First Impressions

We have now been in England a week and so far…we are not impressed. I know one week isn’t long enough to give it a good go but this has just been a bad week. Not a single thing has gone right, or even gone smoothly or easily, for us since we arrived.

It’s not entirely England’s fault though. In fact, very little of our disappointments have to do with England itself. It’s the military we are put out with. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

There are some things that we have already discovered that we miss about the US. The first thing is the sun! Being from the south, where the sun is ever present (and hot), we love sunshine. But we have only seen the sun on two occasions since we have been here and it lasted probably a total of three hours combined. I noticed the funniest thing about the weather here just as we were flying into London last Saturday. While we were still at “cruising altitude,” I could not only see the sun, but it was brilliantly bright! However, as soon as we began to descend to land, we dropped below an immense dividing line of clouds that completely blocked the sun. It was like a whole other world up there above the clouds!

What really isn’t fair is how the clouds block out the sun and its glorious warmth during the day, while the nights are crystal clear with almost never a cloud in sight.

Another thing we miss is good, reliable internet. Now I cannot speak for all of England; I have heard that you can get good internet here. But where we are, which is “in the country” as everyone keeps reminding us, you cannot get good internet, which is just ridiculous for the technological age we live in and the dependency we have on it.

 Thirdly, we miss good cell phone service. We just got cells on Wednesday and already we can tell that the service here is not comparable to that in America (specifically, with our previous carrier AT&T). By "service," I mean coverage area. Again, everyone keeps saying this is the result of living in the country. But even “in the country,” you can still get a decent signal where I am from. But, I will say this for the carrier we signed with: they have reasonable prices on their plans (not something you will get in America, unless you get a “go” phone) and you practically get your phone for free, depending on the plan you go with.

Now let’s talk about the military side of things.

There really is just too much to say here so I’ll give you the run down. On my husband’s first day of in-processing, someone took him to get a rental car and just dropped him there…with no instructions on how to drive a right-handed car or how to drive on the left side of the road. Not only was that dangerous to all the other drivers on the road, but it was also just plain disappointing on their part. They are supposed to take care of their own.

But he survived. And he is doing fairly well with driving, he usually only hits one or two curbs. Me on the other hand…Well first I had to wait to drive until just yesterday because the rental we had was a stick. I can’t drive a stick. Don’t have the coordination. So when my hubbie bought his car this weekend (that is an automatic), we took it out for a drive and I got to practice.

I did ok until I got into a very busy (and cramped) town and clipped someone’s side-view mirror. I decided I had enough practice after that and I’ll leave the driving to my hubbie for now. But anyway…

Since we have been here, we have received very little direction on how to get settled in. There has been very little communication or instruction from the military (who dictates how and where and when we do get settled.) This is very frustrating for a family that has been in this transition period for months now and is ready to get settled!

My husband was given several checklists of things to get done for his job and his new station. But they haven’t given him any direction as to when he has to get it all done, when he is supposed to report to work regularly, etc. We feel like we have been left to “fly by the seat of our pants,” so to speak. When all we want to do is get back to a routine.

Needless to say, we are all still feeling that “No rest for the weary” sentiment from my last post. Fingers crossed things will start looking up by next post!