What a Day...

It all began last night around 1:45am when we realized that our jet lag had finally caught up to us. We weren't tired at all. So we decided to call and check on our puppy. We miss him really bad already. Actually we miss all our animals already! Quick pictorial of the pets we left behind:

I mean, how could you not love this face? Matt is not Rudy's biggest fan, but Rudy still loved to cuddle on Matt anyway...even we he had just rolled in poop. (Rudy rolled in poop, not Matt!)

Sweet girl, Lexi. She was warming herself in the sunlight on our floor the day before we left. Poor thing is old, I mean real old. But all dogs go to heaven, right?

Here is our awesome doggie, Bullitt. Matt is having serious withdrawls without him. As a proud parent, I must say, he is very handsome. We know Mama and Papa Grant are taking good care of him though. Hopefully he is being a good buddy for Grandma LeMaster.

So, back to the story...we couldn't sleep. We have been so tired the past 2 nights that we failed to realize, our bed is not comfortable. At all. In fact, I think we have bed sores and bruises from the springs sticking into us. Finally, we decided we had better sleep or else we would be totally thrown off. I just had to suck it up because I had a reality check and thought, 'There are kids in Africa sleeping on a dirt floor.' Long story short, once we fell asleep, it was apparently deep. Woke up around 11:15am. Day was half wasted! Moreover, the world had gone on without us because we woke up to many sounds: children screaming at the daycare behind our flat, construction drilling and hammering on the unit above us, the trash (excuse me "rubbish") being collected, etc. Not a pleasant alarm clock.

However, the day did get better. We had lunch in a church graveyard near King's College (see attached location.) We got to listen to this hilarious bunch of British guys playing music near the market. They were like a new Mumford & Sons mixed with Bob Dylan. Literally, the accordion player (yes, accordion) looked just like a young Bob Dylan. Wish I had my camera so I could have attached some video. It was so funny. The rest of the afternoon was also productive - got British T-Mobile cell phones, picked up a few more groceries, purchased our new duvets/sheets from Tesco online, and bought Matt's gown. For those of you that don't know, the gown is a must for all Cambridge students. I fondly call it the "Harry Potter robe." It basically looks like a graduation gown, and the students have to wear it for formal pictures, some fancy dinners, the May Balls (explanation at a later date on those), and graduation. They are ridiculously expensive, Matt's was used and still cost 50GBP, or $78. New ones are double that. For something they will use like 4 times, if they are lucky. Whatever, our future children can play HP dress up with it!

Finally, we got home this evening and decided to attempt some laundry...remember the world's tiniest washer? Well, size was obviously no object. The thing can make some bubbles.

I got worried once the suds filled the washer this much. I didn't put any clothes in because I wanted to run a cycle to clean it out first. 

Other thing that worried me was that we didn't buy the right detergent. We bought stain remover, which looks exactly like liquid detergent but isn't, and fabric softener. So those suds were from just the "booster" stain remover. Let me just show you another picture to illustrate how intimidating this thing is, despite its size...

The dial is completely unfamiliar, with a crazy number-coded system. No way to actually choose the temperature or soil level. The indicated temperatures are in Celsius, of course, so I chose the lowest number for the coldest water. That's about as much as I could figure out. There are also 3 trays for different types of detergent. 

I feel like I'm a pretty smart person, at least averagely intelligent, and this thing stumped me. There is no manual to be found, so I googled a bunch of questions to figure it out. "Where do you put detergent in a UK washer?" helped a little bit. Even my engineer husband was confused! Moral of the story, we put our towels in there once we drained it enough to open the door without flooding the kitchen floor. Matt hung up our clothesline outside, and the towels are now drying out there! Whew!

Tonight's menu=pasta, so we will attempt the stove top for the first time. Hope it works because I'm hungry! haha. I guess I will leave you with one final picture of the view from our kitchen window toward our backyard area. It is my favorite spot so far. Looks very quintessentially English. I will try to post tomorrow about some other definitively English things - vocabulary differences, etc. Goodnight! Well, good afternoon to you, I guess!

Some Progress...

I just couldn't muster the strength to get to another post last night. We made our initial trip to the grocery store, and let me just say, we will be ordering our groceries online from now on. First off, we went the wrong way to get there, so it took like 30 minutes. We only got 6 bags, for a total of roughly $50US, and then we carried them the short way back- which still took 20 minutes. It's just not efficient! Haha. But we now have a few staples for the next couple of meals. We chuckled when we bought "NYC Bagels." It would be like us buying "English Breakfast Tea" in the States. Funny how just because it says a different country or city, we think it's cooler. Then after all that hauling of food, we decided that we wanted to go out to eat instead of cook any of the food we just bought. Typical. We mostly just didn't want to have to clean up because we forgot to buy a dish sponge, and we don't have a dishwasher.

Anyway, we slept for about 10 hours last night, so we should be mostly caught up. Matthew got up this morning to go on a tour of a biotech company outside Cambridge. One of his classmates is the former COO of this company (Sagentia), so the students who are in town got to go visit. I decided that while he was gone, I would take some pics of the flat to share with you all. I apologize for their non-edited nature, and the messiness...haven't had time to fully unpack yet. Hope you enjoy! More pictures from around town and outside will come next. Here goes the virtual tour:

Thought I should show the only way we got packed in 2 suitcases a piece: space bags. This one had all of Matt's dress shirts and a couple sweaters in it. (These first 2 pics are from when we were still in OK. I miss our comfy/cute bed.)

Can't believe how condensed it actually made the clothes. Ended up with a little extra room in our suitcases, but no more weight allowance. Good thing there was already a vacuum here at our new home so we can get all these clothes back to the States!

Ok, here is what it looks like when you walk in our front door. The door on the right leads to the 'guest bedroom' with a twin bed. The lefthand door is the one to our room.

Guest bedroom= good news for those of you who are coming to visit! No paying for a hotel! Nice little dresser thing too.

Our bedroom with a nice little dresser and a closet (see below.) Don't know why the light shade is crooked, but it won't straighten. It's driving my obsessive compulsive side crazy. Also, that duvet cover will be going as soon as I can find a new cheap one.

Good size closet (only a few missing doorknobs) and handy shelves next to it.

View to the left when you walk into our front door. Bathroom on left, living through the middle, and crazy closet thing to right.

Bigger than our bathroom in Stillwater. Came complete with a scale so I can tell how much weight I lose from eating minimal food and walking all the time.

Teeny tiny medicine cabinet and the only mirror in the whole place.

Here is the crazy closet thingy. Sorry the pic is dark, but there is our little freezer. In the corner is the vacuum. This little room will also be good for storing our luggage once it is emptied.

Here is our living room. Nice couple of love seats. Cushions are a tad-bit flat, but clean nonetheless. Nice desk for Matt to study. Good dining table with leftover crayon marks from the little family that lived here before. 2 bookcases.

View looking from the other end of the living room. Kitchen is off to the right. Can't remember if I mentioned this before, but there was an iron and board here. We used it last night to iron Matt's suit for the company tour, but he misread the email, and the attire was casual. Oh well, next time the suit will be ready!

Don't know if you can tell what this is, but it is a giant spider on the ceiling above one of the couches. It has definitely caught another bug, and I am too afraid to knock it down to kill it. Waiting til Matt gets home to take care of that one. I'll be sitting on the other couch for now.

Kitchen! Nicely stocked like a time share with a few plates, silverware, pans, skillet, etc. I need to buy a cookie sheet so I can make cookies and so we can bake the frozen pizzas we bought!

World's tiniest washer. No dryer, so we need to buy a clothes line and pins. Haven't figured out how we will ever get our clothes clean since it is usually raining. Guess we will string them up inside. Notice the nice toaster and kettle. Those were a couple of unexpected happy surprises. Matt can now have instant decaf coffee!

World's tiniest "cooker," stove/oven combo. I put a quart size baggie on the top there to give you an idea of scale. Definitely smaller than the one in Stillwater, but as long as it cooks our food, we are better off than 90% of the rest of the world. (*I made that statistic up, but I want to make sure I don't come off as ungrateful. This humble abode would be 5 star luxury for most of the 6 billion people on earth. I don't know why we have been so blessed!)

View from the kitchen to our little back patio. It's so nice to be on the first floor and to have a cute little vista to nature! Tons of really chubby squirrels and huge pigeons have come to visit already. I feel like Snow White. Just waiting to see some bunnies so I can start singing "Whistle While You Work."

Dorm size fridge and hot water heater above. Kind of scared of the heater because it's in Celsius, so I have no idea how hot the water is. All I know is that my shower was warm, and that's all that matters to me!

View toward our flat from outside on the back patio. It's a good size for a grill. Maybe I'll find a cheap one.

And finally, the other part of the patio. That's the kitchen window there.

We Made It!

It hasn't sunk in yet, but we are indeed in our new home!!! All in all, things went rather smoothly. Considering it feels like 6:30am to our bodies when it's actually 12:30pm according to the clock, we are surprisingly feeling pretty good too. I think we may need a short nap before hitting the town to run our first errands so I might work up the energy to do a longer post later tonight (with pictures if I can figure that out.) Here are the highlights for you... Checked our 4 bags weighing at or around 50 pounds a piece for a grand total of $120 in baggage fees. Thanks American Airlines. Made our connection in Chicago, no problem. Left US soil and won't step foot on it again until March. Had a pretty uneventful 8 hour flight, although I was praying pretty hard around the time we were mid-Atlantic. Had some pretty bumpy air that encouraged me to repeat, "Please Lord, carry this plane to solid ground" about a million times in my head. Got through customs and got all 200 pounds of luggage plus carry-ons corralled. Then the fun began. Matt's luggage handles wouldn't extend all the way. The train station at King's Cross was under construction. It's somehow like 80 degrees and sunny in typically dreary ol' England, so by the time we got to our flat, we were both drenched in sweat. Time from airport to tube to train to taxi to flat: somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 hours. But, overall, a very successful day. Our apartment is bigger than anticipated with more amenities (like wifi) than anticipated. We are on the adventure of a lifetime that God has so perfectly orchestrated so far! There will be ups and downs, but like my grandma reminded me before we left, we will try not to sweat the small stuff. Thank you all for your prayers. Pictures to come ASAP. Thanks for taking an interest in our lives and spending the time to keep up to date on the everyday happenings.