Is it really 2 weeks since I last wrote anything on here??!! I'd love to say we've been so busy unpacking that I haven't had time to come on here....but...we're having a nightmare with renting a house....so err no, we are still in an apartment and still don't know where we're moving to!!
The first house, we got gazumped on, they decided they really wanted to sell it to someone else (why they bothered to put it up for rent in the first place is beyond me), the second house we told the realtor we wanted only to be told 5 minutes later that it had gone the day before, now we're trying to get another one, but the owner doesn't trust us!!! We have signed the lease, offered the full asking price, have assured him we're here for a minimum of 2 years.....and still he doesn't believe us, so we're not quite sure what he wants, very very tempted to tell him where to stick it! If he's being this awkward now before even agreeing to let us live in his house what'll he be like if we're tenants, hmmmmm. However it is a lovely house, in a nice area, close to a pool and park. Have to see how many hoops he tries to make us jump through tomorrow but I have a feeling we will be house hunting again very soon!!
We also decided that it was about time we took our driving tests, so Chris and I spent Thursday night testing each other on the Texas driving code. We had a couple of sample tests so we knew the kind of things we needed to learn, however we spent more time trying to learn all the different fines than actually learning the rules of the road! Did you know that if you are caught drinking WHILST driving you get fined $500, if you are under 21 and caught driving whilst under the influence of alcohol you are fined $500, yet if you are a minor and caught in possession of alcohol but NOT driving the fine is $2000??!!! So basically what I learnt from all that revision is if you're under 21 and you've been drinking and you see police car coming towards you you're better off jumping in your car and pretending to drive off as you'll save yourself $1500!!
Anyway....I had to stand in a queue for over an hour, in 30 degree heat at 8am in the morning with Henry in a sling, only to get to the front of the queue and be faced with the most miserable grumpy and unhelpful woman I have ever come across who basically said I'm not eligible for a Texas license because I have a B2 visa and not an L1 visa like Chris, she couldn't and wouldn't tell me anymore! I went home, finally got through to customer services and managed to speak to someone who was a little more amenable to my quandry...as it turns out because I'm here on a long term tourist visa, I can drive on my UK license for a year rather than the 90 days limit which all the websites talk about international residents having to comply to. All I have to do in a years time is leave the country and re-enter and my 1 year starts again....so in effect there is an advantage to not yet being married....my visa is different, I can't get a Texas drivers license and therefore I don't have to learn to parallel park my bus in a parking space which doesn't exist anywhere in Houston, except the test centre!
Last weekend we went and watched the Art car parade in downtown Houston, it was good fun watching all these weird and wacky cars drive past, and quite surprisingly the girls loved it and really didn't want to leave.
This weekend has been extra long as Chris has Friday off work, so he took himself off down to the coast to learn how to kitesurf! To those who know him well, I can hear you all gasp in shock. He has spent years mocking 'T-baggers' as they are apparently referred to by windsurfers, but move somewhere hot, close to the sea but with no waves to attempt catapulting yourself off, and out of sheer desperation to get wet in the sea and do some exercise he has started learning to kitesurf.....and in his own words he described it as awesome! (Fortunately those who are unlikely to forgive him for temporarily turning his back on his fellow windsurfers are also unlikely to be reading this!) I spent the afternoon with the girls in the pool while Henry watched from his pushchair in the shade. Fearne managed to virtually swim all the way across the pool without her life vest which is a first, however I couldn't get her to repeat the swim when it came to showing daddy!
On Saturday we realised that we rather urgently needed to buy me a car as the lease one we have has to go back at the end of this week. Given the dodgy drivers and numerous lanes along the freeway we/Chris decided to go for the same as the lease car as its huge, but the new one comes with alot of bling! The new car is a black Chevrolet Tahoe with leather seats, built in Satnav, rear view camera, parking sensors and dvd player....we are already beginning to wonder how we will ever manage with a UK car again, we are definitely being spoilt with our cars here. Anyway, I get my new car on Tuesday so I will post some pictures of it then.
Yesterday we decided it was about time we ventured somewhere more interesting than the sprawling flat lands of Houston and its suburbs so we drove out to Austin, which is about 2 and a half hours west of here. We stopped for breakfast at the drive through called Sonic, which provided us with a very tasty, but completely unhealthy breakfast. Chris and I went for a what i can best describe as a bacon sandwich and the girls had french toast.....however the only way i can describe what the girls were eating was deep fried finger doughnuts, bleurgh.....needless to say they though they were delicious .
Austin is completely different to Houston, it felt like a small city with lots of character. The main street had lots of old buildings, and lots of interesting looking bars and restaurants. We had been planning on going on a 'duck tour' of the city which involves a bus which looks a bit like a boat. Fearne was very excited when she realised the bus floated on water too, however, unfortunately the tours were fully booked until 4pm so we decided to come back another time.
To save the day, and prevent the girls from going completely mad we took them to Barton Springs Pool. The pool is about 3 acres in size and is fed from underground springs and is on average 68 degrees all year round. The girls loved it, although clearly they have been spoilt by swimming pools because they were quite cold when they came out and just wanted to go home to the pool within the complex!
Today is Memorial day here so a bank holiday, woooo! I went to the gym this morning and took Martha with me to the creche. She thinks this is a treat, she absolutely loves it :-). Other than that, a rather quiet day here. Chris took the girls to the pool after lunch and Fearne did lots of swimming around the pool without her life vest, so hopefully by the time her 2 week intensive swimming lessons start in 3 weeks time, she won't be in the bottom class. She will have finally progressed onto being a swimmer rather than a pool walker!
I think thats about all we've been up to in the last few weeks. Oh, I almost forgot, I bought myself an ice-cream maker, and its been a success! So far I've made vanilla ice cream with butterscotch drops, and vanilla ice cream with crumbled oreo biscuits and M&M's, I'm venturing onto mango sorbet this week once the mangoes I have bought in preparation ripen up enough.
So, yes there has been a lot of frustration over the past 2 weeks, but at least we are learning to see the funny side of it all. Nothing surprises me anymore about this country, and therefore I suppose I'm not getting so irritated by it. Living here is very different to being on holiday here, but then again all my holidays in the US have been spent in Maine and New England with very close friends so I probably have a very quaint and picturesque image of the United States and getting used to Houston, and the 'Everything is bigger in Texas' slogan is taking a while to adjust to. But bit by bit if I can recreate everything I love about Maine down here (homemade ice cream to start with), then bit by bit I will begin to settle more. Obviously I can't bring the Zolper family to Houston, so we're going one better and are off to visit them in July instead.
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