February 29, 2008

Happy Leap Day! I've always thought leap years were interesting. :)

Things have been calm relatively here in Swavesey. We had a bit of excitement yesterday when a serious grinding sound started to come from the rear driver's side (which sounded just like the brakes were metal on metal) and when I took it in I was right- I had to leave the car with them, thereby stranding us again. :) STAG had a welcome dinner last night, so I took the last bus into Cambridge at 5:30pm, and after the dinner we had to take a taxi back home. It was more interesting than that because the A14 is basically closed at night for several more days- they simply closed it, so too bad if you live in a village that has no other access. You can't go out from 9:30pm to 6am. We have no idea what they're doing, and during the day there seems to be no noticable difference. :)

This week has been fairly busy with Arena on Monday nights, which is going well. We also have the TEAM training course all day Wednesday, and home group in the evening. I have the ladies' group Thursday morning, and G has his men's group Monday morning. Our time here at STAG has been very fruitful, full of new relationships, outreach, and study. Just to give you an idea this is what we've been studying:

Arena- Mark's book about JC's life
TEAM- The letter to Colossae, and the OT guy who was swallowed by the fish
Home group- Paul's first letter to Corinth
Ladies' group- the history of Is leaving Egypt
Sundays- The second history book covering Samuel's life

If you don't regularly read the bbl or have ever considered it something which can be studied, you might be surprised. :) All this study has given us a more well rounded and better understanding of the bbl, and we've enjoyed it. The training we're receiving here has already enriched our daily lives, but will also be invaluable for us when we reach the 3rd world at some point in the future. We're still headed that way by the way- we don't know the where's and how's and when's, but that's ok. :) In light of that also I've been looking into sustainable development companies, volunteer organizations, etc, in hopes that I can find a part time position in water resource management and get some experience with that here. We'll see what happens.

G is heading out for Seattle Sunday, and he's giving his practice talk today at another office of his company here in Cambridge. I have a long list of household projects that need to be taken care of, and his being away will be a good excuse to finally get to them since we have some friends visiting at the end of March. I need to fix our toilet seat, rent a saw to cut some boards that aren't properly covering our bathtub, paint 2 rooms if it's warm enough...besides a bunch of other stuff. I'm partly putting this up here as a form of accountability- since I've told others I'm going to do it now I really have to. :)

February 22, 2008 continued

Us on a trip to Wimpole last weekend.

First off, the vet said Nelly had a fever (102.5 instead of a cat's normal 101) but that she didn't have any intestinal blockages or any other real problems, so she suspected that Nelly just has a mild flu. When I get the flu my skin is sensitive and I feel sort of stiff and stuff, and apparently so does Nelly. The vet gave her an anti-inflammatory injection to help her fever come down a bit, and said if she isn't back to normal in a day or 2 to bring her back in. So poor Nelly has been sleeping a lot, and being generally very quiet (which is usually a sign that something's up.)

"A" made it to Vienna from Belgrade yesterday, which I'm sure was a relief for all her family, and her friends. It's becoming increasingly likely that if you travel you may end up in some sort of unstable political situation in your country- scary but a real potential danger. We ourselves may someday find ourselves in a situation like that, so thanks for your pr's for A.

On a lighter note, I'm putting up here some images from a Tesco run I made last week- my first major shopping trip there since we've been back. Infuriating at first, but it quickly became unbelievably funny as I discovered products had been moved to new and completely inappropriate places. :)

#1 germ killer, right next to the salad dressing! Of course!
Why didn't I think of that?

Admit it- don't you think that the best place for veggie and meat bouillon and gravy mix is next to the cat litter? I thought you'd agree....

They recruit scanners young here- this way is seriously a lot faster,
and I wish I had an 8 or 9 year old to do this for me.

This is the trunk of our car....50% of which is taken up by this subwoofer. If it was at least to one side we could use the trunk. As it is we can't really put anything but small bags in there. :)

We saw this flashlight for sale at Home Base. I bet you didn't know that a flashlight (they call them torches) could be high velocity! It can zoom right out of your hand! :)

This is G playing our didgeridu, which arrived from Australia today!

He has a real gift with instruments- honestly I've seen him pick up about 15 instruments and play something on every single one with little to no instruction. This cool shop in Airlie Beach had customizable didgeridu (they call them didges) where they would paint the story of your travels on using Aboriginal art. In fact it's painted by Aboriginal artists. I don't quite know why here in the US we're taught that they are Aboriginies, but in Australia they are Aboriginals. So G made excellent progress playing our didge already.



Fen Drayton Nature Preserve- it's been beautiful recently, when it's not foggy that is. I try to take a bike ride out everyday, and it had been around 3ish so I could get to a good spot for sunset around 4. But the sun is setting closer to 6 these days (I'm so glad!) so I can't bike around sunset because I go to pick G up from work around 6.

There an interesting old windmill near us that was converted
into a cattery (well it's a home, with a cattery behind it).

The village of Fen Drayton has some wonderfully preserved old farms, still functioning too! This building is at least 400 years old. The village is much much smaller than Swavesey, quieter too (it's not on the way to somewhere else) and farther from the A14. If I could find a place to rent there I'd be sorely tempted to move. It's a great wee village.

I feel really guilty that I somehow lost track of my xmas pics from last year- on my computer! I recently found them when I started wondering where they were (it being xmas again and all) and I realized I've got almost a year's worth of photos that I'm behind in. Of course the fact that I'm still taking photos doesn't help either. :) I think I might have it all sorted out in a week or two. Those of you who check my phanfare images site hang tight- those empty albums are slowly getting filled. :)

It's past my bedtime, and poor Nelly's as well. G is working on refining his presentation for a practice talk so I don't know when he'll be going to bed. :)

Sad news from Merida (and pr for a friend in Serbia)

Some of you might remember that I spent a summer in Merida, Venezuela in 1998. The flight that I took from Caracas to Merida was one of the most frightening of my life- Merida is high in the Andes mountains, and the plane was small, and in order to land in Merida the pilots have to do some very unusual turns and twists. I honestly thought we would crash, despite having been warned about how dramatic the flight was.

All this to say that sadly, a plane flying that flight has crashed in the Andes mountains, and they suspect all 43 passengers and the 3 crew to be dead. Please pr for the families of the people on the plane.

I've included a news link:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/02/21/venezuela.plane/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

February 22, 2008

I haven't been feeling 100% lately- there's been some sort of weird fevery/upset stomach bug going around that I think I came down with a day or 2 ago, but I'm pretty much back to normal I think. Yesterday and today we hit the beginning of a warm spell- in the mid 50s, which has been nice. There never seems to be much going on when I'm sick, just the sort of normal routine things. But I guess every day can't be full of strange adventures, some days have to be just normal. :)

Arena started last week- Monday was our second meeting, and we've been having great discussions about what the Chrstn fth is about, and in general just chatting over a wonderful meal that the pstr's wife cooks for all 80 of us. She is amazing. The point of Arena is just to have a comfortable place to talk and discuss the sorts of questions people might have who are curious or even antagonistic towards Gd. I've enjoyed making new international friends through Arena as well. We have 3 internationals and each came with a UK friend- pr for us on Monday nights that we'd have good open discussion and people would feel comfortable enough to ask hard questions and not be afraid to disagree.

My ladies home group has been going well- yesterday was my turn to lead, and we looked at the account of passover in quite a bit of detail, which was interesting. The ladies have been a real blessing to me.

Nelly's been scratching above her eyes a bit, and it seems to be getting worse, so I think I might need to take her to the vet. She's losing a bit of fur above her eyes (it was always thin but it's noticably worse) from scratching there. She's been a bit more clingy than usual too, and more vocal- she's meowing at one of us all day as if she wants something, but we can't always figure out what it is that she might want. I'm hoping to make an appointment for her today.

On the topic of health, I discovered that we're supposed to go down to the local doctor's office (which they call the Surgery here) to register, because each surgery gets funding based on how many people are registered there. I guess we'll see how that goes. :) There's a local surgery in almost every village, and Swavesey's looks like someone's house. :) I'll let you know how our progress into the UK health system goes.

G is travelling to Seattle March 2 to present a paper that he wrote, on the topic of his dissertation basically. The paper was highly rated, and he's giving a big presentation on it at the conference in Seattle. He'll also be visiting XS's Redmond office, and meeting with some of the people there that he works with over the internet. It should be exciting for him, although I'll be by myself for 5 whole days....:) Seriously we've never been apart more than a week since we got married. I was joking with him that I might fly off to some exotic locale in Europe while he's gone (like somewhere warm) but I have to send in my passport with this provisional drivers' licence application here, so I might have to fly off to somewhere in the UK instead. Or maybe just drive. :) We have some friends coming Easter week and maybe I'll just use the time G's gone to paint (if it's warm enough) and finish off those projects. Or maybe I'll spend some time in London...who knows. :)

A bonus about G going to Seattle is that I can get him to bring some stuff back for me from the US! Especially Red Hot, and some other various things that it's hard to get here. It was so nice to bring some of our things from storage in A2, it makes our cottage feel more homey!

February 18, 2008

It's been very cold in our cottage of late. Although it's not been all that cold, it has been in the upper 30s at night, in fact last night we had a very hard frost even. The radiators in our house don't seem to be distributing heat very well, and mostly our house is at about 50 during the day, and who knows what at night. We bought a little space air heater that helps, but it only heats one room, so if I need to leave our living room for any reason it's much colder wherever I go in the house. So although it's warmer here in general, inside it feels colder than Michigan. :) I'm thinking of starting a fire or something!

Our car insurance paper finally came, so now we can take care of that tax disc. :)

Melbourne leg of our Oz trip

We spent a few days with Leslie and Noella in Melbourne- Noella was a roommate of mine when she was studying cello performance at UM. She moved to Melbourne with her husband Leslie when he took a professor job at a university there- he is a Chem E too actually. We had such a good time there hanging out with them. Besides seeing some of Melbourne we hiked in some local mountains, and drove out to Phillip Island which is famous for the colony of Little Penguins that live there. They are so cute- you aren't allowed to take pictures of them unfortunately.

Melbourne is a different sort of city than Sydney- it's more industrial, and has more of a blue collar feel. Sydney seems very modern, very up-to-date, with high quality public transit, and a very clean look. Melbourne looks a bit older, and in fact reminded me in some ways of Pitsburgh, where Sydney was more like San Francisco. An interesting city all the same.

Melbourne from one of the many bridges over the Yarra River, which sort of bisects the city.

We saw lots of street artists- this guy was quite good.

Noella took us on some amazing trails- this is a eucalyptus rainforest. It was amazing.

On our way to the rainforest we stopped in a few quaint little towns and on a fence row we found a bunch of blackberry plants. So we started picking of course! It's a bit early in the season (you can see most of the berries aren't ripe).

Another place we went hiking- it was very dry here.

Eucalyptus trees are so interesting- they are non-deciduous, like pine trees, in that they don't lose their leaves every year. They have very thick, tough sort of leaves with a waxy coating. But their bark sort of peels off in big long pieces and falls off. I think it is a way of returning nutrients from the bark to the soil where they can be reprocessed and then absorbed by the tree in a way that it can use more effectively.

We stopped here at Cape Wollemai on the way to see the Little Penguins on Phillip Island.

George and Noella a few steps ahead of me on the beach.

There were these people fishing right on the beach- considering how high the surf was I don't know what was there to catch, but apparently something. :)

These are the little penguins! (courtesy of Pete and Barbara's Penguin Pages)

Little penguins are only 17 inches tall, and they are unique because they live in these sandy burrows that they dig into the sand dunes along the coast of Australia, at Phillip Island. There are about 1500 that live there, and they congregate on the beach after sunset and run fast across the beach (they're most vulnerable on the beach) as fast as their little legs can carry them, and then they walk to their burrows! Sometimes they have to walk over a mile! They are so cute. Definitely recommend seeing them if you can.

G drinking his very first "I cut open this coconut myself" coconut juice. :)

We saw these cool Moon Jellies at the aquarium in Melbourne- the aquarium was unfortunately very small and overpriced. I don't recommend it unless you get some sort of discount.

And this strange giant jellyfish.

We also saw these great white sharks at the aquarium- they're just babies really, but still scary looking.

The aquarium has a neat underwater walkway so you can see all the big sharks and things swimming around.

This looks like a pretty plain picture of G drinking tea right?

Well, this isn't tea, it's actually Weasel Coffee. Noella brought some back from Vietnam recently and in case you haven't heard the strange tale of Weasel coffee let me share it with you. So in Vietnam and Indonesia there's a creature called a Civet. It eats coffee berries, which are a bit like cherries- they're red and they have a pit (what we call a coffee bean.) The civets eat the best berries, and depending on the type of civet they either regurgitate the pits or they poop them out. Either way, people in villages collect these pits, and they are then sanitized and made into coffee beans the way we know them. Yum. Anyway given the opportunity to try some of this stuff we just couldn't resist. It tasted like plain old coffee to me but I'm not a coffee drinker.

Melbourne has some interesting graffitti, and some very talented graffiti artists.

We flew from Melbourne back to Sydney and the approach way flew right over the Opera House!

We decided to fly from Melbourne the same day as our flight from Sydney back to the US was leaving. The Melbourne flight was early in the day, and the San Francisco flight was at around 4. Unfortunately Virgin Blue canceled the flight we were scheduled to take from Melbourne to Sydney, and put us on it's later flight, which made it too close a call for us to get to the San Fran flight. So we had this interesting and exciting airport shuffle- first we checked our bags in with Virgin Blue, then the woman told us to go to the United counter and see if they could get us on one of their flights to Sydney so we wouldn't miss ours. So off we went, and they said they could do that, but needed all of our luggage. So we went back, had to go down to a special door while the Virgin Blue counter rep went and found our luggage. Then we took it to the United counter, who told us that actually since our flight to Sydney wasn't with United technically they wouldn't get paid for that leg. To which we responded that had we been told that the first time we wouldn't have had to go dig our bags out and everything else. They finally let us take the United flight, and we were then flagged by the computer for a random luggage search. Mind you we were cutting it close already. After that we hurried off to the gate area, and tried to get some food before we went through the security AGAIN. But the woman didn't know how to work a credit card machine. Finally we had to cancel our order, hurry through security, and then as we were checking in we got selected for ANOTHER search. Finally we made it to the plane. :)

Obviously we got back to Detroit just fine. :) But by the time we made it back to London I was starting to feel like a well seasoned cast iron skillet- I felt like we'd been put through the fire and cooked so well that I feel just as at home in an airport as in my own bed. :)

Whitsunday Islands photos

This is my 100th blog, and I'm using it to put up my recently processed pictures of the Whitsunday Islands. I can't believe I've written 100 blogs! I'm enjoying writing and keeping a blog of our adventures here, and I am glad that it helps all of you to keep track of what is going on with us. It's interesting that being here in the UK I'm more likely to write about our daily lives than I would have been in the US- in that way all of you have a better idea what our lives are like than perhaps you could have gotten from seeing us regularly in the US. You might consider keeping blogs yourself for that reason- I've found that it fosters and maintains a deeper level of relationships.

Back to the photos I've been promising. :)

Looking out from the ship- that's me in the white shirt

Whitehaven Beach, one of the most famous beaches in the Whitsunday Islands. The sand is incredibly white, and has a higher silica content so is particularly bad for ships (it gets into the motors and everything else.) This view is from a lookout point.

On the beach

Me on the beach- contrary to normal practice I had on pants and a sunhat and everything else. I hate sunburn and I'm not a tan seeker- I want my skin to last as long as possible. :)

G on the beach.

Our ship, the Enid.

The sea eagle that I mentioned Jonny whistled for- I caught him right in mid grab.

A reef shark- there were a few that were about 5 or 6 feet long. They are terrified of people, so no Jaws worries. :)

Some of our fellow cruise people- we looked just like them though whenever we went snorkeling because we had to wear those suits to protect us from very lethal jellyfish. There's a type that can kill you in 3 minutes of being stung. We didn't see any of that type fortunately, just little relatively harmless ones. G thinks he got stung on his lower back getting into the small boat to take us back out to the Enid from the beach.

Interesting coral on the beach.

This was the teeny stuffy room we stayed in- see the previous Whitsundays blog for more info. :)

The main hallway of the ship. People slept to the left and right.

That's Jonny out on the prow while we were sailing along- you can see the ship is canted to the right because of the huge sail. He just loved it.

Charles, Jonny, and Ben.

We loved the Whitsundays and if I ever had a chance to sail with Jonny again I would do it. He's a bit rough at first but worth getting to know and an amazing man.

February 13, 2008

Just now I made the nastiest food ever for dinner- and let me tell you it was not on purpose. I don't really like cooking, and this is why- you spend all that time preparing stuff, and then something goes wrong and it's all ruined. I hate that. :)

Today I was making stirfry and I was going to put in this Chinese black bean sauce that we got from the Chinese market. Well somehow I misread the teeny directions that said to put in 1 TBSP and I put the whole jar in. That's right, the whole jar. Needless to say we couldn't eat it- it was like pure salt. It was awful.

I wish I could say I made something else for dinner, but you know, at that point I just gave up. It took me an hour to make what I made as it was, and I decided to have half a pummelo (like a big grapefruit) and call it a day. Poor G might be hungry, but like a thoughtful husband he's not complaining. He had the other half of the pummelo. :)

I've been spending a lot of time processing photos, so for those of you not on facebook the photos will start appearing on the blog soon. :)

February 12, 2008

I'm a wee bit late, but Xin Nian Kuai Le to those of you who know what that means. :) For the rest of you, Feb 7 is Lunar New Year! Happy New Year! :) We ate jiaotze (dumplings) and red bean buns in celebration of the lunar new year. Unfortunately we had a meeting Sunday evening so we couldn't go into London's Chinatown to celebrate and see the fireworks and things there. We thought of all our Chinese friends and wished we were celebrating with them! This year is the Year of the Rat.

Sometimes it's easy to forget how different the systems are here in the UK now that we've been here for 6 months. But buying the new car reminded me just how different things are. I thought some of you might find it interesting to know what buying a new car (and scrapping an old one) looks like here.

Let me start at the beginning. :) The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) is responsible for making sure that you pay your road tax. The road tax, also called your Tax Disc, doesn't have to be paid if your car is not being driven (they call that being "off road"). They call that SORN (Statutory Off Road Notification). Anyway, ordinarily you have to pay a road tax based on the size of your engine, with larger engines having a larger tax since they pollute more. Here's a little chart for private vehicles from www.direct.gov.uk:

Engine size (cc)	12 months rate	6 months rate
Not over 1549	£115.00	£63.25
Over 1549	£180.00	£99.00

Something might strike you about this chart...1549cc is 1.549 L. That's right, if your car has an engine over 1.549 L, you have to pay way more tax. Our Megane was unusual in that it had a 2.0 L engine. Our new car, unfortunately has 1.590L, wow, almost a 1.6L! :) In London recently they've upped the London tax to double it for SUVs and cars that pollute more. So our road tax will be 180 pounds- that's roughly $360 right now. Yikes. If you sell the car or take it off road you can get the tax you paid refunded, which we did on the Megane.

Now, I've mentioned the whole MOT thing before- every car has to have an MOT done yearly. There seems to be some debate, with some people being convinced by the government's strategy to make people think it makes the roads safer by keeping old cars off. Unfortunately the MOT doesn't do a very thorough check. Anyway our new car was MOT'd as they call it 2 weeks ago so we're good.

Every vehicle has a Registration Document called a V5. It is like an 11x17 page folded in half, with writing on all 4 sides and many different boxes, in different colors. When you buy a car, the seller takes half of the document and sends it in to notify the DVLA that there's been a sale. By the way, there's no sales tax on used cars. They give you the other half of the document. Then the DVLA sends you a new one.

Now, back to the Tax Disc- you can pay for your Tax Disc at a post office, or online. But either way you can't pay until you can show proof of insurance. We called our insurance company to let them know our old car was scrapped, and we have to send them back the original insurance letter. They put our new car on the policy, and are sending us a new document. When that gets here, we can take that down to the post office and get the tax disc.

You might be wondering why it's called a tax disc. :) Because it's shaped like a disc of course! They give you this minidisc sized and shaped piece of thin paper that slides into a carrier on the left lower corner of your windshield, as proof that you've paid. I think eventually they'll stop sending the discs because there's no point anymore- people can pay online and stuff and it doesn't help enforcement.

courtesy of the Motoring Photo Library.

That PY number is the car's plate number, which is called the Registration Number here. The plate stays with the car forever. The 160 is the amount of tax paid. There's some other info on there but I don't know what it's for. :)

Back to scrapping the car- the agency that does that has to take your registration document and send it to the DVLA letting them know the car was scrapped. Only then are you considered legally freed from owing tax on it. :)

So- now you know as much as I do about the vehicle registration process here- I hope it was interesting. :)

February 11, 2008

Today, I have learned to like Marmite. I got home from picking up our new car (which drives like a dream- I love it already) and as I was making a Britishy style sandwich I remembered that I had a teeny bottle of Marmite in the fridge for visitors to try. Having tried Marmite before, and not being overly fond of the flavor, I decided that today was the day to start liking Marmite.

Britons tend to either love or hate Marmite- a bit like Southeast Asians and durian, a rotting flesh smelling fruit native to that region. Whether they love it or hate it, Marmite is iconically British. Not only that but it is quite good for you- it is packed with B vitamins, Niacin, and other very good vitamins. It's also a good product because it essentially uses what was a useless byproduct of the brewing industry, that being yeast extract.

Quoting from www.ilovemarmite.com:

"Marmite is dark brown-colored savory spread made from the yeast that is a by-product of the brewing industry. It has a very strong, slightly salty flavor. It is definitely a love-it-or-hate-it type of food.

It usually comes in small (2-5 inches high) bulb-shaped glass jars with a distinctive yellow lid. You can also find individual portion sized Marmite in hotels and cafes and for the really adventurist, you can find large plastic tubs for the catering industry.

Children in Britain are generally fed it from the time they are weaned, and most never grow out of it. It has a high B-vitamin content, as well as riboflavin and niacin—and as such is very healthy. (The vitamin-B complex helps prevent anemia.)

Marmite may be stored at room temperature, even after the jar has been opened. Large jars will last months—even years—without any spoilage.

The most common use is as a spread on toast or in sandwiches. Note: it is generally spread very thinly because of its strong flavor—don't use it like jam."

I saw some Kiwis (the self styled name for New Zealanders) in Oz (the self titled name for Australia) eating Marmite on sandwiches, so I put just a little on my sandwich. And you know what? I liked it. Being predisposed to like it I shouldn't have been surprised, but I found that I liked it more than I had anticipated (which is generally the case with new foods for me, and a main reason why I keep trying things I think I won't like.) From an American point of view it looks a bit like thick dark brown caramel-like boullion. I think some people use it in soups in fact. It has a tangy, strong flavor, slightly salty, and tastes like concentrated vegetable paste. Sorry if it doesn't sound very tasty. :)

The same website lists the following as the ingredients:

• Yeast Extract
• Salt
• Vegetable Extract
• Vitamin: Niacin
• Spices
• Vitamins: B1, B2, Folic Acid, B12

Not much- mostly yeast extract.

Anyway it's apparently also good on crackers with strong cheese, which I might try next. I'm going to keep putting it on my sandwiches and finding other uses for it. If you are inspired to try some, you can buy it in the International aisle at Meijer, and Hillards also has it in Ann Arbor. Maybe get a couple of people together and buy a small jar and try it- it's a bit expensive if you don't like it, and you're stuck with a jar unless you determine to eat it all.

You can barely see the marmite on this piece of toast (courtesy of Kuri in Japan), it's the slightly wet looking brown stuff under the guacamole. :)

In other news, I figured out today what Nelly's been up to being outside for hours at a time- she is basking in the sun, not far from "her" compost pile. :) Just sitting there enjoying the warm sun, keeping away cat fiend, and in general enjoying her life as a cat and her ability to go outside again after 4 weeks in an apartment.

We had our Arena leaders meeting last night, and they always ask you to go around and say something about yourself right? There is generally too much to say about what I spend my time doing, so I'm always at a loss. But they have this interesting phrase here that they politely use to describe a wife who doesn't have children and doesn't have a formal job- they call that being a "lady of leisure." When I first heard that I thought the person was joking- what sorts of ideas about that phrase come to your mind? I couldn't help but think of those saloon girls in the wild West. :) Obviously the speaker wasn't implying any such thing, but I thought it was funny anyway. :) They in general try to avoid the title "housewife" actually, because I think people feel put down by it in a culture where most couples have 2 income earners. Some American women feel that way too- there is certainly nothing less valuable about being a housewife I think, but some people don't feel that way.

I got to thinking about the whole "lady of leisure" idea- it makes it sound like I don't have to do anything at all, as if all day long everyday I just wander around with no responsibilities and sort of goof off I guess. I started thinking about my "leisure" this past week (5 days I guess since we've been back), which consisted in part of the following:

-unpacking and putting away everything in 5 suitcases
-washing 6 loads of laundry,
-all day rotation of 6 loads of laundry on the radiators to get them all dry
-folding of 6 loads of laundry (thankfully no ironing- they have to be bad for me to pull that thing out)
-putting away all 6 loads of laundry
-loading and unloading the dishwasher 4 times
-handwashing and scrubbing quite a few dishes that couldn't be washed in the dishwasher
-hand scrubbing the bathroom sink, toilet, and bathtub
-hand washing most of the window sills in the house
-vacuuming the entire house
-taking out the duvet to shake out the dust
-sterilizing all the kitchen counters
-emptying and hand cleaning 2 cat litter boxes with boiling hot water and bleach
-pruning most of the garden plants
-digging out all the weeds with a hand trowel
-spending 2 hours everyday looking for cars on autotrader and ebay
-cooking dinner everyday

Whew! That is quite a bit of work. When I thought about all that stuff, I was reminded why G and I decided on this system where I would essentially stay home and take care of most of the household running- it takes a lot of time to do all of that stuff, and I would rather take care of it while G's at work so that we can enjoy our time together in the evenings. It's simply more efficient, and efficiency is high on my list of values. :) That said, now that it's the season for gardening I'm keeping an eye open for some volunteer gardening positions or something part time at one of the big estates around here- gardening never really feels like work to me. :) I suppose if I didn't mind things being dirty I would have a lot more free time, but I like things to be fairly clean, neat, and tidy and that takes time to do everyday. I don't necessarily enjoy the process, but I like the results. :)

The weather has been in the 50s and sunny for the past 3 days- it sure seems like spring is here to stay. I hope it is- I'm enjoying the nice sunny days everyday and biking on the various paths around Swavesey. Even with all this nice weather here we haven't forgotten you all in Michigan- be careful walking on the sidewalks, and look out for ice! (Living Proof friends we especially don't want to hear of any icy slip and fall accidents- be careful and take care of yourselves!)

Finally a new car!

After a nice walk at Anglesey Abbey we went to check out a car that we'd seen on AutoTrader. We've looked at tons of different cars on there, but most of the good ones in our price range have already been sold by the time we call. We had a lovely visit with Dave and his wife who were selling their son's car because he now lives in London. They are such a nice and friendly couple- we may get a chance to get to know them better- they don't live too far away, and it would be nice to be able to have some new friends. The car is perfect for our needs- in fact a little overboard as far as the sound system goes, because it has a 10 disc Sony CD changer with 2 crazy speakers and a subwoofer in the trunk! I think the subwoofer is going to have to go- there's no space in the trunk with that thing in there. :) We might be able to make some decent money selling that thing- that would be an added bonus. :)

Here are a few pictures from the website of our new car-we'll be picking up Monday (he wanted cash and we can't take that much out of an ATM.)



It's a 1995 Honda Civic hatchback, it has about 93,000 miles on it. Cars seem to last a long time here since they don't salt the roads and the winters are so mild. I've heard good things about Hondas, and we are so thankful to find such a good car, well below what we could afford to pay, on basically the first try since we've been back. Thank you those of you who have been pring for our car issue- we appreciate it!

February 9, 2008

We are finally settled back in here in Swavesey, and mostly over the jetlag. We picked Nelly up from our kind friends who were watching her for us Thursday night- she was a bit confused and ran away and hid when we first came to visit their place, and looked a bit upset, but as we stayed and chatted she was ok. It was interesting bringing her back home because she barely meowed the entire way home, except on the roundabouts which she particularly seems to dislike. But usually when we take her somewhere she meows piteously the whole way there and back. :) So when we put her down in the house and opened her little cat carrier door she was like "Hey! I'm back home again!" And she wandered all over the house sniffing everything, and remembering where things were. That night she woke me up twice in the middle of the night rubbing my face and wanting me to pet her- awww. :) So far she's adjusted right back to our usual routines, right down to eating her normal cat food (our friends couldn't get her to eat that food and were afraid she'd starve when she didn't eat for a few days, so they'd been giving her wet food everyday.) Yesterday we went for a little walk outside and she seriously sniffed every single plant in sight- she walked over everything, checked out the compost, and has been going outside for hours at a time guarding the compost and defending her territory from cat fiend, who's audacity knows no bounds- he already came in the cat flap and had to be chased off.

It's strange at first, one's home being in another country. I laughed when we opened the door to the cottage- this is what we saw:


The Royal Mail works a little differently than the US mail. No matter whose name is on a piece of mail, it must be delivered to the address on the piece. Because this is a rental property, many people have lived here, which is a big pain for us. If you want to have the mail held you can do that, but they can only hold the mail for your name. Which of course doesn't help us since we're getting mail for 5 different people, if not more. Half of this mail wasn't even addressed to us! Among the pile were a few bills that needed to be paid, but fortunately nothing dramatic.

Naturally the cottage had 6 weeks of dust on everything, and after picking up the mail I started cleaning. I'm allergic to dust, so I generally vacuum twice a week, and since we don't have hot air heating that seems to keep the dust down. Anyway after vacuuming the entire place, sorting through the mail, cleaning the bathrooms, counters, shelves, etc things are back to normal and homey again. :)

I don't know if you're aware of this, but every country has it's own smell. I have a sensitive nose, and smells really strike me when I'm going to a new place. The funny thing about coming back to England was recognizing the "England smell" when we got back, but even funnier was coming back to our cottage and having the place that we think of as home smell like England too! Unfortunately with it being winter in Michigan there wasn't much to smell, although I did notice the different smells when we first got back there.

Believe it or not it's supposed to be in the 50s this week- global warming has had a major impact on weather here, and Cambridgeshire has gotten progressively earlier springs. 20 years ago lakes around here used to freeze over in the winter, but not anymore. Locals are complaining that it's just too early for flowers to be blooming- imagine how surprised we'd all be if there were flowers in February and leaves coming out in March! My flowers are all still blooming outside, and now I have loads of bulbs and things growing and blooming as well. It just seems strange to me, coming from Michigan, that it should be so warm. I'll be needing to do a spring mulching of the garden soon before the plants get too big.

Please pr for us regarding our car situation- we're looking around, but the problem with not having a car is that we can't go anywhere in the evenings or on Sunday, which makes it basically impossible to get to chch or our home group, or any other evening event. The buses simply don't run then. We're helping with a 5 week class that stag is having every Monday night which is a sort of introduction to chrstn faith for those who are interested in knowing more about it- we will be taking the international table. But it's a bit hard to get home on Monday nights without a car, and most folks don't live in our direction (and many people feel that we live a long way out so I feel like I'm imposing getting a ride.) We're renting a car for 2 days to go round and check out some used cars in our price range- Ld willing we'll have one this weekend.

I wish I could send some of this gorgeous sunshine your way! It feels so cheery and spring-like today- I think we're going to go out and walk around at some of the manor houses today and just enjoy the "fine weather."