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Published: October 25th 2007
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living room before
The yellow had faded and made the room look dingy. This should have been posted a long time ago. Sorry!!!!
September 10, 2007
“ello from Merry ole England”
We arrived on the 29th of August and stayed four nights in a hotel called the Kandinsky. Mark spent one night with a couple of guys from work, while I had a nice night to myself. Mark’s friend Keith was a wonderful help to us by picking up the car we bought from a man who is on tour in the US now. The car is a Ford Maverick which is the same thing as a Ford Escape. (This will be my first complaint) The car itself is fine and it was really nice to drive for the 2 days it worked. We only bought the car because it would make it easier on us when we got here and the guy who sold it to us bought our car in the US. Let’s just say that I wasn’t impressed with him (when he called requesting things, not the most pleasant person I have talked to). He was worried that the log book wasn’t “stamped” I guess over here when you get the car serviced the service station stamps the book.
living room/dinning room
Not sure how we are going to put the table up We just had the receipts that told everything that was done, no stamps. Well, I think it is safe to say that “stamps” don’t mean a thing. Luckily for us, Andy’s brother has directed us to some good service garages. Hopefully everything will be sorted soon. At the moment we have a rental car. It’s a Ford Fiesta. (done laughing yet?). I think the US stopped making them about 10 years ago, but the one we have is new and actually quite nice. The model we have is pretty fast and I now I have to constantly watch my speed, not that I have had any speeding tickets in the past…..well maybe a couple. When we get back from Maryland in October I will be able to buy a car. I have my eye on a little convertible. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
Let’s see……Our house:
We took the bus from Cheltenham (where we were staying at the hotel) into Churchdown (our village). When we walked up, we were frightened by the size of the shrubs. Shrubs might not be the right word anymore. They were about 11 feet tall and going everywhere. Mark and I spent the next
living room2
The view from our kitchen door couple of hours cutting the shrubs back. The house itself is not as bad as we both thought it would be. We took advantage of having to wait for our shipping and painted some rooms and cleaned. The house was filthy when we walked in. Our house is called a “two up/two down”. We have a small living room and an ok sized Kitchen downstairs. Upstairs there is a full bathroom (think blue tub, toilet, and sink…it’s a beaut), a bedroom that the US would classify as a small study, and our “master” bedroom.
Mark and I decided to go fun on the paint in the small bedroom since it will also be an office. We had the room arranged with our small sleeper couch. The room was filled with boxes and we starting to look at the couch and realized the opposite wall was kind of close. We moved all the boxes and pulled out the couch to find that it is about 2 inches too long. Of course. We hope that people don’t mind sleeping with their feet elevated. Just kidding, We moved the couch under the window and now we just have to move a desk anytime
more than one person visits. Thankfully we have the queen sleeper in the living room.
Mark and I both thought we would be able to deal with our kitchen by painting and maybe getting new countertops. Well, not so much. We have already bought a new Kitchen. We are adding cabinets and will be able to have a full sized fridge/freezer. Right now our Fridge comes up to my chest and that’s it. Grocery shopping has become a bit more creative now that we have to fit things into a small area. We can’t wait for our Kitchen to be installed. I will let the pictures explain why the Kitchen will be redone.
We are waiting for a while until we have some more money to fix our bathroom. We might try to fit it ourselves. (Picturing water pouring down our stairs and into our neighbor’s house) On the other hand we might wait to save up some money and let the professionals handle it.
We have a back garden that is actually a decent size. Well, it will be once we get it cut back. Every time we go back there, I hear “A-weema-weh A-weema-weh A-weema-weh A-weema-weh, In the
jungle the mighty Jungle”. We have decided to wait until we get back from the US and get a quote to have it cleared. We have a door at the end of the garden that goes to an alley, but we can’t get passed the trees. There is a palm tree, and various other plants that were not here four years ago. We are angry that the estate agents did not notify us or take care of the garden. It would have been a lot cheaper for upkeep than for having to almost start over again. Just another thing we learned about renting out houses.
We spent the better half of the morning working on some boxes that we were putting off until we bought a desk and a TV stand. Our room is finally done, well I still have to organize clothes that are somewhat put away, but that can be later when Mark is back at work and I am struggling to find a job. No more boxes in our room!!! Yipeee!!!!
We are waiting for the skip (small dumpster) to be delivered so we can clear out our garage. Our garage is pretty large considering the size
Second bedroom
Please look past the clutter and boxes. We are still trying to sort it all out of our house. Although it is not actually attached to our house. We are in a row of three townhouses and then there are three garages next door.
We are having a great time setting up our new home and we both can’t wait until it will be done.
The one problem we have found is that we really don’t have place for a table. I think we are going to buy one that folds up really small. We invited the Chandlers over for dinner; Grace still hasn’t seen our house (I think she wants to check up that her stuff animal dogs we had at our US house made it here). We then realized that our table is in the garage behind everything so we had to invite them out to dinner instead.
I am still addicted to Spring Rolls. I really can’t stop eating them. I bought Tai red chili dipping sauce and now it is even worse. I love them.
Mark is enjoying having news papers to buy. Funny how he always buys the one with a Page three girl (topless girl). I love the gossip magazines. Give me a mag and spring rolls and I am
second bedroom2
The other half of the VERY small room that is half guest half office. set for the afternoon. We both are missing the gym desperately, so we joined the virgin athletic gym. I am excited to start going there; they have a hula hoop aerobics class, dance aerobics, Pilates, and everything else we need there. I am trying really hard to get Mark to do the Hula hoop one with me. No luck yet. By Christmas I should be a new woman. It’s just the matter of going.
We are considering buying a navigation system for the car (Emily’s car). I have never been bad with directions. It is all the roundabouts that throw me off. I am actually not a bad driver. I drove all over the other day, mark giving directions, and when I got into the grocery store parking lot what do you know, I hit a curb going straight. It was embarrassing, I mean everybody has at least hit a curb while turning, but going straight. Actually it reminds me off the time in high school that Krissy hit the curb and popped a tire at the middle school while we were trying to look cool. (can’t remember why we were at the middle school) Haha.
The worst part of
being in England is being so far away from my family and friends. The best part of being in England is being closer to Mark’s parents and friends. We are heading up to Scotland in a couple weeks for the weekend.
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