The End

After today I will no longer be "An American Librarian in Norwich, England" so the blog will stay up as a record but I won't be adding any new posts. If you miss me you can always visit my other blogs, although they aren't so much about my personal life.

What I Really Think is where I review juvenile books I've read. I managed to read quite a few British juvenile books during my stay here and thoroughly enjoyed experiencing the unadulterated text. (British books published in America tend to be edited to take out colloquialisms.)

Sound and Sense is a blog I started recently which should get more attention now that I am done with this one. It is a place for me to muse on the relationship between the spoken word and what it means using mostly everyday examples. This is an area of interest for me, but I am in no way an expert.

So, this is it! John and I are packed. I spent the day cleaning. I cleaned both bathrooms, although the lower one really just needed a once over after the most recent cleaning. I cleaned the kitchen counters and floor. I want to say, the kitchen floor was particularly gruesome and wasn't really clean even when we first moved in. I also vacuumed all the rooms as much as I was able with our pitiful power sweeper.

John pitched moving to England to me by reminding me that I wanted to "have an adventure." An adventure it has surely been, between learning to live in a foreign country and learning to live with John. (Remember that we moved immediately after getting married.) I know that we will always look back on our time here fondly, but it is with excitement that we embark on our next "adventure."

Goodbye Guitar

So, it's farewell to the purple velvet marshmallow. I looked into getting a hard case so the guitar could travel on the airplane today and there were a couple of problems.

1) There were no hard cases for 3/4 size guitars in all of down town Norwich.

2) The full sized cases cost more than the guitar did when it was new.

Based on these facts I am forced to conclude that although my lovely guitar has served me well the time has come for us to part. It is not meant to travel abroad.

As for my playing, do you think if I played air guitar on a street corner with a hat out I could raise funds to buy another real guitar?

Actually I have access to a guitar at home until I can save up for a nice one.

Like Watching Paint Dry

John had his last final today and FedEx was supposed to bring us boxes to pack our books in. So I was stuck inside all day. By myself. And, to make matters worse, because John was studying all day yesterday I felt compelled to be productive and did a lot of packing then. There wasn't much left to do today.

Here is what I accomplished:

I got my blood test results from the health center (normal, of course). I thought I was going to have to pick them up, but they e-mailed them to me! Much easier. Don't worry, the test was a normal thing they do during pregnancy and the only reason I want it is because I don't want anything that was done for free over here redone for monies back in the US.

I looked into renting a car so we can drive ourselves and our mountain of luggage to the airport on Friday but my looking mostly led me to believe that it's not going to happen. If British people prefer manuals how come the rental companies always run out of automatics?

I got an e-mail from SOS (Southern Order of Storytellers) saying that they are holding auditions which will supply them with tellers for the next year's worth of events. They accept submissions by mail so I started thinking about what I might send them.

That's about when the thumb twiddling began. I talked to Amanda for a little while and then I spent a long time reading. I really wanted to read on the back porch and enjoy the nice weather, but I was afraid I wouldn't be able to hear if someone came to the door.

Needless to say, the FedEx guy never came, but John has agreed to be housebound tomorrow so I can run errands in town.

Packed

Almost everything I won't be using before Friday is packed!

I feel like I've been doing a complicated puzzle trying to get everything to fit.

Warm

I wore a t-shirt outside today!

It's going to be a real shock when I get back to Georgia and it's hot.

No TV

An added bonus of meeting Rachel and Paul was that Paul decided to buy some of our stuff. This is very exciting because we don't have to go through the effort of selling it on ebay. He picked everything up last night. We weren't sure how we would adjust to losing the TV, but it's been okay because now John gets to show me all those movies he's always downloading and I never want to watch. The computer screen is a little smaller, but the company is good.

Perpetual Motion

I'm still trying to work on my running. I seriously lost some ground from all our vacations and, you know, having to share my blood flow and oxygen with another person. I had gotten up to three miles and now I'm back down to one. I was determined to run two miles this morning (this although I am now without an ipod since the iphone got sold and I thoughtlessly left my old ipod in Georgia). Yeah, I didn't run two miles. But it was such a nice day out and I was feeling good, so I ran the first mile and alternated walking and running on the second one. It's something.

John fixed our shower a while ago. Did I mention that? It was sort of anticlimactic since it needed cleaning to be really useable and we didn't clean it right away. But it is fully functional now and John wanted the downstairs bathroom cleaned and out of use so that it is one part of the flat we don't have to worry about. Well, I cleaned that bathroom today. Funny how much dirtier it gets when we use it all the time. There weren't any spider incidents.

Then I packed all my books in one suitcase. But John is undecided on whether we will actually take our books on the plane with us or ship them, so I might be repacking later. Still, they are off the shelf so it sort of seems like I've accomplished something.

Learning Experience

I spent most of the day working on another job application. It took me twice as long as it should have because after I filled in the PDF the first time I tried to save it. Turns out, saving a PDF clears the form. Everything I had typed disappeared and I had to do it again.

I did take a break to have lunch with John and some of his students. He wanted to give them advice and guidance before they head to the US in a few weeks. He's such a good guy. :)

National Family Week

I was at the library all day today for National Family Week. In the morning I shared my power point presentation with some children in the Memorial Library. Then they looked around the Memorial Library at the displays and some memorabilia that the staff had put out. After that they went into the children's area to make paper airplanes and color assembly ships.

I had lunch at a restaurant by myself, which I don't usually do since there is a coffee shop in the Forum, but I could smell the pizza upstairs and it was too tempting. I got some good reading in.

In the afternoon I helped out with a special story time session. Another guest was there with Charlie the Crocodile talking about keeping your teeth clean. So we heard from Charlie and then we took turns reading books about teeth. Afterwords the children had some coloring and activity sheets to work on.

Everyone seemed aware that they probably wouldn't see me again and they were very appreciative of my volunteer work. All I can say is they helped me stay sane by giving me something to do! Not only that, but I do feel that some of the work I have done has helped me grow as a librarian and as a person. I was a very timid traveler, but no more after all my train and bus trips to various parts of Norfolk. And I've really enjoyed working more with school children, even if the boys are a little breast-obsessed. Finally, lets not forget that these experiences have given me lots of stories to tell!

Hysteria

In an earlier time, physicians believed that hysteria was caused by the womb moving around the body trying to take moisture from other organs (thus the alternate name, wandering womb disease). Women were thought to be naturally dry, which is why they were always trying to steal moisture from men. ;)

I'd say this theory no longer holds much water, but I have learned something rather interesting recently. When you are pregnant, your womb does move higher in your body, not to look for moisture, but actually because at some point the baby won't fit in the pelvis. Maybe this is more than you wanted to know, but I say it all by way of explaining my hysteria.

Meet the newest Nelson:
















It looks like John and I will be returning from England with a rather permanent souvenir.

In Real Life

So, I met an internet friend IRL!!!

Doesn't happen that often. Anyway, Rachel was in town, so John and I met up with her and her young man, Paul at a pub in the city center. Two of their friends showed up after a little while as well. It was nice to get out and spend time in the lovely sun talking and eating.

Then back at home there were more forms and job applications waiting for me. But I shouldn't complain. Once I've applied for all the jobs that are more or less in my field all I'll be able to do is wait to hear from them and start thinking of a backup plan.

Hey, I've got an idea. What jobs do you think I should apply for? Barista? Secretary? Waffle House cook?

Back to Work

Now that our guests have left it is time for me and John to get down to the business of wrapping up affairs here and making plans for life back in Georgia.

I spent most of today applying for one job. This is because it was a government job and therefore the application was very complicated. And I probably won't get it. Not being defeatist, just realizing how little I understood some of the eligibility requirements. But, now that my resume is on USA Jobs I can apply for more of these complicated jobs without spending quite so much time.

I also joined Linked In, on the request of someone connected with the Ed S program at UGA. This also took some time, but since it's a professional social networking site maybe just maybe it will help with the job search. I noticed that NONE of the storytelling groups I belong to are on Linked In, so maybe there is a little project for me here that will get me a name in said storytelling groups.

Forecast for tomorrow: more work, with some fun times thrown in!

London Trip

Thursday:
John and I arrived in London, chilled out at our hotel for a little while, then had dinner with Sarah, Jesse, and Barin (friend of Sarah's who is studying at the London School of Economics).

Friday:
Stonehenge. Fatality of the train tracks that held up the trains for about an hour. Oxford. Back to London to see Barin's flat.

Today:
Back home and worn out. It was great seeing people and having more adventures around England. But I think my next "vacation" is going to be a day spent sleeping on the beach. Lots of sun and no walking.

Hope Sarah and Jesse had a good flight home!

London

No internet in London. I'll update y'all later!

Buzz

I was a busy little bee today, applying for jobs and...

Yeah, that was mostly it. Applying for jobs. It just took all day.

Seriously, does anyone need a librarian?

Anyway, John and I are meeting Sarah and Jesse in London tomorrow. Hooray!

Sandringham

We tried to eat breakfast at The Waffle House this morning, but they were opening late due to being lame. So we had some McDonalds instead and then started on our journey to Sandringham.

First there was a train to Ely, then a train to King's Lynn, and then a bus to Sandringham Estate. This is a home that belongs to the Queen and is where she lives for part of the year. When she isn't there, parts of the house are set up for public viewing. We also walked through a museum that had a bunch of gifts given to the royal family, taxidermied animal heads, and old cars. I especially liked the child sized cars they had. Much fancier than my Barbie Jeep.

Once we finally got back to Norwich we went to The Waffle House for dinner. Now we are all worn out!

Norwich Castle

I took Sarah and Jesse to the Norwich Castle this morning while John waited for the plumber. The plumber never came (bummer) and so John met us for the battlements tour and walking around town.

This evening we tried out the Romans game John and I bought at Hadrian's Wall. We discovered that the "long" version of the game is basically never ending, but we had fun playing it. The spirit of Julius Caesar was truly with me!

Visitors!

Sarah and Jesse arrived in Norwich today after flying into London yesterday. Unfortunately there was a small mix-up with the train schedule because of weekend rail work. So, John and I thought we were running late getting to the train station, but were actually very early. We ate lunch while we waited so it wasn't a big deal.

We gave them a preliminary tour of Norwich and tomorrow, more adventures!

To recent commenter Edward, and anyone else who may need to contact me off-blog, my e-mail address is voxfabularum@gmail.com. Thanks for reading!

Spider

As any day before guests arrives usually is, today was a cleaning day.

I started with the downstairs bathroom which was dirtier than usual because John and I have actually been using it regularly. (Our shower and bathroom sink are still clogged. A plumber is coming on Monday.)

There has been a spider living in that bathroom but he doesn't always come out of hiding. When he does though, watch out. He once dropped right into my face while I was trying to brush my teeth and although I generally don't mind spiders I do mind them suddenly appearing in my face. The spider made an appearance while I was cleaning and I decided to take the opportunity to relocate him since my sister-in-law does not like spiders. I caught him and dropped him out the window which was already open to lower cleaning fumes. Several minutes later he caught a breeze and flew back into the bath tub. I removed him once again and this time I shut the window after he was out. Sorry Mr. Long Legs, but this is not the place for you!

After that I turned my office into a bedroom, straightened up the living room and even swept the stairs. My sinuses are irritated and the flat is more or less presentable. Sounds like a typical day of cleaning.

Home Again

Well, John and I are back in Norwich for the final stretch. The next time we fly to Georgia it is to stay!

Our rental agency has started showing our apartment to potential renters. I'm all for this since we can get out of our lease a few days early if someone else wants to move in. But I've never lived in a place that was being shown before. Apparently some people came by when we were out of town, and another trio showed up today. The agency doesn't seem to care that we haven't done anything to prepare for these showings but I do feel a little bad that our flat isn't as neat as it could be. Good thing Sarah and Jesse's visit is forcing me to really clean.