Thanks, Robert, for setting me up….I really did not have a different version of what was happening for the first fortnight of our life in England. It is sort of a blur now.
We were lucky enough to get into a very nice TLF (temporary lodging) house.
It is a three bedroom house, so we never felt too squished.
The weather has been really great half of the time and really strange the other half. It gets to around 45 F sometimes at night, but then it warms up to 70s during the day. It is sometimes rainy for half a day, or sprinkles randomly during the afternoon. It is just strange, very unpredictable—apparently the weather guys here think the same so they can never predict the weather correctly more then two days in advance.
Kids have been doing crazy things inside the house.
Running around, making forts out of a dozen of hotel pillows and blankets, watching A LOT of TV and playing their only toys available—wooden blocks and cars.
After we THOUGHT we found a house, we drove to Kettering, a town about 30 minutes from the base to Wiksteed Park. The park has a free play area, so since we weren’t feeling too adventurous to spend money on rides, we just let the kids play on the playground (after paying $9 for parking!). That’s when we got the call about our house not being for rent any more….sad, sad day. It was Friday morning of Labor Day weekend.
On Saturday, we still weren’t feeling like having fun since we did not have a house. We decided to go to Lakenheath—another military base 1 hour away—to find a car. We were tired of driving around in our super old rental car. Unfortunately, we did not find anything at the lemon lot there. We got to go to the “big” BX store where I will have to be buying my Clinique stuff from now on since our BX store at Alconbury doesn’t have a make up counter. I also ran into our friends, the Adamsons, who were with us in Misawa. It was so great to see a familiar face!
And we got to eat some Taco Bell-haha. I guess we were craving something different besides fish and chips, sausages, and pizza.
That’s one thing I was wrong about. I thought that I will be able to eat all the European food I want here—I really missed that food in Japan. Well, unless we are willing to drive to bigger towns about half and hour away, it is not so easy to find anything besides pubs with fish and chips or Indian curry. Possibly, we haven’t explored enough, but that’s what it seems for now.
Another thing I was wrong about is thinking that British people might not be very nice. Well, so far we have been very lucky and most everyone has been very welcoming and polite. People at the stores are nice, teachers at school are very pleasant, although no one tries to serve you as much as the Japanese did. That’s all right.
On Labor Day, we got to do only British things since most every American was somewhere travelling in Europe. We had to go school shopping since Alex was starting school in two days. The great thing is that all school supplies are provided—we had to buy nothing but uniforms. We went to ASDA (owned by Walmart) in Peterborough, a big city of about 200,000 people. Peterborough is about 30 minutes away from our future house since we have to take mostly rural roads to get there. It’s about 20 minutes from Alconbury base. ASDA was soooo crowded with people, mostly immigrants from Eastern Europe and Middle East, that we couldn’t wait to get out! After buying white polo shirts, dress pants, gray skirts, black shoes, tights and royal blue cardigans, we were done, spent about $120 on both kids with buying enough clothes to last probably three-four days without doing laundry.
On the way home, we stopped by at Nene Park—a beautiful park in Peterborough. Alex was already making conversation in his fake British accent, talking about Harry Potter.
The weather was gorgeous! We still hope everyone has been lying about the weather after all…(I know..wishful thinking).
I think that England has more rabbits than people. We have seen sooo many of them!
This is our new snack staple, apparently. Well, at least until life gets a bit more normal. We are still in survival mode at the moment.
Okay, so that was my update.
Tomorrow, we are hopefully signing the lease. Our household goods will be delivered on Wednesday (they have been here for three weeks now!) and we’ll be busy unpacking for the next two weeks. Katya starts school on Tuesday, as soon as I email the copy of our lease to the Cambridgeshire School Council.
In the meantime, still thinking about starting a new blog for our British years. So changes will be coming soon.
Lyana
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