Updates On Life
Trip Start
Aug 06, 2008
1
14
17
Trip End
Sep 20, 2008
Oxford,
England,
United Kingdom
Sunday, August 31, 2008
We had our first blue sky and sunshine yesterday in a couple weeks. I miss seeing the sky, sun, and stars as it is almost always cloudy here. The rain has let up finally; it did rain today but was the first time in over a week. The temperatures are still very mundane and uninteresting hovering around the 20C mark all day every day. Defiantly not like back home weather wise. I'm so used to the land of living skies that this is odd for me to have something normal. No temperature swings at all to the point you don't even look at the weather station anymore as you know it will be around 20. It's always cloudy and the wind is usually just as bad as back home. Yesterday it was really windy and we had a really nice breeze running through the house that aired it out nicely. Gets kind of boring seeing the same weather everyday but we asked about it and I guess that's how it always is. They don't really have unstable climate or seasons it just sits at the same temperatures. In the winter it does get colder and drop below 0 but it won't vary much and will just stabilize at a temperature just like the summer does. We are also fairly close to the ocean still so our winters will be very mild in temperature and probably not get a lot of snow.
Scott had his first day of school on Friday and starts full swing on Monday. The kids don't come back till Thursday but teachers always get the shaft and have to return early. He has tried to explain their schooling system here but it is very different and hard to grasp. I'll give it a stab for you though. Basically they only have up to grade 11 and for the most part there is no distinction between elementary and high school it is all just one school. There is also a grade 12 and 13 at the same school but it is not mandatory to take. However if you want to go to University you must take it. Essentially grades 12 and 13 are introductory courses into university and depending on how you do in those two years is what schools you will be able to attend for university. Scott has to teach a grade 12 class actually and he says there learning stuff that he took in 2nd year university so the requirements and learning jump from grade 11 to grade 12 in a big way. However once you complete those years then you can go to University.
The University is also a little different as you only take 4 courses. So you are not required to take a bunch of mandatory courses and prelim courses you just pick your 4 and that's all you take. We still don't fully understand what you get when you leave university whether it's a degree or what not but were still just trying to comprehend the main schooling. He's going to be teaching kids all the way from 8 up to 12 and there school year doesn't have a term break in the middle so he will teach the same class / kids all year. However it is on a two week rotation schedule so one week he has a whole mess of class's and then the following week another set of class's and then it repeats. There is no rhyme or reason for it from a Monday - Friday time line either. So his days are never the same and he has to basically memorize 10 days worth of time tables that are all different grades and classes every day. Pretty wild stuff and hopefully once he starts to understand it more I will also understand it more. He does however get to stay in one room the whole time and doesn't have to move around so that will be nice. He also gets a laptop so now we will all have laptops of our own.
Aimee starts work on Monday too working in a file room at the JR Hospital. Doesn't sound like much excitement but its decent pay and gets her working. Bit of a bus trip but that seems to be the going thing around here. We have purchased monthly pass's that cost £37 each which is very reasonable giving you
full access to the bus's whenever you want. Can't plate / insure / gas a car for that cheap so were not complaining.
I myself have a meeting with a recruitment agency on Tuesday to get me working. It probably won't be a glamorous job but will at least be something to cure the boredom and start making some money while I look for other work. I checked into bartending and there is surprising nothing available which kind of sucks. It would have been a neat job but I plan to keep an ongoing eye out for interesting jobs, just need something to get me going and out of the house. I had to do an application recruitment test on Friday before the meeting on Tuesday which was very interesting. It basically tests your typing speed and accuracy, then your data entry and accuracy, then does a bunch of basic, intermediate, and advanced tests for excel and word. It was actually pretty fun doing the tests and hopefully they can place me quickly as I'm going loony sitting at home all day and need to start making money soon.
We are getting our phone hooked up on Sept 16th and our internet shortly thereafter. We will be getting the international package attached so we will have unlimited calling to Canada for £5 a month extra. There fair use policy is in effect which means you can't talk for more than 1 hour and as long as we don't abuse it we won't have limited minutes. If you want to talk for more than 1 hour all you have to do is hang up and redial to reset the timer. Pretty stupid if you ask me but so are a lot of the things out here.
We were forced to go with BT for phone as they are the only real providers out here and in order to get internet you HAVE to have a phone line as they use the same lines for both. I hate the company with a passion and there customer support is terrible and every review I read was terrible but our hands were tied. They basically have all of England in a strangle hold as they are the only line provider. I got in a big fight with one of their customer service reps when I was trying to cancel our order the one day. They told us there was no physical line run here and we would have to get one installed for £125 which we were not impressed about as our agent had told us when we got the place that there was a line. Well the day before our install the engineer called to say that there was in fact already a line and they would just activate it at the exchange. When I asked about the fee he said he doesn't deal with that and he will transfer me. The next person I talked to also didn't deal with that and transferred me again, and again, and again. After telling my story to five different departments and agents I was fuming. They kept telling us we still have to pay the fee so I told them to cancel the order and we will go with someone else because they lied to us and we were not impressed with their service and they were trying to hose us on a hook-up fee that wasn't required. So we would have had phone on Aug 26th but due to this ordeal we cancelled our order. After some more research I learned that you have to get there phone line and have no other option. So I called back to place a new order and this time got talking to an actually extremely helpful guy who said because the lines already there we DON'T have to pay the fee which is what I was trying to tell the other 5 people I talked to days earlier. I guess all it took was throwing the whole thing out and starting up a new order for them to finally listen to me. Regardless they are now coming to hook it up Sept 16th and we will not be paying the install fee. The mate was from Ireland also so he was fun to talk to as we chatted while he was processing things and talked about Canada and Ireland. I like his accent way better than the British.
The internet we can't get hooked up till the phone line is active or even place an order so we will be placing our order on Sept 16th and they said it will be less than 7 days to get it hooked and running. We are going with BE for internet (not to be confused with BT for phone), they really lack creativity in their names. I have done a ton of research on the providers out here as I was very specific on what I wanted and how much I was willing to pay so Aimee and Scott left it in my hands to figure out. They have around 50 companies supplying internet so it's a bit like car shopping. I finally settled on BE which were going to give us in short really fast lines, really cheap, and no limits or shaping. Download limits would have killed us especially if we start doing webcam conversations so we had to avoid those at all costs. And of course Scott has his "American Football" on Sundays that he would like to start streaming so that will use up a lot of bandwidth. The shaping is a term they use for limiting speeds during peak hours mainly 3pm - midnight. We also didn't want this so we were trying to avoid that. So shopping done we have the company just waiting for the other pieces to fall into place first. And there a smaller company so there customer service is actually very helpful unlike Mr. Evil large phone company. And I only had to talk to one person not 5 to get answers.
I think I finally have all the documents and proofs that I need to open a bank account so I will be doing that on Monday. We basically need our passport, and then proof of UK residents and Canada residents. We finally got our tenancy agreement so now I got our UK proof and can get the ball rolling on that boat. Probably going to get a credit card as well as they use CC's with chips out here so it's hit and miss on where we can use ours as some places don't have swipe abilities. Plus we get hit with exchange every time so it would be worth it in the long run. The chip cards basically have a micro chip in them and work more like a debit card. You just push it into a reader and then punch in a pin number and it charges it to the card. Pretty neat system and I like the idea of needing a pin number in order to use my CC as well as debit.
I think I might also hit up the book store on Monday and see if I can't find me some reading material. You can only play so many card games and board games before you get sick of them. We don't have TV so we don't have much to do in the evenings. We have played every card game and board game we have way to many times to count. We also picked up about 4 puzzle and crossword books and are starting to run out of pages to complete. I have been quite enjoying the puzzle books though as it gives a nice daily brain workout and is actually really helping to expand my vocabulary and improve my spelling doing the crosswords. I never really gave them the time of day before as they were too hard but slowly but surely by pounding away on them I'm getting better and better and being forced to learn how to spell words properly. They haven't quite implemented spell check into those yet. Needless to say were having some trouble filling our time at the house but now that we're all going to be working again soon that will take some of the edge off. Once were working we also hope to start touring again more so that will fill a good amount of time and probably weekends. It's amazing how much you miss TV when you don't have one. Never really thought I watched it that much but you really do when you have nothing better to do and are sick of playing games.
We went and picked up an all in one printer as well as we found we were going to need it sooner or later. Just too many things you need to print and especially useful for getting documents for bank accounts and our national numbers which required scans of our passports and visas. We only paid £30 and have got enough use out of it already to make it worthwhile. Also still got my webcam ready so once we have a steady internet and aren't stealing from the neighbours anymore we can start doing some webcam phone calls. I might need to pick up a headset but shouldn't be that much and won't need to get it till later in Sept anyway.
I'm really enjoying the meals being cooked for me every night. Scott has become the appointed make supper guy and were getting a wide variety of pastas and meats and yes mom I'm eating fruit and vegetables also ;) We are having full 3 course meals and actually eating fruit salad most days as a lunch. We also bought some of that crazy fibre and fruit type cereals for the mornings and have been eating that. It means I have to do the dishes every night but it's a small price to pay for having your supper cooked for you all the time. So far he hasn't cooked anything I haven't liked and I am actually trying out all sorts of new things that would make you proud mom. Scott and I love variety and are trying out new things every night so it's been a blast. We also don't own a microwave so I would be lost if it wasn't for Scott's cooking skills. I rely heavily on a microwave and can opener normally so change is nice.
Our laundry machine sucks and is very small not to mention under the kitchen sink. It's one of those stupid wash and dry in one thing and you can only fit a handful of clothes in there at a time or they won't wash or dry properly. So it has pretty much been running the whole time we have been here and will continue that way forever by the looks of it. If I was to ever move here I would get a normal washer and dryer shipped to me in a heartbeat as these things are garbage and it would be worth the shipping costs for a normal one. Be interesting to see what our water bill is like but all utility bills are quarterly so we won't see that for a bit. In fact all their bills are quarterly which is kind of weird and could lead to some fun surprises.
The boredom is something to be cured but hopefully a job and some more travelling in the near future will cure that. Other than that were having a blast and things are going great. The stresses are dropping off by the day and our lives are slowly falling into place again. I can't wait to start travelling again and might look at planning a backpacking trip soon here as I would love to take off into the woods for a couple days. I missed our yearly backpacking trip and can't wait to get a long weekend or something down the line to ditch off and maybe hit the hills of Scotland or something like that. Defiantly miss my mountains though but I'm sure I will find some new ones to climb all over.
