Our Temporary Quarters

For some reason, many people have mistaken notions about our current residence We are staying at a temporary apartment until we find a regular house to rent. The mistakes are all based on expectations.

When we went to a local bank to try to open an account, the bank employee said our temporary address must be a bed and breakfast. While there are a lot of bed and breakfasts in our neighborhood, our place definitely is not. We have a kitchen (the sign out front says "self catering" which presumably means we cater to ourselves). Clearly the bank guy is wrong. We have to make our own beds and breakfast. If this is a "bed and breakfast" it's the worst one ever.

Jacob is insistent that we are not living in a hotel. His reasoning is quite logical and incontrovertible:

• There's no front desk
• There's no work out room

Every other hotel we've been in has had such amenities, especially the three on our way to England. This place clearly does not have either. Also, we get the towels changed once a week, if we are lucky. This week, we are not lucky yet. The service usually happens on Wednesday and we are already at Friday. The cleaning crew is missing in action.

Of course, the other thing we are missing is a proper wardrobe. Like many of the houses in England, we don't have closets. Wardrobes are put in to have a spot to hang clothes and have some drawers too. We do have wardrobes. What I'm saying is they didn't meet our expectations, as can be clearly seen in this picture:

For the back, we weren't expecting pine wood but Narnia woods!

Sure, it's fine for clothes. But what about our children having fantastic adventures? Narnia must be in this neighborhood, because we found this streetless street lamp:

On the way to another magical place, a playground!

We have not given up hope of fantastic adventures, but we are making our expectations more realistic.