Interesting Time to be in London

 Tuesday "we" got a new Prime Minister. And now the Queen. What an interesting time to be in London. We watched the BBC last night for a few hours as they processed the news. To be honest, we haven't really talked to British people (or really anyone at all) about it, and today's walk to school and quick stop at the grocery store felt normal. So it's hard to understand the big change right now. We will see how this plays out. I hope they talk about it in school.

We had brought the kids to Buckingham Palace and Tower of London and learned about Queen Elizabeth II's coronation and reign, so I'm glad we had a tiny bit of background before all of this. It will definitely be interesting to live through this here.

Separately, a quick update on my medication. I went to pick it up. It was there. It was free. I mean really. 

And we signed our lease. We get the house on 28th September.

And our stuff got loaded onto a ship, and it's supposed to finally leave the US today. Fingers crossed. If it does leave today, it's schedule to arrive in England on 24th Sept, and it takes about 4 days to go through customs and some time to schedule delivery. But if it will only be a few days or a week that we won't have it, we might just find another air bnb rather than renting furniture and buying kitchen stuff. What a pain and waste of resources that would be. Let's see what happens.

We also got our air shipment yesterday. Horray for ping pong paddles, footballs, cleats, shin guards, games, shoes and clothes! 

Food prices: I cannot believe how cheap food is here. It's possible that inflation has been recently INSANE in Newton and also I shopped at Wegmans, which might not have been my cheapest option. But here I'm also shopping at a nice store, and it's just so damn cheap. 0.20 for an onion. 1.65 for three big bell peppers ($3 at Wegmans). 2.10 for a clump of grapes that would have been $6 at Wegmans. I have had to do little shops every few days so I don't make the same mistake as before where I have too much to carry...but I am still fully loaded with four bags of stuff, and it's usually about 25 GBP. We had anticipated a serious increase in costs here, but so far we are paying less rent than we are earning on renting our house in Newton, food is cheap...though we have already started booking travel, and that is ADDING UP (especially since we have that third kid - finding spots to stay in Europe for a family of five is no joke). So maybe it will all balance out. 

And finally, a short description of how our life is a bit different than it was in Newton. We have no car. But kids are living a kinda similar schedule. So how? Yesterday Elie had a playdate at a friend's house. Samara had a playdate at another friend's house. Koby came home after school. About an hour after he came home Koby and I walked in the rain to a bus, took it to Elie's friend's house. It was a 20 minute journey in the POURING rain. Grabbed Elie and walked 15 minutes to Samara's friend's house. We were soaked. But about a block from the friend's house, there was a woman struggling with her son on the street. I think she must have had some sort of stroke. We ended up calling 999 (911 here) and talking to the dispatcher and staying with them for about 15 minutes until they had an uber coming to take her to the hospital. The ambulance could get there in TWENTY FIVE MINUTES (WTF???). Picked up Sam, walked to the bus (again, pouring. soaked. soaked. soaked), took it up a few stops and walked home. The whole adventure was about an hour and a half. Home at 6 for a meeting for me. Each stop was about a mile in between. On a nice day it would have been the same amount of time to walk and not bus. It's just a whole new world and takes a lot of time. And again, similar to life in Newton, dinner is supposed to magically appear. But we made it. And we dried.

Random photos:

K at the bus stop on the way to get Elie

K looking out his window

S has new friends. But luckily they have the same backpacks as our friends from Newton. Phew :) (photo evidence about midway through the pics on this post)

Elie and Koby are obsessed with this par core course. (is that how you spell it? what is it anyway?). Thanks to Oscar who showed it to them