The Sports Ground Debut!

Hello all! Happy Friday!

Well, in my previous post I talked about watching the Super Bowl. It was a great night here at the Yellow House and we ended up staying up for the whole thing, which was well after 3am here. It was fun!

So I thought that I would mention another ‘sporty spice’ kind of thing to continue this trend for one more post. No, I haven’t taken up a sport…yet ;-) However, my Brit Boy, who is the real sporty one around here has opened a new chapter in his blogging life.



Brit Boy has started a new sports blog called, The Sports Ground, and he will cover a wide array of sports, since this is one of his great loves. He will concentrate mostly on football aka soccer, but he will also be blogging about sports that are enjoyed on both sides of the Atlantic. One of his recent posts was about his take on the Super Bowl, so the transatlantic life of the Yellow House extends into his new blog, just like it does in mine.

So if you’re a sports fan or if you just want to read the knowledgeable musings of Brit Boy on all things sports…take a trip on over and check him out! :-)

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As for me, I’ve been doing fine and will be blogging about one of my new favorite things in my next post. I love a cliffhanger…lol.

Have a great weekend!

Packed For Home and Ready To Go

So the time is drawing near for my trip. It's all very exciting :) I've sorted through my stacks of clothes over and over and have finally found my wardrobe for this trip home...a bit of this and a bit of that. Here's my final stack.


Here's my electronics stack. I've been rounding up all of my wires and adaptors for my various UK and US plugs. Some of my things were bought back home and some were bought here, so I travel with my adaptors wherever I go. I've got my ipod ready and my camera, so it's have electronics, will travel ;-)


And that's about it. I'm ready to go. I have my book and my music ready, so I'm good :-) Now bring on my nine hours plus flight!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I will be doing something of a photo blog while I'm gone for these three weeks, so I hope that some of you will come by and see what I'm up to. I'm figuring that it may be a case of impressions rather than activities that I photograph, but you never know. At least it will give you an idea of how I'm taking the whole experience of being home. I'm really looking forward to this trip :-)

Well I will leave it here for now. I'll be checking in from the other side of the Atlantic in the next few days. Take care and I'll talk to you later! :-)

Olympics 2008 & Two Teams In Our House

Brit Boy and I, like many around the world, were absolutely amazed by the Opening Ceremony at the Olympics in Beijing. The visual imagery was astounding to see. We were very impressed by the beauty of it. I also always like the parade of nations and you get to see all of these athletes who have worked so hard to get to the biggest sporting stage in the world. I can’t imagine the pride that they must feel to be able to compete and do their best alongside the rest of the world. Sadly, there always seems to be strife going on in the world, but for that one moment, a great chunk of the world is on the same page. I love getting that glimpse of what the world could be.

So now that the pageantry of the opening is done, Brit Boy and I are good naturedly cheering for our own national teams. It’s a funny thing about living in a house with two nationalities. Just by us coming together and marrying, we have forever linked ourselves regardless of our backgrounds. So we live our lives as just us. We both feel a divided loyalty and it works for us. (smile) However, just to rib each other, we take up the flag of our teams during the Olympics. It’s all in fun.

I gave Brit Boy some robots for Christmas and the main one has been dubbed Trevor… or Trev for short. He is our family mascot of sorts. But poor Trev has to parade the flag for both sides. He’s so loyal to us both. (laugh) Here’s Trev with the England flag and the Union Jack for Great Britain as a whole.



And then here he is with the American flag.



And then little Trev is showing his divided loyalty proudly with all of the flags. He’s such a team player.




So we support two teams in our house, but mostly we just enjoy the world all playing nice together and giving us all something to cheer about.

Inspections and Risqué Television

I wrote the other day about Brit Boy and me mowing the lawn and doing the gardening on Sunday. Well it was in preparation for our inspection yesterday. The letting agents (real estate agents) come by to inspect our place twice a year to make sure we haven’t wrecked the place or something. (smile) Far from it...they will miss us when we are gone. Anyway, so even though we always keep on top of how things look around here, we always do an extra sprucing up of our place when we know that they will be coming.

For the last few times they have sent the same guy. I told Brit Boy that I hope that he stays for all of the while that we are here. He is so easy and is done quite quickly. The first time that he came, he spent most of the time talking to me about Disney World. He heard my American accent and was absolutely sure that I must live next door to Disney World...he really did. (smile) As we say back home, bless his heart. I told him kindly that actually I come from Georgia and that Florida is the next state south of there. I laughed and told him that I was the only person probably in my family that has never gone to Disney World, even though I have been all over the rest of Florida to the major cities. But it is on my list of things to do. Funnily enough, Brit Boy has even gone there too. (laugh) I really have to catch up. But anyway, with all of this talk about theme parks with the inspector guy, he just did a quick walk through and left. We had a good talk and I even told him of other spots he should visit whenever he got to Florida again. So it was all good. Transatlantic understanding...I love it. He was a good guy.

So thankfully in the times since, he has still been our inspector. They never tell you what time to expect them, so I usually just halfway do stuff all day in a state of apprehension about him coming and getting it over with. The bit of apprehension is that I hope it is the same guy. Also, I hate waiting. I've got to work on that.(smile)

Anyway, he arrived at a bit after 3pm. I greeted him and he went around the house to do his thing and check off his boxes on his form. So I went back to watching my show. I was watching an old episode of “The Young and the Restless”, an American soap opera. A few months ago, they started to show the show over here. It is episodes from 2003 at this point, but back when I was much more homesick, this show comforted me. It was like having a bit of home that I remember even though I didn’t watch it a lot back home. It is funny what you find yourself clinging to when you are living in another country and you will go to mostly anything to find the familiar in the life that you had in your home country. Sometimes it is just good to hear other people who speak like you. (smile) I embrace the differences here and I love having this totally new experience and I think that I have done a good job, but sometimes after a challenging day, it helps to hear my accent reflected back at me. It is an expat thing I guess. (smile) Also, the soap operas make me think of my mom. She watched most of the soaps for years and so when I hear the theme songs when the shows start, I instantly have this sensory memory of her. (smile) In the beginning, I would even tear up when I would hear the opening theme songs...memory is a powerful, powerful thing.

So when the inspector came back downstairs to speak with me, of course at that very moment they were showing a scene with two characters “in the afterglow” of lovemaking. And the inspector looked at the screen just then. (laugh) It was so funny. I told Brit Boy that the guy probably thought that I was watching porn or something. (laugh) Thankfully, right before he left, they switched to another scene so I hope that he figured it out. He was pleasant as always and I said a little prayer after he left, so that hopefully he will continue to be our inspector. And then I went back and got knee-deep into being both “youngish” and only vaguely “restless” because I hadn’t eaten all day.

Monday in London - Part Two

Today is my entry that brings to a close, my story of our time in London at the end of April. When I ended yesterday, I had just received my visa and Brit Boy and I were absolutely thrilled that a few years of hard work had finally yielded such a great result. I now have my visa!!!!! (smile) What a relief. Now I don’t have to go around with this monkey on my back anymore. I am free to think of other things and not think about gathering this or that to add to my evidence for my visa. That is behind me. Now Brit Boy and I can have a summer that we can enjoy, without this in the back of our minds. I don’t feel self-conscious anymore…I have completed this task and it has taught me a lot about tenacity. And it has also made me feel stronger about me and Brit Boy. No one can ever say to me that our bond isn’t strong or true, because we have really WORKED to be together and for us, it just makes it sweeter. We have had some doubters in the past who thought that we were nuts to have a long distance relationship and to try to build this transatlantic life. They questioned the validity of our relationship or were condescending or whispered about us. Well I have learned that it doesn’t matter what they think. We know us. Brit Boy and I knew when we met over five years ago, nearly six years ago now, that this was it. It was like “hello…I see you” when we saw each other. And we have been working towards this point ultimately for years. We have completed this circle and now it is on to the next thing…together. (smile)

So Brit Boy and I walked away from the immigration office and headed back to Kensington. As we rode back into the more central bits of London, I had time to think. I just wanted to have a few moments to be with the fact that I finally had my visa. Sometimes it is good to just be with your thoughts. A lot of times in life, I think a lot of us rush past the moments in our lives and don’t just stay in the moment for a bit. I have been trying to do better with this. As I followed through, a calm came over me. It was a good feeling.

We got back to Kensington and went to our hotel room to unload my big folder full of documentation and to take a breath. We then headed out to celebrate. It was still only about midday so we had London at our feet and plenty of time to play. We decided to go out and soak it all in.

We were hungry since we had left early for the immigration office. So we headed to one of our favorite places to eat. We were kind of broke after paying for the visa, but we figured what the heck, we may as well throw a few more pounds onto the plastic to round things off. (laugh) So we went to have a steak lunch at a place around in the Piccadilly Circus area. The streets were full of locals and tourists and loud and it was glorious!! Usually we are not big fans of crowded places, but we just really wanted to be a part of the wildness of the throngs of people right in the middle of everything. We had gone to this place before back in 2007 for my birthday and the food is superb every time. Brit Boy had soup and I had calamari rings for a starter. Then we both had steak for the main meal. For dessert or pudding as they say here, Brit Boy had the most divine cheesecake and I had lemon sorbet. We also tasted each other’s dessert. We both chose well. Our waitress was so wonderful. She noticed my American accent and asked where I was from and I told her and she said that she was from Romania. I felt this surreal kinship with her, like two people away from home, but enlarging the idea of home for ourselves to include more than one place at this time in our lives. That was a great moment.

After we left the restaurant, we walked around Piccadilly Circus with all the others in this sea of humanity. I have been there before, but I always enjoy it. It is great. Piccadilly Circus reminds me of Times Square in New York…life and activity everywhere. Here is a photo of the Greek god of love, Eros, in Piccadilly Circus.



And also, here is another street scene in Piccadilly Circus. I love the architecture.




Brit Boy and I love going into the huge music store there in Piccadilly Circus. I always find myself moving back and forth to the music as I flip through the Cds on display. It is hilarious. (laugh) I told Brit Boy that they should have a dance floor in there. While we were in there I picked up some collectables. I got a small set of Jimi Hendrix and Linkin Park badge buttons. My musical tastes are all over the place and cover many genres and decades. The badges reminded me of ones I had back in the 80s with my fave idols on them. A bit of nostalgia is always good.

Then we spent the rest of the afternoon walking along two of the most fabulous thoroughfares in London….Oxford Street and Regent Street. Wow…shops, shops, and more shops of every variety. It is retail heaven. (smile) Here is a photo of a bit of Regent Street. I didn’t photograph any storefronts, but here is a photo from that day.



After our extended browsing down Oxford Street, we found our way to the edge of Hyde Park. So we walked over to enjoy a bit of nature. It had been misting rain off and on, but it was fine. We enjoyed a nice long walk along the great park.

Then we headed back to our hotel since it was going towards evening at this point. We took a breather and then headed down to the grocery store to pick up some snacks and food to eat. We went back to the hotel and ate in our room and watched television. It was a great night in.

The next day we headed home. We went back to Paddington Station to wait for our train. We sat for a bit and watched the world go by. I love people watching at Paddington. Then we boarded our train back home. It was a lovely time that Brit Boy and I spent together.

So this draws to a close my experiences over our weekend in London. I can’t wait until we go back again. And that will be happening next month. As I mentioned before, we are going to Wimbledon. I have the ticker at the bottom of this page to remind me everyday how long we have to wait. (smile) Brit Boy and I are psyched about going. I used to watch Wimbledon on television when I was growing up, so it will be a thrill to actually go. I will certainly share that experience here too.