England, je t'aime

I was chatting with a friend a while ago and he asked me what my favorite thing about England is so far. It’s such a good question, but a difficult one. I thought about it for a moment and said something, but have continued to think about it ever since. I couldn’t narrow it down to just one thing that is my favorite, so you’ll have to bear with a rather long list. Firstly, I love that it’s England. There are times when I have to remind myself that I actually live in England. I’m not just visiting; I actually live here and that is so much cooler. I go to the grocery store, I do my laundry, I go shopping. I just do it in England instead. It means that I walk a lot more, but I don’t mind it because it’s beautiful. The walk from my house to the town center passes several old churches and crosses the river. There’s a lovely garden with spring flowers beginning to poke up. I also love the buildings. Here in Reading, most of the buildings are red brick. I think it’s just lovely. Most of the houses are also covered with vines or ivy as well. It gives them an old look that is perfect for imagining oneself in a Jane Austen novel or something.

I also love it here at night. It’s often a little foggy and the streetlights are much orangey-er than they are at home, so there’s this soft orange glow everywhere. It’s romantic and makes me want to go on a long walk hand in hand with a cute boy.

I also love that everywhere I go there is history. There’s a story to everything here. I can imagine people in old-fashioned clothes wandering around town, climbing out of carriages, attending the theatre, or having tea and scones. I love the feeling that the buildings and streets and trees have been witness to events that changed the world.

Another thing I love here is the trees. There are beautiful trees everywhere. They’re big and tall and the branches spread out beautifully all around. Some of them have vines growing up the trunks. One of my favorite things to do is ride through the countryside where the fields roll over the hills and the sheep graze. But what I love the most about the fields is the great big tree that is often smack dab in the middle. I have no idea what kind of tree it is, but almost every field has one and they’re beautiful.

I love the old people here too. I love that the women wear tweed skirts, knee-high stockings, blouses, knitted sweater vests, and carry crocheted shopping bags around with them. I love that the old men wear hats and suits when they go out for the day, even if it’s just to the shops. They perfectly fit my imaginings of what old English people would look like.

I guess what I love most about England, is that I’m here. I feel so lucky every time I think about the experience I’m having here. I had always wanted to live abroad someday and now I am and I love it. I might just have to stay a while longer.

The Quest Continues.

As you may recall when I first got here, I was freezing. It was only September and I worried about how I would survive the winter. As roommates we had decided to only have the heating on for a few hours in the morning and a few in the evening. I hated it. I was freezing all the time and spent my waking hours wrapped up in a blanket. My feet were like blocks of ice and I couldn’t even bear to be without my jacket. The only time I was truly warm was in the shower, where I would stand in the hot water until my feet melted and my blood warmed. This was no way to live. (By way of explanation, we have an old-school boiler and radiators in our rooms. The gas heats up the water, which flows through the radiators and gives us heat. Unfortunately, there’s no thermostat to regulate the temperature; the heat is either all the way on or all the way off. This makes it quite difficult to maintain a very constant temperature in the house. It gets nice and warm and then very shortly after turning off the heating, it gets really cold.) So, we called the gas provider to see if there was anything we could do to keep the heating more even because to my mind having to reheat the house every few hours was wasting a lot of energy, whereas having it on more often for less time would perhaps use less. So the gas company told us that the rate would be lower if we used a bit more gas. So we started leaving the heating on all day with the radiators turned down. IT WAS HEAVEN! Then the heating bill came and it was not good news. We realized that we’d been given bad information by the gas company. So we decided to go back to only having the heating on for 8 hours a day and I went back to wearing a blanket around all the time. We were a bit smarter about it and decided to heat the house up for an hour or so and then have the heating come on every 15 minutes for 15 minutes. We figured this way it would maintain the heat better. It was working perfectly until two days ago when the heating just stopped working. The pilot light was on, but the heat wouldn’t switch on. That also meant we couldn’t get any hot water. We called the gas company but they couldn’t send anyone over until the next day. That meant we had to spend the rest of the day and night without any heat. I was not pleased, but spent the evening at the Church building where the heating was working. I came home and got in bed as quickly as I could. The next morning the gasman came and fixed our heating. We had heat again and we rejoiced and I took a shower, which turns out was a good plan because last night, the pilot light went out. We tried multiple times to restart it and it would stay lit for a few seconds only. We were again facing a night of no heat. We called our landlord who is a tightwad and won’t get a new boiler despite the fact that ours is 15 years old and a piece of crap. He called the gas company and they came out today and tried again. We’ve now become quite good friends with the gas technician as we’ve seen him many times. I feel like we’re all on the same team against the landlord in our efforts to secure a new boiler. Anyway, he did some other things and hopefully that will do the trick. My great hope is that I will now be able to sleep without the fear of hypothermia.