Since the weather has been so good to us in southern California, we’ve decided to remind ourselves what a northern hemisphere winter should be and enjoy Christmas in Utah. Coincidentally, I have two brothers living there as well as and so it’s a win-win situation — though, not for them obviously. One minor drawback to this plan is that our household goods, including virtually all our winter clothing, we shipped from Germany in July will not be available through US Customs until after Christmas. It’s a sad story of neglect and delays but the short of it is we’ve managed to borrow enough warm clothes for the week we’ll be in Utah. Hopefully a post on the trip in a week or so.
In the meantime, we wish all our friends and family, near and far, a joyful Christmas.
Having decided to rent a house a bit further away from my place of work than we’d ideally like, a second vehicle was on the cards. Given the high price of petrol (*snigger*) — actually I mostly just believe in having sufficient for my needs — I thought a scooter would be the ticket. Since the freeways I take have a tendency to clog quickly and often, having a smaller vehicle than can go slip through is a great boon. Though one must ride very defensively, lane sharing, as it’s known here, is considered acceptable behaviour. In addition to lane sharing, motorcycles are also permitted to use the car pool lane and this helps reduce the danger to me and the time to ride.
I picked up the new bike for what I think was a very good price. The guy threw in a jacket, two helmets (one of them a child’s), a bag for the seat, a pair of gloves and a service manual, confirming to me that he was in fact going ‘cold turkey’ on bike riding. The bike is a 1988 model and had only 9300 miles on it. Basically, it was owned consecutively by two older guys who rode it a couple of times a month and then brought it home to polish it. I’ve already let the bike know that she won’t be getting that sort of treatment from me.
As one bike-course instructor told me, “A commute doesn’t get much sweeter than a southern Californian highway on a motorcycle.” I think I’m tending to agree.
Oh, and if you don’t think this is a scooter, you should see the ones that ride past me!
Since we shifted to the new house which until very recently contained no television set, there has been a veritable explosion of reading by the children. Part of this has been the discovery of a very decent town library and not so much to distract them. Our children really do love to read, though sometimes television helps them forget it. So here is a list, supplied by each child, of what they have read recently.
Joshua
Stormbreaker, Point Blank, Scorpia and The Raven’s Gate by Anthony Horowitz
Series of Unfortunate Events, Nos 1-8 by Lemony Snicket
Black Duck
By the Monkey’s Tail
Small Steps by Louis Sachaf
Elijah
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azskaban and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling
Rowan of Rin by Emily Rodda
Mara
Into the Wild by Sara Beth Durst
By the Monkey’s Tail by Kerrie O’Connor
Dexter the Tough
Series of Unfortunate Events, Nos 1-8 by Lemony Snicket
The Unseen, Spyhole Secrets and The Magic Nation Thing by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Junie B. Jones, First Grade (At Last)
Inky the Indigo Fairy
The Lake of Tears by Emily Rodda
Ariana
Inky the Indigo Fairy
The Lake of Tears by Emily Rodda
Junie B. Jones
Bryna
Clifford Saves the Day and various other Clifford books.
Thanks to all those who have called or emailed in the past few days to check on our family’s welfare amid the recent southern Californian fires.
For those who didn’t know (or care), we are all fine. There is no real imminent threat to our home but we stay informed, just in case. However, my work was closed on Monday and Tuesday (22nd and 23rd Oct). It took me two hours on Monday to get there and then 45 minutes later they said we should go home! Only an hour to get home, riding into the fierce Santa Ana wind. By Tuesday afternoon the fire closest to work had made it to the car park of the building across the street. Fortunately, it was contained there with our car park now somewhat ash covered.
It is extremely dry around here so bush(brush/wild)fires are always a constant concern — well, except immediately after the fire I guess. Being Australian, fires are nothing new to us. You learn to respect them and how to take precautions. On the other, we have little experience with earthquakes …
We now have a car we bought it a couple of days ago it’s not an American car no not even from Europe no it’s from Japan we got a Honda. Yes you heard me right a honda. Why we didn’t get a German car I don’t know. I would have liked one. Well we got a Honda “Odisey” Well i think that’s how you spell it. It was fairly well priced and it was big enough although it isn’t that big but it will do!!! =) It’s a nice car and in great condition. So the weather is great here. And there is a house in “Mission Viejo” that would suite us great. CYA I’ll write again soon at lest someone will Elijah
After all the preparations for the shift, matters have progressed relatively smoothly. Our visas came with plenty of time to spare, all our friends were as helpful as ever — we spent some lovely times over the last few days with those whom we have grown close to — and we even made the flight on time. The luggage allowance on flights to the US is very generous and we took full opportunity of it to bring our tent, blankets, sheets, extra clothing and a few special things we always inevitably forget to send with the shipped belongings. However unloading, carting all the luggage through the airports and reloading was a bit of a challenge.
The flight itself went quite well and my brother Donovan was there to meet us at the car rental agency. We had a whole airport-agency shuttle bus to ourselves due to the amount of luggage we were toting. Eventually we made it to the furnished apartment being provided by my company for a few weeks and clocked off for the (very long) day. Donovan was also great the next day, looking after the children, including a movie, while Gaynor and I did a bit of running around.
The next days included house hunting, a bit of shopping and some orientation. The weather has been wonderful and warm (actually, quite hot but still great!) and the apartment complex includes a pool. For the Labor Day holiday last Monday we enjoyed a few hours at the beach and playing in the sand and surf. The children are now coming to the end of their extended summer holidays and as soon as we can find a house we will enrol them in the relevant schools.
As for work, the new job is shaping to be very interesting and the company seems to be a great place to work. I’m looking forward to getting into it further.
So for now, we are looking hard for a house to rent and a car to buy. The rest will come in time. Many new things to learn and experiences to enjoy.
Well our time in Germany is quickly coming to a close. Here us a brief update on our recent activities and a couple of those coming up.
Recent We finished up in our house, and I at work, at the end of July. The idea then was to go, as the Germans say, ‘on tour’ visiting friends, relatives and having a relaxing camping holiday until the time came to depart this country. That was the plan anyway and we managed it — mostly. It was altered in large part due to an extremely unreasonable landlady and, in smaller part, the camping being less than relaxing for the whole family. I shan’t go into details regarding the landlady but, concerning the camping, our imminent departure meant that we were reluctant to invest in much more reasonably essential camping equipment so soon before shifting continents. In the end we decided to cut the camping short and take up one of the many, very generous offers to stay at a friend’s house. We have had a lovely time visiting with a number of the good friends we have made since we’ve been here and will miss them all terribly.
We had our interviews with the US Consulate in Frankfurt last week and they indicated all seemed OK and we should have the visas this week. 🙂
Upcoming So this week we are staying at a friend’s house while they are on their own holiday. We’ll be doing a lot of organising for matters in the US and hopefully trying to get a bit of relaxation in (always hopeful!). We have plane tickets booked for a flight on the 27th of August and so having the visas arrive before then is a good thing. We have friends who’ll help us to get to the airport and I’ll also be trying to sell our car during the week. Couple of things left to do and then all we need to do is set up again in the US. 😀
2nd of August: My Birthday I woke up about eight o’clock, changed he calenders in the kitchen.Then went and woke up everyone else (a bit anoying realy for them), it was time for presents yeah… but no Dad had to go to work and sort out some stuff (how unfair I don’t work or I could spoil his birthday too). And it got worse we didn’t just wait we had to tidy no x box, no gameboy or computor :(. After a promise of 1 hour dad came back after 2 hours. And finaly i could open my presents. (it was a bit hard to open them since as they were all in bags). I got: A didle pen ( didle is big in germany look on their web site if you want.),didle necklace, an “A” necklace, some chocolate (kinder), some pencils and a didle diary. We had a borthday dinner in Frankfurt with our great aunt Shirly at a italiano restaurent. But Dad did not want to buy desert (5 euro each). So we went across the raod and got some icecream at a ice café and all got a ice cream and mara did some fake candles for me (which i blew out in one:)) By Ariana with help from Elijah
I’ve been job hunting for a number of months now and am pleased to say I have just received a formal offer from a private fusion research company based in Orange County, California. It seems pretty reasonable so we think we’ll give it a go. I mean, it can’t be any harder than shifting to Germany right? Don’t worry though, we’ve put a bit more thought into it than the preceding sentences might allude to.
We still have to clear our entry/work visas and will have an interview middle of next month. Hopefully only a few days to process. We expect to be arriving around the 25-28th August, though that may delayed if something in the plan needs changing. The company has asked me to start early September.
We should have about a week between arriving and starting work and school and in that time hope to find a house, a car, schools, change drivers licences — yes, another test 🙁 — take out insurances, cure cancer and solve global warming. Or as many as we can manage anyway.
Gaynor and I are both excited and the children also seem pretty happy about it. There are a number of advantages in moving to southern California not the least of which is the promise of continued income. There is a lot of work to do before then but I think we’ll make it. We are planning to be relaxing on a camping holiday for most of August and so probably won’t be making much internet contact during that time.
25/6/07 – 29/6/07 Unfortunately, due to time pressures this will just be a short report on our recent trip to London. Though Gaynor and the children all hold British passports they have not spent a lot of time there and we hoped to correct that in the event that we will move shortly from Europe[1]. We decided that rather than try to see a number of places in England in the course of a week, we’d concentrate on just London. Still, plenty to see.
We drove first thing Monday morning to Calais where we missed the ferry we had booked. Only by 10 minutes mind you but they put us on the next one with no trouble. All I’ll say is that the traffic through Europe during peak hours can be very hard to predict. The ferry was a nice break from driving and a new experience for the children. The next new experience was driving a left-hand drive vehicle on the left-hand side of the road. Not as bad as I thought it was going to be. It helped having driven on that side before. 🙂
We stayed in Barking, on a direct half-hour-or-so train (the Underground actually) ride from the city centre. The children enjoyed catching up on some all-English television, comparing some of their regular shows to the German versions (voice over-dubbed).
The next few days reads like a list of a museum crawl including the British Museum (extremely impressive; highlights including the Rosetta Stone and a whole pile of other stuff the Brits have ‘collected’ over the years), Natural History and Science Museums (we split up to do these simultaneously), Imperial War Museum (not nearly enough time here) and the Ragged School Museum (we learnt there are poorer school systems than German).
Other highlights included visiting Westminster, a stroll along the Thames, Tower Bridge and the Tower of London (from the outside), climbing The Monument, a walk and a play in Hyde Park, changing guards at Buckingham Palace and Evensong at St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Sorry that there isn’t more time to pontificate over the trip but you can find a number of photos on our photo page. (Note the permanent link to the photo page, “Selected Images”, located on the left of every blog page).
The drive home was reasonably eventful with an extra two hours to get out of London due to a jack-knifed truck blocking access to the only highway with a river crossing for many kilometers. Of course we then missed our ferry home and, with the one we did get leaving an hour later than scheduled, it was the wee small hours of Saturday before we rolled into the driveway.
All over though, an enjoyable and thoroughly worthwhile excursion.
[1] Please don’t ask yet about exactly where we are going. We don’t know yet and we’ll make a post as soon as we do. 🙂
Update, 22 Aug: Creative Elijah has made a short movie of our trip!
