Some Stuff

After five days without any Internet contact (yes, our home Internet still doesn't work. But the guy to fix it is here today, on this very estate, so hopefully things will change very soon. I'm in the Manor, currently) I got on, and everyone had updated. I've spent forever reading everyone's lovely blogs, and it made me so happy, and grateful even that all of you write and read blogs, so that way I can feel and be in contact with you, even if you're super far away. One of the sad things about going home to America soon is that I'll still be far away from most everyone that I know.

Not much has been happening to us lately. Yesterday we went to Oxford, and I bought clothing, because I couldn't stand the heat anymore without some sort of reprieve in the wardrobe department. I'm very impressed with the underbelly of Oxford clothing prices. Ok, so underbelly as a word doesn't exactly fit there, but I liked the word so much I just had to leave it in the sentence. I bought three shirts and a pair of flip-flops (with blue glitter, even) for ten pounds and fifty pence at one store, Primark. The real deal of the day, though was at the Next clearance store. Primark is a new department store, but most of their clothes are made out of cheap materials, and frankly the vast majority of their offerings rate a high level on the tacky scale. Next is a higher end department store (comparatively, at least), and so their clearance store has all the joys of better made clothing while still being cheap (although they too have many clothes up their on the tacky scale. I have a sneaking suspicion this is just British styles currently, or maybe just world wide styles; I wasn't up on American styles by any means). One thing the store doesn't have, though, is the joy of any dressing rooms. Even DI has dressing rooms, but maybe it's part of the clearance appeal. So I did the time-honored approach of trying on the skirt I ended up buying over my clothing while standing in the middle of the store. You do what you can. Although Primark had dressing rooms, the line was so long that I ended up trying on their shirts over my clothes while standing in the middle of the store as well.

I'm classy, I admit it. Not as classy as the girl next to me, who did the same as I did, minus keeping her own clothes on while trying on the new ones, but I still try.

Still the skirt I bought that is cute and black and flared and looks like Linen (I think it's a linen blend) and knee length, and originally cost 20-30 pounds only cost me three pounds. Now that's my kind of clothes buying. I only wish Michele, my true shopping buddy in life were there with me. Avram wished she were there as well, because that meant that he wouldn't have to be there with me, while holding Elisheva and trying to keep track of Lydia.

Life with two children while traveling around certainly involves more stuff; I felt like we looked homeless, we were carting so much around with us. Sadly no one stopped and gave us money, though.

Otherwise in our life Avram is working steadily to finish his thesis. It has to be 15,000 words (which isn't very long, really; only about 30 pages), and he currently has around 10,5o0 done. He just needs to write a conclusion and finesse the rest of it, and then can turn it in to his supervisor to be edited and constructively commented over. It's due in about two and a half weeks, so everything is working well and on a good timetable.

Also we missed making a regular appointment to register Elisheva and get her a passport with the US government consulate in London, because they're made three months in advance, and we didn't find this out until a week ago, when the closest appointments were July 10th, and we were due to fly home on June 20th. Luckily they fit us into an emergency appointment on June 2nd. The only difficulty is it's at 8:30 am, and so we'll have to travel to London around four in the morning that day, which will be interesting (getting to Oxford to get to London, mainly). Avram's excited, though, because since we'll be in London already we're planning on visiting the British Museum for any time we have left after our appointment. He's currently torn between seeing the Egyptian sights, specifically the mummies, and the medieval collection, which is amazing as well (so we read). I'm hoping to squeeze in both, somehow.

A final note: Avram finally made me read To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. I had been dragging my feet because it had always sounded like a depressing book, but having now read it I must admit it's not depressing, and in fact was incredibly well written and a pleasure to read. So you should all read it too.