House Hunting # 2

Hello all, it is Tuesday, August 5. To follow up on are house selection, we choose the flat in Harrogate. We loved the cottage, but Linda would of had nothing to do and the closest town was 3 miles away. Without a car, she would of gotten board rather quickly. As promised, here are some pictures. The first picture is our departure from Denver.

This is our flat, we will be moving in on 16th of August.

Here are some pictures of the Valley Garden across the street from our flat. The garden is 17 acres.

Our next post will be the pictures we took on our first weekend of traveling. Linda and I travelled to the city of Whitby on the North Sea. The pictures you will be seeing is from our trip last year. Because of the water temp and air temp, the city had a very think fog layer over the city. Linda did not get to see much because the fog was very thick. I will post those in the next couple of days. This past weekend, we went to York and Fountains Abbey. I will post those pictures very soon. What does the word, jab mean in British English?

Have a great day

House Hunting

Somehow we lost a day, yes, we got up on Tuesday, got breakfast and started our house finding. We were collected by Richard at quarter past nine. The first placed we looked at was a fully furnished two bedroom flat across from the valley gardens in Harrogate. This flat was very nice. It surprised Linda and I. My first thought is I wanted to be closer to the office even though it was only about 5 to 6 miles from the office. After the appointment, Richard drove us around Harrogate while we waited for our next appointment at 11:00 am. Richard took us to a little village called Goldboro which was about 3.5 miles to the office. You had to have a key for every room. This place was an immediate no. Next we started looking at places in Knaresborough which I had found on the web. The first place in Knaresborough was very new, but it was unfurnished and very small. You could not put a refrigerator in the kitchen area. This was also an immediate no. Next we went to the market place in Knaresborough and looked at a place above the shops. This was more what we thought we were going to be looking at. We thought we were going to have to choose between best of the worst. It was bad, but not if we had to live there we could. We walked to another place in Knaresborough and it was even worst. We then went to a cottage in Knaresborough. It had a very nice kitchen and sun room, but the rest of the property was a problem. We ruled out all the properties in Knaresborough. It looked like no matter where the property was, I was going to have to drive to work. We drove by the bus stop to see if we could tell when the bus would run. I called the office to ask about the bus. He stated it would not work to ride the bus to work. Next, Richard drove us to Little Ribston, another small village. This village is only 3 miles from the office. There are about 25 to 30 homes in the village. We walked up thorough the garden to the front door. The showing agent opened the door and we walked in. It was the cutest English cottage you could imagine. It was also fully furnished. The kitchen was a good size, along with the sitting area on the first floor. We had already fallen in love with it. We went upstairs and it just got better. I study for me and two bedrooms. We went to the back of the cottage to the garage and the back yard. From the backyard, we could look out over the pasture. The furnishings was very English just like you would be. Richard them drove us to Weatherby which was also the same distinct the opposite was from the office. It was also a very nice town. It was almost perfect. Richard had one more property he wanted to show us. It was also a flat in Harrogate. It was on a busy street across from the park close to town centre. It was nice and larger than the first flat we looked at in Harrogate. The kitchen was bright red. Are day of house finding was done.

Richard took us back to the hotel and it was decision time. We had three properties we could live in. The first flat and last flat we looked at in Harrogate and the cottage in Little Ribston. Which one would we choose. We immediately dropped the last flat we looked at because it was 200 pounds more than any other property. We were left with the first flat and the cottage. Which one will it be?

Travel to England

I will try to catch you up. It is Saturday, August 2nd.

Just a quick note, we will not be able to add pictures until I get a mobile broadband card. I can't put the pictures on my company laptop and I don't have wireless for my personal computer.

As most of you are aware, we left the states on July 20th. We went to church and said good-bye to all of our friends. My mother-in-law took us out to eat and then we went home to finish getting things together. We left for the airport around 4:15 pm, parked the car for Jon to pickup the next day. We took the bus into the terminal and got there about 5 pm. We went up to the check-in machine and immediately got rejected. We have a one-way international ticket. You need to go to the special handling counter. We stood in line for about an 1 hr waiting to get checked in. We went to the counter and the agent checked us in after about 15 minutes. One piece of our luggage was over weight. I had one piece of luggage and Linda had two. Mine was over weight. We paid the fees and checked our luggage. We were off to security. We thought this also would take a lot of time, but it did not. My daughter was at work, so we met her and took her to supper. We then went to our gate, took some pictures and we boarded our plane for our trip over. After about 9 hours, we arrived at London Heathrow. We stumbled around to find the correct customs line to go through. For us it was the short line because we have work visas. We cleared customs and waited 4 hrs for our next flight to Leeds Bradford airport. It was about a 45 minute flight. Finally we arrived at our final destination after about 15 hours on the road. We got the rental car and headed for the hotel. We got in the car on you know, the opposite sides of the car. I was on the right and Linda was on the right. I keyed in our hotel address into the Sat Nav system and we were on our way. By the way, that is a GPS system. As we were driving, we were wishing we could stop and take pictures but we could not because of the size of the roads. No place to pull off. The views were spectacular. It was a beautiful day in the English country side. Did we go the correct way, no, the Sat Nav system did not get it correct or I keyed it in wrong. It was well worth the drive because of the views. We were in the wrong town, but it was the correct road but it was about 5 miles to far north. We got to our hotel, checked in and we to our room. We went next door to the hotel to eat and then we retired for the night.

A kip is a nap.

No Internet Connection

Wednesday, July 30th, I know this will be hard to believe, considering I am a computer guy, but we did not have an internet connection, until Monday of this week. As a result, I have been getting all the banking information caught up. We will be working on getting you caught up with what has been going on. You asked why we did not have internet, well the first hotel we were in, we could not connect to the internet. We moved hotels on Monday and since then, we have had an internet connection. Look for additional information and pictures over the next days. We will start the information from the very being of our trip.

Day Before Leaving

Hi, it is Saturday, July 19. It is the day before departure. Everything has been shipped, things are being packed. Yesterday was my last day in the office. The company had a lunchen for Brenda (my co-worker) and me. It was very nice to get to see everyone and say good-bye for a while. Tomorrow, we will do the same at church before we leave. Our plane will leave at 8:50pm and we will arrive in our final destination at 5:50pm their time, that will be almost 11:00 am in Denver. We have a four hour layover in London. On Tuesday, we are going to be collected at half past nine to go on a housefinding expedition. Also we are going to be working on getting the car hired. As you can see, I am telling you some of this in British English.

Now to answer our question from last week, if you are on the first floor, you would be on what we call the second floor. The ground floor for us is the first floor, but for them it is the zero in the lift.

Here is the word for this week. What does kip mean? In context, go take a kip. What would you do? I will being getting a kip today.

Watch for the pictures next week.

Tom

One Week Left

Hello, it is Monday, July 14th. We are just a few days away from our departure. We got our work visas back last Friday and we were given the green light for moving. Today, I signed the Expat agreement between my company and me. Almost everything is ready to go now. The movers are coming Wednesday to take all of our winter clothing and our kitchen supplies. I have a few things I am trying to finish at work. I hear we are having a going away party at work for me on Friday but we currently have a conflict. Two different people are planning two different parties. I guess I won't be working that day. Be watching for more very soon, but before we go, we are going to have an english contest each week. So here is your second work to guess the meaning. If I was standing on the first floor in England, what floor would I be on? See you next week.

Hi, it is Wednesday evening, July 2nd. We have 18 days left in the states until we depart for our adventure if we get our work visa in time. I got the work permit on Monday but still needed to apply for the work visa. I applied for the work visa on Monday night. I hope this gets completed and back to us in time. Last Saturday night, my wife's work, Hyland Christian School gave us a going away party. It was a lot of fun. I will put some pictures up with our newest travel bag and our wonderful hats we were given. You will be seeing a lot of this new travel bag and hats. Thanks for coming by.

Tom