« Say It, Or Write It Down? | Home | The Torch That Refuses to Go Out. »
What is it like over there?
By DnA | April 6, 2008
You’ve got questions. We’ve got some answers about some of the differences in life at Bulstrode.
We arrived exhausted March 12. After some work, we were able to collect three out of four of our suitcases. (Three out of four is not bad at Heathrow these days.) The WEC van picked us up and carried us to our new home where Moira, the accommodations coordinator, had kindly saved us some lunch. (Suitcase arrived the next day.)
Our room is lovely. It is one of those large Jane Austin type rooms with a partially sloping ceiling. The double window looks to the South over the wide lawns and fields and woods. We see pheasant and horses all the time. From time to time we see sheep, and twice we saw deer. The large room has been divided into four areas: an entry with closets; a sleeping area with a partial wall (7 ft.); a kitchen area with beautiful cabinets and cupboards, a sink, a small refrigerator and a microwave; a carpeted living room area with a bookcase, a small desk, an electric fireplace, and a matching sofa and love seat. We also have three end tables and mugs to go on them.
We hung our tiny metal plaque on the kitchen wall. It says, “God Bless Our Home,” and it was a wedding present from one of Arnelle’s piano students. We have taken it everywhere we have lived in the world (three continents so far). Thirty nine years ago it hung in this very building when we worked at Bulstrode as summer volunteers between two academic years in
It’s beginning to look a lot like home. Actually, outside it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Friday we had a gorgeous sunny day; Saturday there were clouds and rain, and this morning there was snow everywhere. A WEC family had already built a snowman out on the south lawn before church.
The UK Conference was all last week. What marvelous fellowship and preaching and prayer meetings! We saw some old friends and made new ones. Four missionaries joined Arnelle for prayer in our little apartment each morning. These particular ladies were grandmotherly sorts with kind and gentle faces who chatted, as grandmothers will, about Mugabe and the elections in
Speaking of
We are learning to think pounds instead of dollars. The exchange rate right now is at least in the vicinity of one pound = two dollars, so that makes calculations easier in our heads at the shops. We don’t have a car here yet, but there is transportation to shopping every Thursday. The trick is getting around an unknown store fast enough to get all that we need to start a kitchen from scratch and not have all our fellow shoppers waiting in the van for us to finish.
A really good multigrain loaf of bread with seeds and nuts costs a little less than we are used to. Hurray! Milk costs more. We are using powdered because we go to the store only once a week. There is plenty of Marmite here (this is the
Arnelle is learning to cook microwave. In the past, we only used a microwave to heat leftovers and make a hot drink, but now we cook eggs and spaghetti and hot corned beef sandwiches. (One day we tried french toast, but it’s just not the same.) We are going to venture into some banana bread any day now. Thank goodness for the internet which has recipes for everything. A friend lent us a camp stove so we can fry things. We had our taste buds all set for pancakes when we discovered that we had no matches! Wait for Thursday. Got a Bic lighter. OK, pancakes! Or maybe a grilled cheese sandwich or an actually fried egg or maybe . . . . Whoops! Seems like we are out of butane in the canister. Patience. Patience. Someday we will in fact have a fried food again. In the meantime, there was someone in our room last week who had fallen and injured her arm, so we used the sunflower cooking oil to anoint her, and the Lord healed her arm. Hurray for God! Better any day than fried tuna patties.
Topics: Home |
April 21st, 2008 at 7:48 am
So proud of the both of you! Love to hear your stories of adjusting to a new life and, of course, I miss you less AND more reading these stories, because I can almost picture your room in my head. Actually, it’s very likely that I tidied up your room at some point when I was there.
Hope you get pancakes soon and am looking forward to seeing you here and someday seeing you there as well!