JK'ing Around in Europe: 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.