Great Expectations

Well, it has been a long while since our last post. Many, many things have happened, so this will probably be a long post. In the future... we'll update more often with smaller posts instead of waiting over a month between bloggings.

We moved to England!! We did warn you we were going to. The move went smoothly, customs was easy, and we arrived in our hostel without (too much) trouble. It seemed like a longer walk than it actually was thanks to the 100+ pounds of luggage in tow. Unfortunately, at this point, the story doesn't go anywhere fast. We ended up staying in the hostel for a week while we spent

our days trying to get all the logistics of the move arranged. On the plus side, we were absolutely awed by the beauty of our city.

Our first day in England we went to the bank because, well, we needed money in a bank to buy things like apartments. Unfortunately, upon walking in to the bank, we were penciled in for an appointment two days later... an APPOINTMENT.. at the bank. It was weird, but hey, a new culture, so we accepted our appointment time and moved on, trying to think of something else we could do.

Fortunately, we had plenty to do: we got phones and watched Fringe. We didn't want to look at apartments, find one we love, and then find that it has disappeared by the time our bank account was up and running. We did make some calls and send some emails to at least get some viewings set up for later in the week.

The hostel we stayed in was very nice, but there's only so much tolerance for hostel-living when you actually want to settle in to a new town. So we bided our time, finally got our bank account setup, and then managed to get an appointment to see ONE apartment, not quite the number we were looking for, but hey, if it's nice we need no more than one. And it WAS nice! One problem, though, was that it was still under construction/renovation and wouldn't be done for another couple of weeks, something that was, for some reason, not mentioned in the description. That left us with no place and no other appointments, so we took some initiative and walked into one of the real estate offices to talk to a real person about the available apartments, which turned out to be a good decision. We found a couple options and setup some more viewings... for another couple of days away. Everywhere must be really busy to have such a drought of appointment times.

In the mean time, we explored the city a bit, as we are going to be spending the next year (at least) here, we thought that would be nice to do. Let me say, the city is AWESOME. Definitely picked the right place to study. The streets are cobblestone, the buildings old and British, and there's a medieval wall surrounding the city... which is built on top of a roman wall that was originally around the city. Yeah, awesome. We walked everywhere possible in the city. It's not huge, but there are tons of winding, medieval streets, and on the north side of the city there is a giant church, York Minster. It's HUGE and amazing inside, though we didn't go inside until much later in the story.

In an attempt to save money we basically ate complimentary

breakfast (toast) and peanut butter sandwiches for dinner. Finally, though, on Friday the 9th of September we went to a viewing of an apartment and it was awesome. Even more awesome was the fact that we could move in almost immediately! We just had to wait for them to clean the place a bit over the weekend, and we could move in Monday. The weekend went by slowly, but a huge weight had been lifted knowing we had a place to live! Our place is awesome, it has a spiral staircase in it!

Now that we had moved in, it was another waiting game until Tara and Mike to arrive. We did some more city exploring and ran across a pair of "native Americans" in full garb (feather headdresses, etc.) playing wind pipes and dancing. In England? Weird enough. But then, we got a little closer and they started singing... in Spanish... Making up words to a song from The Last Samurai. Really strange, but made us laugh. Oh, and British people were eating it UP, buying CD's and dream catchers. /sigh

Finally Tara and Mike arrived, and we really appreciated seeing friendly faces we knew. It was great hanging out with them for the 4 days they were here. We did some of the touristy things that weren't free that Gaby and I had bypassed before. We went to the viking museum (awesome) and we went into the York Minster and its catacombs. That was really cool because in the 70's they found ruins from the Roman and Norman buildings that used to be there. Great museum under the church and the church itself is beautiful. And HUGE. And, as Adam will be happy to learn, there is scaffolding on one whole side because they're renovating. It is a really cool place.

Along with the touristy stuff, we also went to some pubs, which Gaby and I had been refraining from doing just so we'd be able to go with Tara and Mike. We found some really neat pubs with good food and beer, and it's not all that expensive if you find the right places. Also, we found an all you can eat Chinese buffet for 6 pounds, which was excellent. Overall, we had a great time hanging with our friends. Unfortunately, they had to leave, and now we are waiting for school to start, which happens in another week and a half. I've received some of my textbooks in the mail, so I've started studying those (math is hard). Gaby doesn't know what books to buy since her schedule is still up in the air, so she doesn't have as much to do as I do. We've been falling back on WoW, minecraft, LoL, and of course, walking around our awesome city.

By the way, this is our entrance to the city from where we live (which is just outside the wall). No big deal, it's a giant medieval bar (which apparently means gate here).

Our crate comes next Monday, which is awesome! We're excited to get all of our cooking supplies, my computer, the xbox, etc. We'll step up the quality of our meals once all that arrives. Now we're sticking to pasta, sandwiches, and cereal.

Among other things, we're missing friends and family. It's exciting being here, moving to a new place, and doing it together as a married couple, but we still miss people. When we busy ourselves with school I think that homesickness part will start to recede. But we love you all!

And I think that catches everyone up. Gaby will probably have something to add, I'll let her do that in another post as this one is long enough.

Cheers!

Jarrod