The First Real Blog Post from LONDON

So much has been going on that I have not been able to write a proper blog since we arrived! 

 The plane flight was pretty bad. I have learned that flying at night is not my thing. Every single time the turbulance hit I was jostled awake from a strange sleep with a horrible crick in my neck. Egil was stuck between me and a very quiet, kind, gentle asian man who slept the whole way. How he did that is beyond me. Also, there was a woman who sat directly across the isle from us who had either taken some intense sleeping pills or hadn’t slept in days because she fell asleep before we even took off. At one point I woke up from my sort-of slumber to look over and see her facing me with her mouth wide open. It looked like something out of horror film. Her mouth was easily a three car garage. Hey, at least she got some sleep right?

The B&B we were staying at was pretty awful. Anna, the woman who owns the B&B, is terrifying. She has to be one of the most unfriendly people in the entire world. Her face is pale and her wrinkles are like small craters. Cover-up is caked onto her drooping face and is paired with sticky, thick mascara. She constantly plays with her gray, dry, brittle air as she talks way too loudly. The only things she loves are tennis, her elite all white club, and money. Whenever I talked to her all I could watch was her gobbler. It moved and swayed with the wind. 

When we first arrived there, we decided to get a pizza for dinner. We talked down to the nearest and cheapest pizza place, which was full of Italians. I could barely understand what the waitress said and some of them didn’t even speak English as far as I could tell. 

There was a tiny boy, he must have been four or five, who was riding his scooter into the counter next to us as we waited for our meal. I was so exhausted and upset about leaving my family that I wished he would just disappear. He was adorable, though. Annoying but adorable.

The pizza did not take more than five or ten minutes to prepare. We both got salads go go with it because, after eating airplane food, we probably needed the greens. Not having read her ‘rules’ before going out, Egil and I both figured we could bring it back and eat it in her kitchen. Little did we know, however, that was not the case at all. 

As we lumbered into her kitchen, with food in hand, we asked her if we could eat in the kitchen. She looked a bit shocked and then became extremely stern and told us that it was “her kitchen, you know?” and that we’d have to find another place to eat. I was so exhausted that I did not want to deal with trying to argue our way into eating at the table.  I simply told her that we would go eat outside. Although she asked us if we were sure, her questions were not sincere. I also asked her if we could borrow two forks in order to eat our salad and she completely ignored me. So we turned around and walked back outside into the cold.

We walked along her road, heading south towards and cross-street. When we reached that, we took a right. There, in front of us, was our new eating place: a small curb. Egil squatted down beside me and we opened the pizza. It was still warm, which was very nice. The salads were plain and only had oil for dressing. I poured it onto my salad, not really caring how it effected the flavor. In my eyes, I simply wanted to get the nutrition out of the lettuce, cucumber, tomato, and other various veggies. So there we sat, our first official meal in London. On a curb in the dark at the end of a street. Eating salad with our fingers. Egil did try to fashion a fork or spoon of some sort from the cardboard from the pizza box but it didn’t work. 

The bathtub was the worst. Simply because we, as grown adults, cannot bathe in something like that. There is no standing shower head so taking a shower means squatting in an awkward position until I have sufficiently soaked my hair with the shower head, (which is just a fancy hose with a shower head on the end of it) quickly scrubbing my hair as well as possible for the situation, rinsing it while trying not to get her carpet wet (I do not understand why one puts carpet in a bathroom without something protecting the water from the floor), and almost shaking to death as I step out of the tub. There is no heat or outlets in the bathroom so it is like stepping into an icebox. Egil and I kept talking about how all we wanted was a normal shower, where we could wash our armpits and stand up like a normal human beings instead of crouching like animals. We cannot help but laugh now.

We are staying a Best Western now. Actually, it is quite nice. We have a shower and the window in our room is something I have never seen before. I also have internet for the first time since we arrived! Who knew something so simple could be so amazing? I have a new appreciation for the internet.

When we left, we thought we could rent something in London for short term. Now that we are here, we have realized that London is so incredibly expensive. In order to find something nice, we would have to spend quite a bit of money. Due to the fact we are foreign, every letting agency we went to wanted the rent up front plus a deposit, among other things. That is now out of the picture.

Due to all of the change, we are now going to stay with a woman we met through a good friend of my mothers. If that makes sense. Her name is Carmen and she has the most vibrant blue eyes and blond locks. She is half swiss and half spanish. She stands at around six foot and speaks with the most gorgeous accent. It is mostly spanish but every once and awhile you can here the british influence. Carmen has lived in London on and off for the past twenty years. She has traveled all over the world and we have the most tantilizing conversations. Her personality is a bit eccentric and it makes for a memorable time. 

We will be staying in her flat, which is four stories up in a building that was built in 1886. The wall paper in the building is bright yellow and there is no lift so we hike up a winding staircase. Her living room is so gorgeous. That is where we will be sleeping on a lovely, comfortable couch bed. It is decorated with eastern european art that she has collected over the years. Three huge bay windows sit in the front of the room and are accentuated by bright orange drapes.

 We cannot wait to sleep in a place that feels more like home. Also, it will be so nice to cook! Her kitchen is mostly all red and has a fifties checkered floor. Not being able to eat real food has taken a toll on our bodies. I have already told Egil that I am going to do a cleanse right when we move in.

As of right now, we can stay there for three weeks or so. During that time, we need to decide whether we are going to stay in London or possibly travel somewhere else. Spain has come up in the conversation. I have cried about half of the time we have been here because things have been so much more difficult that we expected. We aren’t giving up though! Not going to lie, sometimes I wanted to.

Egil is currently whining and trying to get me to move from the bed. He is blaming me for losing my phone and dropping my phone even though he did both things. I didn’t do while laughing. He just called me sasquatch. Now we are crying with laughter. Things are good and I will write more soon! Hope all is good on the home front. xoxox