Merry Christmas from Texas

This is short message wishing everybody a very Merry Christmas and to give you all, or y'all as they say here, a taster of what Christmas is like here.

Yesterday was the grand judging of the Marina Bay Park (our subdivision) Christmas light competition. People really go in for the competition here and spend many thousands of dollars on their decorations. However, for a modest fee ($500 for the first year for purchase of lights and $150 per year afterwards) you can have somebody turn up with all your lights, put them up and put on a pretty reasonable display for you. They come back after Christmas, take them all down and pack them away for you for next year. Needless to say we didn't go for either option. We went to Target and spent about $15 on two strings of lights for the two smallest trees in our garden - but at least we tried to get into the spirit of things.

In the end, the winner of the lighting competition came from our road. According to our closest neighbour they are well known for their extravagant displays, which get even more elaborate every year:

Our neighbour across the road came up with something a little more tasteful, but was not quite a winner:

Our own display was a little more modest:

In readiness for tomorrow we have been busy preparing vegetables and our very own Turkey a-la Nigella. This has involved soaking the poor bird in a briney mixture for 24 hours. Fortunately, the temperature in Houston has dropped enough to allow us to put the whole concoction in the garage with some ice in the mixture just to make sure it stays cold. All I'll say is be very careful if you are offered Christmas Day punch by a rather expressionist ex-Chancellor's daughter.

Best wishes for y'alls Christmas (as they definitely say here)!

Adam and Claire xxx

Life in Texas....

So what is life REALLY like here in Texas? Well, after 9 ½ weeks living Texas we are not sure how well we can answer that question but we will try and give you some of our thoughts so far!

Size….before we left the UK we were told that everything in Texas is BIG and it sure is! For a start the state is bigger than the several European countries, let alone England, Scotland and Wales. The roads are wide – the phrase dual carriageway could be applied to most of them. I could list many examples but everything out here is bigger!

Weather….being British how could we fail to talk about this. The first month we were here felt like a record breaking Mediterranean summer with daily highs in the 30s. The last month or so the weather has been somewhat schizophrenic. We have a few days of winter with chilly winds, frosts and temperatures around 5 ⁰C and are giving our winter clothes a brief outing. Then after a few days summer returns and we’re back wearing shorts! In December!

Food….returning to the conversation on size, portions here are HUGE. If eating out is your thing there is plenty of variety and every imaginable type. We have been known to share a main course as there is sooo much food. Supermarkets can either be a surprising find or a big disappointment. There is plenty of poor quality, cheap food available. However, good quality, local, seasonal and organic food is more of a challenge, but is available if you know where to look. Texas is just starting to get into the idea of Farmers’ markets but for once this is something that is small. Houston Farmers’ market would be put to shame by most of those held in British market towns, but much of that maybe because the area around Houston does not seem to be a big food production area. However, there are a few good stalls selling local eggs, honey, meat and vegetables. We also have two excellent supermarkets in central Houston which sell excellent food and are worth the journey. Luckily for two marmite addicts we can buy the all important Marmite even if it is rather pricey! Obtaining suet to make the Christmas pudding and mincemeat was rather more complex. Thank goodness for online shopping!

Language…who would have thought that communicating in an English speaking country would pose such a challenge. Well it has done. The locals frequently look at us blankly as if we are speaking a foreign language. We often get asked whereabouts in Australia we have come from….have these people ever heard an antipodean accent! The pronunciation, speed of speech and vocabulary seem to baffle them completely. Particularly on the telephone. But all this gives us much amusement. We have learnt to speak more slowly and to repeat things several times. A few important things we have learnt are that water is wadder, butter is budder, mobile phones are mobuls or cell phones, brake disc s are rotars, and there is no such thing as a gear box. The best thing to think is that in the USA they speak a foreign language and we are just very lucky that a lot of the words sound and look a bit like English ones.

So, a different country and a different culture. We may still be very much in the western world but Texas is definitely different. These are just a few insights into life here but hopefully gives you more of an idea of what life is like in America’s last republic.

More soon

Adam & Claire xxx

We've moved into our house!

We moved into our house at the end of November and have just about got through all 252 boxes of items from the UK and France.


Fortunately this time there was more room in the road for the lorry.


Our house is about 20 miles from Downtown Houston, in a place called League City which is on the South Shore of Clear Lake.

Austin

A few weekends ago we took our first trip west of Houston -160 miles to the state capital of Austin. Leaving Houston and driving through open countryside was bliss. There was gradual change in scenery from flat to “Hill Country” – the name for the area around Austin. It was wonderful to see hills after being in flat-as-a-pancake Houston. OK, so not the big hills that we love, but they were hills!

Austin, is quite different to Houston with a much more historical feel to it. It is also very relaxed and much more pedestrian and cycle friendly. We explored the city, some of the parks and visited the Capitol Building, which is 7 feet taller than the Capitol building in Washington DC - everything has to be bigger in Texas!.

Typically for us we could not keep away from food for long! We enjoyed delicious American and Mexican breakfasts. The Mexican included tacos, salsa, refried beans and other southern delights. I’m not sure you’d want to eat it every day but it was different and yummy! The Saturday Farmers Market was wonderful and so much bigger than the ones in Houston. We bought honey and local jams to take back. Remaining on the subject of food, we paid a trip to the home of Wholefoods Market, one of our favourite grocery stores. Some of you may know of Wholefoods from trips to the States or from the recently opened store on London’s Kensington High Street. For those that haven’t heard of Wholefoods they sell wonderful food. I’m waffling. Sorry. The reason for the trip to Wholefoods in Austin is that Austin is their head office and has the biggest Wholefoods in the states. Foody heaven so we returned with some yummy treats!

We very much enjoyed our trip exploring another little bit of Texas. Thanks also to our friends Adrian, Jon & Trisha and Ian for the social events in Austin too!

Sorry for the silence!

Oops, we’ve been a little quiet, but we haven’t disappeared! We’re all ok here in Texas. It’s been a busy few weeks as Adam headed back to France for two weeks, we moved house and have been getting sorted so there’s lots to catch up on and things to say. We’ll try and catch up with all our news very soon so watch this space!

No Guy Fawkes here

Here in Texas Guy Fawkes hasn't been heard of so no fireworks or bonfire for us tonight! Good job as it still feels far too warm (sorry to those of you in colder climes but it's still 25-30 celsisus here!). Halloween has been the main event in the States and boy do they go to town with houses decorated with more than the iconic pumpkin. Aside from Halloween we've been busy with continuing on the road to get sorted.

Another success happened last week as we purchased and took delivery of another car. Both of having wheels is making life soooooooooo much easier. Yeah!

We've been doing some exploring of the local area. The houses much smaller than on Wisteria Lane. Both of us are very happy to see so many places to walk/run/bike straight from our front door and also to see so many other people doing the same. There is a good network of sidewalks and paths next to the golf courses which should help keep us on track and off the obesity scale...we hope!

There are several state parks close by which we have enjoyed visiting. Last weekend we went to the San Jacinto monument. It is the site of the 1836 battle which resulted in Texas becoming independant from Mexico. So you can see we're trying to improve our Texan-American History. San Jacinto left Claire with an interesting memory as she was bitten by an unknown (to us) insect. Well at least we got to see how the American medical system works and it wasn't life-threatening! Yesterday we went to Galveston Island state park. There's a super looking campsite literally on the beach so once we can get the tent out of the container it seems we will be going on a camping trip.

Above: Yesterday at Galveston Island State Park (for all of you asking for piccies and to see we're alive and well!)

Adam is settling in well at work. However, it seems he has got bored of all this exploring, as he's off to France for 9 days! His ex-colleagues miss him so much he's going back. Also a good excuse for delicious cheese and wine!

Adam and Claire xxx

Some successes!

Our last post was written on 12 October. We have not posted much since due to the appalling computing equipment at the Marriot we were staying at and until now we haven't had much to say. But all of a sudden everything sems to be go, so this is a somewhat lengthy update! In the last couple of days we have moved to a proper apartment that we can use for a month (the reason will become clear later), which has much better internet access and equipment.

We are staying in the Clear Lake Area of Houston. It is close to the coast and about 20 miles from Downtown Houston and 20-30 miles from Galveston (Brighton/Blackpool in Texas). Essentially the area is home to NASA (aka "Houston... we have a problem") and Boeing, but it is also the third largest water bourne recreational area in the USA and a large housing area. We have been staying in a Marriot Residence Inn whilst we searched for a house. We have looked at a large number of houses. All the houses are much bigger than they are in the UK - it is impossible to find anything that is less than 3 bedrooms and everything is huge. The problem we have had is that many of them either backed onto major roads (lots of noise), were fairly horrendously decorated inside or were just too big! After looking at around 20 houses we have agreed a lease on a 4 bedroomed place in League City (pop. 45,000 - the "historic" part of Clear Lake). The house was built in 2ooo , in a quiet neighbourhood next to a golf course and is fairly well decorated, so we are pretty happy with it. Unfortunately it is not available until 21 November 2007 (the day before Thanksgiving, when America shuts for 4 days). To bridge ourselves until them we have taken a 1 month lease on an apartment, which is very nice and has high speed internet.

Adam also managed to get his Social Security Number this week - the number is the key to everything in the US. It is used as a personal identifier and is linked to your bank details, your credit history, your taxes,... basically everything. You cannot walk into a store and sneeze without it. The process of getting it involved going to a very Hispanic part of Houston and standing in a queue for an hour to apply for it and then going back the following day to collect the number. As soon as we got the number we were able to go and buy mobile phones (again - very different to the UK - you pay to receive and make calls or text messages). Fortunately we found that we could obtain a very favourable discount due to the company Adam works for, but still expensive compared to the UK. The key to buying things in the US is discount..."Can I get a discount for being English, or walking into the store at 6 minutes past 6pm...?".

Today we have achieved another major success - buying a car! The process is completely different to the UK and a real eye opener. US car Salesman are animals and will negotiate on anything. The whole negotiation process took nearly an hour and a half, over about 1000 pounds of money. Eventually we managed to purchase an immaculate nearly new Nissan Murano, with only 14,000 miles on it (everything here seems to do about 30,0000 miles a year). Once the deal is done, in typical American fashion, they bury you under about 6ft of state paper work. We had to sign no less than 15 forms (the largest of which was about 3 feet by 1.5 feet and covered with small print). But we made it out alive and take delivery on Monday.

We'll keep you informed as everything keeps happening. We understand that some people have experienced some problems accessing the blog after around 30 days, even though they have set up the required Google account. If you still experience problems you should be able to access it by going to http:\\adamandclaireabroad.blogspot.com. If that does not work then let us know on adam.h.scott@btinternet.com or ccbardwell@lineone.net and we'll see what we can do.

Take care and enjoy the great British weather for us!!!

Adam and Claire xxx

We have arrived!

We arrived in sunny Houston yesterday afternoon after a slightly nerve racking experience. Claire's passport and visa were delivered at 0805 in the morning so that we could catch the 1200 flight from Gatwick! After a very nice and relaxing experience in Business First we landed at around 1600 CST and experieced the ever so pleasent American Border Control staff (we are not longer friends with them). Since then our experience has been much more relaxing. We were greeted by a very friendly taxi driver who did not raise an eyebrow to carrying, loading and unloading our 8 bags. The hotel we are staying in is pleasent and clean and in the out of town area of Clear Lake. The weather is very good - about 30degC, sunny and not too humid.

This morning we woke up early due to the jet lag, took a taxi Downtown and collected our hire car (or should I say "rental"). This afternoon we are taking a tour of the area with our relocation agent to get ourselves adjusted.

We'll keep you all posted!

Ready to go...... almost!

The house was packed by Pickfords last week (4 days!) and loaded into a very large container in order to start the long journey by sea to Houston. We even had a little bit of room left to spare, which I am sure we will be able to fill for the return journey!

With the help of Adam's parents we then cleaned from top to bottom and decorated in places to allow the new tenants to move in on Monday of this week.

Claire went to her visa interview on Thursday of last week and passed with flying colours after a frustrating 4.5 hour wait for a two minute interview. We are now just waiting for her passport and visa to come back via courier so that we can get underway on our trip across the Atlantic.

Packing is underway

A wee bit more news from us...not so much a postcard from Texas but a bit of an update...

The packing of our possessions has begun in earnest. Last week we packed up the flat in Le Havre (for those of you not aware Adam has been working in France for the last 10 months). Somewhat chaotic as 5 Frenchmen worked manically for 2 hours resulting in 64 boxes starting their journey to Texas.

Furious cleaning followed until the flat sparkled and we could handover the keys and enjoy some yummy French food and drink.

Back in Marchwood the shippers have started to pack our house and squeeze everything into the container. It's all go as we fly on Thursday 11 October...it really is countdown to Houston!

We're almost on our way...

After a summer of planning and waiting we're almost on our way to Texas. Adam's visa has arrived - yippee! The wait is finally over and it's all action stations here in blighty to get us outta here and over there just as soon as we can.

To keep you posted of life in Houston we've set up this blog. We can't make any promises about the edititorial quality but we'll try to keep you uptodate with life stateside!

Adam & Claire xxx