London

U K - London

Well here we are in London in the Spring, with the daffodils flowering and new leaves on the trees. We are very fortunate to have Hugh's house to stay at until we are sorted, job wise. He has been very accomodating, as it is taking us longer than we initially anticipated. Most days when we set out, we walk along the canal at the end of his road which is a lovely change from the bustling city streets. For our first week we walked and explored Regents Park, Hyde Park, Madame Taussauds, National Art Gallery, Kew Gardens, and other tourist attractions, plus used our family gift voucher on the London Eye. We had sunshine everyday. Never mind, little did we know the next week was going to be back to winter and we spent time in a variety of Charity Shops, hunting for a good warm coat. I purchased one in Kensington and very pleased to have it!!
Our cold week was spent applying for jobs and deciding whether to teach and Ian find something in the same area or still hang out for a couple position!! We placed an advertisement in "The Lady" for the above - a number of responses but nothing to really excite us. Soooooooooooooo it looked like teaching was what it was going to be! On Friday we hired a car and headed up to Norfolk as that was one of the many teaching counties offering work, but this one provided accomodation as well (at a very reasonable rate) for both of us. The people organising the Norfolk County are a NZ couple and are just so helpful and accomodating. We stayed at Great Yarmouth and attended the Friday teacher gathering they have once a month and obviously met many others like us(NZers, Aussies & S.A's)- a variety of ages and a variety of reasons why they are teaching there. We looked at the accomodation which was a delightful house on the coast, so most appealing. On Saturday it was just very cold and miserable, so we travelled over to Norwich to look at the city and we were able to stay in the teacher accomodation for that night. It too was very pleasant. These are the two places we would be choosing to live and work from. On Sunday, we received a call in response to our advert, from a lady in Hampshire, looking for a mature couple to look after their house and 3 dogs. She is away for at least 3 months of the year and her husband absent for at least 8 months. She wanted to meet with us on Monday morning so this altered our direction again!!!!! We weaved our way down to Oxford through delightful little country villages along and down from the Norfolk north coast, so we would be handy to Newbury for our interview the next day. It appears to be the exact type of work and position we are looking for so we are probably going to accept it and hope it works out for us all.There are too many good points to write in this blog but stay tuned and I will tell you more as we go along!!!!! As we won't start work until the weekend after Easter we are now trying to book a trip to Ireland for 12 days before we become like most others and join the real world. What a shock for our system!!!!!