We haven't been in Cambridge a full week yet, and it's not like we haven't been to the UK 4 times already, but there's always something interesting and new that one of us encounters here.
This week we were finally provided with a place to rent, at almost the 11th hour, but our Father had it in hand all along and although I made it to the 10th hour without seriously panicking, He held out to stretch our faith. Things never go as planned here because everything takes "3-5 business days" longer here, at a minimum. Perhaps there are places in the US where a person not only undergoes a credit check, but also a reference check, where they personally contact your previous landlord and your character reference (a member of upright standing in your community) and ask them questions. Perhaps by phone, perhaps by a written letter- it's random which realtor places use which. The fact that realtors deal with people renting is even strange- the property is "managed" by a realtor. We were told to expect 10 business days before we could sign a lease. Now those who say that the US is not an instant gratification society are on crack because we pretty much get everything the instant we want it. :) I've never had to wait more than 5 minutes for the leasing office to print out a lease for me to sign right then and there. So this was a novel idea to me. So we are waiting for this reference company to do whatever they're going to do (we provided original copies of our references- we had to do some work just to get a reference from our apartment complex because no one in Ann Arbor does that.) We should at least have a status update Monday.
In the meantime Nelly has to stay in a cattery. I never knew such a thing existed! But they are a thriving business here in the UK. Apparently people are afraid to leave their cats at home while they go on "holiday" so they take them to these special cat kennels. Poor Nelly has no idea why we're putting her through all of this, but I think coming to pick her up at the airport put the seeds of "Ok, they are still going to come back for me" in her little cat brain. At first she was upset- I think Nelly's brain is about equivalent to an average 2 year old. Perhaps 2 and a half. Since she's been passed from person to person probably 6 or 7 times in her life, including a stay in the pound where Paul adopted her in the first place, she's a little sensitive to being "abandoned." That's what I've noticed at least. Over 4 years she's grown to trust us to a very high degree, but I think her faith in us was stretched on this whole airplane adventure, and then restored in the 3 hour car ride home from the airport. Which involved copious amounts of cat treats, assurances that she would be fine, and 2 hours of petting on the head.
By the way, letting your cat out in the car is a no no here- I've never done that in the US, but she was meowing so piteously that I thought she was hungry and the second I opened the carrier to give her some food she bolted out and under the car seat. Where she stayed for some hour and a half, meowing piteously. Truly piteously this time- I've never heard her meow like that before, and she tends to be a bit of a drama cat. Maybe she was like that before, maybe she picked it up from us. Who knows. :) In any case, the nice lady at the cattery told me that it's against the highway code to allow your cat out in the car. I didn't even know there was a highway code. Is there a highway code in the US? If there is I don't know what it says. Maybe it says the same thing. :)
By the way Nelly isn't a fan of the roundabouts here- think Grand Theft Auto or something like it. I feel like a European race car driver just driving around here. The roundabouts are good- a better idea than traffic lights. But they are really tricky and often involve simply swerving in front of other cars. The cars here have good handling since it's routine that everytime you go out driving you'll have to swerve around either a pedestrian, a bicycle rider in the street, a parked car blocking 90% of your lane, or another driver who swerved into your lane to avoid any of the above. You get used to it after awhile. But I don't know if I'll ever stop cringing when I'm riding in the car and G has to squeeze to the edge of the road- when you're not driving it looks like you're going to hit everything. :)
When is the last time you've used a checkbook? I only use mine to write a check to my voice teacher every week for our private lessons. We've stopped ordering checks even and just ask the bank to print us a strip of 8 for $1, which lasts 8 months. I do everything online, have all our bills set to prepay via the credit union, and I pay everything either by debit card or Paypal. So imagine my surprise when months ago the banks we opened accounts with sent us checkbooks! I thought "what am I ever going to do with these?" Well this week I found out. :) The realtor asked us to write a check for the deposit on our new place (this is just the "no one else can start applying for this property" deposit, also called marking the property as "under offer".) So I brought this checkbook. Several funny things have revolved around the whole UK banking thing. My checkbook doesn't actually have my name on the checks- instead it says "Mrs KM D_____" (it has my last name but I'm keeping that out of my blogs). Isn't that weird? G's says "Dr. GW D___ III." Titles actually matter here! In the US where they ask for title you can just leave it blank. But not here- it's everyone's right to know what your title is. :) Women can at least still use Ms if they feel it's no one's business what their marital status is. I always thought that Ms was useless because I don't care whether people know I'm married, and I was never ashamed to be single. But I have to admit it's a bit strange having my marital status on every piece of paper I sign and on every account of any kind here. G at least can put Dr. on his which sounds very impressive. :D When you call someone or they call you they ask what your title is first, before anything else, and then they call you Mrs. ___ or Dr. _____.
But back to the checkbook thing- I had to ask the realtor for help to even write this check, because their checks are different from ours- fundamentally the same concepts, but everything is in a different place. I'll post a picture of a sample check from online. US checks have the word "dollars" printed on the check so you don't have to write it. What a good idea! Now we have to write "pounds" on every check because it isn't there. "pounds only" instead of 0/100 ----------" At least I don't have to sign "Mrs KM D____" I can just sign my real name. I could even just sign my first name if I felt like it. The realtor was very nice and helped me write the check- I felt like I was 15 again.
I learned this week what a "drawing pin" is. It is not something you draw with. It's something you would use to pin up a drawing onto the wall. In other words, a thumb tack, or push pin. Many words are like that here- in the US our English has slowly migrated toward words which more directly describe what an item does. A thumb tack is a tack which you push into the wall with your thumb. But here there's a level of indirection. Like the juice concentrate which is called "squash". It isn't made from squash as one would expect- the fruit was squashed in order to get it. Very tricky. Road signs often leave me wondering too- such as "Danger pedestrians!" Are the pedestrians posing a danger to the drivers? Are the drivers a danger to the pedestrians? Is there some other danger which isn't obvious that is being announced to the pedestrians? Many of the road signs leave us laughing since we don't know exactly what they mean and what with swerving around and avoiding other cars we don't have time to find out. :)
Just to let you all know our US cell phone numbers will work, once they've been fully transferred over in a few days. We are setting up vonage but had a few snags due to a different type of phone jack here. But that should be resolved today. You can call Gon skype, but I still don't have a microphone yet. We're looking forward to talking to people as soon as we can!
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