Happy Boxing Day!

As you may or may not know (probably the latter since we didn't know either!) today is Boxing Day in the United Kingdom!  What does that mean, you ask?  We're not really sure.  We just know almost everything was closed today, just like yesterday.  Actually my mom looked up some info on it and we wikipedia'd it.  Here are the detailsif you want to know more. 
Craig, Deja, and I had a very nice Christmas.  We spent Christmas Eve in Cambridge showing Deja the sites and went to the Cambridge Corn Exchange and saw Snow White on Ice.  The Corn Exchange is a theater venue which used to be the building that they traded corn in.  Here is us in front of the River Cam and punting boats.  A popular thing to do in Cambridge is to go punting, it is similar to riding in the gondolas in Venice.  Basically you use a big giant stick to move the boat up and down the river.  We are waiting until it is warmer to go! 

We spent Christmas day watching bad made-for-tv Christmas movies that Deja LOVED (ok, I did too...), took a hike in the meadow across the river from us, and cooked a huge meal which we will probably be eating for the next two weeks.  It was very tasty though!  Craig even proclaimed, "You CAN cook!" Ha!  Deja made quite the haul from Santa, her grandparents, aunts and uncles, and the tooth fairy!  It was pretty cute because Deja lost a tooth and she was so excited that the tooth fairy and Santa would be coming on the same night.  Craig and I thought, geez we better not screw this one up, talk about pressure! We did well though and she was happy, as evidenced below:

We had a fun time and we are thankful to be together during the holiday season, but we missed our friends and family who were celebrating with each other back in DC and Minnesota. 

On an odd note, the other day we stopped at a little restaurant to get something to eat and I mentioned to the waiter that we had just moved from the US.  When we were walking out of the restaurant later on two customers said, "Ahh duck and cover! Americans are coming!"  So we were caught off guard, but I said, "Don't worry, we left our guns at home today" and just laughed it off.  And one of the guys said, "Oh good, we don't want any B10 bombers flying through here either."  So it was all a little weird, but I guess it goes to their perception that we are warmongers.  I know that is the perception that some people around the world have of Americans, but to be confronted by it in that way was kind of disturbing.  Maybe instead of making a joke I should have defended "us"?  Or explained that not all Americans have guns and want to be invading other countries?  Also, why did the waiter have the need to tell two random guys we were American?  I mean we not THAT exotic, are we?

It's Official...

Well we have some sad news to report. We had to give up our Virginia license plates yesterday for the much uglier, non-descript UK plates.  It's funny, it wasn't signing our lease, or unpacking all of our stuff, or getting British cell phone numbers that made an impression on me, but getting these license plates finally made me realize, we are officially living here.  Ahhhhhhh!!!!  But I am dealing with it alright I guess, I was planning on saving my VA plates for sentimental reasons,  until Craig burst my bubble and informed me we have to send them back to the DMV.  So there goes that idea.  I still get to have my Virginia driver's license so I guess that will have to do.

In other news, we had a huge milestone: we finished painting!  Exactly one month after moving in we completed every room and it looks great.  Once we tidy everything up I will post pictures.  I have to congratulate Craig for this.  If it was up to me, I would have petered out after doing the kitchen, but we he was gung-ho on doing every room and it looks so much better.  Since we have been doing all the work on the house, dressing up, doing my hair and makeup (showering...) has been somewhat on the back burner.  So we finally got the chance last night to attend Craig's company Christmas party and get all gussied up.  We had a great time, it was at a Turkish restaurant and they had a belly dancer perform and a DJ later on in the evening so we could dance.  Here is us looking pretty:

 Here are a few more things we have learned about living here.

• We had our first experience with the UK government services.  About a week ago Craig was trying to cut something using a knife, rather than a scissors.  I will spare you all the gory details but it ended badly, needless to say.  I had to call 999 (their version of 911) to figure what to do because he was bleeding pretty badly.  First a woman picked up the phone and asked what we needed, and I explained we needed medical assistance.  She said someone would call back within the hour.  I said, no we need help now!  And she hung up.  Luckily someone called back in a few minutes and I explained to her what happened and asked if they could send someone out or send an ambulance because we just moved here and didn't know where to go or where the nearest ER was located.  She said no because his wound was not life threatening, then she suggested I have him sit down for a little while and give him something to drink (by this she meant give him a cup of tea because that's their cure for 90% of the problems here-- I am not exaggerating, I have confirmed this statistic with several locals).  I told her, no we need help now!  I asked her where the nearest hospital was so I could bring him, she responded that it is on the "main road".  What main road?!  There's a million main roads!  Finally I just googled it and we were off.  After a few hours, several stitches, and one fainting episode later (me, not Craig...) we were all set.  The experience at the ER was alright, but the doctor kept leaving to check on other patients while he was still in the middle of treating Craig, we noticed a conspicusous amount of dried blood in the exam room, the doctor admitted to the nurse he forgot to write down what medication he gave the last patient, and he also told us how much less school is required for them to become doctors in the UK. That was comforting. So while the emergency services people were not helpful at all, and the staff at the hospital were not particularly attentive, the cost for it all was 7 pounds (around $12.00), and this was for the box of antibiotics they gave Craig when we left.  We paid nothing for the visit to the ER, in fact, we never even filled out any paperwork or signed anything, or showed them any ID.  The experience opened our eyes to some of the positives and negatives of universal health care.  Not having to pay or deal with insurance is great!  But do you give up some quality of the services...?  Possibly.
• British people laugh at you when you don't know what something is.  Just in the past week I have been laughed at several times.  Not that I am so unaccustomed to getting laughed at, but usually its at least by people I know!  At the local bakery they have "tiger bread".  It looks like a flat loaf of white bread with brownish orangish lines on it.  So of course I ask the woman at the counter what kind of bread it is.  She laughed and didn't answer.  The man in line next to me laughed and responded, it's white bread! But how is it different from the loaf next to it which is labeled "white bread?"  Who knows?  Then, at the farmer's market they have all this produce that I've never seen before.  So I ask the guy, what is this and what is that?  He just laughs: haha that's so funny, she doesn't know all 30 thirty varieties of root vegetables!     
• Credit cards are different here.  They don't swipe them.  As a way to combat identity fraud they put chips in all the credit cards and you stick the card in a little machine and then punch your personal code in to authorize a charge, similar to using a debit card.  But we are still using our old credit cards (it's a big process to get UK credit cards since we don't have any credit history established here) so everywhere we go we have to ask if they accept swipe cards, some of the younger salespeople don't even know what we're talking about when we say we need to swipe our cards.  Most places still accept them, if their machines still have the capability to swipe cards, but when we sign the receipt they practically take out a magnifying glass to make sure the signature matches the signature on the card.  And then the sales person kind of looks you up and down, as if trying to decide if you look like a person who would steal someone else's card (Craig says this is in my head, but I swear they do!).  It's very disconcerting.

Well that's all for now.  I am leaving on Monday to go to Minnesota for 5 days to see my family before heading to pick up Deja in Georgia.  She is spending Christmas with us here.  We are incredibly excited she is coming! 

Our Adventurous Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day in London.  We arrived in the morning and attended a church service at St. Paul's Cathedral for Americans living in the UK.  There was about 500 people there and the US Ambassador to the UK spoke as well.  It was a nice service and the church was beautiful.

After the service we went to a lunch at great restaurant called Fifteen owned by Jamie Oliver, he is pretty big over here (he had the show Jamie's Oliver's Food Revolution in the US), and then we did some some sightseeing at the Tower of London, walked along the Thames, and saw the London Bridge (behind Craig in the picture below). 

We had a great day together and can't wait to spend some more time sightseeing in London.  We really missed being with family and friends though.  When we got home we ordered some Chinese take out and sat around talking about how much we wished we were back home!

We've been feeling kind of like duds since we arrived here.  Most days we're in bed by 11pm.  We get up early every morning and drink tea.  We plan our meals out in advance and look up recipes accordingly.  We spend most of our days working on the flat.  So when the opportunity came up for an inexpensive three day trip to Amsterdam, we thought, here is our chance to prove we are still young and fun!  We left on Friday morning at 3:30am and took a ferry from England to Holland.  It took a LONG time to get there, about 6.5 hours on the ship plus driving to and from the ports.  We got to Amsterdam that evening and had a great dinner at a traditional Dutch restaurant, in fact, when we were done, Craig proclaimed it was the BEST meal he ever ate--and Craig has eaten a lot of meals!  We walked around the city and found the famous Red Light District.  Somehow it didn't seem as scandalous as I had always pictured it. The next day we did some more sightseeing and saw the Anne Frank House, the Van Gogh Museum, and the outdoor Christmas market, complete with ice skating and glogg.  We did a lot of walking and explored the different neighborhoods and canal areas.  I can't say that we partied enough to lose our "dud" status though, it was a pretty tame but enjoyable few days. 

This was a group of swans in a canal at the start of the Red Light District--you can see some of the reddish pink lights in the distance.

My favorite meal of the trip, a traditional stampot.  Just look at that sausage!  It was de-lish!!!

 On the way to take the ferry back to England we stopped in Delft, where Delft pottery has been made for several hundred years.  It was a beautiful little town.

So it was a great trip and has reignited our desire to make the most out of our European experience.  We'll still probably be in bed by 11pm most nights, but on occasion, you may find us in some famous city, drinking hot wine until the wee hours of the morning.

English vs. English

I haven't posted in a while, after moving into our place we really underestimated the amount of work we would need to put into the place in order to make it livable.  We're finding out just how different things are over here.  For example, when we moved in to our "flat" it was pretty filthy, although the rental company didn't seem to think so. There was still junk left in closets from the previous tenants (including condoms--luckily unused!).  We wouldn't have even moved in that day but the shipment of all our belongings was arriving that day and we had to put them someplace.  So since moving in we have been cleaning, painting, and unpacking.  It is starting to look really cute though and its nice to be able to make it our own place.  We ended up getting all new light fixtures,painting the entire place--we have three more rooms to go, installing mirrors and towel racks in the bathrooms that didn't have any, amongst other things.  We also had to purchase our kitchen appliances, known here as white goods, a lot of rentals do not come with them.  Also, another difference here is the washer and dryer go in the kitchen!  Our appliances are very tiny, we had to buy new cookie sheets because ours wouldn't fit into the oven.  I made cookies earlier this week and could only bake 8 at a time...  I am going to be 1/4ing my recipes from now on!  We have a small fridge/freezer that's about 4 feet tall, when we go to the grocery store we have to remind ourselves we can't buy everything we want and to buy the smallest portion of items so everything fits.  It's killing Craig to not be able to buy everything in the jumbo sizes!  We should have the place all done and looking great in the next few weeks and then I will post some more pictures. 

I also wanted to share some of the new English we have picked up while we've been here.
The word BRILLIANT.  In the US we use it mostly to describe a great idea, or to say how smart someone is.  They use it all the time here but we haven't quite figured out the exact translation, its similar to "that's nice", or "good".  For example, if we were to tell someone we were going on holiday for the weekend (a vacation), they would say "Oh brilliant!".  But the other day Craig called the cable company to set up our service, the conversation went something like this:
Cable guy: Hello, what is your name?
Craig: Craig Vaughn
Cable guy: Ahh brilliant. What's your address?
Craig: 33A the Broadway in St. Ives
Cable guy: Ahh brilliant. And what are you calling about?
Craig:  We need to set up our cable and internet service
Cable guy: Ahh brilliant
I was listening in the background giggling thinking, Craig is pretty brilliant to know his name, address, AND why he is calling!
 
There are lots of other words that are either new to us or have different meanings from how we use it in the US.  Like, the word cheers. People use it ALL the time, I thought it was an over-exaggeration, but it's not.  Mostly men say this to other men, its like "take care" or can be used like "thank you". Craig is trying to start saying it since people say it to him, but it just doesn't sound as natural somehow...  Trolley means cart, so at the grocery store its the shopping trolley, or the luggage trolley at a hotel.  Sometimes if a person doesn't know what we are talking about we just have to describe it for them.  The other day we went to the hardware store to get some weather stripping for some of our windows, we asked the salesclerk where it was located, she just looked at us with a blank face so Craig started describing it, and the lady's face lit up and she said "Oh! You mean draft evader!" Yes, draft evader, that does sound much more proper.  And then there are times when someone is speaking to us and for the life of me, I have no idea what they said, it sounds like a foreign language!  This is usually when someone has a really thick accent, like they may come from a different part of England.  The other night we were at the pub down the street from us, and this older guy started talking to us and he asked me a question, I just stared at him because I didn't understand anything he said, he probably thought I was deaf...  But Craig jumped in and started talking luckily!  Probably the funniest thing so far has been British people doing American accents, and they are pretty good at it too!  They are usually making fun of us, like look how you have ruined OUR language, but we just laugh along with them because it is pretty comical.

We want to wish you all a happy Thanksgiving!  We are going to London for the day and are really looking forward to it.  The US Embassy puts on a service at St. Paul's Cathedral every Thanksgiving for Americans living in the UK, so we're going to attend that and then do some sightseeing.  Here is a link to the cathedral, it looks beautiful, it was built between 1675 and 1710!  Stay tuned for pictures!  http://www.stpauls.co.uk/Cathedral-History

Top of a Flower Shop

After almost three weeks of searching, we found our place!  It's in St. Ives, a town located about 15 minutes north of Cambridge.  We had hoped to find a place right in Cambridge, but everything was tiny for what we could afford.  But St. Ives is a really cute town and the location we're in is phenomenal.  It's a large apartment right in the town center above a flower shop.  The front of it overlooks the street and it backs up to a river, we actually have a mooring if we wanted to get a boat (I can't see us actually getting a boat, but we can go fishing!).  Here is a picture of the river.  Our place is about 100 feet upstream, located here.
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The apartment itself has a lot of character, the leasing agent said the building could be anywhere from 100 to 200 years old, that's a pretty wide range, but nevertheless, it's old!  We need to do some work to it--painting, cleaning, etc., but we really like it overall, and it's big enough to fit all of our junk, err.... belongings. :)  It's three bedrooms (yes, we will have a guest room!), and two and a half baths.  When you walk in from the front door there's a big curvy staircase that goes up to all the rooms.

And here is the view from our deck-- yes, those are sheep!!

So we're moving in next Friday.  We're excited to get out of the hotel and in a permanent place!

Some Cambridge Fun

After a week of looking at houses and apartments (or flats as they call them), trying to set up a bank account, and get cell phones, we finally had a day to relax last Sunday.  It helped that most things here are closed on Sundays so we had no option but to have a day of enjoyment.  The University of Cambridge includes 31 separate colleges throughout the city.  They are all very beautiful, the olderst was founded in 1284!  You can imagine all of the 18-22 year olds running around because of this....  Here are two pictures of King's College which is one of the most stunning.  After a long walk around the city we needed a break, so we went to have tea of course, at a sidewalk cafe.  A classic afternoon tea includes small sandwiches, scones with butter and jam, and a pot of tea with milk.  Side note:  Coffee and tea is served with milk, we ask for cream though which everyone thinks is odd, their cream is real cream so its extremely thick, similar to melted ice cream, if its mixed with milk it makes half and half though. 

On the housing front, we've looked at around a dozen places, some have been very nice and others not so nice!  The houses tend to be a lot smaller than in the US, so we're worried about fitting all of our furniture, even though we got rid of a lot of things before we moved.  All of our belongings and car are being shipped here on a steamship and are scheduled to arrive in early November so we need to settle on a place in the new few weeks.  We have a couple more places to look at this weekend and then hopefully we can make a decision. 

Getting the Feel For It

Well we have been in Cambridge for about three days now, and have accomplished very little in getting our new lives set up here.  In order to rent a place, we need a UK bank account, and in order to get a UK bank account, we need a permanent address.  In order to get cell phones here, we need both!  So we've been banging our heads against the wall trying to figure it all out.  Tomorrow we're heading to the base where Craig will be working and hope to get some help from some other Americans who have been through this before.  So far everyone has been very nice to us here and we've had fabulous food (don't believe what you hear about it!).  The oddest things we've tried are squirrel (it was good!), and black pudding which is a typical breakfast dish made with pig's blood.  I will be dedicating a future post just to pudding, as people are obsessed with it here.  Here are a few pictures we've taken around Cambridge, they really don't do it justice though.  It's very beautiful, a mix of old and new architecture, mostly old though, the newer buildings look a little out of place.