We Made It!

We’ve arrived in London! We got here Friday morning at around 6am London time. The flight was pretty pleasant. I slept for an hour or so, but M stayed awake the entire seven hours, watching movies. We found our embassy sponsor with pretty much no issue and headed to the flat (that still sounds weird), getting there around 9 or so after fighting through the infamous London traffic.

So the flat is great. It’s pretty small, but deceivingly so actually. The setup is just kind of strange — when you walk in, it’s basically a hallway, and then all of the rooms are off of the hallway. Everything has doors, including the kitchen and living room, so I think that makes it appear much smaller than it really is (that along with all of the walls). You walk in, and immediately to the left is a bathroom with a tub and a sink, followed by another bathroom with just a toilet and a sink, then the kitchen, then the second bedroom. Across from the second bedroom is the master bedroom, with an ensuite bathroom, and then behind that (on the right side of the apartment, heading back towards the front/the door) is the living room. And that’s it! Everything is new and updated, which is great. The building itself is kind of a demolition zone right now though. Literally. The carpets are being changed, the walls replastered, there’s no handrails on the stairwells, etc etc.. But honestly, we’re ok. The apartment itself is the complete opposite, which is what really matters, and there’s an elevator, so who needs handrails on a staircase? 🙂 This is the happy, still in the ‘just moved bliss’ Lisa speaking, but I think it should last at least until the building renovations are done. 😉 So finally, a few pics to give you an idea of what the place looks like:

Entry Hallway

Two bathrooms

Kitchen

Master Bedroom

Living Room

We’re excited to start rearranging things and hopefully switching out some of the furniture to get more of what we need – e.g. more bookcases, more seating space, and less side tables. It’ll also be great once we get all of our stuff and can start making this place more our own. If you can’t tell, the furniture isn’t exactly what we would normally pick. ha. But it’s nice to have it provided for us all the same. Our UAB is actually here already and should be delivered sometime next week. The HHE is still a mystery. We’ve heard everything from people getting it in as little as two weeks, to as much as 2 1/2 months. Fingers crossed that it does not take that long for us.

Other things that have happened so far — on Friday, we went to the embassy with one of our sponsors, who will be a future coworker of M’s once he starts working in the PD section. We got a full tour, met a few more of his new coworkers, and got badges. Thankful to have a sponsor who was willing to help us out and spend so much time with us, as that isn’t always the case. Later on that night there was a happy hour with some embassy folks and some locals at a pub that is literally about a two minute walk down the street (best walk home ever!), so we went to that and met a few more people before the jetlag took over.

That’s about it! Still getting settled. Just made our first grocery trip and have started exploring the area a bit. So far, it’s wonderful. London is a really beautiful city and we’ve gotten crazy lucky with the weather — sunshine everyday! I’m trying not to get too used to this, but still enjoy it while it’s here. And my umbrella still has a permanent home in my purse, just in case.