2008-09-17

Second Letter From England


Family and Friends-
Hello from across the pond. It's time for another email update from sunny England!
If long emails scare you - the way they do me - a brief summary is below followed by the long format further on. And if you're already thinking of hitting the "save for later" button, you can visit our London blog,
http://trojanlondon.blogspot.com/, at your leisure. Phew. We've thought of everything.

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The girls are doing wonderfully. No, Lucy isn't referring to pants as "trousers" or backpacks as "rucksacks" or boots as "wellies" yet but she is starting to get a little conflicted over Ellie's "nappies" instead of diapers and "biscuits" instead of crackers or cookies (or, to really keep her on her toes, in Italian, "pannolini" and "biscotti", respectively, by her slave driver dad). She has started pre-school which is held at a nearby cricket club. The school is called Jiminy Cricket. How cleva. Lucy is learning to ride a bicycle and is picking it up quite well. Her bike is pink with tassels on the handle bars and has "stabilisers" (training wheels) on the back. Lucy loves running, jumping, serving tea, playing with her dolls, and anything pink.

Ellie Jane is now starting to eat some solid food. Peas and carrots oh my! She's crawling, pulling up, and of course hamming it up whenever we put the camera in front of her. She's learning to tolerate her sister's affection (did somebody say rough-housing?) just a little bit more. She loves being held and making loud noises whenever mom and dad talk too much without giving her a turn. If you Skype us and she is nearby, you'll see what we mean. Needless to say, mom and dad are overjoyed watching them both grow and experience the world. They both miss their grandparents, cousins and friends.

Erin and I are getting along in our new home swimmingly. I guess you could say our initial adjustment period is over. Certainly we've stopped counting days (it's been three months), watching the currency exchange rate (1.79 USD to 1 GBP today), and thinking about the economics of VAT tax (17.5% in the UK) and Council tax (levied in tiers on renters. Ugh.). We're really getting to know our neighbors and to participate more in the goings on of our town and nearby church. Our small block has some nice Polish, Russian, Dutch and Indian couples, to say nothing of the Italians and Koreans we have yet to meet.

We speak often to some of you over IM, Skype, Facebook, Google Video and email - but perhaps you may still find the highlights below interesting. Or maybe you just need to procrastinate for something important by reading our blog. Anyway, check at the very bottom for a link to some fun pictures from London and Madrid.

Regards,
The Fam

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So blackberry season has ended. It was wonderful being able to pick berries whenever we took walks anywhere (which meant everywhere and all the time). Along the way we discovered that the fiendish Stinging Nettle, described in our last post, has an arch-rival plant called the dock leaf. If you get carried away in your hunt for the perfect juicy blackberry and get your legs all stung up, you can seek out the milky sap from the dock leaf plant, which, happily, grows right beside the nettle. Brilliant! As the Brits would say.

Our diet has changed a bit. In our last email we mentioned how our eyes had been opened to the joy of beans-on-toast. And in due course we have come to appreciate how a good crumpet just can't be beat, especially when accompanied by a strong cuppa English tea. Erin has taken this tradition to heart and is known to imbibe regularly of said beverage. This is evidenced by the fact that our purchase of a box containing 80 portions is very nearly empty. Truly good stuff! We are able to find good Indian food left, right and center, no big shocker to anyone. I myself have come to appreciate Marmite on toast (a spread which is a lot like vegemite if you remember the Men At Work song from the 80s. Go to mark 1:16) and having sweet, organic local berries with every dessert. What do we miss? Hands down: Qdoba Mexican burritos (admire one here. Ah, vicarious wonder). We missed them so much that we declared Mexican food day. We invited our fellow American neighbor over to feast on homemade black beans, pico de gallo, mexican rice, tortillas with ground beef and Coronas with lime. And to further that gastronomic urge, we then decided to celebrate the start of college football season by going to a friend's to cook cornbread and thick, spicy chili. Erin is cooking our neighbors into submission. Too bad the Horns game was delayed.

What are we up to? Well, somehow we managed to make it out for a Michael Franti concert. How cool to see an American artist raising the roof at a small London joint! (Thank you Maribel for the babysitting!!!) We spent a day ogling the medieval cathedral at Salisbury: 800 years old, grand arches and an impossibly high nave. We explored the Tate Modern Museum in London (a hit with Lucy). We met up with a high-school friend of Erin's who came from Paris by train. We've had various other small day trips. We're especially looking forward to a trip to NW England to see Hayfield where Erin's dad was born and hopefully catch up with relatives there.

A word on Madrid. We spent a few days in downtown Madrid for a work trip of mine. We all agreed (Ellie and Lucy included) that we dig the Spanish lifestyle: wake up late, eat lunch late, eat dinner late, stay out late, and finish it off with some nice warm chocolate milk. The Spanish really like their chocolate! (and Iberian ham)  Again, brilliant! It provided a much needed refresher to be in such a hot and sunny place, if only for a few days.

We've taken to listening to BBC on the radio. At home we would occasionally listen to BBC World Service which would give international news highlights. Here, however you can get filled to the brim with hearty BBC programming. You can catch broadcasts in all sorts of English accents and eras covering the likes of Mr Darcy! in Pride and Prejudice to a faaabulous rendition of "Valerius Terminus of the Interpretation of Nature" - all on the FM dial. Hopefully you're chuckling right now because that is right in line with subtle, sharp British humor. Quite clever I say. Indeed Mr Wandsworth, indeed! Also on the radio and media here we see frequent coverage of the US presidential election. I would hazard a guess that much of Europe is watching rather closely.

I'm looking for a segue into the next topic, but try as I might, the point is eluding me. Ah yes, British standards. You can't miss'em. There are many little details to keep track of on this front: electrical plugs here have a very complicated though sturdy design; sink nozzles always produce the hot water from a separate tube within the faucet; the definition of a two-way street is perplexing at times; houses have names. For example, what do "In Time", "Tigger Heath", "Little Cottage", "Brickyard" and "Verity" have in common? Absolutely nothing save that they are all nearby houses. It's really odd: these houses really do not have numbers. It's not like "Little Cottage" over in NW Woking is otherwise known as "23 Temple Bar Road". That would be too easy. How does the postal service do it's job?

On the topic of postal workers (this one's for you Aunt Sandy), in Woking anyway, the Royal Mail rides red bicycles to deliver the day's parcel. Our home happens to be at the top of a small hill, so I'm curious what will happen in winter when the mail load is heavy, the weather is rotten, and we're at the end of the route. Let's just say that if we don't receive every letter from the US, we won't be surprised. Another interesting tidbit is how the mail carriers share the road. Here is a informative illustration of Woking's idea of a two-way street (a little ASCII art for Jeremy):
|   | xxx|
|     xxx|
|   | xxx|
|        |
|   | xxx|
|     xxx|
|   | xxx|

where parked cars - the "xxx" blobs - occupy the road, often on both sides, while bikes, buses and other cars travel by. So if a parked car is precisely "xxx" wide and the lane is "____" wide and a bus coming the opposite direction is "xxxx" wide, and you leave point A at 12:03 traveling at 5 mph but Marge leaves point B traveling in a straight line at 12:06 traveling at 8 mph...

oh, sorry, a little off track there (the answer is D, all of the above).
Frankly it's a miracle that anyone gets anywhere. It's like tetris meets frogger.

Lastly we'll leave you with, as before, some random observations about our area.
  • When you first get a driver's license here, you have to display a 6"x6" card on your dash or rear window, "L" for learner driver. What a [insert qualifier here: brilliant|great|clever] idea, especially considering the rigors or learning the windy roads.
  • It's not called "drunk driving" here, rather "drink driving". Much more optimistic don't you think?
  • Marleen, Euro fashion sense is alive and well. Er, well, to my eye, it is alive, but not always well. It can range from Brittany look-a-likes to sharp pinstripe suits (complete with Captain Kirk pants and boots), to droopy, tight at the ankle grunge jeans. One thing seems to hold true: clothes are just a wee-bit tighter.
  • Familiar US stores seem to have British alter egos: "TK Max" instead of "TJ Max", "Home Base" instead of "Home Depot", and in a reversal of fortune, it is Starbucks stores that are dirty and messy inside but BurgerKing and McD's that are squeaky clean. Who knew?
  • Certain words are very, very popular. If you haven't gathered that already from the post, you're not paying attention. For instance, if you are clever (pronounced "CLE-va"), you could have just done any number of things, some certifiably quick-witted, others having little at all to do with the word. Here's an example: Lucy is a clever girl when she stands on the step ladder to place something high up on the fridge. Ah, but she is also very clever when she greets adults in a sweet voice. Brilliant!

Okay, that's all. We wish you all the best. You're brave for reading this far.
As a small reward, some pictures of Madrid: Kodak Gallery Madrid
Or visit:
http://www.trojanovich.com/erinmatt

Cheers,
Matthew, Erin, Lucy and Ellie Jane Trojanovich

2008-07-07

First Letter From England

Yes, we made it to London! We know that we've been awfully quiet on email/phone/skype over the last 3 weeks, but we're finally getting some semblance of a normal day-to-day now. What follows are some details about where we live, what we've observed, who we've met, how the girls are doing and more. So sit back and relax (maybe get yourself a nice cuppa' tea). This is going to be a long email...

We live in a town called Woking in Surrey County. We are about 20 miles SW of London proper. So technically speaking, we are not in London. I'm commuting into downtown London where I work near Regent's Park. As an overarching generalization, the city of London is very nice. Due to an express train and our handy location close to the Woking train station, it only takes 50 minutes door-to-door for my commute. Woking is a town of about 60,000, so it's small, pleasant and fairly "English-countryside-like". The downtown (here referred to as town centre) isn't particularly scenic, but we all agree that we're comfortable here.

One fun detail about Woking - it is where the Martians landed in H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds (which explains the presence of a totally incongruent and curious 20 foot silver spider-like structure located in the middle of town). And further back: in 1497 the Treaty of Woking was signed in the town by King Henry and Maximillian of Austria.

Houses in Surrey tend to be nestled along tree lined much-too-narrow streets that wind this way and that. Few roads in Woking maintain the same name for more than a quarter mile. This has made exploring around Woking (remember, with baby stroller in tow) quite a fun and sometimes challenging adventure. We feel very safe however and can access most of the town on foot including a grocery store, market, church, shopping mall and train all within 15 minutes walk. Other than figuring out how to cross busy turn-abouts with traffic going the "other way" and narrow sidewalks, we're getting the hang of it.

We have met a whole host of friendly, helpful folks here. From the staff at the hotel in which we stayed for a week before finding our home, to the neighbors all around us, to my co-workers, people have been genuinely down to earth. We've had to call in many favors too: you'll see from the photos that we didn't have so much as a chair, tea pot or mattress when we moved in (as of this writing, our goods from the US are yet 3 weeks away. We're becoming well acquainted with living on our floor). Neighbors have generously supplied us with loaner bean bag, coffee table, silverware, etc., and even toys for Lucy! The last of which has been especially welcome as Little Miss Antsy Pants has been cavorting all over the house busily trying out every new switch and valve and door handle.

Our back yard backs (here usually referred to as a garden) up against the train line (refer to picture). Fortunately most of the trains are electric so it's not too loud. Lucy used to point at them with glee as they'd pass by but now hardly notices.

We're surrounded by oak trees and, amongst others, two plants that grow vigorously here: wild black berries and stinging nettle. This is quite a conundrum: the black berries are ripening deep purple right now in copious amount... but everywhere you step off of the footpaths to get at them is this stinging nettle plant. We had never heard of stinging nettle until Erin asked a neighbor (here neighbour) why her shins were itching so badly. It turns out that this devious plant that looks exactly like lemon verbena (but with spikes) stings your legs if you brush past it and, of course, are not wearing pants (here trousers). Needless to say though, it is very green here.

We've had fun learning all the British-isms around us. We get the local paper and have yucks at the headlines – some of which we honestly can't decipher. Try this one on for size: "SLAP IN THE FACE. Fishmonger says he may shut up shop because yellow lines driving customers away." [picture of grim looking man outside of his non-descript storefront sign reading 'Traditional Fishmongers' in the background]. Now Erin and I have heard of fearmongers and hatemongers, but darned if we know what a fishmonger is and why this one is so incensed. Another fun one: the neighborhood that abuts ours is called Horsell. It is pronounced, roughly, "WHOR-zul". When we try to speak the name, we stand out like a sore thumb with our Yankee "r"s not to mention our improper emphasis on the first lurid portion of the word. Maybe Lucy will eventually learn how to say it like a proper Brit. We hear words like "lovely" and "brilliant" and "absolutely" and "virtually" used with far greater frequency than at home, and boy, try to understand the thick accent of a taxi driver here. Phew! Grocery stores in Woking have "pies" (pork, kidney, steak, curry, custard, rhubarb, etc) and puddings (desserts) of all varieties. Exactly what you'd picture traditional English comfort food to be.

The girls are getting along fine with the move – now that the jet lag has worn off and we're out of the hotel. That bit was not fun. Anyway, Ellie can now roll over and grab her toys. She enjoys bouncing in her new Johnny Jumper (thanks Aunt Susan). Lucy loves to play with her little sis. Hopefully Lucy's present definition of the word "play" though will be short-lived; it means rolling on top of her sister yelling into her ear two inches away: "Ellie! Ellie! Ellie! Play with me!! Oooh Ellie!". Unbearably cute. There is a neighborhood park just around the corner where Lucy climbs and swings whilst (just practising some British English there. And for all you fans of same: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/practice.html) Ellie sits on mom (here "mum") or dad's lap drooling with wild abandon. It seems her teeth may be coming in soon...

Lucy wishes a fond "hello" to all her little friends. She surprises us by talking about cousins or aunts or uncles or friends – but without any provoking or prodding whatsoever on our part (we don't mean that in the negative sense). We're continually impressed by her memory. That said, we'd only be too happy to receive digital pictures or letters of goings-on from y'all (thanks Keri for pix of the 2008 Trojanovich Family Picnic in Ramah, CO). We plan to post more photos of our own on our personal website or on our Kodak page. In lieu of that, we're spending increasing time on Skype using a web cam. If you don't have an account, get one and look us up! It's free and the video picture quality is generally good. Oh, we almost forgot to mention that Lucy can now make horns with her hand and sing The Eyes of Texas. Bravo little lady, bravo.

Lastly, we'll leave you with some tidbits of what we've done so far:
  • Discovered some good bed and breakfasts nearby – come visit! We do have a guest room too.
  • Found a historic town 10 minutes away complete with a castle and very good cobble stone shopping area (Guildford)
  • Been invited in to various neighbors and acquaintences houses for afternoon lunch and tea.
  • Spent a day at Wimbledon during the final week of competition. What a final match this year for the men!
  • Flew our American flag proudly on the 4th of July. Got some cheeky grins (need a translation? See subsequent posts).
  • Decided that, yes, we too think the British breakfast staple for all kids, Beans On Toast is a fine breakfast meal. As for blood pudding... not so much.
  • Visited the French Market in town where, oddly refreshing, all the vendors were in fact speaking with real, not fake, French accents. Sacre blue! Aimez-vous acheter de la confiture?
  • Eaten some fantastic Indian food. Lucy differs, but ah, she'll come around. Here Indian food is variously referred to as either "Asian food" (which seems to include any and all of China, Japan, Korea, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, etc), and "a good curry" (always a good curry).
  • Chris, I've walked through the Vauxhall and Piccadilly neighborhoods of London. Alas, I have yet to hear any Piccadilly Palare that I can identify as such. Given the precise derivation of that term, ahem, it's probably just as well. Look it up at the link provided.
  • There is a notable Polish population in Woking so fortunately we're able to find poppy seed cake, perogi, and good chlieb. We haven't identified any Slovaks yet though.
  • We actually had a guest over for dinner at our place despite the conditions (JB, brave soul). Erin served a wonderful baked chicken-- we ate it our our precious cardboard box dining cum room table. "Ellie, stop drooling on the furniture, it might cave in!"
  • Yes, it really does rain here. Rains a lot.

There's much more to tell, but we'll save it for later.

We hope this letter finds you well and miss you all. Do try us on Skype or similar.

Cheers,
Matthew, Erin, Lucille and Eloise Trojanovich