England, Day 2

England, Day 2

Man, is my sleep schedule whacked! I think I went to bed last night around 12, which was probably around 7 or 8 in Missouri & Ohio (this time change thing man – weird). Anyway – the kids were up at like 630 this morning!!! Aka 130 and 230 your times! I tried to continue sleeping but it just wasn’t working – the kids were wound tighter than an eight day clock! So, I got up, we ate some cereal, and they went back to playing. Then I started typing up a letter and with in an hour I was about to drop! I decided to put a movie in for them and I went back to bed. I woke up and the clock said 11:30! I’m thinking yikes! How are we ever going to get used to the time change? David managed to get up a little before me, not sure what time he got up.

Anyway – after I got up, he called to get us a rental car and boy is it funny and cute looking! It’s a Volkswagen pilot – I think. It’s so small, yet not cramped. It has no armrests in it though! It has pretty much nothing in it…its weird. The weirdest part is sitting in the passenger seat, which in America would be the driver’s seat. You should try this, you want to hold on to the steering wheel, shift the gears, and push the pedals – but their not there!!! It is so weird! David did pretty good driving, he only attempted to drive, what we would call on the “right” side 2 or 3 times….but there are no shoulders on the edges of the road! So it seems like he is going to run into the grass or hit the curb a lot…thankfully he only did a curb check once.

I don’t know how I’m going to handle driving around here – this could be really scary! They have so many round-a-bouts and their signs are so different, several are self explanatory…but then you have those ones that make you go “ummm…” Example, today I saw a sign with a couple on it, one using a cane, and beneath the graphic it read “elderly people”. What the heck! Why would you put that up there? I don’t get it! Oh and the signs for possible deer crossing – their deer have antlers. Know why? “Cause the United States has doe’s and England has bucks,” said Brier. Most of their signs are shaped like triangles and circles. I’ll post pictures of these strange things as soon as I can. Oh and one other thing, their stop lights turn yellow before they turn green!

We drove to the 2 basic exchanges; aka BX (this is like a military department store), the furniture store (this is where military buy furniture, car seats, and household decorations), and 2 commissaries (this is a grocery store) today. There are 3 bases here really close to each other so you travel to and from. They are interdependent. Like we needed boaster seats for the kids – you have to get those at the furniture store – different base. We needed groceries, so we went to the commissary here at our base and it’s tiny!

We were able to get almost everything we needed (for right now) and then we went and checked out the BX on our base – it’s small too – but nice. Then we went to the 3rd base for the soul purpose of gas, checked out the BX there – much bigger – lots of clothes and things. Got something’s we still needed since they had them and then we went to that commissary – definitely where I will be doing my shopping (just not on Saturday’s and pay day’s…too busy). They had the last few items we needed from our grocery list. It worked out good. Then we drove off that base…forgetting our gas! Can you believe that?

We drove around some “villages” or towns – still not sure what they call them. We found a house that looked okay for rent, not sure if it’s big enough or still available or anything, so we need to call about it. We drove around some other little villages that looked like they’d be okay. They have little markets…kinda cute – kinda strange. We saw one home we thought might be okay, have to call about it and continue looking. We are still praying to be lead to the right home, right town, and right Church. Thankfully, we made it back to our base without running out of gas. We found a station; “Services” is what their called and got a little gas. It was 113.9 per liter and we put about $10 in it, so it was like umm 20 pounds for 8 or so liters, crazy uh? Yeah I thought so too.

Thankfully we have a GPS and made it back safely. Then I HAD to fix frozen pizza for dinner, because we bought it at the commissary and come to find out it was too big to fit in the freezer!!! Gonna have to pray that the fridge we receive will be just a bit bigger. Oh, and on that note, some of the way food is packaged here is a bit weird too! The milk comes in 2 liter bottles. Weird! Their funky shaped too – not like a 2 liter pop bottle. Oh and pop here is “soda”. We bought eggs and they are sold in ½ a dozen cartons. So 6 eggs…and they say “fresh Danish eggs” on them. The hamburger is packaged differently too…matter of fact I walked right past it and David said, “uh honey, you want some hamburger?” haha

We get most the foods we are used to, most people don’t realize that the commissaries on base sell “American food” so not a whole lot to worry about. Dinning out could be a different store, but for the most part we get the things we are used to and like….including Burger King, Taco Bell, Pizza, Ice Cream, and oh ranch dressing. J

Cooking the food is a little different. I had to have David figure out how to heat up the oven. You have to flip a switch to turn it on first. Then everything is done in Celsius instead of Fahrenheit, I need the oven at 400, which I guess was 204 Celsius – it cooked our pizza anyway. It is definitely a whole new ball game over here and I still think I might need a math class and possibly a science class at this rate! J

Anyway – that’s what we did today and that about sums it up I think.

Oh, and Tara, when we were out driving around I saw a meadow of sheep!!! I took a picture of them for you!! I was so thinking of you then!

Alright, well hopefully we can make it to the community center tomorrow and I can post these blog’s and check some emails or something. David has to work on Monday – I have no idea what the kids and I will do yet!!! It could be crazy.

Well, goodnight or good morning which ever it is! God Bless.

~T~

New Words:

To Let = To Rent
Services = Gas Station or Convenient Store
Toilets = Restroom
Waste Disposal = Garbage Disposal

Military Jargon:

Basic Exchange or BX = Department Store
Commissary = Grocery Store