Unpacking

Friday night we had the first significant rain we've seen since we arrived.  There were a few scattered showers Saturday morning, so we were happy to stay indoors and get to work unpacking our stuff.  We started with the kitchen, which is relatively large for a house this size, but has much less storage space than our small kitchen back home.  I really tried to pare down what we brought with us, with some apparent success.  I was able to find spots for everything, and there's even space to hang our pot rack, which will take care of some of the larger items.  It helps that we brought our buffet, which provides plenty of additional room for serving dishes and table linens.  Not much space left for food storage, though, so we may need to move some things around.

We started feeling a bit peckish around 1:00, so Josh hopped on his bike to pick up some sandwiches for lunch.  On his way out, he bumped into our neighbor, Anna, who was on her way over to invite us to tea at her house.  We devoured our sandwiches, cleaned ourselves up, and presented ourselves next door at 3:00.  By then the sky had cleared and the sun was out, so we sat out in the backyard with Anna, her husband Kevin, and their kids, Chloe and Henry.  I was expecting just a cup of tea, but she had put together a full afternoon tea with three kinds of finger sandwiches and scones with clotted cream and jam.  Yum!  Although Anna and Kevin are ethnically Chinese, she is originally from New Zealand and he is from Australia, and they've lived in London for 18 years.  An interesting, but not unusual, mix of cultures.  Like our landlords, who are from Germany and Singapore, they were very sympathetic about the challenges faced when moving to the UK from another country.  It was nice to hear that we were not alone in being frustrated by the inefficiencies and complexities of the British way of doing things.

Anna and Kevin were very friendly and helpful, which made us both a little happier about choosing to live here.  They got along so well with our landlords that when they replaced the fence between their yards, they installed a gate so they could visit more easily -- and so the kids could retrieve any stray toys without having to knock on the door.  The neighbors on the other side seem friendly as well, but I don't think we'll hang out with them much.  They are a retired British couple named Jan and Terry who have lived in Wimbledon all their lives and barely have a full set of teeth between the two of them.   They spend most of their time puttering/bickering in the yard -- it's like watching a BBC sitcom -- and, as a result, not a blade of grass is out of place.  It is a marvel, and makes our yard appear woefully neglected.  Our landlords have a toddler and another baby on the way, so I don't think they had much time for yardwork.

We walked to the town center after tea to do a little shopping, and came back with a toilet roll holder, a small stand mirror,

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