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?

What time is it where you live?

Greetings from jolly old England! We've been here nearly five days. So far our tasks have included sleep, trying to sleep, trying to sleep at the correct time and (finally coming to our senses) trying to sleep whenever we get the chance. Fatigue rules, but despite the massive task of adjusting a family of five to an eight-hour time change, we have turned our efforts towards the even more massive task of getting our lives settled here. We've spent the better part of our non-sleeping hours (not necessarily considered waking hours, since our wakefulness could truly be debated) on the dwelling hunt (aka your guest quarters when you visit London). Until we secure our permanent digs we're living in limbo in one of the most hectic (aka non family oriented) parts of the city. Here's a peek at our cute, albeit tiny, noisy flat . . .

The narrow entrance hall leading to two tiny bedrooms


The reception (aka living room in the US)


The kitchen


My kitchen window view into the echoey inner open space in this odd converted building


Flying rats rule the skies (the clouds might disagree)


Flat views

Farewell

Right now our house is full of sights like this


And this


And this


And well, a lot of other far less photogenic things (actually downright disgusting) that I do not have the time to document (I know you're bummed :).

This is officially the last post from the US! The last few weeks have been a dizzying time full of move prep, farewells and travel (photos from trips to Tennessee and Alaska will hopefully at some point make the blog, albeit a little late and a little out of order). We officially bid farewell to these United States on Friday. This is all very surreal. I clearly remember the last time this house was filled with nothing but wall-to-wall boxes upon our arrival three years ago. Could it really be time to say goodbye? We are filled with mixed emotions, some of great sadness and some of great anticipation. At unexpected moments these emotions surface and take us by surprise. Onward we go. Back to spackling I go. Until London, we bid farewell!

Tennessee in June

Okay, so this is a bit late and a bit out of order, but when you fry your desktop which contains all your photo files this is what happens! Alas, after much blood, sweat and tears with the incredibly useless folks at Dell (okay the guy who finally came to replace the power supply, you were pretty useful) the desktop is back in action! Now I am onto the task of managing a pretty massive backlog of pre-move photos taken during our farewell USA tour.

In late June we met up with Shannon's one and only brother and his family for one last cousin love-fest before the big move. We rented a cabin near Gatlinburg, Tennessee, which provided a great base to explore our nation's (yes we still belong to the USA!) Great Smoky Mountain National Park. We had a lot of fun hiking, reading, playing in the river, talking, splashing in the hot tub, shopping for sweets on the strip, eating, bear watching, counting live scorpians in the cabin, watching movies and just being together. I am not a fan of goodbyes and typically do my best to minimize adieus, but I have to admit that when it was finally time to say goodbye this one was a little hard.