Jet Lag

Its about 4:00 in the morning here. Russell and I have both been hit surprisingly hard with jet lag. Well... perhaps not so surprisingly considering none of my normal jet lag tricks panned out this time around. Oh well. We are starting to equalize, but its going to take a while. We are still relying heavily on cat naps to get through the day, and wake up at odd hours of the night. Bleh. I'll be glad when this phase is over.

Home Base

I took pictures of our apartment today. As I mentioned before, its on an out-of-the-way little street behind a rather large mall. The building we are in is about four stories high, but has an odd split-level system that allows for 6 floors (kind of). All of the doors open off of a central court that's open to the outdoors.


When we walk into our apartment there is a bathroom immediately to the left. Its hard to see the bath tub/shower, but it posed quite a problem when we first arrived. The shower and bath tub spigots are independent of each other (come to find out) so if you start the bath tub water to set the temperature (the way you do in the U.S.) and then turn on the shower - you get nothing but cold water coming out of the shower head and the hot water continues to come out for the bath tub. Then the shower head was set to "soak bathroom" It gave off a lovely even spray high enough to jump the glass partition. It was all a little frustrating, but once we did some experimenting and adjusting, everything worked fine. I remember Alice saying that she was instructed to give her Japanese exchange students instructions on how to use a Western shower. I wish someone had been kind enough to fill me in too!


And our bedroom is immediately to the right. I am especially fond of the bedspread. It doesn't feel like a down comforter, but its really warm like one. Maybe it has a combination of down and something weightier.



As you continue down the hall there is a kitchen to the left (its bigger than it looks and came equipped with dishes, utensils and a modest supply of cooking hardware.Notice the cloths washer under the counter. I'm anxious to try it out, but I still need to buy soap.


At the end of the entrance hallway you go through a door into the main living space. This is composed of a living room on the right and a dining room on the left. The living room has internet access (though we need a power cord before we can convert it to wireless), and a TV. The dining room is just off to the left (picture to come). Its a bit cramped - especially for Russell, but its nice.

Unfortunately, this apartment was not designed with Russells in mind. The light fixtures hang at about his nose level and he has to duck to get through doorways. He is taking it all in stride, though (with only minor bumps and bruises).

Getting to the UK

We're finally here!

It took quite a bit of work, but Russell and I finally made it. Many of you were following along on the craziness as it happened, but here's a recap.

3/19: End of the term for Jaci
3/20: Jaci goes to Seattle for a conference
3/21: Russell finds out he needs a work permit and visa (he had been told he didn't previously)
3/24: Jaci returns from the conference
3/25: Jaci and Russell pack for the UK and rent a storage unit for the rest of their stuff. The whole family turns out to help move furniture and boxes to storage.
3/26: Jaci cleans most of the apartment and finishes the last of the packing. Russell gets his work permit - and discovers he and Jaci need to fly to L.A. to get visas. (Keeping in mind the flight to England is for the 28th). Russell, Jaci, and families rush through cleaning the rest of the apartment and loading the rest of the boxes into Alice's van. Russell and Jaci drive up to Portland.
3/27: Jaci and Russell fly to L.A., get their visas, almost miss their plane because they are doing a crossword, but do make it home to Portland.
3/28: Jaci and Russell leave for the UK.

It was a busy week.

Our flight went quite smoothly. The plane out of Portland was carrying a donor organ, so we were put first in the queue to take off (this was good, since flights were a bit backed up). We traded planes in Chicago and were lucky again. Our gate was just a short distance down the hall. We got there just as first class was boarding and actually had time to choke down some dinner before jumping aboard. We weren't able to sleep much on this leg of the trip, which was unfortunate since we arrived in London around 7am. Luckily, we were excited enough about being somewhere new that we managed to find the bus station, hop a bus to Reading, figure out the phone system, meet with the apartment representative to get our keys and make our way home. Once we got there, however, we crashed.

We let ourselves sleep for two hours and then went exploring. We are only about three blocks away from the train station, and our aparment building is located off a little back street behind a huge shopping mall. The giant brick mall blocks most of the traffice noise, but we are right in the center or everything. The location is great.