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Saturday Night

As I sit down to write this post, I have been in London for one week - to the minute. I just looked out the window and saw an Emirates plane flying towards Heathrow. I'm not sure if the schedule stays the same, but if it does that's the same flight I took last Saturday. I'm completely synched to local time now, but I still wake up early due to the sunrise. The internet's down at the moment which means I can't publish the post for a while (and I can't catch up on Doctor Who! The season finale just finished, but the signal's really bad in overcast weather anyway. Digital TV sucks).

One week... it's all so surreal. Am I really in another country? I'm not sure if I've grasped that or if it's really as small as I'm feeling it. But as my dear friend put it in an email the other day "They are just different people in the same world". I've gotten used to saying 'pounds' (haven't actually bought anything yet, that should be fun), but 'pence' is too weird. Everyone says 'p' anyway though.

If you're into linguistics like me, you might already know that when Brits ask a question the pitch goes down at the end, but Aussies' questions go up (an inflection I think it's called?). Well if you can count that as acquiring part of an accent then I'm afraid to tell you that I'm fully there. Afraid my foot - everybody knows I wanted one. Still got some pride, though. Scoffing at a "long" drive (3 hours) made me feel great. But I may have exagerated when I said that's a day trip for us, there and back.

We went to the school fete today - a May Fayre it's called. (Real spelling! Not Mayfair.) It's to kickstart the Spring they say. There was Maypole dancing and bouncing castles (jumping castles!) and a petting zoo and food and craft stalls. When I arrived there was folk music for the dancing and I thought "what a great traditional atmosphere!" Then it finished and they put on One Direction and Taylor Swift. Oh well. I thought of you Charlotte. I'm breaking my blogging rule to put in a smiley face for you! :)

I walked around for a bit but then I started to see faces of friends back home. Either that or Lady Gaga was the reason I left but it was nice to get back to my room and write some letters. I've had a couple of days of homesickness. Gone for a year - that is damn scary. I miss everybody and I've wished I was back with my family, but I know it will get better as time goes on. I'm trying the local church tomorrow and I hope it's really great (and that I make friends close to my age - is that too much to hope for?). I need a new wallet since pounds are wider (upways) than aus dollars. And they're made of paper - I mean really, don't they sweat here?

Sunday afternoon

Well the internet's down for a few days they say. That's fine I'll just keep adding to this TextEdit document.

Today I went to the local church. It's a big old building - you've probably seen one like it - and on the inside it has all those tacky banners and flowers and traditional stuff. But the people there were really, really friendly and I even got a mention from the front as "Jessica from Armidale, Australia" so that was a nice way of being introduced. About 88% of the people there were at least sixty, but I don't think it was a typical sample because the 'junior church' were off doing something and there were extra people from the partner church down the road because it was the vicar's last service before retiring. I almost forgot I was in England while I was in there, because apart from the lady who read the bible the accents weren't very obvious. Or maybe they just suited the building. They sang hymns with an organ and a choir. It's not identical to my home church, and I didn't gather much from the 'message', but I'll definitely go back again next week. Maybe see what else is in the wider suburb too.

I'm feeling good today. Watched Pollyanna after lunch on telly, golly it's a feel-good-film. I cried for joy in the ending and was happy for the rest of the afternoon. Thanks to everyone who's been emailing! It means SO much and I can't wait till I get the internet back! 'Africa' by Toto was on the radio the other day which made me happy. Gotye was on today! Wow! And thought of you Izzy (and Stu) because they played Passenger's 'Let Her Go' (and I wasn't even annoyed, happy even). Some Florence took back with you, Sarah. They love Paul Simon here - I've heard more of him and Garfunkel than anything else. And if I told you I was kind of over the new Doctor Who, I take it back. This season is really good! I'm enjoying it so much more than 2011's.

Well I actually woke up with a cold this morning, but when I said good I meant good in an emotional way. I would have loved to have been sitting next to a friend in church but it was all OK and I enjoyed it. Mostly. They do good tea (everywhere) and they give it to you with milk already. My nose is red and sore from snotting all day and I've got hives on my leg from being too hot (polar opposites on my own body!?) but compared to Friday night I'm one happy little Vegemite. Ah, that's something that would make no sense here. My host Mum made Yorkshire puddings with tonight's roast dinner. And we had European cheeses for supper last night. Feel so spoiled! This weekend I might go into Baker Street (and visit 221B, there's a museum I think) or somewhere exciting and go bananas. The London Eye... gotta rustle up the guts... gotta get that new wallet. Or an underclothes bum-bag equivalent. Grooovy.

Monday night

Ugh my snot turned yellow today. I woke up feeling rotten after a rotten sleep. I haven't caught a cold in years! Until now. Second week in England. Oh well. I bought some stuff today! And I think I've got my head around the coins. Anyone could probably rip me off still but soon it will be second nature I'm sure. The lady must have thought me weird when I had to read the amount on the one pound coin. 

Tuesday morning 

The cold is a bit better today, I slept soundly and woke 1 minute before my alarm - proof: body clock totally atuned. It's miserable outside though, and most of the blossoms are pretty much all dropped. It's a good thing my life isn't a movie or that could be some gloomy metaphor (for want of the proper term, help me out here?). I'm doing alright though. People here, instead of saying "how you going?" say "how you doin'" and then they answer it straight away with another question: "alright?" or they just say "you alright?" I remembered a couple of days ago that a friend warned me of this because at first she thought people were thinking she wasn't "alright," when really it's just their [insert linguistic term that I have forgotten and would google if I had internet - it must be my cold]. It's still weird though. I have to stop myself and focus on a polite answer...

I must remember to get postcards in the city. Sending a letter to Australia is a lot cheaper than I thought it would be, which is great. The chocolate here is much less creamy, I don't enjoy it as much. The peanut M&Ms taste like they've had liposuction - you know where they suck fat out of your bum or something. I think that this country hates fat and oily fat more than anything...! I bought my usual moisturiser and it came out looking like unhomogenised milk, or that rice goo that babies have, but 'healthy' white. It's weird how they have to change products for different places. 

Tuesday night

Not much to talk about, it's just the document was on my desktop and there's STILL NO INTERNET and nothing on TV and I have hives again because it's really warm inside. But the hives are dots and not stripes like usual, which makes me wonder if I'm reacting to something that's not the usual thing I react to (which I'm unsure of but I think it's heat or stress). But I have dotty and stripy hives and I'm thinking if this makes the cut to the final blog I'm a looney.

Wednesday Morning

Oh yeah, being stuck inside all day due to the weather isn't all bad. Yesterday Little Miss and I danced around the kitchen to "I Like To Move It" and some 1D... We made orange juice, took the "puppy" to the "vet"...

I just want the internet back!! And an old friend. I'm not great at working at new friendships, and one family is quite a lot to get to know. Well I should have thought of that before I came. It'll be good for me I know. My cold is getting better and I'm sleeping well, I just hope this cough doesn't linger. My hayfever's back too. This is not a grumble blog! Shut up!

Later

Hmm I'm so bored I'm actually watching Top Gear. Maybe it's comforting since I am so so so far from anything familiar...

Hellooo

This is a quick post to say that I am alive and about to start replying to the backlog of emails... the internet of the neighbourhood has been down since Saturday!! Grr! But now it's back and so am I.

Read this next bit like an obnoxious ad (really fast, loud and ridiculously enthusiastic):
Do you worry that you have missed out on five days of news? Stop worrying right now! Here on this very laptop I have been blogging away like mad on a makeshift writing space... TextEdit! It's chockablock with trivial info, spontaneous and sporadic branches of thought, mildly clever observations and a good amount of complaining! So hang in there readers, it's on its way and will be here very soon!

*Each post won't be published separately and contents may have been edited since initial composition.

My Fair Lady

Are you wondering what I do all day?

There's two kids I look after, the boy (obviously I'm not going to say who they are on the blog) goes to school and the girl, nursery in the mornings. I help get them ready (like NEGS in microcosm but not really) and we walk to school together. It's like half the street walks too - kids on scooters everywhere and mums in coats. I love it. But it's darn cold. No colder than the Dale gets but golly this is May (spring).

And then in the afternoons, the usual stuff: Hiding from giants, monsters and ghosts; getting trapped in caves; buying a car from Tesco (and instead of paying twenty-six pounds you get given fifty); hide-and-seek and oh! you're in the basket again; royal weddings (I was the prince); googling pictures of possums after the typical term of endearment went straight over the target's head (but when native Australian animals showed massive shark mouths we googled my house instead); explaining why there's only half a mouse seen in front of the trap outside; watching the worst show ever - H20 - and it's Australian! blurgh; making daisy chains; making cookies (chose that over scones); swinging in the park (it must have been below 10 degrees); singing Bingo, Five Little Ducks, Away in a Manger, London Bridge is Falling Down... school pick up again and a taste of Little Britain. Even more blurgh - it's like Monty Python was a really good looking apple then it went mouldy and there were some worms and that's Little Britain. It might taste a bit apply (or be a bit funny) but no thank you.

Then it's dinner-bath hour and after that just chillin'. After I finish writing this I'll go to bed, even though it's not completely dark outside yet. Just an aside - I'm sorry if I repeat myself, it's just I can't be bothered remembering what I wrote in an email and what I wrote in my last post.

In all seriousness I am really enjoying this new thing. I can't call it just a job and I'm still me so it's not a new life. Though I've only been here four days I think I'm going to be pretty content. The posts now may be sparse until I have something new to talk about. I'm not really itching to leap into London town really soon; I'd rather just get to know my area and my new community and wander around until I want to stretch my horizon. (Come to think of it I still don't know which way's north..)

Overuse of parenthesis! Criticising myself again at the end of a post!
Woo, top of 14 tomorrow, sunny with 83% chance of showers. I need to invest in a raincoat.

Brambles

I'm sorry to disappoint, but I haven't been able to take photos of the pretty streets because every time I'm outside there are people around, and I wouldn't want to give the wrong idea. I think it's probably better that I don't anyhow because it's the internet. You know.

You'll be pleased to know that we're enjoying some lovely freezing grey weather and that it rained all of yesterday. On the way home from the school drop off I took a peek up the river behind the house and here are some photos -

Beautiful, huh. Nettles, ivy, brambles, grey sky, wet grass. I hope there's sunny day soon to go out again. Apparently if you walk further out it becomes fields. I must definitely be in the best part of London.. for a country kid. (I couldn't bring myself to write 'gal,' I hate that word).
You know one thing I find hard to do? Lip-read. Different accents are fine enough to understand if you can hear them but not if there's no sound. Just an interesting part of adjusting.

Funny words? Yoghurt - pronounced like bog-ert (if that were a word); privacy - the 'i' is like is snip; singlets are called vests and one of the kids mentioned flip flops the other day so I better be careful with that one. Is their word the same as America I wonder? The milk, I noticed, comes in 4 pint bottles (a little over 2L).  What I would call corn (or corn on the cob) is called sweet corn, but maybe that's not just Britain. The kids watched some Top Gear this morning and the theme music actually made me smile even though at home I would have groaned since Seamus watches it all the time. I'm thinking about cooking scones this morning but that could be kind of... pretentious? (Thanks for your word Izzy). Seeing new birds was exciting, and they sing from sunrise even when it's cold. But all in all it's a similar place - there are people who walk to school (in coats), ride bikes, drive cars, go to the park. The gardens are just lovely - tulips, bluebells, other plants that probably each have a name as well... Everything is so green. SO green. But I'm comparing it to Autumn in Armidale where there's been no rain for ages and all the flowers are dead.

And now I am most definitely rambling. Hope you liked the photos!

Daisies!

My new host family picked me up from the airport (it was about 9pm local time) and drove me to my new home. I have felt so welcomed from the very start by everyone - the kids are fantastic and we're buddies already, and I feel comfortable and, well, 'at home' in the house too. I managed to sleep most of that night, but I guess that's not surprising since I'd only had 4 hours or so in the last two days. Literally. (Thanks to those people who texted late Friday night, but I really did wish I'd put my phone on silent... still love ya!)

The next day, Sunday, I woke up quite early but I lay in bed and had that long-anticipated leaving-home cry. I read an unopened letter from my mum and a handbook from my au pair agency on how to deal with homesickness and I just sobbed. It surfaced a bit throughout the day but I'm good now. I was feeling bad before I left that I wasn't crying when saying my goodbyes - so now you can happily know that mine just came late. I finished unpacking which was really helpful psychologically, and had tea and toast. After some chatting and being shown around the house properly we went "into the village." This doesn't really make sense to an Aussie, you're thinking 'huh? I thought you were in London?' But I think it's like your suburb is your community, with a row of shops like a nicer Uralla and pretty much all you'd need week by week, and "town" is London-London: the city bit. Or the next suburb might have department stores and such if you need a new phone or clothes.

Anyway the "village" is just lovely. I'll take some pictures of the streets tomorrow and post them but they're not going to do it justice - it is so much prettier than I ever imagined and street viewed. There's a little river that runs behind our house... yes! A river! Think really really green grass with daisies (daisies everywhere! on the roadside! made a daisy chain today with real daisies not clover..!) and big green trees overhanging with blossoms blowing everywhere and a little wooden bridge.

There's a nice park too and a lake down the road surrounded by woodland with a fake beach. We went there for a festival type thing, which was a bit like a market and a fete but less commercial and more... folky. There was Morris Dancing - see photo - and if I had have known it was called that before, I would have got the joke "Which one's Morris?" Haha. There was a barbeque, which I called a sausage sizzle, and found that that's not a widely used phrase here... It was kinda surreal to hear accents everywhere, and people just look English. Not in the way they dress but their faces. I dunno. Saw a bunch (I think there were five) of teenage fellas walk out of a store and one of them had a granny cardigan and I nearly laughed out loud. You can see in the photo the grey sky - it rained as we were leaving - but we've actually had some nice sun and we played on the trampoline today. People have said it's unusually cold for May, probably a good thing for me though or I'd think too highly of England too soon...!
I love this area, though; and my house and room are so nice.

It's 9:09pm but still not pitch black - kind of that grey where you've got your headlights on and decided to leave the clothes on the line overnight and you can't really tell who it is walking down the street but the window's still blue not black. I'm going to wrap up here because I just want to show some pretty pictures of the place next.

I was listening to the BBC radio and heard an ad for the finale of Doctor Who this week, but I forgot to keep watching after episode 2 - I feel like a bit of a wally!

Getting There

I'm here, I'm in London, I'm safe. I live on the sweetest little road and it's Spring here so everything is in blossom. It's 5:39am but the sun is up and my body clock is still refiguring. There's a lot to write about but I'm still jet lagged so I'll just take it one bit at a time.

On Thursday I drove down to my grandparents house on the Central Coast. I stayed the night there and the next day we went into Sydney and they spoiled me rotten, of course. I had a great time doing all the touristy things, but it did feel a bit odd. Even though I kept checking my passport was still in my bag I kept forgetting I was leaving for England the next day. We walked from the Sydney Opera House (I'm going to miss seeing the Harbour Bridge. And the Southern Cross) through the Botanic Gardens where we had lunch. It was a beautiful day and I love Sydney. Every third person was going for a jog. We then went to the QVB. I love that clock.

But you want to hear about London!
Well on Friday night I stayed over at my Uncle & Aunty's house (we went to the Via Napoli restaurant in Lane Cove - fantastic place) and watched Mythbusters with my cousins. I got up at 2am to get to the airport by 3 and my Uncle very kindly drove me there. (Thanks Doug!!) The airport opened a few minutes after we got there so the queue was very short. There was only one cafe open. After customs though I had a Chai latte at Maccas and eventually made my way to the gate. I thought I'd use the loo before I boarded but I left my laptop in there... DUH idiot. It's OK I remembered it in time and it has stayed with me ever since.

Then I was on the plane and not one bit did I feel like sleeping. I watched Wreck-it Ralph (loved it), The Hobbit, some New Girl (yes Charlotte I know but I still don't want to watch anymore), Tangled, Hotel Transylvania, started Frankenweenie but it didn't grab me so I tried The Impossible - and that was a dumb idea. If you're leaving your family who you love immensely don't watch a movie about a family who is separated by the 2004 tsunami. I cried and it was a little embarrassing.

Dubai was terrific. I'll just paste here what I wrote to my Dad last night - Dubai airport was huge!!! I had to descend a zillion stairs to get to my gate and then CATCH A TRAIN to the A gates!! English signs everywhere of course. There were massive wall fountains and so many staff just standing around waiting for someone to ask them for help. I liked it, but I was literally sitting down for 2 minutes then boarding. Apparently I was on the biggest plane there is - A380. I could see out the window coming into Dubai and the houses were that lovely mix of creams and tans and all rectangular with flat roofs. As you got closer to the river there were more trees and nicer houses, then there was the city and the massive sky scraper. It was 32 degrees outside. I hope I stop over there again.

The next flight wasn't as long and I was next to a nice old couple. We were in the last row on the plane (88) which was kind of groovy because we got served stuff first and the toilet was just behind. I was on a window seat which meant I could watch the coastline of Saudi Arabia (I think?) and could see London when we'd descended. I managed to sleep for probably about 90 minutes all up.
I just ate a chocolate at 6:15am! There were no dramas at all at the airport. Once you know where to go and what you need to present it's all very simple. I went straight through the border no problems and found my bag. I'm not half as intimidated by airports anymore!

I'm all blogged out so I'll leave the rest for later today..

Flight booked!

On Monday afternoon I was sewing up my Avengers pyjama pants when my mum came running back from the mailbox with a parcel in hand -

My visa had arrived.

The last few days have been back and forth with my flight agency and in and out with boxes of recycling from my room (it's embarrassing, you know, I kept every single exercise book from school. Still couldn't throw out primary school ones and for some reason any of my english books. Except from the HSC).

But finally a flight is sorted as well.

I'm departing on Saturday morning, but I want to be safe so I'm heading south tomorrow afternoon and staying with family both nights. I've said so many goodbyes now but I know there are people I've missed. If that's you, I'm sorry I couldn't say goodbye in person but I'm not intending to be gone forever. I'll be back at least to visit within a year.