A Little Like Harry Potter World

I usually peruse CNN.com every day to keep up with the world happenings, specifically what is happening in the US.  Today I clicked on an article titled "10 places that can change your child's life."  It was about all the cool experiences that you can have with your children besides the typical ones like Disney.  One of the places was London and here is the quote that I found humorous and so true: "The wonderful thing about it [London] is, this is a little like Harry Potter world. It's familiar enough to be safe and foreign enough to be thrilling."  The full article is here:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/03/travel/national-geographic-kids-travel/index.html?hpt=hp_c3

While reading that article I realized that today actually marks the 6 month anniversary since we moved here.  So I've been really reflecting on how life has changed in the last 6 months.  Our time here has been interesting, and overall great but there really have been some "foreign" differences that have been difficult to work through.  Since this is basically an online journal of our life I wanted to document a few things.  I will start with the negative first and end on a positive note.  The things I (we) can't stand about living here (in no particular order) are:
- The size of our sinks.  They are ridiculously tiny.  I measured them today just to document it.  Our master bathroom sink is 12"x8" (no double sinks) and our kitchen sink is 15"x 13".  This may not mean anything to you but try washing your face in a sink that is less than a square foot in area - there is water everywhere.  Also try washing a normal sized cookie sheet in this size kitchen sink, again water goes everywhere and the cookie sheet, casserole dish, big pot, etc are all impossible to clean.
- The tube is great, but it really sucks to take a stroller on.  I've written about this before, and even gotten used to it, but it still really ticks me off when I have to haul my 30lb child in the 15lb stroller up 2 flights of steps.  Or when I have to run over people's feet to get on the train.  Then there are the service disruptions.  One of JJ's favorite stories is how his coworkers told him about the "bad leaves" messing with the train.  They are literally referring to leaves that fall on the track and cause a disruption.
- Paying bills/setting up utilities/banking - they are all weird systems.  To do anything online with HSBC you have to use what I call a secret decoder key.  It's a little calculator looking device that you enter your pin in and it gives you a unique random number that you enter to even look at your account online.  JJ does all the banking.  I don't even know where my secret decoder key is.
- I miss Target the most (after family and friends of course).  There are some things that you just can't find here.  Target was this wonderful utopia where you could buy groceries, personal care items, a garbage pail, and clothes all in the same trip.  Beautiful.  I desperately miss it.
- Although it is the same language, so many things are called different names or pronounced differently.  I joke with Tyler about taking his vitamin (pronounced vitt-a-min here vs vite-a-min) in the morning.  Grocery shopping is a nightmare because I don't know what anything is called and the search functions aren't great on the online sites.  And I said trousers for the first time ever when going to the dry cleaners.  It was awkward.
- People don't know how to get in line here (or queue as they would say here).  I hate cutters and there are a lot of them here and in Europe in general.  I'm a rule follower and I don't take cuts.  It aggravates me.
- It's bloody expensive here.  Your perspective changes.  Today I bought a kids meal for Tyler for lunch that was 7 pounds, and I was like, hey - not bad.  Then you think of it and it's like wait I just spent about $11 for half of a ham and cheese quesadilla and a couple pieces of avocado? Not even a whole quesadilla or at least give me the whole avocado? It's ridiculous.
- The roads don't make any sense.  They change names after 1/2 a mile, they veer in strange directions, there just isn't a good direct route anywhere.  I swear every time we take a cab to Heathrow we go a different way because there just isn't any one good way to go - they all suck.
- The weather.  It is really bad and this year is particularly bad.  I have seasonal depression which is why I pushed for the trip to the Canary Islands.  It is currently snowing sideways and we haven't seen the sun in a while.  Ugh.
- TV and commercials are really, really bad.  There are a couple US shows that we get in this season but it's spotty and way behind.  They are currently showing Christmas episodes.  The commercials are really bad too.  They are all this slapstick kind of humor that JJ and I just don't understand (think Monty Python or Mr. Bean, but not funny).  We haven't started watching Downton Abbey but might need to start.
- I miss a normal sized washer and dryer.  This small combo thing just doesn't get the job done.  It take a full day to get a couple loads done and our clothes are perpetually crunchy.

OK now on to the good things.  Here are the things that I have learned here that I think are life changing and will take with me back to the states (again in no particular order).
- Live life to the fullest and do, do, do.  I look at this two year trip as a fantastic way to see this part of the world and I don't want to let any time be wasted.  So we are traveling like crazy right off the bat and doing everything in London that we can.  Weekends are spent exploring.  We had gotten in a bit of a rut in Chicago before we left.  Going downtown seemed like a pain so we fell into a routine and barely left our neighborhood.  I hope that we take away this feeling of being tourists in our own town and really take advantage of all opportunities when we come back to Chicago.
- Take control of the food you eat and the ingredients.  Processed food, for the most part, just doesn't exist here, which is forcing me to make things from scratch.  In Chicago our dinner choices mostly came out of a bag.  Now with Tyler I am watching ingredients and I have so much more time here to cook things using fresh ingredients.  I'm no gourmet chef, don't get me wrong.   But luckily Tyler and JJ think it's good and I've built up a nice little recipe collection.  And I'm exploring with new ingredients.  I wouldn't ever think that I would have almond flour or agave nectar in my cupboard, but I do and I use them often!
- We can live on much less.  Now if we do move from our condo in Chicago and are looking at new houses, if that master bathroom doesn't have a double sink - totally not a deal breaker!  We are managing just fine with our midget sink and odds are it will be bigger than what we have now so it's a win.  It's a good reminder that we don't need much to be happy.
- Cherish the moments with family.  I really look forward to skyping with people and getting updates from home.  I think I actually talk to my mom now more here than I did in Chicago thanks to Facetime.  Being away has really made us give extra appreciation for all the important people in our lives and we look forward to coming back this summer to spend time with everyone.  We have also gotten a chance to bond with our little family of 3.  We are all we have here in this foreign country and JJ would probably say that now I over-share to him, but it's nice to have time to focus on our little family too.

So I see now that the list of annoyances are much longer than the positives.  But those 4 little positives are huge and and important, and the annoyances are just minor annoyances, so I think overall we are ahead from our choice to live here.  Happy 6 Month Anniversary London!  18 more months to go!

Here are some pictures from our outing today to the kids club with Andrea and Nathan (JJ's coworker's wife and son).  They are fun to hang out with and we enjoy going to their side of London.

That's all for now - GO BLUE!  The game is on an 2am here Saturday.  Think JJ and I are going to either stay up or go to bed early set the dvr and wake up early to watch.

Tyler has this strange obsession with ramps.  He went up and down this little temporary one about 20 times.

Playing at the kids club.  This place was awesome!

Music room at the kids club.  They had a baby grand piano and all this cool recording equipment so you can make your own song or music video.

More play

We took a kids cooking class for the first time ever and Tyler was pretty civilized.  It made me realize that I should involve him in the kitchen more.  Here is his first creation - hot cross buns.  The picture doesn't do it justice - it's half eaten and it was actually delicious.  People here have a hard time with his name for some reason - here it is clearly misspelled (not my doing).