Back at it

Well, so much for the New Year's Resolution to post once a week. We did get four in for January, so I guess that should count for something. I should have known that with heading into my busy season it wasn't going to happen. Anyway, we're back, and it is probably a good thing that we haven't been writing, because as you'll soon see, we've had a pretty boring 3 weeks.

Visitors

First, we had some friends (Jason and Leesa Potnick) come over from Dallas. It was Jason's birthday and they had miles, so they came over to see London for a few days. They mostly went out and saw the city on their own, but we did join them for a service in Westminster Abbey, which was very cool (and they don't charge if you go to a service!!) It was great to have them here, and we loved getting all the news about church and other things from home. They were even kind enough to bring over some precious peanut butter and some Saltines! We still have rooms available over the next 12 months, so call to make your reservation...

I Wanna Join the Circus

So for as long as I can remember, I've wanted to go see Cirque du Soleil. That kind of stuff amazes me. They came to Dallas once and I was pretty tempted when in Vegas, but it has always been so expensive that we've had trouble justifying it. Well, they were coming to London, so we thought we'd at least look to see how much tickets were. Turns out the nose-bleeds were very cheap - like less than 50% of what we'd have paid back home, so we jumped on it. The seats were high, and partially obstructed by a cross bar, but it was still amazing. It is hard to describe if you haven't seen it, but it was just incredible to see what the human body is capable of. We thought it was really amazing what you could do with a jump rope! Next time we have a chance to see them, I don't think we'll question the cost.

Customer Service Nightmare

So literally the day before Jason and Leesa came, Jenna was trying to do some last minute cleaning, including some laundry. Jenna called me at work to say that the washing machine was not working. I came home and did the manly thing - pulled it out and pretended to know what was wrong and how to fix it. When staring at it didn't work, we called the landlord and he called to set up service on it right away. This was on Thursday, and we got an appointment for the following Wednesday.

The guy shows up and fiddles for a while, coming to the conclusion that the motor is out (this was brand new when we moved in five months ago - we need to start buying American). Of course, he doesn't have a motor with him. "It's going to be a week." The next Wednesday, another guy comes out and replaces the motor, but informs us that the module (what the heck is a module!?) is also broken. Of course, he doesn't have a module. "We can get back out there on Monday". Monday morning we get a call that due to adverse weather (see below), they can't make it and we need to reschedule for Friday. Today (Friday), we get a call saying that the repairman scheduled for us quit without notice, so we have to be rescheduled for next week.

Needless to say, this has been a pretty big deal. I have made no less than 3 trips to the store for new underwear, and tomorrow we are finally breaking down and I will be making my first ever trip to the laundromat. We had heard that customer service over here was terrible, and based on our first experience, we have to wholeheartedly agree.

Snow Day

Although London is north of the US, and gets a lot of precipitation, it very rarely snows here. So, when we got 7 inches last Monday, it was the most snow the city had seen in 18 years, and everything literally shut down. I hear that this actually made the news back home, too. I showed up to the train station to find out that 1) no trains were running; 2) only 1 of the 11 Tube lines was running; and 3) that all of the cabs that would normally service my area were already headed downtown. Even the London Buses, which have not stopped running "in living memory" - including the "Blitz" of 1940 - were not in service due to adverse weather.

Since I'm in the middle of Busy Season and had a deadline this week, I didn't have the luxury of taking the day off, and in order to do any work from home, I first needed to grab a few things from the office. I literally had no choice but to walk. Luckily, my client's office is on the one Tube line that was running, so I didn't have to walk all the way - just 3.5 miles. Through the snow. In my dress shoes. With my 20 pound laptop backpack. Uphill both ways.

I left the flat at 7:15. When I arrived at the office at 9:45 (normal commute is 40 min), I was told that I was lucky I didn't get there much later, because everyone was leaving and they were closing up at 10:00. So, I basically packed up a few things that I needed and headed back out the door. Luckily, I was able to catch a cab from the city (after an hour wait), so at least I didn't have to walk back home. Anyway, it was a little bit of an annoyance, but makes for a good story, and it was nice to be able to work from home at a time of the year when I normally spend more than 12 hours a day behind my desk.  Here are a few pics:

"The Red Van" outside our house

Another unfortunate soul who had to walk in to the city with me

A picture from the office looking down on Golden Square - Not Golden today!!

Jenna's Trip

I (Jenna) am getting ready to head back to the States in the next week. I am so excited to see all my family and friends! I will get to be a bridesmaid in my friend Kelsey's wedding, where I will get to see "the girls" from school. I will then head to Omaha with my Mom for a day to see Hesse and Cobi, my brother and sister-in-law (and their dog Dubs). Then my Mom and I are heading out to San Diego to see Krissa and J.J., my sister and brother-in-law (and their dog Cubby). I will also hopefully get to see my new nephew K.J., if he comes when he is scheduled! I am excited to soak up this time with loved ones and am sad that Aaron cannot join us! I am also excited about all the of the shopping and good eating I will be doing while I am home!

Random

Some other random stuff that's happened...

-Saw an Annie Liebovitz exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery, which was pretty good, but not impressed with the rest of the Gallery.

-Saw a couple of movies (7 Pounds was okay but could have been better; Revolutionary Road was very disappointing/depressing)

-Jenna watched 4 seasons of Lost (I also re-watched Season 4) in anticipation of the new season starting. We've only seen the first episode so far...so don't say anything.

-Discovered that one of the parks that is pretty close to us is pretty awesome. We took a Lost break to take a walk and found that there are a lot of cool things in that park, and we're looking forward to going back in the summer when it is more green.

-And maybe most importantly...We got the Wii working! Jason and Leesa gave us the cord we needed to make the video work on these crazy UK TVs, and we ordered a power cord from Hong Kong, and now we are back at it!!!

Our Biggest Christmas Present

So we totally forgot to mention in the previous blogs that we got a huge answer to prayer for Christmas...

Our townhouse in Dallas finally got rented!!!

We'd had it on the market since about the middle of July, dropped the price twice, and had a ton of people look at it and say that 'it was on their list' but then we never heard anything again. But, in the first week of December we got 2 lease applications! Anyway, one of them turned out to be a very good option, and she moved in on the 27th. More importantly, she paid the rent, so we are now only losing a few hundred dollars a month on the mortgage!! We are very happy and relieved, thank you for all of your prayers and thoughts about this!

Now all we have to do is wade through the paperwork and get Jenna a nursing job!

Week in Review

I don't really do very good with New Year's Resolutions. For one I think they are pretty silly. Also, I can never think of anything about myself that needs to change. This year, though, I have resolved to try and add something to this blog at least once a week.

It probably seems like a little bit of a waste since I don't really think anyone is reading this, but I figure it will be good just in case there are one or two of you, and I had the bright idea that maybe we can turn this into a small book or something once we move back to the States.

Anyway - this first post since the resolution is probably the best argument for not blogging weekly, because we really didn't do anything worth mentioning. But, this is probably the most revealing of what life is really like for us over here.

Busy Season started for me this week. So far it hasn't been as bad as back home, although I'm sure that will change fairly quickly. With that, though, I have been working a few more hours. We did go out on Saturday night with some friends for tapas and karaoke. Both were a first for me, Jenna has had tapas before. The food was great, and the singing was surprisingly fun. The karaoke was in a facility that had about 10 karaoke rooms, that hold 8 people, where each group rents their own room. There was about 16 of us and we traded back and forth. Basically everyone that was in the karaoke room would sing along and it really was a lot of fun! On Sunday we went to a new Methodist church, which was pretty good and we think we'll go back to try it again. We also went and saw the new movie Slumdog Millionaire, which was very good and well worth the terribly high price.

The big news of the week is that we started planning/booking a few Spring travels. Take this as the "teaser" for future entries that will come with interesting information and pictures. Anyway, we've planned Barcelona in early March, Austria with some friends in April, and the big one - a week touring around Italy and then a week cruise to Croatia, Greece, and Turkey in May. Stay tuned for more on those at some future date.

How We Spent Our Christmas Stay-cation

If there is only one good thing about living in Europe (there are many), it is the reduced workload.

First - the workweek is only 35 hours, so if I just work 9 hour days (which was pretty standard back home) I can get overtime and a 3 day weekend. So even though I've taken off early several Fridays, didn't work Black Friday, and we took our long weekend to Paris, I still hadn't used a single vacation day prior to our Switzerland trip.

Second - they give out a ridiculous amount of vacation here. Back home, I had 3 weeks, which is pretty decent considering what some people get. When I mentioned that to a guy from the UK, he was floored. For them (and I quote) "anything less than 20 days would be considered slave labor." Everyone here starts at 5 weeks, which is what I'm getting as well.

They only allow you to roll a limited number of days past December 31, which meant that I basically had 6 vacation days that needed to be taken before the end of the year. Of the 10 days between 12/22 and 1/2, 3 were public holiday and I worked the first Monday, which meant that I didn't need to work any of the rest of the time, so...Stay-cation!!!!

Since we got back from Switzerland on Saturday night, here is a summary of what we've done (in close to chronological order):

-Ate 75% of the candy and cookies that Mom mailed over
-Watched the most recent series of The Amazing Race (we thought the winners were deserving)
-Watched the most recent series of Survivor (we wished Matty would have won, but liked Bob more than the other two)
-Stayed home and played dominoes on New Years Eve and watched the biggest fireworks display in the history of the UK on TV (it was way too cold to be standing outside)
-Went to the Museum of Natural History (free, but crowded with 1/3 of the children of England)

-Watched "Bedtime Stories" (wouldn't recommend if you aren't bringing kiddos)
-Mailed off applications for new passports (old ones expire in the Spring)
-Saw the West End show "Jersey Boys" (very good if you can make it through the first 30 minutes)

-Ate our first Full English Breakfast - sausages, ham, eggs, mushroom, tomato, beans, and a slab of butter with a spot of toast on it (Yum!)

-Went to the Tate Modern art gallery (also free, but better than the MNH due to the lack of kids)
-Had a sandwich and apple cider from Borough Market
-Split up to watch separate movies - Jenna: Twilight, Aaron: 007 (we were both very happy with the movies, and the decision to not see what the other had chosen)

All in all, it was a great way to spend the holidays. We had an awesome time roaming around Switzerland for a few days and almost as good of a time hanging out together in London for the remainder. Sadly, though, work starts again on Monday...

Merry Swissmas!!!

So we decided a while ago that with the cost of transatlantic flights and the short time that we are here, we would not be travelling home for the holidays. Since we couldn't be with family, we thought it would be best if we went somewhere Christmassy, so we planned a trip to Switzerland. We hit four cities in five days, and had a generally wonderful time. Here's the brief recap:

Basel - 3 Countries in 5 Minutes

We left London for Basel on the 23rd. The city is on the corner of Switzerland, Germany and France, and was supposed to have the best Christmas Market outside of Germany. We flew into the airport, which is in France, and had a car from the hotel pick us up. Our hotel was in Germany, but we had to pass through Switzerland to get there, so we literally went through all three countries in a matter of less than five minutes. The odd thing was that they never really checked our passports. The Frenchy at the airport basically just waived us on by, and although we had to go through border checks every time we crossed, the cars we were in were always just waived through as well. So alas, although we spent the week in Switzerland, we never got a passport stamp, which was a little bit disappointing.

The city was great, though. The city was very decorated for Christmas. There were trees and lights and decorated shops all over the place, and it was a great kickoff to our Christmas trip. The Market was very nice. They had about 140 booths selling everything from nutcrackers to Swiss Army knives to cashmere scarves. We toured around the market, saw the main church in Basel (which was very nice) and enjoyed a wonderful German bratwurst and pretzel.

Interlaken

On the morning of Christmas Eve, we caught a train from Basel to Interlaken, which is in central Switzerland in the heart of the alps. It is a very nice town, stuck in a valley surrounded by mountains and in between 2 lakes. The town was very small (15,000) and touristy - lots of shops selling watches and clocks and chocolate. We spent the first day walking around town trying to figure out what exactly we could do. The area is famous for its extreme sports, but since we were only there for the 24th and 25th, we were a bit worried that we wouldn't really be able to do anything, which turned out to be mostly true. So on the 24th we got into our hotel (which was awesome) toured around the town, and decided that we would spend the 25th skiing. We ate at a local fondue place, which was actually somewhat disappointing. They cook the meat in oil rather than the wine/oil/herb deliciousness that we're used to at the Melting Pot back home. Not that it was bad (and the chocolate was pretty much to die for), but I think we set our expectations a little too high.

On Christmas day, we woke up pretty early and headed up the mountain to go skiing. We had bought warm weather gear, including ski pants, in anticipation of our trip, so we thought we were all set. It took a while to actually get up the mountain, and get outfitted, but we ended up on the lift by about 11:00. We were on the longest cable car in the world (or maybe Europe or just Switzerland - but in any case it was long), and the views of the mountains for the 30 minutes or so of the ride were incredible.

We realized very quickly once we got off the lift that maybe it wasn't the best idea to have our first ski trip in 8+ years be to the Swiss Alps. There were 2 signs pointing toward easy slopes. The first was easy all the way, but it looked like the first part was difficult and then got easier. The other sign said "TO" an easy slope, and it looked very easy to start off, so we went that way. Turns out that the "TO" piece of the sign was very important. It wasn't long before we realized that we were actually on a intermediate slope (which compared to the difficult runs we'd done in Colorado) which led to an easy one. We basically skied a little, tumbled a bit, and walked quite a ways down the mountain. After about an hour and a half we made it to the easy slope (probably about 100 yds from the start) and it got fun from there. We skied the rest of the way down and it was good. By the time we got to the bottom, though, Jenna was freezing and emotionally drained. We had the option of either going back up the same lift to the same spot (which Jenna refused) or calling it a day, so we went back to the lodge and enjoyed the views and some hot chocolate (one of MANY cups on the trip).

We eventually went back to the hotel, read the Christmas story, and watched "It's a Wonderful Life".

Bern (or Brrrrrrrn)

We hadn't originally planned to stop in Bern, but we noticed that our train from Interlaken to Geneva stopped there, and since the 26th is a national holiday (Boxing Day -we don't really know what that means) we figured Geneva would be mostly closed down. So we thought it would be best to just devote the entire day of the 27th to Geneva and make a stop over in Bern on the 26th. We jumped off the train in Bern and put our luggage in some lockers and were off.

Bern is the capital of Switzerland, and we read that it means "bear" in German (I haven't taken the time to verify that). Anyway, they have bears all over the place (signs, statues, etc). The best part was the "bear pit" right in the middle of the city. It has been there in some form or another for over 400 years, and is basically a big pit where some bears live. We only saw one out while we were there, but it looked mostly like what you'd see in a zoo, other than that it was right in the middle of town.

It was pretty dead being a holiday, but we were able to see most of the city. It was really just an old city and it was interesting to see the buildings, parliament, famous clock (overrated), church, etc. It was very cold that day, so we didn't stay too long - just about 2 hours - but since the city is small and most stuff was closed, we were able to see everything that our book said was important.

Geneva

The train ride from Interlaken/Bern to Geneva had magnificent breathtaking views. It was nice to sit back and enjoy the ride.

We got into Geneva at about 7:00, so we knew everything would be closed and it was too dark to see the city, so we just went up to the room and tried to find a place for dinner. Turned out that our hotel had a traditional Swiss country restaurant, so we decided to have fondue again. The restaurant was very interesting - decked out like a mountain chalet. They had a live band as well that played guitar, accordion, alpine horn, and cowbells. It would have been the whole package if the fondue would have been good. We just wanted cheese and chocolate. The cheese was fine, but the chocolate was crap. Jenna actually quit eating it after about 2 dips - which if you know her should say everything.

The next day (our last) we spent seeing the sites in Geneva. It is the home of the original League of Nations, and now houses the European arm of the UN. We went to see that building, but of course with the holidays it was all closed up. We got to see the building at least, and have pictures out front, so we'll probably tell our kids that we got to speak there or something. The other main site in Geneva is the church, where John Calvin and other reformers started their work. At this point, we're kind of over seeing all the churches. They are all great, and we'll probably continue to visit them, but they are pretty much all the same. All nice, but the reaction we have now versus the first one we saw is quite different. We spent the rest of the day walking around the city (which we did quickly and with more than one hot chocolate stop on account of the fact that it was freezing).

We got to the airport a couple of hours early, so we spent a while walking around the various shops and bought one last chocolate bar. When it came time to check in, Jenna gave the lady her boarding pass and instead of hearing the happy beeping sound, a red light flashed and it made a shrieking buzzing noise instead. I was a little worried until the lady said "Oh, I think you'll be happy...You got upgraded." I was then very happy to see that my ticket buzzed as well. We still have no idea what we did or why it happened, but we ended up in first class. It was only an hour and a half flight, and the seats were actually exactly the same as coach, but we got a nice meal and overall better treatment. I guess it was mostly the fact that we got upgraded, and now were just hoping it happens next time we fly to the US!! It was a great end to the vacation, and all in all we had a wonderful Christmas celebration (although I think next year we may end up at the beach instead!).

Pre-Christmas Update

It has been a while since we've had a chance to update - I guess we've been pretty busy between work, the holidays, and planning for our big Swiss adventure. So here's what we've had going on.

Pikkujoulut

The first weekend of December some friends from Finland invited us over for Pikkujoulut, or "Little Christmas." I guess this is the traditional Finnish Christmas party, where we enjoyed some traditional food and drink that was prepared by our hosts, which was awesome. There was a white elephant gift exchange (or apparently if you're from Memphis, "Dirty Santa"). Jenna got some cookies and I got an ornament. There was a quiz over the history and traditions of Finland (the world record for the sauna world championship - sit in a 230 degree sauna until you can't stand it - is just over 17 minutes). There was even an appearance from Santa Claus. It was a very fun party and helped us get the Christmas season started.

Stomp

Last weekend we had nothing planned, so we thought it would be a good opportunity to hit the London theatres for the first time. There is a tkts booth (1/2 price retailer, same as in NYC), so we went there. It opens at 10:00, so we needed to leave around 9:00. Turns out that is a little too early for us on a Saturday, so we got there just after lunch, so the selection was less than ideal. We'd been talking about seeing Stomp for several years, but never really got around to seeing it, so we figured this would be a good opportunity, since it was pretty cheap.

In between getting the tickets and the show, we went to Harrod's and braved the Christmas crowd. We were looking for a decent snow globe, and their Christmas section ended up being at least 50% off, so we also ended up with some ornaments and a Christmas puzzle.

Stomp was pretty good. Our seats were excellent, and the show was pretty impressive. After about an hour, I guess I did get a little bored. I guess there's only so many things that you can bang on before it starts getting repetitive. We're really glad we went, but it didn't compare to Blue Man Group that we saw this summer.

Cambridge

Like when we went to Oxford, we bummed off our KC friends that have a car and drove up to Cambridge. The weather was significantly better than Oxford - 50 degrees and off-and-on sunny. Again, we took a guided walking tour of the campus/city. Our tour guide was incredibly disappointing. She was some kind of scientist before retiring, so she concentrated her tour on all of the scientific breakthroughs that happened there. She showed us all of the buildings where they discovered things like blood flow and DNA, and talked about a lot of scientists that nobody has ever heard of. She did mention that the school is involved in other things like philosophy and history, but that was mostly a side note.

The buildings and the campus were amazing. It is a little weird to walk into a church and see the section that is dedicated to Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn and to think that he stood in the same spot several hundred years ago.

All in all, Cambridge was very cool, but I think we preferred Oxford. If anyone reading this has some affinity to one or the other, our bias is probably based mostly on the tour guides, so don't get too upset. That, and the T-shirts in the gift shops weren't all that nice.

Misc

A few random items from the weeks:

-We finally decorated our house for Christmas on about the 12th. All of the local stores were sold out of fake trees, so it took us a while to get one. It looks good now, though, and it helps make things a little more festive.

-The Christmas puzzle we bought (the first we've put together since being married) made me realize 2 things. 1 - When Jenna sees that a puzzle may be difficult, she just tries to not get started, thus saving herself from getting annoyed. 2 - When I see that a puzzle is difficult, I HAVE TO beat it. In this instance, I did win. It took a little time, and we decided that of the 1000 pieces, Jenna placed about 15. Just don't know when we'll give puzzles another try. 

-We went to see a Christmas Carol concert. The churches here don't really play Christmas music, and since we don't have cars we don't get non-stop carols starting November 1st, so Jenna was pretty excited to do this. We saw the Mozart Choir and Orchestra. The orchestra was dressed in period wear - so white wigs, tights, and buckled shoes. That was probably the highlight, as we realized fairly soon that Christmas carols are very different here. They have a bunch of weird ones that we've never heard of, and then about half of the ones we knew were set to a different tune, which kinda ruined it. It was nice for the 3-4 songs that we knew and had the right music, and it did a pretty good job of making it feel Christmassy, but we probably won't be back next year.

Thanksgiving

So as you probably know, they don't exactly celebrate Thanksgiving over here. In fact, they really don't even understand it that well, and as it turns out it isn't the easiest holiday to explain. So, I had to work on Thursday and Friday, which was kinda weird. It was also probably the hardest week for us since all of our families were together and we were here by ourselves (we ate leftovers from Tuesday for dinner on Thursday).

We were able to get a pretty good lunch on Thanksgiving day. Jenna and Anne were able to meet me at Borough Market, which is close to my office. There is a little shop there that sells turkey sandwiches on a baguette. Even better, they serve turkey sandwiches with stuffing and cranberry sauce. It wasn't exactly the same as being at home, but it was a decent substitute considering our circumstances. We were also able to talk to both of our families so that helped.

We decided that we needed to have some semblance of a Thanksgiving dinner, so we offered to host at our flat and invited a few friends from the GEP program to come over on Saturday - 8 of us in total. This was great. We were in charge of the turkey and a few other minor sides, and then everyone else brought over all the other necessities.

We had a cheese and cracker tray for an appetizer (pretty popular over here). Then for dinner we had turkey, stuffing, corn, corn pudding, green beans, cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole, fruit salad, mashed potatoes, and gravy. Then for dessert we had pumpkin and apple pie (with homemade whipped cream), Hungarian teacake cookies, and pumpkin bread. The food was very comforting.

The interesting part was the seating plan. Of course, if you've seen the pictures of our flat you can guess that there isn't a lot of room. I measured it to just over 400 square feet. Also, we have only 4 chairs. As a solution, we had to move the kitchen table into the living room, and we brought in the patio table from outside. Luckily they were both about the same height, and we were able find a tablecloth that was big enough to cover both tables. We also brought in the patio chairs. Not exactly ideal but we cleaned them off pretty good and we thought it was better than having people on the couches trying to figure out how to deal with a loaded paper plate and cup and silverware and everything else.

Anyway, we had a pretty decent holiday. It wasn't the same as being at home with the family, but it was a very good alternative!