It's been a busy week! We drove 2400 miles, settled into our temporary apartment downtown, applied for driver licenses and WA vehicle registration, set up our utilities and registered the kids in their new school. When we registered for school in Tennessee there was a permission form regarding your children being paddled. Although I myself was hit with a ruler and a belt on my hand at school, it's not the practice to hit a child nowadays right?! I was shocked to read the form and I thought it was a joke, but as I looked around the classroom filled with other parents scribbling away, I realized that it was for real! Needless to say, I declined to sign my kids up for paddling in Tennessee. It was nice to see, when doing the paperwork here, that paddling is not an option and in fact, isn't even mentioned.
This place is pretty similar to back home in the UK in many ways. You can buy wine in grocery stores for starters - yippee!!! No more dragging the kids into the liquor store if I'm picking up a bottle of vino for dinner, and getting frowned at for doing so. This is life changing, people! When you're grocery shopping, if you don't bring your own bags with you, you are charged 5c per bag, which isn't a bad thing at all and will encourage me to try and remember my own bags next time. It definitely costs more for groceries here though. It also doesn't rain here all the time contrary to popular belief. The weather has been lovely, t-shirt weather in fact, and it's only rained once so far.
Gas is 70c per gallon more expensive than it was in Tennessee. That's going to be a shock to the system. We've already experienced Seattle traffic at its worst, but because it's still new to us, we were quite content to sit in the van, and admire the scenery. I'm sure that'll get old soon enough though. The husband will be the one dealing with city traffic while the kids and I spend our days in and around our new abode close to the mountains.
We now live 25 minutes from a ski resort! Granted, the snow season hasn't been great, but we're that close to stunning, craggy mountains that we can enjoy year round which is pretty cool! The view from the kids' new school is Mount Si, which is pretty spectacular. They can also see Mount Si from their bedrooms. I don't think we've ever lived anywhere with such amazing views.
Recycling wasn't really a big thing in Tennessee. Here, however, it's highly encouraged and even compulsory, which is great. I'm still learning though, it took me an embarrassingly long time to sort out our lunch trays at Panera after we'd eaten. Hopefully I'll get used to that quickly!
So that's it for now, just a quick blog until I have more time. Our stuff arrives tomorrow so chaos will ensue for a few days, but it's one step closer to being settled. We're really looking forward to our new life here and so far, so good. Molly has had a few walks around the city and has even visited her first Starbucks. She did so well traveling in the van for 4 days to get here, and now has yet another trip under her collar, making her a very well traveled dog indeed. I'll blog about our mega road trip soon!
Showing posts with label Washington. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Washington. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Monday, March 2, 2015
Bears and Angry Birds
Regardless of where you live, when you move house, you take into consideration all the usual things like schools, location, walkability etc. But when you move anywhere in America, it's a good idea to research the local wildlife too. The scariest things here in TN are without doubt, the snakes, and unfortunately I've seen too many of those! Apparently in Washington we won't have to worry about venomous snakes. They do however, have bears and mountain lions. Shitballs! Do you play dead or act big and loud when you see a black bear? I have no idea, time to do some research I guess. Apparently we have to use special garbage cans in our new neighborhood to stop the bears foraging for food in your trash. Yikes! But truly, this is part of why I love living over here, there's definitely never a dull moment!
The kids and me went out for breakfast recently. It's always a struggle to order tea over here. Servers rarely understand that when I ask for milk on the side, it means I want it at the same time as my tea. My tea duly arrived minus the milk. I asked again. And again. 15 minutes later (yes I'm sad, I timed it), my milk was brought to the table, but of course by now, my hot tea was bloody freezing. I waited another 10 minutes for fresh, hot water, but I did eventually get my nice cuppa. By the time our food arrived, I was kind of frustrated after the tea debacle, but looking forward to eating. Ha! Middle son ordered a pancake with a smiley face made out of fruit. We were all about to get stuck in when the waitress decided to become Chatty Kathy. She started talking about the pancake face and told my son that if he moved the apple slices, it would look like an angry bird. I was looking like an angry bird myself by now, hungry and fed up waiting for my tea for so long. I was about to say something when she took it upon herself to use her long, nasty fingernail to move my son's apple slices to make the angry bird face. Ugh! I told her we were in a hurry to eat, so she left and I removed the apple slices before I let my son eat. Yes, worse things happen to your food while it's still in the kitchen, but I'd rather not see people touching it with their fingernails! I wasn't feeling very generous by the time we left, so Chatty Kathy's tip wasn't very large...
This little episode reminded me of an experience we had in Korea. The husband and me had popped in for a coffee somewhere and I ordered a latte. The server was lovely as are most people there who work in stores, restaurants etc. She was chatting away, we had no idea what she was saying but we nodded politely and smiled a lot. Until... she was in the middle of making my latte when she took the spoon out of the mug, put it in her mouth, sucked it and returned it back into my mug. For real. She then presented it to me with a huge smile, like it was something very special. Yes, it was indeed very special and there was no way in hell I was going to drink it. I waited until she wasn't looking and dumped it into the trash can before slinking away silently. She was such a nice girl that I really couldn't get angry, but man, how gross is that?!
Anyway, eating out here is usually a good experience, so you'd think that by now I'd have learned to be more patient with the tea thing. But nope, I still get a bit grumpy when it happens again and again. Tea is very important to most of us Brits you know! I did spot a Tea and Crumpets Cafe in Seattle when we visited, so I'll definitely be going there for a taste of the homeland when we live there. Speaking of which, it's less than a month to go before our mega-drive to live in the land of bears! Till next week folks!
The kids and me went out for breakfast recently. It's always a struggle to order tea over here. Servers rarely understand that when I ask for milk on the side, it means I want it at the same time as my tea. My tea duly arrived minus the milk. I asked again. And again. 15 minutes later (yes I'm sad, I timed it), my milk was brought to the table, but of course by now, my hot tea was bloody freezing. I waited another 10 minutes for fresh, hot water, but I did eventually get my nice cuppa. By the time our food arrived, I was kind of frustrated after the tea debacle, but looking forward to eating. Ha! Middle son ordered a pancake with a smiley face made out of fruit. We were all about to get stuck in when the waitress decided to become Chatty Kathy. She started talking about the pancake face and told my son that if he moved the apple slices, it would look like an angry bird. I was looking like an angry bird myself by now, hungry and fed up waiting for my tea for so long. I was about to say something when she took it upon herself to use her long, nasty fingernail to move my son's apple slices to make the angry bird face. Ugh! I told her we were in a hurry to eat, so she left and I removed the apple slices before I let my son eat. Yes, worse things happen to your food while it's still in the kitchen, but I'd rather not see people touching it with their fingernails! I wasn't feeling very generous by the time we left, so Chatty Kathy's tip wasn't very large...
This little episode reminded me of an experience we had in Korea. The husband and me had popped in for a coffee somewhere and I ordered a latte. The server was lovely as are most people there who work in stores, restaurants etc. She was chatting away, we had no idea what she was saying but we nodded politely and smiled a lot. Until... she was in the middle of making my latte when she took the spoon out of the mug, put it in her mouth, sucked it and returned it back into my mug. For real. She then presented it to me with a huge smile, like it was something very special. Yes, it was indeed very special and there was no way in hell I was going to drink it. I waited until she wasn't looking and dumped it into the trash can before slinking away silently. She was such a nice girl that I really couldn't get angry, but man, how gross is that?!
Anyway, eating out here is usually a good experience, so you'd think that by now I'd have learned to be more patient with the tea thing. But nope, I still get a bit grumpy when it happens again and again. Tea is very important to most of us Brits you know! I did spot a Tea and Crumpets Cafe in Seattle when we visited, so I'll definitely be going there for a taste of the homeland when we live there. Speaking of which, it's less than a month to go before our mega-drive to live in the land of bears! Till next week folks!
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