every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end

I was so excited to finally be on the way to England. It was mostly surreal, because it was just another plane ride, but a little part of it was kicking in and helping all of the instability subside. And then, gratefully, all three of our flights were mostly uneventful. I mean, I did have one flight attendant fight with me about whether or not Berlin's car seat was "airplane approved" and the fact that she couldn't see a big bold sticker on the car seat that proved it was adequate meant that she couldn't let me bring it on the plane, and all of this was at the front of the plane in front of a number of passengers and she made no effort to keep her voice down (and we were basically on a crop duster - short flight, not the one over the Atlantic) so a few minutes later a lady from the front row came back to find me and offered to look up the car seat's manual so we could prove to the flight attendant that the car seat was just fine (even though the car seat had already been checked at this point, I still just about burst into tears because the lady was trying so hard to help me out)...

That, and I left Berlin's Minion water bottle in the seat back pocket on the first flight, and he asked for it the rest of the trip. I honestly am still counting my blessings that it wasn't a worse experience.

Jeremy emailed me instructions a few days before Berlin and I left the US on how to make it out of the airport and to the bus station in Oxford, so fortunately, I didn't feel lost when we landed in London.  This was great, because before the email, I was definitely on the verge of hyperventilating that I'd never been to this airport or this country before (no, it didn't help that I knew I would be able to understand everyone when I got there). I exchanged some of my dollars for pounds, and we got on a bus (to another terminal to another bus) to Oxford.

And then we got to Oxford. The first day was certainly the longest day. I think I was expecting a little more grandeur for the beginning of this adventure. But I suppose it would be fair to say that most of what happened the first few weeks we were together as a family were pretty far from our expectations. And in hindsight, I don't think anything in my life has ever been "smooth sailing," so why did I think this was going to be any different?

When Berlin and I got to the bus station, we had a heyday of a time finding Jeremy. Jeremy's phone had some major issues when he got to England, and they hadn't all been sorted yet, so I could only get in touch with him if he was sitting at his computer. My phone worked if I was in WiFi, which meant that as soon as I got off the bus I lost my stable connection. Jeremy tried to give me directions on where he was going to meet us before he left his computer and I left WiFi, but he gave me cardinal directions to tell me where he was going to be with a borrowed car that he couldn't leave. I struggle with cardinal directions everywhere, even in Utah Valley (I know the mountains are always to the east. I know. But what happens when you drive towards Spanish Fork Canyon? Or when you drive through Provo Canyon? Or what if you go to Park City? They're not always to the east. Don't explain to me that driving through a canyon means your on the opposite side of the mountains. I won't get it), and I definitely knew even less about Oxford. So I asked the first person I found if he could tell me where "north" was. He had no idea. But in true British style, he said he was sure he could find it and offered to help me get wherever I needed to go.  Not helpful, since neither of us knew where I needed to go, so we wandered around the bus station in a circle, the man telling me the whole while different reference points to give to my search party, me too tired to realize that it was pointless, or to tell him that my phone didn't work.  Eventually we were in fact rescued by Jeremy, who found an illegal parking spot and braved getting the car towed to come and find us.

At this point in the day I'd been on the verge of tears too many times, and I think I started crying while we drove away from the bus station. I'd been awake for more than 24 hours on about 4 hours of sleep, it was only 2PM, and Jeremy told me that we couldn't move in to our apartment that day, on top of needing to return to the class he was missing. So he returned the car to its owners (the Flamms- an American family in our ward whose dad is Jeremy's classmate) and left Berlin and me with them to hang out until he had another break from classes. I'm grateful they'd made the same trip, because I don't know how we would still be friends otherwise from my total lack of sociality and general consciousness. They gave us beds to nap in, and that's about all I remember. At some point, Jeremy came back from class and we ate dinner with them, too.

Our move-in date was supposed to be the day that Berlin and I landed, but we were told we couldn't move in because 1) our payment hadn't cleared (foreign transactions can take up to five days to process. So even though Jeremy paid the agency on Tuesday, it was only Thursday. Two days wasn't enough) and 2) they were replacing the boiler in our apartment. The agency told us that we could maybe move in the next day. Fortunately, the bishop of our ward and his wife told us that our whole family was welcome to stay with them while we figured the whole apartment fiasco out. So after dinner with the Flamms, we went to Bishop's so that we could all go to bed. Jeremy had another lecture to attend that he thought would run late, so I put Berlin in bed and then crawled into bed with some work to wait for Jeremy to come home. I made it about 5 minutes. When Jeremy got home, I was passed out next to my computer with the light still on.

The next day would be better. What isn't made better by a good night's sleep?

[title from closing time by semisonic]