Beulah Street
Topic: Harrogate
Larry and Ryan and I went out in the early evening yesterday. Larry had Ryan in the stroller and I went for a walk/jog. (I haven't run much this year, but am hoping very much to get back into shape.) It was an absolutely gorgeous evening. The sky was clear and the evening sun threw everything into relief between shadow and golden light. We were in what they call here a "stray," which is like a green belt, park-like area with big stretches of grass bordered with trees and a paved path. There was a bit of a breeze and the temperature was perfect. It felt good to get out and move around, especially in such a picturesque setting.
Today Larry and I took Ryan for a walk in his stroller to Beulah Street (the photo on the left). It's a pedestrian zone with lots of shops and cafes. It's only about a five minute walk from our house. There's a church in the middle of the shopping area, which I thought was funny until I remembered that there's a church in the middle of the marktplatz in Wuerzburg. (I'll be comparing England with Germany a lot, simply because I lived in Germany for five years and it's interesting to see the similarities and differences. England is a lot like Germany in many ways, only the signs are in English and everyone drives down the wrong side of the road.) Most businesses were closed since it's Sunday, but a few more were open than usually are in Germany. One of the things here I love is that everywhere you go there are flower arrangements in public places. It's so pretty.

We turned down Cambridge Street (the photo on the right - and yes, that's a Starbucks on the left side) and went into a little place called Cottage Bistro and Coffee Bar to get something to eat. I ordered the day's lunch special, lasagne. I've never seen lasagne served with french fries and cole slaw before! Larry had a hamburger. Both our plates came with a small salad with no dressing. Our food wasn't bad, but it wasn't great. I don't think we'll be going there again. Of course we stopped by Starbucks on the way home.

The House
Topic: The House
Here's a photo of our house. I just took it about five minutes ago. The sun came out for a second so I ran outside and tried to get a photo before the sun went behind the clouds again. I only semi-succeeded. This house is nice, but has some odd quirks. We have two bathrooms, one in the master bedroom and one down the hall (both are upstairs). One bathroom has just a tub, and the other has only a shower. They both have toilets, but you can only really use the one in the bathroom with the tub, which is NOT the one in our bedroom. The shower is a walk in, back out deal, with very little water pressure and not much control over the temperature. I'm glad Larry was here before I was to figure out that there's a switch outside the bathroom that you have to turn on to get hot water. It's near the floor, so it's not obvious. It's an adventure!

From Los Angeles to Harrogate
Hello. Nearly *gasp* twenty years ago I started keeping a journal on paper. Five years ago I started a website The Adventures of the Layman Family. With a move to a new country, I figured now would be the time to try my hand at blogging.

Four days ago, my ten month old son, Ryan, and I departed LAX. My parents very kindly drove us to the airport and helped with all our stuff. Because of airport/airline staff incompetency and equipment malfunctions, we very nearly didn't make our flight. However, once on the plane everything went quite smoothly. Ryan makes friends wherever he goes. Before long he was playing with two very nice boys from Northern Ireland who were sitting behind us. Both the flights (LAX to London and London to Manchester) went smoothly. Ryan is a champ at travel, whether by air or land, local or international.

I've been the to UK a few times before. I've been to London three times, and to Scotland once for a week, so the landscape wasn't totally alien. However, after such a long trip (a ten hour flight to London, a two hour layover, and an hour flight to Manchester), everything seemed a bit unreal. We went to the Hard Rock Cafe in Manchester for lunch, then drove to our new home in Harrogate. We live on a street called Dragon Parade. That is so cool! Our house is a two story Victorian style, with four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a small patio in back. It's long and narrow, and has lots of windows but not much of a view from any of them. Some of the windows have stained glass, which is nice. We lived on post in Germany, so it will be interesting to live on the economy here in England. The electrical outlets are different from those in the States AND in Germany. We're using transformers for our American appliances. Luckily, our German stuff works here with a simple outlet adapter.

So far we've run some errands on post and have just been trying to get acclimated to the new locale and time zone (8 hours later than California). Things are definitely different here. It helps that we lived in a foreign country already. It makes things less of a shock and gives me some idea of what to expect. However, I am not looking forward to learning how to drive on the "wrong" side of the road!

My goal with this blog is to chronicle our time here in the UK and keep friends and family updated on what we're doing and what life is like here. I'm hoping that if I write a little each day, I won't get epically behind the way I have in my paper journal and with my website. We'll see what happens!