'ello! from Jolly Ol' England!

YES - we made it!!

We have a new method for beating jet lag - travel with a toddler. Over the course of the 7.5 hour plane ride across the Atlantic (9pm EST to 9am UK time, with the time difference) Lincoln decided to sleep a whopping 1 HOUR! I guess having a personal TV with "Bolt" showing nonstop and playing bowling on the iPod was too much fun to sleep through.

When we got to Heathrow airport a cute old English guy met us to drive us to Brighton. He entertained us the whole 2 hour ride with stories about all the Americans he has met. It was SO hard to stay awake after the sleepless night and listening to his lulling British accent, but we managed to make it to our temporary flat (apartment). It looks just like you would picture a little English home and it's right across the street from a beautiful gothic church.

By this time we were too excited to sleep, so we ventured out into the town. The streets are lined with tiny shops and tiny cars and people bustling about at all times of the day...well, except for in the evenings apparently. We were in a grocery store and asked the checker where we could find a hardware/electronics store to buy an outlet adapter (we bought some in the US but stupid me had them shipped with our other things that will arrive next week) and she looked shocked and said "What?! At this hour??" It was 630pm!! We soon realized that apart from a few convenience store places, most shops close down by 5 or 6pm - even restaurants and ice cream places! That's a big change coming from "The city that never sleeps".

There are a lot of things that are really different here and make us laugh. I am going to wait to write about some of them when I have my camera cord and can provide pictures to go along with the descriptions. Something that we find really amusing is the television here. We had been warned beforehand that British tv is awful, so our expectations were low. We were surprised to find quite a lot of American shows on the cable we have here - but the selection is really odd: CSI, Scrubs, Jerry Springer, Dog the Bounty Hunter, Grey's Anatomy, and Friends all seem to be on CONSTANTLY! There are also a bunch of knock-off game shows like "Are You Smarter than a 10 Year Old?" or "Britian's Got More Talent" that are the same as their US counterparts but set in the UK.

I think many people (us included) assume that many things are similar in England because it's an English speaking country, but we've found that it's just as foreign as any other country. There are a lot of things to grow accustomed to - from grocery shopping, money and exchange rates, driving, to how they do laundry- and we do have brief flashes of longing for our comfortable American life, but every day is an adventure here and we love it. Lincoln especially has done really well with the transition and I am so thankful for that. I will be sure to post some pictures and funny words/phrases of England ASAP!