We're here! We're in our home! We have internet (finally)! I am so woefully behind on telling our story that it almost isn't even worth doing a summary. But I'll try to make it very short, and maybe later come back with more details...
The past 2 months have been absolute chaos in my eyes. I prefer to be a methodical, planning sort of person. I don't like to be rushed, and if it means I get half as much done in a day as the average person, that's fine with me. That was unfortunately not an option in the weeks leading up to our big move. We inventoried our entire home - every possession with its own line item, monetary value, and destination (air freight, sea freight, or storage). We requested and received visas. We did copious immigration paperwork. We took our dogs to numerous vet appointments and priority overnighted paperwork for their own immigration. We made several improvements and repairs to our house to prepare it for sale. There were a million other little things we did that have now faded from memory. We absolutely could not have done this without the help of our families; they were incredible and truly self-sacrificing!
In the midst of this craziness, we made it a priority to spend time with friends and almost every living relative we have, who all came down to Houston for Christmas. We are so glad we made the time; it truly was a wonderful Christmas and New Year, and we felt truly special by our friends who sent us off with tons of love.
Fast-forward to Sunday, January 22nd - we arrived in London and hit the ground running. We lived in a hotel for about 5 days while we took possession of the house, got rental furniture delivered, did the first grocery shopping, etc. We had 9 suitcases between the two of us, and since we had no car (and few taxis are large enough to carry that haul), we took three trips on the city bus lugging our bags from our hotel to our new home. I kept wondering if we ever got the same bus driver, and if he ever thought, "I could have sworn I've seen those two before carrying different suitcases...what the heck are they doing?!" But it all worked out great, and we eventually got it all transferred to the house.
I got a new UK phone (technically a new SIM card for my semi-legal unlocked iPhone, which I did myself - pretty proud of my hacking abilities), so we finally had a phone number we could provide to the numerous local groups who needed one - electric company, internet provider, air freight delivery, etc. Really funny observation related to that - there is no consistency (that I can see) to how phone numbers are written. The UK has an 11-number phone number (basically same as the US except with a 0 at the beginning instead of a 1). In various places, I've seen the numbers written all these ways: xxxx xxx xxxx, xx xxx xxxxxx, xxxxx xxxxxx, xxx xxxx xxxx, and more. Literally every combination you can think of.
On Sunday we tried a new church just down the street from us in Richmond. It was very different from The Waters, but not in a bad way! Churches tend to be smaller here (except for a few American-style megachurches in central London), and as we learned, tend not to have a full-time pastor. This particular church has five leaders/elders who all have full-time jobs outside the church and take turns preaching. In addition, if any church member (I think male only) feels led to preach, he can petition the elders, they pray about it, and most likely that member will get his own Sunday to preach. The church had about 50 in attendance and met in an 18th century manor house that they had come to own by some amazing story we have yet to hear. Despite the small size, they had quite a large group of young adults, maybe 15-20 out of the 50. One couple invited us to lunch at their home, which was so wonderful, and then we came back Sunday evening for their young adult Bible study. We felt incredibly welcome, really learned a lot (the study was just great), and we are definitely going back this Sunday! It was funny; everyone we met just loved that we were American, said they always had one American couple in attendance and the last one had just moved away, and basically gave the impression that they wanted to adopt us as their token Americans. That's fine with us!
Lots of progress happened this week. Adam started work on Monday and has already established some friendships there. I continued to work on setting up the house, searching out recipes for which I can actually find all the ingredients, learning to do laundry in tiny tiny machines, only shopping for what I can carry home, etc. It feels more natural every day. I too have made some connections. I joined a Bible study in central London at Westminster Chapel and had an awesome time. The wife of Adam's boss invited me to her expat ladies wine club on Wednesday. Wow. It was about 15 ladies my mother's age, all quite saucy and boisterous. We met at a pub, and I'm pretty sure we cleared out the place for being so loud. It really was a lot of fun, though! They all joked that I can set my mom at ease for me being over here, because I now have 15 moms to watch over me. :o)
Our air freight arrived Wednesday, we got internet set up yesterday (now I no longer have to be that uncomfortable-looking girl sitting alone in a pub using their wifi!), and our dogs arrive today! We absolutely cannot wait to see them; I think it will really start to feel like home when they get here.
Okay seriously, that was my "short" summary of the last several weeks. Now that I'm all set up with internet, I'll try to make these blogs shorter and more frequent!
Love to all of you, we miss you dearly and hope all is well in the States!
Erin
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