It was a especially important plus because we found out on Friday morning that we would not be moving into our apartment that day either. Apparently our payment still hadn't cleared (so "it can take up to five days" means "it will take at least five days, don't get your hopes up"), which meant that the soonest we would be able to move in was Monday, because payments don't clear over the weekend. The agency called Jeremy after his 15 minute bus ride to their office to pick up our keys to tell him this, of course. This also presented the new problem of where to stay; Bishop and his wife were going out of town early Saturday morning, and we didn't even want to think about asking to stay at their house while they were out of town- they'd known Jeremy for a couple of weeks, and they'd known Berlin and me for about 12 hours. We didn't want to even suggest taking advantage of their already extraordinarily generous hospitality- so Jeremy started asking some of the people who had offered him a place when he first got to Oxford. As luck would have it, all of them were going out of town, were sick, or already had visitors.
While we were debating what options we had left, I went back to Bishop's to put Berlin down for a nap. Sister Bishop came home minutes after we did, and when she saw us, she said, "Oh! I'm not sad to see you, but I am sad to see you!" I briefly explained what the agency had told us, and before I could even think of anything else to want to say, she was already into "I'm sure you can stay here while we're gone. Let me just check with Bishop, but don't start packing" and explaining where more towels were if we needed them. Cue more tears. I was still tired, very frustrated, very grateful, very relieved, and again probably more tired than I cared to admit in that first paragraph. I just couldn't believe their generosity. Or their trust- we're crazy foreigners! We could've destroyed their house while they were away!
But really. I probably blubbered my appreciation incoherently as she walked up the stairs and I returned to the task of putting Berlin down for a nap. And fell asleep again.
We did manage to bring a few toys for Berlin, but Bishop and his wife have grandchildren.
Berlin was set.
Bishop and his wife went out of town for conference, and we watched at their apartment.
Because of the time difference, the morning session was at 5PM and the afternoon session started at 9PM.
This is Jeremy reading a bedtime story in between sessions while Berlin pretended not to be interested.
(But it's one of these books, and we have since become hooked.
Not an affiliate link, just where we bought them if you're interested!)
On Monday evening, about 15 minutes before their office closed, the agency called to let us know we could move in that night and we had 15 minutes to go pick up the keys (remember how long the bus ride was?). I didn't know this until about 10 minutes before they closed; Berlin and I had adventured out to start stocking our not-really-furnished apartment by buying a soup pot that I'd found on Gumtree (the British equivalent of Craigslist) and this biker shot past us on the little trail we'd taken. When I realized the biker was Jeremy and yelled to him, he came back, explained that he had minutes to go pick up the keys, and took off again (we still didn't have working phones, at this point). Berlin and I got our pot and made it back to Bishop's as Jeremy showed up with keys to our new apartment and a car to haul all of our stuff there.
(I could probably have written a whole post about just getting that dang soup pot. Not because the previous owner was creepy or mean or anything, but you try finding an incomplete address when your phone doesn't work and you have NO idea where you are going, and then try to tell me it wasn't an adventure. Long story short, I got the pot. It's a great pot. There were pots in the cupboards when we got to our apartment. Oh well.)
It's crazy just how excited and happy we were to walk into a mostly-empty apartment. It had beds, a couch, a kitchen table and chairs, and other random little things in cabinets and closets, but otherwise, that was it. We had four and a half suitcases, mostly full of clothes. But we finally had a place to call home, and that was about all we cared about. We didn't have more than one little blanket for Berlin, we couldn't figure out how to get the heat on, and a couple of the lightbulbs were burned out. But it was home!
We did bring sheets, but I misinterpreted the size of the beds.
So these sheets were purchased for our bed but fit Berlin's.
Jeremy and I slept on a flat sheet for the first week or so.
When he was done jumping on the bed, he came in and just rolled around on the floor.
I guess all the open space was inviting?
The next day we called the agency and learned how to get our heat on, and within the hour it was warm. After that, we headed to the phone company to sign contracts for cell phone service and internet. They told us we would have our router within 10 days, but probably that week. We got it three weeks later. Our phones, however, started working immediately, which was happy. Jeremy picked his up from the repair place and everything seemed to be in order. So we at least had our phones going for us.
We learned that we could order groceries online a few days before we moved into our apartment, and that was glorious. Dragging groceries home on the bus would only have saved us a few minutes of walking, as it turned out, so when we learned about the miracle that is online grocery shopping, I'm pretty sure I was signed up within the hour (using a really poor quality hotspot connection that we paid some company to just pull from somebody else's wireless, so it probably took me that full hour to sign up because the connection was so bad- details I will probably never forget).
Having food always helps. We started taking inventory of all the things we needed and building orders on Amazon and Ikea, which also had its pros and cons. Amazon here is amazing; because England is not a very big country, Prime shipping is next day shipping. So if we found whatever we needed on Amazon, it would be at our front door the next morning. Ikea had a lot of items that were better values for the bulk items that we needed (no furniture), but their shipping... varies. When I started placing my order, it estimated shipping time as two days. I thought that was totally realistic. We'd borrowed a number of necessities from Bishop and his wife (silverware, towels, etc.) and with two day shipping, we'd still have everything we needed in time to wash and return the borrowed items at church on Sunday. Except that I didn't notice that the shipping time at Ikea had changed until I'd finished checking out. The two days had become two weeks. Which, if I remember right, somehow turned into almost three.
It was a long three weeks.
A lot of our meals were eaten like this. We ate the pasta out of the pot.
The plastic trays are ones our groceries were delivered in,
and we would wash them after every meal to be used again for the next meal.
There are some details I don't want to forget. As silly as this is, it's kind of fun to remember,
especially since it's so much like the phase of leaving our house in Provo.
It was a frustrating few weeks for a lot of different reasons. Besides not really having all the things we felt we needed, it just takes time to adjust to living in a new place. Especially when that new place is a totally different culture and lifestyle from wherever you left. We didn't even consider buying a car because, mostly, it's a huge expense. We knew there would be public transportation readily available, and we also planned to buy bikes. Finding/fixing bikes took way longer than we anticipated, and buses were pretty reliable until then. But even reliable buses gave us their share of issues.
One particular issue we've had with the bus is not remembering to bring cash with us. It's strange to be in a country where so many places only take cash, which is a kind of old-timey detail I suppose I should appreciate, but most of the time I'm more frustrated than anything- for crying out loud, it was 2015, who carries cash anymore? Buses only accept cards if you're paying for a pass online. We signed up for those immediately, but it takes 48 hours after you make a payment for your bus pass to be functional, which we thought was like the payment from our bank for the apartment deal ("up to 48 hours" means way less time, right?). So one morning at about 6AM, Jeremy tried to get on the bus at the stop by our house to go to rowing practice. Even though we'd already topped up his bus pass, it hadn't been 48 hours, so his card didn't work. He didn't bring any cash with him, knowing he'd have his bus pass, so he had to run down to the closest little town and find an ATM, pull out some cash, and wait for the next bus, making him incredibly late for practice. For those of you that don't know much about rowing, you need a full boat to go on the water. For this team, if you don't have a full boat when practice starts, you don't go out at all because you don't have much time as it is. So Jeremy messed up practice for everybody, despite leaving in plenty of time to get to practice and thinking he'd been adequately prepared for the journey.
After a few episodes of similar bus fiascos and realizing that it's not very cost effective to take the bus every day anyway, I got a little more serious about bike shopping. I finally found one (again on British Craigslist) and took Berlin and the bike car seat to look at it and potentially take it home. Another small fiasco because, despite our calling and informing our bank multiple times that we were moving overseas (both before and after we left the US), our cards were frozen on a regular basis. So I had counted on getting cash for this bike right before I met the lady selling this bike and ended up getting to her place 45 minutes after I told her I would because I was on the phone with my bank trying to get the hold taken off of my card so I could get out some dang cash. The lady selling the bike was very kind about the whole thing. After a test drive, the bike seemed great but had a flat tire, and the lady had her husband replace the tube right then and there. I felt like somebody going to that much effort to make sure the bike was in good shape, even just for a sale, probably wasn't selling a lemon of a bike, so I paid her for it, installed Berlin's seat, and we headed home.
He must've known it was a lemon.
But it was definitely a lemon. I didn't get halfway home before the back tire somehow slid out of place and rubbed so hard against the brake that I came to a screeching halt. I assumed it was because I hadn't installed the car seat right, so I just kicked the tire back into place and walked the bike home. Jeremy made sure the car seat was on tightly later that night and tightened the back tire, but we decided to take the bike into a DIY bike workshop that weekend and make sure everything was in good shape. He spent 5-6 hours one Saturday afternoon replacing the back tire, tightening everything, having a specialized bike mechanic look at it and approve that everything was shipshape, but two days later the brakes jammed again, a wire popped out of the brake system, and the tube that had just been replaced popped and went completely flat. Of course, this all happened as Berlin had fallen asleep, so he was leaning his head on my back when I tried to just jump off the bike. I locked the bike to the first pole I came to (which I wish someone had been recording. I still am not sure how I managed to do that and hold Berlin upright) and carried Berlin partway home. He woke up and wanted to walk the last leg.
This was on our walk home, sans bike. I was still seething about it.
But I'm really happy I stopped to take this.
I'm glad to have him as a distraction.
And that's just my bike story. Jeremy's isn't much better and in fact, in many ways, is worse.
After events like these kept happening over and over and over, we started to wonder if we'd made the right decision. Even after feeling like we had confirmation to be here, like this was the best decision for us and the best place to be right now, it's hard not to doubt yourself when so many things seem to be going wrong. Jeremy and I are smart kids, we consider ourselves pretty well-travelled, we've lived abroad before, we feel like this is where we should be, and none of the things that are throwing us for a loop are really even country-specific. So why is everything so hard?
Jeremy and I talked about it in passing a few different times. Neither of us really doubted that we'd interpreted our revelation the right way, but when things were going so far from what we expected, it was hard not to be a little disappointed and wonder if maybe we had done something wrong.
A few weeks ago (so sometime in January), Sister Bishop was over at our house to visit teach me, and she was kind of talking to both me and her companion about trials, when she said, "Just because things aren't going the way we think they should doesn't mean they aren't going right."
I think all of Edison's lightbulbs clicked on in my head, and most of them shattered from the electricity surge. Actually, it would be more appropriate to say, "And I felt like an idiot." This wasn't a new idea, and certainly not a new lesson for me. "If it wasn't hard it wouldn't be worth it!" ? "Opposition in all things!" ? Those are some of my main mantras, life themes, if you will. Just, evidently, not when it comes to my life.
While somewhat painful, this was a great realization for me to have. I almost immediately started remembering the little glimpses I did have during that term of "yep. This is it. This is where we're supposed to be right now." Of course, it wasn't all miserable, and I've only highlighted the negative parts so far for the sake of the story and explanation of the lesson I learned. Before we even left for Christmas break, we felt more settled here, and this is home for us.
And even for as few parts of Oxford as we've really even seen, Oxford is cool.
We went on a walking tour a few days after we moved into our apartment.
The tour guide was a fabulously British professor, and we had to stand really close or we weren't able to hear him. We had Berlin with us in his stroller, so Jeremy and I just took turns listening to his wisdom.
Or not listening. Whatever.
Seriously, Oxford is beautiful. The walking tour, for me, was a way to get slightly more familiar with the city and know where to find things.
And a way for us to get rid of any pent up rebellion.
We also went punting with some of Jeremy's classmates in the first week or two that we were there. Berlin wanted to climb out of the boat and jump into the water the entire trip. Jeremy's classmates loved it.
That night, we went to the "End of Launch" party, "Launch" being the three-weeks before term actually started that all the MBA students had to be in school. I'm not entirely sure why there was a party, since they still had the entire term to do (and had already started, at this point) but it was fun either way. Berlin was especially ham-y and ran around winning everybody over but trying to avoid being picked up and held. Good times.
Jeremy joined the rowing team and we went to a start-of-term BBQ at the boathouse. He also golfed in a few tournaments, or "fixtures" as they're called here. We watched a Christmas parade in the middle of November and followed it up with a night tour of the museum with flashlights. The next week, we celebrated Thanksgiving at our apartment and of the six families that came, only one and a half were American.
And besides bigger events, we've found some small things to keep us busy, when I'm not just content to sit at home in the warm apartment and read books. We've found a few parks, a couple of libraries (that Berlin refers to as "library book"), a toddler play group (that we've been to exactly once, but we made a friend out of it!), a group of moms whose husbands are also in the MBA program who occasionally coordinate ending up in the same spot with their kids, and even some friends who we visit or have visit us. Our ward also has a fair amount of activities too, sometimes very cultural events that we've never heard of but in which we definitely want to participate.
Just making the house his.
I didn't actually initiate this but fully support it.
He's been a lot more independent here.
Although that probably doesn't have anything to do with the country we live in.
He definitely enjoys the accessories needed for English weather.
He's further developed his obsession with cars.
This is the one time at the toddler playgroup.
And he made sure NO ONE had any cars. He needed every last one.
Just a quick top-up stop at the grocery store.
Walking to the park. Probably his favorite place to go.
And all of the other little things have eventually ironed themselves out. Even though they were later than we were expecting, the Ikea boxes did eventually come.
There was much rejoicing.
And while I still haven't quite worked out all the issues with that lemon of a bike, I did find another one. Gumtree redeemed itself, and I got a steal of a deal on a barely used bike.
Again with the rejoicing. Berlin got a bike trailer for his birthday, and now if he falls asleep, mom doesn't receive back injuries. Further rejoicing.
So the moral of the story is: moving takes work. No, "moving to a new place probably won't ever be super smooth so don't go with crazy unrealistic expectations of grandeur." Maybe more along the lines of "don't order things from Ikea and expect it to be speedy."
Real moral: I'm really bad at this moral thing.
I've learned so much in this adjustment period of life, which maybe is long over now that this feels like home, but our time in Oxford is so short, I'm sure it's all going to feel like an adjustment period. And I love it here. I know I don't take advantage of nearly a small fraction of the great resources at my fingertips, but even the day-to-day stuff, like laundry taking half the week because things have to hang dry and having to use food almost as fast as you get it because it doesn't have the same level of preservatives in it... it's different. And I'm finding that I love it.
[title from brink of disaster by mae]
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