Hello London

New House, New country, New Blog.

Note to all those who hate me because of the English: The combination between Hebrew, Blogger interface, my Mac and the fact that we now have readers who can't really read Hebrew (you know who you are... :) ), led to... Me writing in English :) So, this is the way it's gonna be from now on...

So where to begin? 

We got to London from our very short time in Israel with grandparents on July 1st on an El-Al flight that felt like Israeli Flying Summer Camp, but at least we got to meet Kofiko and Ron went (for his second time) to visit the pilots and even got a signed postcard... In Heathrow we were met by what looked like a very high driver, but turned out to be a really nice Caribbean guy who really likes to talk and has opinion about all London neighborhoods. Grandparents organized a short-let house in Islington  so it would be easy for all of us first of all to be together and second to move around. The house looked really nice at first glance, like something out of a romantic fantasy about London living. It is an old house that was something that was converted to something and so on and so forth until it became a 2 story, 3 bedrooms - 2 bathrooms house that its owners left the UK and are now short letting it. After a while though it became more and more creepy, until by our last night there we were sure that the house has ghosts, and when the power went out around 3 in the morning - that we are about to be killed either by the ghosts or by the friendly serial killer walking past. We survived, but the photo of the headless dog will stay with us forever. 

Anyway, we spent our first week or so looking for an apartment and a school for the kids. We concentrated around Highbury because of some very good reasons like good schools, safety, nearness to Jewish communities, good commute to work etc, but also because we promised Ron he could live next to the Arsenal stadium. Our search started when we were in Israel, but by the time we got to London, all those houses were off the market. We took it well. Sure. Why would we care if we are going to be homeless? But apparently the market moves very fast and we were able to find new places to check out. We started in a basement apartment the size of a shoebox, with no light, and a very strange layout. After that we moved to some old traditional houses that were... Well... Old. And dirty. And expensive. And dirty. And facing the street, without bars on the windows or alarm systems or locks that were manufactured this century. And dirty. So from that we moved on to what is called "new build" or how we called it - clean houses. we saw a few all around the Arsenal stadium, and in the end chose one in the old Arsenal stadium. It is a 2 bedroom 2 bathroom apartment on the first floor (not ground floor) facing the communal area so it has great views. One side of the flat is windows so there is a lot of light (so important) and it is a gated community which means everywhere there are electronic gates (very important). It only has 2 bedrooms because a) it is hard to find 3 bedrooms apartments here, b) when you do find one it is SO expensive, and 3) the kids asked to sleep together. Repeatedly. In the beginning Hidai and I were against it, but because of reasons a & b and because they insisted, we took the 2 bedrooms. 

We saw the flat on Wednesday, it took us until the following Tuesday to close all the bureaucracy - getting the reference letter from Yell, a recommendation letter saying that we are nice reliable people, pay the deposit, sign the contract, etc, and we were unsure that everything was well and truly fine until, I don't know, a day after we moved in :). 

The school issue was much easier than the home one, and after some on-line research, 3 viewings and a  conversation with the Islington council, we chose Ambler Primary School, that has a place for both Ron and Yon, puts a very big emphasis on math and football, has a Jewish head-teacher (but no other Jewish or Israeli students) that really wants to make this the best school in Islington (or London. Or the world), and is, as the head-teacher put it "very diverse", with students from 52 states. Ron enjoyed meeting her and the fact that they have players and coaches from Arsenal regularly coming to the school, and was proud to represent both Israel and Gibraltar in the school. We have to admit that we were a bit unsure about the school because of our own prejudices and unease about the level of diversity in the school (ok, that was the politicly correct thing to say. The truth is, we are racist and don't like anyone different from us). But since Ron does not share our narrow minded look at the world, and that is the world he is living in, and he really wanted to go to the school, and the school really wanted him, he is now enrolled and so is Yon.

Hidai found out that even though we thought he was going to go into Reading every day he is actually going to work in London, 25 minutes from home by 1 bus (on Uri & Ev's st.) which was a really great surprise, and he started working officially on July 1st, and actually on the 10th, with a few days in between. He says it is going well (knock on wood, tfu-tfu-tfu, etc.) and he is enjoying himself very much. That is all I am going to write about that, since, let's be honest, nobody cares (kidding. kidding. kidding. it's just the beginning and there is not a lot to tell).  

Grandparents stayed with us for almost a week longer than they originally intended, until Friday the 13th (and left us on that date in the ghosts filled house...) and had the pleasure of seeing us in all our glory when everything did not go as planned (because, you know, nothing ever goes as planned, and Hidai and I are always so cool under pressure :) ), when it kept on raining and the weather and kids were miserable, etc. From our side of things, it was actually great having them - first of all, because we didn't have to call them all the time and fill them in, and mainly because it was a very very hard 2 weeks, filled with so much uncertainty and fears and troubles, and having someone else to talk to, and to share with helped tremendously. 

So that brings us to moving in the apartment day - Sunday the 15th. We packed everything after we survived our last night in the horror house, and divided our belongings to 2 parts - the "small" bags pile and the "big" bags pile. The big pile were the suitcases which we decided Hidai will bring later on his own. The "small" bags pile was everything else. It was not small. But we made it to the new place to discover that, a) there is no-one from the letting agency here (despite their saying otherwise), b) there is one guy doing the inventory for the tenant that left the day before, c) the landlord was not here, and d) the apartment is dirty. Really dirty. Really really dirty. It was horrible. We made sure the inventory guy sees that also, so we will have a witness, and then we tried calling the letting agency, that informed us in return that it's our problem since they already took their money and don't give a f&*^%k anymore. We then managed to get the landlord's details from them (until that moment "they were handling the apartment") and called him, but of course he did not answer. Since we were unable and unwilling to go back to the haunted house, we decided to find our own cleaning company to come clean everything, scrub one toilet for the meantime and not touch anything. 

And so, the next morning some very nice Russian people (2 women, 1 man) came and for almost 3 hours cleaned everything so the house became livable. We managed to get a hold of the landlord who apologized, paid for the cleaning, and promised to come and pickup whatever we don't want in the apartment (that basically includes photos and kitchen things) since the letting agency did not tell him we don't want those things here... He is coming tomorrow morning. 

After the cleaning company left, Hidai went to work and the carpets dried out, I took everything out of the suitcases and bags, got my first groceries delivery from Sainsbury's, and started on the hard work of turning a flat into a home. 

2 side notes - all our things will only arrive tomorrow, that is Friday the 20th, that is almost a week after we moved in. That is because apparently they can only load the truck on Fridays, and it takes them a week to get here... So we have been living without our things. That meant buying bare minimum of very cheap things for the time being. Like plastic dishes, and Argos bed linen... Not a big help with the whole "house into a home" thing.

And second - we have no TV or internet. Well that is not really true, the thing is, the flat doesn't come with a TV set, and we have the one we bought for the living room coming from Gib, so we decided to buy a smaller one for the bedroom and have it delivered to us on Monday. It did not arrive. It took 3 angry phone calls, 2 mails and 1 chat to get it here on Tuesday. Amazon still have not apologized. But at least as of Tuesday at noon we have a TV and a DVD set. We do not, however have the Sky TV yet, just the Freeview channels, because apparently England still believes we are in the middle ages in all things TV related. It amazes me how they can be so ahead of the times and behind the times at the same time... So after we talked to them for hours, arranged everything, waited to get our viewing card in the post (seriously), they will come and put in the TV box on Friday (tomorrow). They will not, however, put in the internet. That is a different story. We will have to wait until the 30th so that someone will come to - listen to this - install a phone line (????) and 24 hours after that (if we got our router in the post in the meantime) we can install, by ourselves, the internet. Seriously?! So now we have 3G on our mobiles, and we payed for BTOpenZone, that is a WiFi connection on one device for a specific period of time, that works great but is rather expensive and is only good for one computer... Really not helping the "life in London is good" thing...

On the other hand, internet shopping is so much fun! We already bought through Argos, Tesco, Amazon and Sainsbury's, and we even used the Shutl service which is - the things you ordered gets to you within 90 minutes of your order! It is great! a few problems occurred when the delivery guys left things with the concierge instead of coming to the door (including the 32 inch TV I had to carry inside. It is not as easy as it sounds, since the concierge is at the other building and I had to take the kids with me), but seriously, shopping without leaving the house, and everything gets delivered the next day! Amazing! (You have NO idea how backward Gib is).

So how is it? How is London? 

I actually don't know... We anticipated hard. It's been harder. 

It is harder than we remembered all this moving country thing. The kids are older, they understand more, they suffer more, miss their things more, they are aware of what they lost (I want to say what we took from them, but Hidai will not like me saying that). The weather has been shit. They have no friends, and they are stuck with me in the house all day, and their father disappeared also because he is working. I know what you will say, it's London. It is going to rain all the time, get used to it and leave the house. And I would say the same thing if someone were to ask me, and I do say the same thing to myself. But for some reason it is not as simple as that. It takes courage and strength to leave the house with 2 kids in a strange city, a strange neighborhood. It is not the language thing. It is the scary thing. It is the "I don't know where I am and where I am going" thing... I don't know how to put it into words exactly, and it might sound silly, but being in charge of 2 other tiny people that looks at you like you know everything, including where we are going, why and how to get back, and knowing that you don't, that all you know and recognize is no longer there, it's hard. It's scary. And add to that the rain, the fact that delivery companies here tend to give you time frames of "8:00-18:00" and that Hidai is busy and I am all alone... 

So right now, we are in the "we are bad bad bad parents, everything is ruined, and it is too damm hard" part of moving. It will get better, I know it will, it just takes time and courage and baby steps, and some sunshine... Today there was no rain so I took the kids outside to the main street in Highbury to buy some rolls, muffins, magazines and Italien coffee and cookies. After that we played in the communal area. Baby steps.