First entry from England!

Hello all! I hardly know where to start! It's been only 2 days since I last wrote, but in that time we've left Taiwan, been to Thailand, arrived in London, been chauffeured to Crawley, stayed at a lovely B&B, hired a car, explored Ben's school, made some friends, talked to real estate agents, viewed 2.5 flats, got a working phone, and lots more! There, that'll do for this blog entry; all updated! :P

It's 6am on Thursday, and I woke up bright and cheery 15 minutes ago, despite having such severe tiredness (belated jet lag?) last night that I looked at the space we were about to park the car in when we got home from tea, then managed to fall asleep and wake up again in the 2 seconds it took Ben to pull into it! I'm typing this on the floor of our room at Caprice Guest House, where we're staying until Saturday night at least – there's no Internet here, but I'll save this and hope we get to an Internet cafe today.

Well, you may have noticed above that our flight also stopped in Thailand! We didn't know about that stopover until we left our hotel on Tuesday morning after having breakfast (Subway for Ben and Starbucks for me), and saw on the flight boards that BR0067, departing at 9am, had “Bangkok” as its destination! What a lovely surprise! Anyway, we had one hour at the new Suvarnabhumi Airport, so we basically walked and walked and walked (it's a huge airport) until it was time to board again!

We landed at Heathrow around 6:20pm on Tuesday night, went through Customs, and were reunited with our luggage. The guy going through Customs next to us was of Indian appearance and was being absolutely grilled by his Customs officer – i.e. “But doesn't your wife need help? Why are you leaving your wife and children to come over here and do nothing for 4 months?”...!!!! Our Customs officer just looked at Ben's passport photo (taken 8 years ago) and said “well, you've lost the nerdy look!” We then faced the task of finding the taxi that TimePlan (the agency that arranged Ben's work) had organised for us. By 7:40pm, we finally did so, and got into a black van with Rodru, our friendly driver. After an hour or so, we arrived at Caprice Guest House and were shown to our cute little room on the second floor.

Now, this is where the retelling of Tuesday's adventures should rightfully end. However, instead of going straight to bed after our day (already up for 22 hours by this time), we decided to take a walk. To cut a loooooong story short, this ended up being about 3 miles (MILES), in the RAIN, with the aim of finding food. We finally made it to McDonald's in Langley Green at about 11pm, and gratefully ate some bland food at a restaurant that doesn't give out serviettes anymore because someone threw them all around the carpark. We then managed to get a servo attendant to take pity on our bedraggled and exhausted selves, and call us a taxi. £3.50 later, our 25 hour day came to an end.

On Wednesday (yesterday) morning, we headed to the dining room for a lovely breakfast of cereal, toast, coffee, bacon, eggs, and baked beans. We met the others who had stayed the night here (there are only 3 rooms as far as we know) – a lovely newlywed couple (primary teacher and IT) from Lincolnshire who were returning from their honeymoon in Kenya, and Abraham from Texas who had just been to Prague for a uni friend's wedding! The lady from the Guest House, Jane, who is very helpful and friendly, then rang and organised a hire car for us for the next week, talked to us about what areas we should and shouldn't try to get a flat in, and then took us to pick up our car at 10am. Our Guest House is so close to Gatwick Airport that we can see the tails of the planes on the runway and watch them taking off and landing every few minutes – awesome!

After we picked up our car, a white Ford Fiesta that only Ben can drive so we didn't have to pay extra insurance, we found a Tesco store and bought a local paper for the real estate listing, and a local jobs guide.

We then headed to Ben's future school, Ifield Community College, for a look. We ended up staying for hours, as there were some staff there even though it's holidays, and a stint of “rotating tour guide” ensued! They were all so friendly and welcoming; it was absolutely lovely! We talked to a few of them about what areas of town to live in, too. Finally, we were shown the science labs by Maria the lab assistant, then settled in for some phoning of real estate agents regarding potential flats to let (using the lab phone at Maria's insistence)! Meanwhile, we met Maria's husband Frank, who works at the school (in maintenance), and his mother, Rose, who was also there for some reason! Rose is 75 years old and showed us photos of her and her friends hula-dancing in Hawaiian outfits at the club they go to!!! She gave us another newspaper, which she hoped would be the one we found our future flat in, and Frank told us jokes and also gave advice on where to live. They even gave us their phone number because they want to know how our flat-hunting goes! We also witnessed the young IT guy searching the staffroom fridge for the source of an interesting smell, and throwing a bag of something that was dripping into the bin. I'll let Ben tell you more about the school's facilities etc, but in both our opinions they were superb! All in all, it was a very enjoyable and productive visit, and if I find a job with facilities and people as nice as ICC, I will be ecstatic!!


We then headed to the main street, High Street, as we'd been told there were lots of real estate agencies close together there. We are looking for a two-bedroom place (with visitors in mind – hint hint) that is fully or partly furnished. I'd already organised via phone one viewing for 4pm that afternoon, and by talking to the agents we organised another two, for 3pm and 5pm. So, off we set for our 3pm viewing. Well, what an adventure! By the time we found Copthorne Court, which was supposed to be on Tinsley Lane, we had asked half of Tinsley Lane for directions. Everyone “had a feeling it's just over/up/down there” but only the last person's feeling was right – and it wasn't on Tinsley Lane anyway; it was on the street we'd driven down to reach Tinsley Lane!!! Alas, we arrived 45 minutes late, by which time we confirmed with two young painters that Tom the real estate guy had been and gone. Anyway, on to the 4pm viewing! We arrived early, and this time the real estate agent couldn't get the key to unlock the door – she was already on the phone to her office by the time Ben had a go and opened it straight away! This flat was new, modern, and quite spacious. It certainly exceeded my expectations and is top of the list so far. At our 5pm viewing (also with a troublesome key), the flat had more character on the outside but was a little dingier inside. All three places have the same monthly rent, but it's the maximum amount we have in mind, so we plan on trying to find some more today (and perhaps asking Tom for a second chance!).

After this, we went to the County Mall (which we'd briefly been to earlier) and bought a SIM card for my mobile, so we now have a working phone! Ben should be getting a SIM card from TimePlan soon. We left the shopping centre with only one small incident along the lines of getting to the automatic ticket station and discovering that you do indeed need to have paid at the machine inside the centre! Ben stayed put (other cars drove through the second gate, so thankfully we weren't holding up a bunch of annoyed English drivers) and I ran back inside to pay. Lots of “live and learn” happening here!

We then came back to the Guest House and got ready to go out for tea. Observant readers may notice there was no mention of lunch: this was because we had eaten nothing since breakfast! Thank goodness for Jane's delicious big brekky! Anyway, we found a Thai restaurant near High Street, where we enjoyed a delicious meal of crispy roast duck with cashews and tamarind sauce, and special fried rice with king prawns. We then did some quick shopping at ASDA. And that brings us to the trip home during which I fell asleep repeatedly and awoke at every roundabout or touch of the brakes!

Now it's 20 minutes until breakfast. Today's plans include finding more flats, getting on the Internet somewhere so we can look at cars, and setting up a bank account (Jane's daughter works at a nearby HSBC – very handy!). Until later!