The Daily Grind

While my blog and my facebook may portray an image of a "dream life" in Wales, let me assure you that it has not been all tourism and fun. I am, after all, running a household, cooking, cleaning, shopping, and caring for two furry cats and buying petrol and driving. We are doing the mundane things of life like watching television, walking in the neighborhood, eating, sleeping and showering each day. School training days begin this Thursday and Friday, with students in attendance on Monday, next. Then my one way 45 minute drive will begin on a daily basis.

While we have been lucky to see some fantastic places and make some new friends, we are also learning a lot about regular daily life here. Some things are the same, no matter what side of the pond one lives on, and others are very different. There are comforts of home that are absent and social transitions for both of us. Central to the comforts of home that we miss tremendously are the super size washing machine and the tumble dryer. We have had to adjust to doing smaller, almost twice-weekly loads of laundry, in order to allow it the time and provide for the space needed to dry. While we have clothes lines outside, the weather is so unpredictable from one point of the day to the next, that clothes cannot be left outside to dry all day, especially if one leaves to go out; that's if they can even make it to the line to begin with.

Cooking is something I have always loved to do, and when I have the time and the luxury of money for the necessary groceries, I have been known to whip up some brilliant food. Cooking in an unfamiliar kitchen, with unfamiliar appliances and utensils is not too easy. Small items, like a garlic press and a coffee pot can become luxury items when away from home. Ingredients are sometimes not too easy to find in the grocery, and there are about four different grocery shopping options, as far as stores are concerned. It can be confusing as to which is the best, in the end it depends on your budget, comfort level with the organization, its cleanliness and availability of items. Micaela and I have done "walk throughs" of four different stores in an effort to familiarize ourselves with each. American grocery stores are loaded with a myriad of products that cannot be found here. The size of American stores are doubled many of the stores in the local area and brand names that we take for granted are not here.

Maintaining a clean household has also always been something I strive to do. While it is not always an easy task with busy schedules, the size of my house at home, two shedding golden retrievers and two children to clean up after it was a priority. Keeping this fantastic little flat clean is not difficult. Sweeping and mopping the floor is a bit different, without the familiar Swiffer and Mr. Clean products, and I think both Micaela and I are very conscious of keeping everything neat and tidy, especially since it is not our own home. Changing cat litter, however, has never been one of my favorite things to do, and now I am changing, scooping and dumping and cleaning TWO cat boxes, as there is one for each cat! Not my favorite thing, and I have never been able to stand the smell of cat litter while it is still in a bag never mind in a litter box... so it's really not fun. The cats, however, are nice cats and while one is more sociable than the other, they are good company.

Buying petrol is also a different experience. Petrol is relatively expensive here, and is measured out in liters. There are approx. four liters to a gallon. Being unfamiliar with the car I am not quite sure how many liters actually fill the tank, nor do I know how many "miles" to the liter this car gets. (Yes, in the UK, road distance is measured by miles, not kilometers as common myth would have it.) I have yet to run the petrol tank down to what I think is the lowest I can get and then "top it off" to determine how much I may be spending each week in gas. Remember, at home I travel 5 miles a day, if that, and can get almost two weeks of driving from my 12 gallon tank. Yesterday, as I left the driveway to head out, the gas tank light was on, on the dash, indicating that I needed petrol. Not having too much cash with me, and not expecting this to occur, I qued (to get in line) up at the pumps, which are not "pay at the pump" pumps, and put in 10 pound worth of petrol, just so I could make sure I would not run out.

Good thing I did too, because, I got lost going to my destination and drove around for almost one hour, lost amidst narrow hedge lined "roads" which all look exactly alike, without any cell phone service to call for further guidance. For the first time since arriving here, I was in a panic, trying to remain calm for Micaela's sake, which all came to a crashing end when I found myself driving down a particularly narrow lane, with a deep trench on the left side where the rain had caused a washout which turned out to be a dead end. At this point I had to back up and turn around, trying to avoid putting the car into a ditch and navigating myself back up the lane without taking off the left hand mirror. While I have adjusted to shifting with my left hand, the thing I was most nervous about, and driving on the right hand side of the car and the opposite side of the road, my confidence all goes out the window when I am anywhere other than a dual carriageway or main road through a village. When I am driving and see an oncoming car on one of these country roads I tend to overcompensate and the left side of the car inevitably brushes the hedges. I am so tense when driving on these roads that my jaw clenches, my shoulders stiffen and I get a serious cramp in my right leg and foot which is controlling the accelerator. I have still not driven anywhere in the dark so my nights are spent in the house watching television, cleaning, reading or writing my blog. No nightlife for me at this point in time. If these roads were not so "claustrophobic" with the encroaching hedges that tower to six feet in some places I think it would be a bit different.

British television is an interesting thing. The satellite service that most everyone subscribes to is called SKY. There are a myriad of station options depending on the level of service one subscribes to. Unfortunately, my exchange partner, not being a sport enthusiast, does not get any sport channels with her service so I have not been able to learn much about rugby, cricket or watch a proper British football game. I have viewed my share of BBC, CNN and SKY live news. These stations have a lot of coverage from America. Top stories this week from the US have included the Jaycee Duggard kidnapping story, Ted Kennedy's funeral, and Michael Jackson's drug use and homicide. There is not much sport news though, so Red Sox updates, thank goodness for the internet. Top British stories have included the Lockerbie bomber's release and the deal that is rumored to have happened, a story about a man who poisoned his estranged wife with mercury so that he could nurse her back to health and rekindle their relationship, alcoholism in the UK, national health service scandals and stories of children drowning at sea. Top sport stories have included "Bloodgate" which involves a cheating scandal for a local rugby team where a player used a packet of fake blood in his mouth to allow him to come off the field so a kicker could be subbed in. Apparently this is a trick used often my some teams, and is used when they have exhausted the number of subs they are allowed to make in a game. Overall, broadcast news is very similar. Formats of the news are similar, and those annoying scrolls at the bottom of screen continue here too.

There are a lot of options to watch American shows, although usually one or two seasons behind. In some cases more, like Prison Break Season One, was on this week. "Deadliest Catch", "House", "CSI", "Law & Order", "The Mentalist", "Missing", "Dr. Phil"and many more shows are also on. Surprisingly I have not yet seen the Oprah Show or Britain's Got Talent. Some of my favorite British shows include "reality" shows like "How Clean is Your House?", "Relocation, Relocation", "Trawlermen" and "Four Weddings." One thing about television that is exactly same... commercials...the number of them, not the actual commercials. They are a bit different, and sometimes its the exact American commercial with a British voice over and can be a bit freaky.

Showering and getting ready each morning is also a bit different. The showers work differently here in the UK. There is a pull switch mounted to the ceiling which activates hot water. The shower mechanism is mounted on the wall and has controls for water pressure, hot/cold mix and has an on/off button that is pushed to start the shower. Here, in the UK, it is illegal to have electrical outlets in bathrooms here (aka, "the lu") so hairdryers, flat irons, curling irons, etc cannot be used in the bathroom. All this has to take place in the bedroom.

It will be interesting to see how this works when both Micaela and I, hair dryer/flat iron queens, are trying to get out the door in the morning... as we get ready to make the drive to school.