under still means under and over still means over I might be okay.



Jumbo is probably a word that people here just shouldn't use. Show me the jumbo! Seriously, everything here is tiny! My "jumbo" roll of paper towels, for instance, is more like a roll of toilet paper. Most things at least don't come with such a laughable claim, but US elevators, milk jugs, refrigerators, washer/dryers, ovens, closets, just to name a few, would give their UK counterparts a serious inferiority complex. And that's not even counting Texas!



Though we aren't newcomers to the eye-popping price tags here in the UK, it still manages to give us a good bit of sticker shock. In fact if you're an American who's hoping to drop a few pounds, you might want to head to the UK. After several days of attempting to live on a college-budget diet to keep costs down, we decided we needed a little splurge. We stopped for a little ice-cream treat on the way home from a museum. The bill for three child-size single cones and one small shake came to a whopping $30! That's enough to keep you from indulging! On the other hand the monthly fee for a gym membership would cost us $182.54.

At the end of the day we may be dealing with some smokey streets, odd preposition usage, tiny lifts, high prices and whole list of other interesting things, but we are living in London. And really, how cool is that?