Greetings From London

Well, where do I start? I might skip over the Christmas period, and launch straight into my arrival in London. It was such a relief to finally get here after all the packing up. It was sad leaving though, and I'm missing everyone a lot. But I must say, it's nice to be back with my husband after so long apart, even if the weather is a little different here!!!

I didn't get much of a chance to relax when I first got here, as that first week, I had job interviews pretty much everyday. But it all paid off, with Masterfoods offering me a job on their snackfoods business. It's a 9 month contract to start, working on their new product launches, and I'm getting thrown straight into the deep end with a few projects of my own from Tuesday 27 Feb. It's based out at Slough, which isn't a great location, but is a do-able commute from where we are. I'm going to take the train to start off with, and if it gets too much, we'll buy a car.

I was looking forward to a week off between looking and starting the job, unfortunately I got struck by the flu, so instead of exploring the area, I've been exploring the movie channels on Sky!! Our flat had an old Sony TV from about 1983 which weighs more than I do (well almost!) so our first shopping expedition was to get an overcoat for me and a new TV which actually had the right connections to take digital TV!! It's a nice small LCD TV but we can't wait for our Plasma to make its way across the ocean and be reunited with us! Having the flu has been a pain but it has been nice catching up on some sleep, which I think I really needed after the stress of finalising everything back home.

Well, we've planned our first weekend away. For our first wedding anniversary (I can't believe that's almost here) we're going to Paris for the weekend. We thought it was only fitting. We're going to take the EuroStar over, which will be fun.

The apartment Ben got us is very nice. It is only 1 bedroom, but has a lovely big living/dining/kitchen area with nice large windows overlooking the private gardens which all the residents (including us!) get access to. You can see the private gardens (underneath that white snow blanket!) in the top picture which was taken by Ben from our balcony when the first snow of the winter fell the week before I arrived.

The flat's large windows and high ceilings make it feel very spacious and let lots of light in (when there is any!!) and the central heating has been very handy! There is a double sofa bed in the "reception" room as we Londoners call it, so don't worry, we're still willing and able to accept guests!! It's in a great location in Notting Hill and we're enjoying slowly exploring the area. The other great thing is that it has a loft where we can store all our junk out of sight and avoid lots of clutter around the place.

Well, that's about all for this update. We'll try and get a bit more regular about writing in our blog, once we actually start doing more things to write about!! We did go and watch the Soceroos play Denmark and Loftus Rd stadium a few days after I arrived but it's hardly worth writing about as I was frozen solid for the entire match and we got flogged! But I guess that's what happens when you field a team that seemed like it had been pulled together from the 3rd division league here rather than our World Cup heroes!