Jeff and I got a coffee pot! Yay! And of course I brought a big bag of Dunkin Donuts coffee with me in the air shipment, so we could have coffee. So we have had coffee and eggs, with rashers (aka bacon) each morning. Bacon here, if you get what they call bacon reminds me a little of Canadian bacon or something along those lines. Rashers are the skinnier slices of bacon that we are use too. And apparently their version of bacon is better for you, healthier I guess than rashers. But we are use to rashers and since I’m not a big fan of ham and their bacon is like ham to me more than bacon………..we have rashers! ;)
Today is Memorial Day there; here it’s a Bank Holiday, which is basically what they consider a day that the banks, post office, etc is closed. I have no idea if it’s a holiday here or not and to be frank it seems like they have a bank holiday about every other Monday or so. That’s probably an exaggeration but I do know that in the past two months they have had at least 3 bank holidays and me, nor Jeff have figured out what they are closed for other than just being a “bank holiday”.
Since our sea shipment is still weeks away from arriving we don’t always have a car. Sometimes we rent a car, other times Jeff uses a truck from work, when it’s available and when we have neither (which hasn’t occurred since I’ve been here yet) we will have to take the bus, taxi’s etc. But we live far enough out that a taxi is really not feasible, however the bus runs right by the house. So I am guessing one day this week I will start to learn how to use the bus system here. Which as many of you know, public transportation is a way of life here, much safer than in the States! On the road that we live on, real close to the house actually, is Benholm Mill. It’s kind of what started the town we live in or the area really. We live in Benholm but it’s between Montrose and Inverbervie (In va burvee and you say the last part really fast) so since they are so close together (literally) we sometimes are referred to in computer systems and such as living in Montrose but we consider it Inverbervie but so far, no one says we live in Benholm, though our address is just that. And here in Benholm you don’t have a street number……..your house has a name………that’s how they know where you live. So we live at the Brigview house. So when someone asks for your address they will ask for your area code which is basically your zip code and then they will verify that its Montrose area, which we say yes and then they will ask what house we live in and we tell them Brigview and they pretty much have our address then. Very different! Could you imagine if we all had house names in the States or even in the smaller towns and no street numbers?
Front of our House - Brigview
See the sign with the house name on it?So anyway, since we don’t have the Yukon yet, and we need to return the rental car tomorrow, we’ll go to the store tonight and get stuff for the week so that we won’t need to go to the co-op (that’s the little grocery store in Inverbervie) until this weekend. But I will be very glad when we get the Yukon, though I am dreading having to drive it on the little roads around here. Of course the roundabouts scare me more than anything! It’s so confusing, on top of driving on the left hand side of the road! I have seen a few cars (not many though) that were obviously imports and the steering wheel is on the left hand side. Jeff says I have to learn to drive this week though, so that when we do have a car I can drive. So I guess tonight I will attempt to drive the rental car, even though it’s a standard and a right hand drive. Should be interesting………so I’ll write more later or tell you tomorrow how that went.
And I’m doing laundry again today while Jeff is getting some work done at the office. Okay let me tell you about the washing machines and dryers here. First off everything is compact! So with the washing machine you can realistically only fit probably 3 pairs of jeans in a washing machine and nothing else. Towels about the same. And everything is eco friendly and has an eco-friendly setting. I’m not quite sure what that does or what it means other than maybe it conserves energy. But the dryer blows my mind! The dryer doesn’t work like our traditional dryers do and it takes MUCH longer to dry. Which makes no sense to me; you would think that it would be better to have a dryer that dries quickly to be more efficient. However, most people don’t have dryers either; they use a whirly gate which is those circular clothes lines. And yes, we have one but so far, I’ve never used it. I have thought about drying towels out there, but just haven’t yet. Anyway, back to the dryer. Okay so when you are drying clothes it somehow absorbs the moisture out of the clothes and it puts it in this container inside the face of the dyer. And it’s a tank that you literally pull out and dump the water out of when it gets to full. And just so you have an idea how full it can get, the tank is actually rather long, I would say probably a little more than 12” long and its probably 3” deep and it will fill up just from drying a set of queen size sheets and before they are even dry! And that’s how the dryers work! They absorb the moisture out of the clothes and it drains it into this tank and you empty the tank when it’s full and you just keep tumbling the clothes until they are “dry”. And everyone here is very efficient and very eco friendly, but I must admit, I really don’t understand how that’s doesn’t use more energy than the way we dry clothes. Because you still are tumbling these clothes. And it will take like 2 hours to dry 3 pairs of jeans. I’ll keep you posted on how much our electric bill is! LOL
One nice thing though………..well at least right now anyway………….we have no a/c and it’s like its 70 degrees in the house almost all the time. You actually open blinds and curtains to get some heat in the house or turn up the radiators so that the house warms up. And they only use fans in the winter time……..to circulate the heat in the house. They are considered a seasonal item that you can mainly only get in the winter, unless you go to B & G (which is Home Depot here. Same colors and same brands like Homelite). We know this because we bought an osculating fan this week too. ;)
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