Lunar Eclipse

We joined millions around the world to wake up, bleary eyed, in the middle of the night, and wander outside to see what  the end of days will look like.

Although they were calling for clouds (up to 50% coverage), and at some point an early morning 'sea-fog' to roll in, we had clear skies to see the eclipse.

What better time to try our hand at some night shots.  The telephoto didn't end up working so well.... perhaps we need a sturdier tripod.

I had my first day of class yesterday.  It was mostly administrative details and a get to know you activity, but we start in earnest today.

Wish me luck.

Loughborough

So we've had our first week in Loughborough, and it has certainly had it's ups and downs! Hopefully now that things are a bit more settled life will start to return to 'normal'.

We are staying in the upper year housing, just across the road from main campus and the Engineering buildings. It's a pretty basic apartment, and it's weird to feel like we're 'starting over again.'  I realized yesterday we couldn't buy a certain keyhook because we lack any tools to mount it to the wall. There are a lot of things in the apartment that were odd to us:

1) All outlets have an on-off switch to them to reduce power wastage
2) The stairway light is automatically off - when you walk in you hit a button which turns on lights for a few minutes (this is actually great for energy conservation)
3) Heating is by radiator and most people line-dry their clothes, either inside on racks or outside on the line.
4) We have a washing machine in the kitchen near the sink. Do all front-loading machines take 1.5 hours per load or is this a UK thing? One dryer shared between all of the upper year apartments in the other building.
5) The toilet. THE TOILET! They flush differently here - instead of pushing down a lever which opens a flap, letting water drain out, here they activate a siphon pulling water upwards. After a few days of misfires (it honestly still takes us a few times to successfully flush) I had to look up directions online. Thankfully we weren't the only ones having trouble! "Flush UK Toilet" has 1.04 million results on google.
6) You have to turn on the ability to get hot water before you take a shower. Forget to do so and you'll be sorry!

Here are some pictures of our bedroom. Reminds me of Saugeen in first year of undergrad!

We've also found some... interesting foods. Some are great (rhubarb and custard hard candies!) and some are terrible (we had already thrown out the bag of Lamb and Mint chips, we tried Beef and Onion last night, Marmite [Vegemite] is tonight). We have eaten a LOT of curry and Indian food here... seems to be all the brits eat! We also bought "Toastie" sleeves - lets you put a ton of different food into an upright toaster. We had some jalapeno-chilli bread and cheese sandwich toasties yesterday, yum!

Porage, Curiously Cinnamon and Multigrain Boulders = oatmeal, Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Corn Pops

We also went to the market yesterday. The town of Loughborough was first mentioned in 1086, and the first market has been operating since at least 1221. It was neat to be shopping for things like a flat sheet (not so common here - many people seem to just use a fitted sheet and a duvet cover) and then look up and see a big church dominating the skyline and remember the rich history of this place.

Not a bad day for a stroll!

Next bag of chips?

This place is NUTS for Christmas (and Frozen) - we've been seeing advent calendars for weeks!

Some of the hard stuff is hopefully behind us. Getting all of the paperwork out of the way has been, to put it mildly, an absolute chore. Granted this may be just as hard to do for a new Canadian, but to have to make two hour-long trips to the bank, then an hour on the phone, then wait for them to mail your card to you just to have the 'privilege' of banking seems ridiculous. I also got a screw in my brand new work car's tire and had to figure out why my tire pressure kept dropping - luckily now fixed. I also no longer have to travel back to London for an interview to allow me to get the equivalent of a SIN number as most of the stuff needed was already done in Canada - too bad this took four hour-long phone calls to sort out! Lastly, starting my new job has been rocky. There was always going to be an adjustment with drug names, how to practice differently (no rabies vaccines here - in fact I am not legally allowed to give a rabies vaccine or write an export form!) and with the notorious 10 minute appointment slots. But there was additional drama with the outgoing locum vet who was supposed to train me, and I'm having to muddle through. The area manager is coming down on Monday to go over things, so hopefully that is behind me too.

We spent this afternoon taking a hike around the area (we saw blue sky and so have to take advantage!) and possibly the lunar eclipse overnight (3-4 am our time, yuck). Justin starts school tomorrow (oh right, the reason we are here in the first place) and I'm heading back to work, hopefully to a much more productive second week. Here are some pictures from our walkabout today.

Longboats (houseboats)

Locks are hand-operated with no supervisor in sight - better have brought your own tools!

And suddenly I realized a) why the public footpaths had to be closed during the last BSE outbreak, and b) why it was such a big deal

Signal beacon at the top of a hill

Another lock

Cute! (And probably the not-too-distant fate of our identical vaccuum cleaner, which came with the apartment)

Settling In

Sorry for not posting for the last few days, it's been busy here trying to get ourselves re-set up with our flat, buying items that we didn't have and still trying to figure our way around here.

Kris has had a couple of challenging days to start at her clinic.  Mostly new job / new place / new methods type stuff.  To be expected but not necessarily easy to handle with everything else coming at us.

I, on the other hand, have been hoofing it around campus and downtown trying to collect what I can as we realize things we need, but didn't get or didn't realize we needed.

Much time spent wandering around campus trying to find my way about.  I don't know what it is, but when we landed in the UK, my entire sense of direction flew straight out the window.  I don't even know which way is North any more.  On Tuesday, I actually made 7 wrong turns tying to get from our AirBnB to the accommodation office to pick up our flat keys.

Speaking of the flat, it's ... modest.
Nothing special.  The water is hot, and most of the appliances are new.  The bed is comfortable enough, and we purchased a winter weight duvet so we're toasty.  We have a short list of issues that need to be looked at, but the university seems happy to look into everything we pointed out.

It's been a busy few days.  The fact that students across the UK are all descending on their respective universities all week doesn't help.  Kristin has had a long commute which we're hoping will ease up next week.
We're looking forward to a bit of down time this weekend, try to enjoy ourselves and explore Loughborough a bit.  There is a long standing market that runs in a large downtown pedestrian mall on Thursdays and Saturdays.  Apparently thats the time to buy fruit and veg, fresh from the farmers.  We're looking forward to getting finally set here, and setting a routine.

More to come.

Love,
J&K

Awaiting the chance to settle in

So we are just finishing the last day of our official homelessness.  We drove away from our house, not to be seen again for 12 months on the 29th of August.  Tomorrow we get keys to our flat, and can finally, after 25 days  of living out of suitcases, and no more than 3 nights in a row in the same bed, have a place we can actually unpack in.
We're both very excited!

It was not a very exciting day, especially when compared next to an11th century castle, but we tackled some bureaucratic hurdles, and made some headway.  Today we started in London, still at our friends house in Ashford, but got an early start out to travel back to Loughborough.  We had our second crack at opening a bank account in the UK, and after a 90 minute meeting, were successful in opening the account.  Twice we had the bank employee calling the lender to ask about specifics of our case.  Who would have thought we were such a complicated case.

Following that we bunkered down and started a couple of hours of calling immigration, insurance, telecom companies and the like, trying to press our case to each of them, and hoping to convince the poor customer service rep we reached to take pity on us.

Some hurdles surmounted, others sprung up in our way.  That's pretty well the day that was.  We get to try more tomorrow, but from our own apartment at last.
it should be exciting as we get to embrace a little bit of normalcy.  Kristin starts work, and I'm going to get settled in for the academic semester to begin.

Hopefully a few pictures to share tomorrow of our apartment.

Cheers,

South England

We got to sleep in a bit this morning! (Haven't had the most sleep or the most restful nights in the last, say, 3 weeks - 9 am is totally exciting). We decided not to go in to London on this last day - instead we drove over to Kent to see Leeds Castle, which is branded as "the loveliest castle in the world". Is it ever! But I'll get there.

This was only my second day driving in my new work car. Removing the stress of heavy rain helped, and I'm getting better at driving over here. There's a lot of changes - from the obvious (sit in the right seat, drive on the left of the road) to the ones you wouldn't think of (when pulling into a roundabout, your left hand is pretty busy shifting gears, using the turn signal, and turning all at once). England doesn't even have speed limit signs in most areas - unless posted you follow the National Speed Limit (ie a two-lane carriageway or two lanes in each direction is 70 mph). And yes, everything is in miles and mph - one of the last few countries in the world to do this!

Leeds Castle has a cool history. No information on when it was first built or by whom, but it's changed a lot of hands over the years, usually due to bankruptcies. It was once owned and renovated by Henry the VIII for his first wife, Catherine of Aragon (one of the 'lucky' ones who was merely divorced, banished, and lived out her life to die of cancer), and was almost bought by William Randolph Hearst. It was instead bought by Lady Baillie, who sounds like she was pretty interesting. She was a rich American raised in the UK, who wanted to buy this estate but couldn't as her family wasn't from the area - so she divorced her husband and married a man from 'down the road' from this property. She later divorced him and married another man so that she gained a ladyship. She entertained tons of famous people at her holiday home at the castle (including JFK and Errol Flynn) and then left it to be enjoyed by visitors in perpetuity.

If I had an unlimited budget and a room like this, there would have been a secret passageway

Flipping upside down to catch a morsel slingshotted straight up from the ground!

360* panorama from the rocky hill in the centre of the maze

We also saw a great falconry show on the grounds, as well as the wildfowl (including Canada geese, ugh!) and the black swans Lady Baillie imported from Australia. It finished with a hedge maze (took us 20 mins to solve!) which ends by you walking down into the centre rock through an aquatic-themed grotto... neat stuff!
We then came back to Ashford and went out for a nice dinner with our friends whose hospitality we've been enjoying for the last several days, and played some games before bedtime. By the way, it's HARD to play Cards Against Humanity when you don't get the cultural references!

Tomorrow it's back up to Loughborough for a second shot at convincing the bank we're trustworthy enough to open a simple bank account! Fingers crossed.... And then on the 22nd it's back to work for me for the first day since Aug 27th - vacation is over for a little bit at least! Justin doesn't start school until the 28th but he gets to set up our new apartment, which we get on the 22nd.

More London

This was our last day in London (at least for a while). Before I forget, some pictures we missed in the last few days' uploads: 

My new work car. Check out the jazzy racing stripes! And the tiny size will be perfect for these narrow streets. Also yes, this is how people park their cars here.

And here's a picture of Justin and I with Tower Bridge (popular misconception that this is London Bridge - but L.B. is actually super boring looking): 

This morning we headed to Covent Garden Market for some shopping (Whitney and Heather/Lenny tie for the earliest Christmas gift purchase!) and general goofing around.

 It was then time to head out to some museums. The great thing is that most (if not all) of the museums in London are free (although they do ask for donations for upkeep). We could have spent a day or two in each museum but had to keep it to the highlights. We saw the British History Museum and Natural History Museum. We ran out of time for Science and Technology (as well as the Museum of Sex... after we missed the Penis Museum in Reykjavik this was a real heartbreaker!). We even got to see the Rosetta Stone (and check my reflection in the glass to see how popular that one was!).

 

 

From the museums, we took the long way around to stop at King's Cross Station for the obvious photo op. They've moved it away from the actual trains (people were blocking commuters!) and installed a line and staff, but on the plus side the line moved quickly, they let you take your own picture for free if you wished, and they helped you out with scarf magic...

After a quick stop by 10 Downing Street (or at least as close as you can get, given the fence, guardpost, and multiple police holding automatic weapons)...

... we finished the day with some well-known landmarks at sunset and some photography fun.

 Tomorrow: what's the prettiest castle in England?

Tourists in London

We've had a couple of great days in London! As Justin mentioned, we're staying with friends on the west end of London and commuting in by train and subway every day. We keep falling into the trap of planning way too much each day, forgetting the commute each way is 1-1.5 hours, and that most attractions take 2-3 hours! We're getting better though.

On Thursday we saw St. Paul's Cathedral. You're not allowed to take pictures inside, which was kind of nice as it let you focus on the tour and learning about different things like the Whispering Gallery (where you can hear someone whisper from around the circular room, on the other side - 30m away!) We climb go up to the walkways around the outside of the dome for some stunning views of London's skyline. And although it rains here on and off, we were lucky enough for it not to rain while we were outside on the pathway!

After St. Paul's we walked along the Thames river (so very brown!) to see the sights and buskers.

Not planned, but we happened to be near the Globe Theatre with a play starting soon, and thought why not! We got tickets standing down on the floor right up against the stage (as the peasants used to do in Shakespeare's time) and enjoyed Measure for Measure. I did feel bad for the actors when helicopters flew overhead - the theatre is open-roofed!

After that, we had a nighttime walk back along the river to the subway and found our way back for the night.

Today (Friday) was the reason we are actually down in London. I had to finish the paperwork to get my vet license by coming in for a quick in-person interview and show the originals of my diploma and passport, etc. Within 60 minutes, I am licensed to practice in the United Kingdom! So now I am officially* Dr. Kristin Isnor, MRCVS, DVM, BSc
(* - although vets have recently started to be allowed to use "Doctor" as their title in the UK, I will probably use the more common "Miss" here to fit in a bit better and avoid any stigma).

 

As an aside, if anyone is considering working overseas (at least in the UK) I recommend it (at least so far!). There's some annoying and slightly costly paperwork, but there is no writing of any exam, and there are plenty of jobs available - a locum agency found a job for me with almost no effort on my part - in fact I turned down two previous offers as they weren't the right fit!

After the oath-ing and whatnot, we went to Buckinghman Palace for another tour (another place where pictures aren't allowed) and learned about fun things like the secret doors in rooms that let the royals move from their private quarters to the state rooms without going into public areas, and the number of glasses at each place setting for a royal dinner (six!). We then move on to the Tower of London. Some exterior areas allowed photography, others (sadly including the Crown Jewels) did not.

This was scratched into the stone in a prison cell in the tower by a prisoner - some of the graffiti was actually stunning in its complexity! Makes you think about how long they were in there for.

We also got some shots of Tower Bridge (the one everyone mistakes for London Bridge - LB is actually very boring looking) and then went out for a great dinner with friends. Tomorrow we're going to pop into some museums (all free, yay!) and maybe check out Westminster Abbey.