Starting To Feel Settled

Hello all...

We wanted to start with some pictures of our place...been meaning to put them up for ages!
Our entrance way...

 Coming in the front door...my room is the door to the left, Sam's is straight ahead, and the rest is around the corner to the right...

 Above is my room...below is also my room. Sam and I share the hanging shelves.

 This is the en-suite bathroom in my room...there isn't a light right now. But has a small shower, sink and toilet.

 This is Sam's room...

 Her lovely bed above, and below is her closet.

 This is the hall to the rest of our place...bathroom is the door on the right, the 2 on the left are closets, and the living room/kitchen is straight ahead.

 Main bathroom...nice big shower.  Energy saving light, takes a while to turn on.

This is the living room with our couch, chair, table, and clothes drying rack.

This is our kitchen...stove, oven, fridge/freezer (hidden on left side), and clothes washer/dryer in the cupboard on the far right (last cupboard on right).

It's nice and open.

Last weekend was a busy one, but so good.
 Saturday morning we woke up to a knock at our door around 7:30 and it was a package from momma Sharon!

These lovely decorations came in the box :)

We made ourselves our first real breakfast

and a wicked awesome playlist to start our day, then blasted it and set up our house.  We FINALLY unpacked.  I can't tell you how good it felt to not be living out of a suitcase anymore. 
After setting up and unpacking we got dolled up for our first night out in London and headed up to the NW to start at our friends' place (Marina, Meghan and Cierra).  It was Cierra's birthday and a bunch of their friends were there as well.

We were there until after 11, then head out to a club called Koko for "Guilty Pleasure" night.  It was such a cool place...an old theater converted into a club, and this night is all about playing guilty pleasure songs.  It was fun. 

 There were 3 fat old men that came out on stage a few times to dance...it was really funny.

We left at closing, which was around 3, got some food and took cabs back to the girls' place.  It was an entertaining cab ride with us 2, Meghan and 2 of their guy friends. By the time we got home and to bed it was after 4.
Let me tell you right now, we don't go out very often, and rarely stay up past 11 or 12...this was a LATE night.  Both Sam and I are early risers regardless of what time we go to sleep, so let me tell you, 4 hours of sleep after a long week was not enough to recharge, especially when you're on the verge of being sick.
Sunday morning after everyone was up the girls made us French toast with icing sugar, "maple syrup" (they just don't make it the same here), and blueberries.  It was so good.  By the time we got up, ate, and headed out it was 3.  So, we're exhausted, starting to get sick, we've both worn heeled boots so our feet hurt and my knees are killing me, but we needed food so we stopped for groceries on our way home.  We usually take a bus that drops us around the corner from home, so we wait, and wait, and wait, and it just doesn't show up.  So we decide to take a different bus that drops us about an 8 minute walk from our place instead of walking the 15 minutes from the station.  Then it terminated early.  So we ended up walking 20 minutes home, but more like 30 because we were walking so slowly with our 6 bags of groceries and stupid heeled shoes on.
When we got home and put on our onesies though we felt much better and then we made our first real meal...steak, baby potatoes, and green beans.  It was exactly what we needed.

This past week went a lot better than the first week.  We were feeling more settled and just knew how it worked better.
I had basically a full week of high school, Thursday I had an amazing year 6 class though.  Monday wasn't great but went back to that school Tuesday and it was a lot better (both days were at a high school in NW London), then did Wednesday and Friday at 2 different high schools as well and both went fine.  I'm getting used to it a bit and more confident, but would still rather be in primary schools.

Sam had a day off Monday, 3 days of primary (2 of which were in NE London), and she had her first day of high school.  It was definitely a different experience than primary school.  She was asked if she lived here and when she said "No, I commute from Canada every day" she got a stunned look until she said she was joking...they don't really get sarcasm here.  She ended her week in a school that I was in last week.  It's an amazing school, and she had a year 3 class that was so great.  At the school, every Friday the whole school does a Big Write, which is essentially just writing straight for about 45 minutes on whatever topic is given.  Her year 3s were able to write the entire time, no problem, and when she marked them later, she was amazed by the quality that these students were able to produce. It is very different here than home with what they expect from kids at different ages...they put a greater expectation on these 7/8 year olds than most 9/10 year olds have at home.

After work Monday I met Sam at the Leisure Center and we did our first swim. We both weren't feeling great and I was starving after a long day and commute, but it felt SO good to exercise.  "Yea, no don't put me down for cardio."  We ended up swimming for about an hour.

Through the week we got pretty good at making ourselves cook real food for dinner whether we were tire or not.  We've come up with a good system of both prepping, me cooking, and Sam cleaning up.  So far it's working well.

We've both been fighting colds since last weekend and by Wednesday they caught up with us.  Sam got hit worse than me, but we both got sick.  By Friday night we were just exhausted.  We grocery shopped for the weekend and start of the week on our way home because we just weren't going to have time over the weekend, we had beans and toast for dinner, skyped home to chat with my parents and grandma, then my god-father for a couple minutes, then watched a movie before heading to bed. We finally got our internet today too!!

Saturday was a long day for us.  We had a conference through the company that we are teaching with here in the UK up in the Oxford Circus area.  It was at the University of Westminster campus, which was cool.  We met up with our new friends to tube up with them, and got there for the 9:00 start, which means we had to leave our place by 7:30.  We had a keynote to start and it was continued after lunch, then had a morning session and an afternoon session.  It finished with a social at a nearby pub.
This was trying to walk through Oxford on Saturday afternoon to the pub.

Mary and Brianne (the girls that we've met who are from Ontario and are teaching in our same area) were both fighting colds too and both Mary and Sam looked like death on Saturday.  We were all exhausted and wanted to just head home but we needed dinner and it was too early to eat so we decided to go just for a bit, get some free drinks, then head for dinner then home.  It ended up being really good.  We got a little table in the back of the place, had a few drinks, got to talk to one of our consultants (so nice to put faces to the people that have been calling and texting us to send us to schools for the past 2 weeks), and we got to have a really good chat with the girls.  

When we'd had our free drinks and were all starving we headed out and just started walking back in the direction of the tube station...we saw a little walking street off the main road with lots of people so we decided to head down there.  We saw a cool shiny British flag hanging over the street so we stopped to take a picture

and Mary noticed a little burger place so we decided to check it out...and boy are we happy we did.  It's a little hole-in-the-wall "Hawaiian" Burger place and they were the best burgers that any of us had had in a long time, if ever.  So we ate our burgers and fries and then just sat, fully contented, for the next half hour or so just talking.  We all were getting super tired though so we headed out for our trek home.  It ended up being a really fun night, even though it was a long day and none of us were feeling 100%.
When Sam and I got home we had the lovely surprise of our mail key!  We have been waiting for this since we moved in.  I have been without a debit card since we got our UK bank accounts because it never showed up and then we couldn't get into our mail box.  So I was thrilled.  So I went out to see what was in there and there was a ton!

The most exciting thing for me was a little package from Matt :) 

and of course my much needed debit card.  Also in there were some things for us about our council tax, internet, and water, as well as letters summoning the previous tenants to court and saying the police could show up at any time.  GREAT.  Hope they know that there are new people here now.
As soon as we opened our mail we went straight to bed, both of us were exhausted.

But of course we didn't sleep well, but had a much needed lazy morning.  We watched a movie, cleaned up a bit, did some laundry, and started making lunch.  Meghan, Marina, and Cierra were coming down for lunch and a lazy afternoon.  It was the perfect Sunday.  We had lettuce wraps for lunch, they brought some awesome junk food, and we painted our nails, some of us did face masks, and we just hung out and chatted.

So tonight Sam and I are just taking it easy.  Going to watch another movie, have a bit of pizza, and head to bed early to hopefully give us a good start to our week. 

I'm pre-booked for tomorrow...PE cover in Primary school. Very excited...I get to wear my lulus and runners to work!!!!  So I'm going to try to go to the gym after school too.  Sam is still feeling really sick but is a trooper and is heading up to the station in the morning to wait for her call.


Thanks for reading :)  we'd love to hear your feedback!

Lisa and Sam

We out.