Wed, Jan 3rd misc. a sundries

I drove quite a bit today, and am doing better. It’s VERY hard to navigate. Everything looks the same, no landmarks (because it’s so rural). I don’t know what I’ll do tomorrow. Paul has to work and I’ll have to pick the girls up from school. Since we only have 1 car at the moment, I’ll have to do a lot of driving and navigating.

The day starts later here, and Paul plans to drive the girls to school in the morning before going to work. I practiced today with Paul and it’s not a difficult drive, but if you make even 1 wrong turn, you’re off and running down another generic country road that all looks the same, with no obvious place to turn around and certainly no room to make a U turn! The roads are so narrow – exactly space for one car going one way and another car to go the other way. There are no such things as shoulders. If you drive off center, you’re in the field, which is very muddy and slippery, or you hit the bank of the grass that is higher up than the road. I’m fairly confident I can figure out how to get to their school from our house, but from the hotel is tough. The hotel is 13 miles away from our house. I’ll also need to drop Paul off at work and that’s the hardest of all! It’s shocking how you go from the middle of nowhere to busy streets.

This afternoon we bought an American sized washer, dryer and refrigerator. We also bought a European sized microwave (no such thing as American sized microwaves over here). I’m sure the sales lady loved us. It’s so strange to enter the equivalent of Circuit City and see pint sized stoves. The refrigerator in our house is a little bigger than a bar size refrigerator in a beach condo (and there is no freezer)! Our 3 new appliances will have to go in the garage since they won’t fit into the house….anywhere!

I’ve been doing quite a bit of thinking about where we’ll put our furniture. There is no way our big American dressers will fit.

John is eating considerably less. He’s gone on strike for any U.K. yogurt. By the way, even the yogurts are smaller here! The one he liked 2 days ago comes in a package of 6. Of the 6, there are 2 strawberry, 2 raspberry and 2 apricot, and each one is only 1.8 oz! This compares to his large, American sized French vanilla in a 6oz container that he ate 3 times daily in Austin! So far, he likes the apricot only, which is causing quite a storage problem in our little bar refrigerator in the hotel. John’s food intake is my biggest stress point at the moment.

The bigger kids are doing GREAT! They talk about their friends frequently, but love the house here and are so excited about school! Funny story – Megan made a comment at one point about, “that house we keep going to”, and Paul and I laughed and said, “That’s OUR house!!!” Perhaps they feel this is like one giant vacation and they don’t realize how long we’ll actually be here!

After getting the uniforms, we stopped by the girls’ school, taking a chance that it would be open and we could at least show them the inside of it before the big day. The head master was there and amazingly enough knew their names, even though he had never before met them. He’s a great guy and everyone speaks very highly of him. We were able to meet both of the girls’ teachers and see their rooms. Everything seems very good…small, but good! The same room is used for lunch, gym and music. It has hardwood floors and is the size of a large U.S. dining room!