Recap of the Past Few Days

I finally got the internet to work in our temporary flat, so now I have time to fill everyone in on what we have been up to the past few days!!



Sunday, September 9, 2007


On Sunday morning we checked out of our hotel and headed to our temporary accomodation in Chelsea. Chelsea is one of the "posh" areas of London, similar to Soho or Greenwich Village in NYC. Anyway, we were supposed to meet the housing representative at 11:00 and we got to the apartment a little early so we just sat on the stoop and waited. While we were waiting this old man came walking down the street with the cutest little dog that reminded me of Buster...The housing representative finally showed up at 11:20 (even though in the email he sent earlier stressed the importance of US being there promptly at 11:00) and let us in. The flat is small but nice. It is a one-bedroom with one bathroom, with a sitting room with a nice bay window, and a tiny kitchen. A flat of this size in this area goes for about 750 GBP PER WEEK!! Keep in mind that 1 GBP= 2 USD. Do the math and you will see that it is quite expensive, but believe it or not this is one of the cheaper flats in this area. You can tell these folks can afford it though because the streets are lined with BMWs, Mercedes, Audis, Range Rovers, and the like. I was able to find a picture of our flat online so I have posted it at the top of this post (as you can see, there is a Porsche in the picture).

So we got settled in and took a nap for a few hours since we were still a little jet-lagged. We woke up around 5 pm and walked up the street to where all the shops were located. We ran a few errands and then we rode the underground to Goldman Sachs so that Victor would know how to get there on Monday. We then went to the grocery store and then headed back to our flat. I'd say we walked at least 4-5 miles on Sunday.




Monday, September 10, 2007



Today was Victor's first day on the job! He wore a black suit and looked like a handsome corporate businessman. :) I always tease him that all he needs is a black hat and then he will look like a chauffeur when he wears that suit, but he really does look nice. Anyway, he left here around 7:20 am and got home at 7:15 pm, and that was just the first day!! We expect that he will be working at least 12 hours a day Monday-Friday. One of his co-workers said that he has logged in as many as 115 hours in one week!! That is ridiculous! But I figure that it will be okay since I will be gone several days out of the week on my monitoring trips anyway, so at least Victor won't feel guilty if he has to work late. It seems like Victor will like his job; he said that his co-workers seem nice and alot of them are around his age and the work seems interesting. What a relief, because the last thing we want is another Ernst & Young experience! We are praying that he will continue to enjoy his job.




Tuesday, September 11, 2007



Today I got up early to go to Starbucks so that I could log on to the internet since I was expecting an email from the housing agent regarding some rental properties. I also needed to download some software that we needed in order for the interent to work in our flat. After I left Starbucks I went to the electronics store to exchange an energy adapter and then I went to the grocery store before heading back "home".

I spoke to the rental agent this morning and we will be meeting tomorrow morning at 10:15 to go look at some properties. We will be looking in Battersea/Clapham Junction, Walton-on-Thames, and Woking. We will probably end up moving to Woking because it has direct trains that go both to central London and Basingstoke, so both of us would be able to get to work easily, plus the flats are a little more modern out there and cheaper than what you would find in London. I will more than likely drive to work though. I am looking forward to finding something tomorrow. It is going to be tight for awhile though because they require that you pay 10.5 weeks of rent up front!!! We have alot of money saved up, but since the pound is worth twice as much as the dollar, you can imagine that our money will drain pretty quickly. We will both be getting paid in pounds though, so everything should be okay. Oh yeah, we found out yesterday that we both fall into the highest tax bracket in the the UK, so they can take 40% of our income in taxes. YIKES!!!!!!!!!!!! I told Victor that he needs to work his tax-knowledge magic and find a *legal* way around that, because that is ridiculous. I think for the rest of this year we should be okay since I think we will pay our taxes in the US since that is where we lived for the majority of the year, but I don't know about next year. I guess we'll see what happens.

Anyway, I will be sure to post some pictures/links tomorrow of the properties that we view.