This is some sort of surreal trip and although it may dampen in time, it is no less obvious right now!
I digress, I landed a bit before midnight late on the night of 4 September. Without having the time or ability to make changes, I had to scramble to get a cab after midnight at Heathrow and paid a pretty penny to get to Portsmouth. So, after customs, baggage, the cab ride, and checking in, I went to sleep sometime around 3 am Monday morning. For the better part of Monday and Tuesday I remained in a haze of jet lag, something that I usually don't have a problem with. Anyway, I keep strange hours for the first couple days I'm here and I also do a fair amount of walking due in no small part to getting lost twice to the tune of a couple hours each time. Eh, I figured it was good for me to just keep on walking around for the fitness of it and to tray and learn the streets, its all good. Something I note up front, this temperature sure is a change from the summer Minnesota has just had. It is pretty windy and overcast and close, but not quite, Seattle type weather. The difference? It wasn't really cool or too damp, it was a windy setting where you weren't too cool. My hotel is pretty close to the waterfront and is the tallest building between its location and the water so there is a fair amount of ambient white noise against the side of the building, just a reminder of how windy this can be. Monday was a haze, nothing much happened aside from walking around, but I was able to open up a UK bank account on Tuesday. The intent was to then go walk to the car dealerships but I was promptly lost and eventually cabbed it back to the hotel. On Wednesday I walked around with a CPO level gentleman with the RFA and he started laying the ground work for my assimilation into the local life. This is where it began, but I go on to meet with what now feels like a million realtors but they are called letting agents in the good ole UK. One thing to mention is that that are literally a couple dozen or more different agencies and I have met with probably more than a dozen although I Wasn't counting. It doesn't make sense Wednesday but, over the next couple days, it is increasingly obvious that the apartment or house is the key to doing everything else I need to do (cell phone contract, car purchase, etc.). In fact, to get a cell phone with a contract you have to have a "credit check" completed, but it is pretty bogus for most Americans this check also includes how much time you've been here and, because I've only been here a few days when the first check was completed my credit check was not successful. Weird.
There are a great number of similarities here, yet it still feels a bit foreign and I honestly feel as if I am a bit of a novelty most places I go because of my strange and heavy accent. I still feel like I am in a bit of a tourist stage, at least for the time being anyhow, as everything is still pretty new and the "firsts" are still occurring. Of course, to date, one thing that has proven to be fun and a little demanding for some creativity is the minimum picture a day with Animal doing something or being somewhere. If you haven't checked those pictures out on my FB profile, check them out!
I may be leaving some gaps right now and I'm sorry for that, I swear I will write more in the future. One parting shot though was my experience at the movie theater Saturday night. Sure, I've been to movies in other countries before but for some reason I really don't remember anything happening that seemed out of the ordinary. In the UK, there are differences. Sure, there were, what seemed like, a half hour of fluff before the movies started, but that didn't seem too crazy. What did seem a bit odd was that there were a number of commercials before the pre-movie trailers even started which seemed a bit different. Admittedly I haven't seen many movies in theaters recently in the States, but something was clearly out of place. What? you might ask, well, how about among the commercials prior to the trailers including four for beer and one for condoms. Different, definitely a little different.
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