It Gets Better...Right?

It’s been very hard trying to enjoy being in England. With all the military red tape we have been going through since we’ve been here, we have a bad taste in our mouths. My husband commented that, as exotic as it sounds to receive PCS orders to an overseas base, the military drains the excitement once you get there with all of their regulations, stipulations, complications, and a whole bunch of other “tions;” plus their general unhelpfulness with all the matters you have to attend to because of it (“it” being the military).

We continue to try and make the best of things. The thing we are most disgruntled about at the moment is our housing situation. We have been in temporary housing for three weeks now and are desperate to have a “Home Sweet Home.” We have been missing that since October. Also, we found out this week that our “Household Goods” shipment (i.e. the “big stuff,”) has made it into the country and has received the OK from Customs. Hopefully we will have a place to put it soon! We really miss our stuff…

One of the hardest things for me has been the fact that we are in a foreign country (one that I have been desperate to visit since I decided on a bachelor’s in English Lit), and we haven’t been able to get out and explore much. At first, the problem was driving. We were afraid of driving on the British roads and in a British car. (Driving on the right side of the car really messes with your depth perception and spacial judgement! And, the UK has much stricter driving laws. You can get a ticket for driving while drinking a coffee…what?!)

But now that we have overcome that hurdle, we have another obstacle preventing us from exploring our new residence: snow. Ironically, our taxi driver from the airport told us that it hardly ever snows in England and that, this year, they were having an unusually warm winter. Well…our arrival must have upset the balance of things because it has snowed several times since we have been here and has been bitterly cold! And, the icing on the cake, it hasn’t gotten warm enough to melt any of the snow that has fallen.

At first the snow was nice. It was the dry, fluffy kind that makes perfect snowballs and snowmen (and women!) Not the kind of wet, icy snow that makes everything slippery and dangerous, which is what we got in the southern US, where we are from.  

 

This was us on the first day of snow.

This is on the seventh day of snow…from the window in our room in Temporary Lodging, stuck. We are just sick of looking at it.

 

My son, who would brag to people back in the states, saying “I’m moving to England! It snows everyday in England!” (Not sure where he got that idea from, but the point is: he was excited about the snow!) But on the fifth day of having snow in England, he asked, all exhausted and whiny, “When is the snow going to go away?”

Surely. Surely. It will get better…right?