Trip to London (finally)

We finally got around to visiting London. 

Thank goodness!

I was starting to feel really depressed that our longest trip thus far had only been to Cambridge... and that was on my Birthday.

Ben planned this particular outing. 

We drove to one of the outlying tube stations and then rode the underground into the city.

If you get off at the Tower Hill station, you come out to some of the most amazing views.

This is the River Thames.

And the tower of London.

And one of the London Bridges that apparently did not fall down.

Or maybe it was rebuilt.

Who knows. 

Well, probably if you visit the museum that's right in the middle of the bridge, they explain the history. But we didn't have time because we had to make it to the "Jack the Ripper" tour.

That's right. We carelessly roamed the streets of Whitechapel looking at car parks where they found some dead people about a hundred years ago. 

It wasn't very spooky. 

The whole neighborhood is pretty Gentrified. Except for the part that's like a little Bangladesh. The street signs were in Bengali which threw me for a loop because the script looks really similar to Hindi and for a minute I thought I'd forgotten how to read.

But it was getting pretty dark and I so I didn't take any pictures. Believe me, you would have been disappointed anyway.

But here's a picture of the entrance to the Tower Hill Station at night.

Way more interesting than the car park where they found victim number 2, or 3 or someone. I don't remember because the guy kept going back and forth. It was confusing.

Eating camel at the pub down the street

Market day in bury

Last Saturday we finally made it to the market in bury st Edmund. That's the small market town down the road from our house. It's open on Wednesdays and Saturdays and has farm fresh produce, eggs, fresh fish and meat... And like any other market, a bunch of random crap... Which I failed to get a picture of. But I did get these other pictures that should make you jealous of our access to fresh produce and bread.

First house guest

Ben has been learning how to cook. 

Which coincided with our first houseguest. This is Ellie. 

She's a good friend's sister and now a friend to us as well. Which is good, because the house is still in a bit of disarray which she kindly chose not to notice.

Thanks for staying with us! Let's hope she's the first of many.

Playing pool with the locals

We went down to a village called Long Melford to see an antique shop whose business hours were listed on their website as 10:00am to closing time. Apparently that means 5:00 pm in the English country side. Which means we had about 5 minutes to look before they politely told us to get out.

So we wandered down the very picturesque main street and then ducked into a pub called the George and dragon. The promise of coffee for Ben and a pint for me (and some shelter from the East Anglia winds) was irresistible.

We watched some locals play pool and then Ben's offer to buy them a game led to him getting trounced twice. But I think it was amusing to the locals. We'll try the antique thing again tomorrow.

My office

So this is where I'll be living for the next three years. Yep, my office. I already have a general court martial next week. Just direct of two of the witnesses and the script but it's still going to be two days of sitting in court.

The new place

So the other place I'll be living is in a place called 2 The Old Flint Cottages. It's 400 years old.

The picture above is the master. Our bed will fit in the room. But will it fit up the stairs?

No closet but there is this little room that's going be my closet.

There are closets in the two other rooms. But they are kind of awkward. 

It's like we live in the land of I Love Lucy where guest rooms are stocked with twin size beds.

And also random sinks.

And I have to say... I love the bath tubs here. They are awesome.

Nice view from the guest room.

This is the entryway. The weird opening is where the boiler used to be. Don't know what we're going to do with that space yet.

This is what sold me on this place. 

That's a whole bunch of cabinets.

Now these shelves look like they're the perfect place to put some vintage Pyrex.

This is the living room. It's a little long and narrow.

And this is the dining room. Those are some antique chairs we bought on the equivalent of craigslist. Ben's going to refinish them.

And this is the outside. We're going to fence in the front yard so the dogs have a place to run around. 

Hopefully I'll have some time to post pictures when we get some furniture in there.

The Great East Anglia Scavenger Hunt

We left Houston on December 17th. Both sets of parents very nicely agreed to take our luggage, our dogs, and us down to Houston which is where the only flight (apparently) that could take more than one dog at a time was flying out of.

Oh you poor, poor puppies... they have no idea they have 14 hours in a crate ahead of them.

We arrived in England on the 18th. Two neurotic dogs in tow. 

We were determined NOT to sleep until the evening to try to cut down on jet lag. 

Which meant when my sponsor asked if we wanted to go meet the office, I said "sure". 

Who cares if my hair was a mess (it was) or that we were so tired we were having to ask people to repeat things, or that we hadn't eaten anything for about seven hours and were starving. 

Ben calls it "Extreme traveling with Carrie".  

Everyone was really nice and the deputy of the office sent us on our merry way telling me not to come back to the office until I'd gone to newcomers' orientation, passed my driving test, found a place to live, and some transportation etc.

Thus, as my friend Chris pointed out, we have embarked on a scavenger hunt of East Anglia. 

I would like to point out that scavenger hunts by Texas law are considered hazing. 

Because we had to attend the newcomers session the next day - where we did indeed both pass our driving test -  we weren't able to really start house hunting until Friday. 

Which is when we discovered that pretty much every letting agency (the agencies that actually LET you into the houses to see them)* are closed for a two week holiday. We managed to finagle two showings - one Friday and one Monday but everyone else either didn't return my calls/emails or phoned to say that they were pretty much closed until after the new year. 

* That is NOT why they are called letting agencies. They don't say "rent" over here. They say "let" instead.

So, we've been stalking rightmove.co.uk and zoopla.co.uk. I'm pretty sure I've looked at every posting within a 20 mile radius of the base. Twice. 

Today we were at odds and ends trying to figure what to do with our time since it was Boxing Day so everything British was still closed.

We went to get Bitey and Barky (Ben's name for Lucy and Fank) registered at the vet clinic at Feltwell which is another base about twenty minutes from here. Since we were out already, the sun was shining (a rare occurrence here lately) we decided to go look at the outside of some of the houses we're interested in. 

It's a little bit like wedding cake shopping when you can't taste the cake or dress shopping when you can't try on the dress.

Our absolute favorite place (based on the pictures and our visit to the little village where it sits) backs up to a river.

That's right. It has a river! I don't feel that I can put too many exclamation marks at the end of that sentence.

With my luck it's either already let, they won't allow dogs, or it's only a short term lease (or all three).

This Baptist Church is right across the street. We're not Baptist, but I might consider it if it means we only have to walk across the street on Sunday mornings. 

This house is a door or two down the way.

Notice the grass coming up over the side of the house - I think it has a hobbit hole!

... and also some very energy efficient solar panels. There's probably a joke about Lord Sauron and global warming in there somewhere that I am just not nerdy enough to make.

Anyway. That's the house we want (not he hobbit hole house, the one that backs up to a river). I'm trying not to get my hopes up. 

Nope, that's a total lie. I keep looking at pictures of the inside and thinking about what kind of rugs we'd need and comparing the floor plan to the pictures to figure out which room our bed would fit the best in and what kind of furniture we'd need to buy.

I'll be very disappointed when we find out it was let the day we were in newcomers orientation...

Mom keeps bugging us to go check our mail. 

Mom, I promise if you're reading this, I will go and get the code for it tomorrow. There IS something in the box, but I can't tell what it is. Those little windows are tiny.

But this post wouldn't be complete if I didn't leave you with a little bit of Star Wars weirdness. 

This was in the post office. 

My sister is spiderwoman

Before going off to COT (that's commissioned officer training), I was lucky enough to go on a family vacation to Colorado.

We drove (well, a few people flew) but I forget how wide open the skies of West Texas are.

The wind farms were especially cool. You can't tell from this picture, but we passed a flatbed truck along the way carrying one of those wind blades. It was as long as one whole block of the town we were stopped in.

Texas has nice (apparently snake infested) rest stops. there were warning signs all over the place to watch for rattlers.

The first leg of the trip to Amarillo, it was just my sister Ginnie and me in the car. 

But we joined up with the rest of the family and on Saturday we stopped at this cool little park in Dallam Texas.

The kids had a blast playing on some very old fashioned playground equipment.

(the merry-go-round AKA the vomitron)

Because I only had a week before I would be flying back to Dallas, we ended up cramming in a bunch of stuff into three days.

(hiking to Alberta Falls)

Ziplining (that's a word right?)

I really enjoyed the rock climbing...

from this angle, it looks kind of impressive

from this angle, not so much.

But Ginnie was amazing. She was a regular spider woman. 

She has sticky fingers. And I mean that in a nice not a she-steals kind of way.

The next day was white water rafting and the day after that was home for a bit more packing and a road trip to Alabama. 

Which brings us to today. Tomorrow is the beginning of COT. I don't know how much time I'll actually have to post things, but if you're wondering what COT is like, I like this blogger's posts.

If his posts are any indication of what COT will be like, that rock climbing excursion should be helpful. I just wish I had Ginnie's fingers.