THE UK INVADES!!!!

Ok, way better news going on here. A lovely family from England converged upon us this last Saturday and is taking over this place. Jan, the mom is originally from Scotland, she’s 45, her son Rob is 19, and her husband, Frank is a police officer. They brought along Jay, who has a 4 month old baby with Jan’s daughter. Jay is the chef of the family, though both Frank and Rob like to cook…. BUT, since they are also buying a restaurant in Portugal, Jay will be helping me come up with a menu for here, as well as refining my cooking skills, etc.

In short, Jess and I can stay living here, and I have been hired on as the main chef! I will also be going to and from Portugal to help out in the kitchen there when it gets busy! Oh yeah! That to me is amazing, I get to fly back and forth to Portugal, to their place which is right on the ocean, and help cook there! THIS is the type of thing I was looking for when I planned to come to Europe. I don’t mind staying in one spot at all, because there is so much within a short flying
distance!




Everyone left this morning to go back and sort things out in England, and then in 2 weeks everyone will converge on us again, Mark, the current owner will be gone by then. Rob will be living here permanently. Jan’s parents will also be coming in two weeks, and it looks like everyone will be staying through Christmas. Frank is a police officer in England, so he will not be here the whole time.

They are also bringing down one of their cars so that we’ll have transportation, since Mark either didn’t want to sell his car, or was asking too much, etc. So this means that I will be driving a car with the steering wheel on the wrong side!!! How fun will that be! It can also be training for when I visit England.

Everything happened so fast, and everyone in this family is so fantastic, but I sort of had a mini breakdown last night. I ended up calling my mom and bawling my eyes out. I feel so guilty that we will have all these people here and my mom and Nick will be alone for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The family said they are welcome here any time, but I don’t get paid until the restaurant is up and running in a month, so money is still going to be tight until then. PLUS both my mom and Nick still need to get their visas.

Jess and I still have the second half of our plane tickets from the original trip to Italy. We could pick up the flight in Amsterdam and fly back Dec 1st to the states to visit, but I have no money for a return flight to Germany. I am praying the house sells or I get another payment from Jodi, but then I should be paying the car payments for Nick, they are now two months behind. Anyone know how long you can get away without making car payments before they come to repossess it?? AUGH. So all troubles are certainly not over, but we are sure now that we will be staying in Germany long term. That is kind of a relief, now in December sometime we can apply for the extension of our permits here, and then we will be able to take free German language classes that the government offers. They do this to encourage assimilation, which works for me, I WANT to be able to speak the language.

Sooooo… that is the latest…. Much more exciting and upbeat than the last few blogs have been. I should have a lot more to say now, and should be updating the blog more often. We just need to be able to get through the next two weeks living with Mark. Things will be much harder now, I think, to be able to lend and ear to listen to him for long periods of time unfortunately.

Lot’s more to tell. Where to start.
Weeelllll… Jess and Rob hit it off right away and after only 3 days consider themselves boyfriend and girlfriend. OH,OH! The first night everyone was here, Jay and Rob stayed up with us and Mark, and were drinking. Jess and I went to bed, and sometime in the early morning we hear Mark outside our door asking if Missy, his dog was in our room. She was and the door was open, which is weird because we keep it closed because of the cats. (which, by the way are going to be allowed to have run of the house, in fact Jan has two dogs but is only bringing one for the month of December because of the cats, which to me says it is fine to let them out. They also have a Persian cat at home, and they are always worried about it getting out, so we should be safe in making sure our cats don’t get out here.)

Anyway, Missy was in our room. Jess gets up to close the door and go to the bathroom. When she comes out, she sees a strange shoe on the floor at the end of my bed. (My side of the bed is the farthest from the door.) When Jess looks closer she notices that the shoe is actually a foot! She goes up and looks, and Rob is sleeping on the floor along my side of the bed!

We laughed so hard. We think he drank too much and didn’t know what room was his, which could make sense but we were amazed that he could make it to the far side of our room in the dark to lay on the floor, without making any noise to wake us up! We made sure he was breathing, threw a blanket on him and a pillow under his head. I could not stop laughing. Later when we were talking about how we were surprised that he didn’t just trying to crawl into bed first, jess said if he has, she would have just shifted to the middle. LOL. That is how comfortable we both feel with all of this family right away.

The next morning I told Jan that if she was wondering what happened to her son, he was asleep on the floor of her room. She was so apologetic, we just said not to worry about it, no big deal. Then after we found out that Rob and Jess slept together last night (JUST SLEPT) Jan was so cool. She just says “I apologize for my son’s behaviour.” I just cracked up and said “And I apologize for my DAUGHTER’S behaviour” and then Jay just said “And a truce has been formed”

But make no mistake about it, these are NICE people, not one sleazy person in the bunch. They have manners, respect each other and genuinely LIKE each other. Very nice.

Last night, when my stomach was so upset due to stress I now think, Jan brought down something for me to take called “Andrews salts”

The closest thing I can compare it to is alka seltzer, but it is nothing like it. You put it in water, stir it up, it fizzes like crazy and you are supposed to drink it down fast. I then let out one small burp, then one HUGE one! That is part of what it does, like lassoes all the air in your stomach and kicks it out in one burp. NICE stuff.

So now the house is all quiet, and we are waiting for Mark to get up so we can get cat food and litter. Now it is VERY uncomfortable asking him for money for cat food and litter, we are worried he is going to make a huge deal out of it, pretty sure he will make a bigger deal about it than before. I feel bad, but they have to eat.

Well, I am stopping here for now. Will update later as I remember more about what went on. MOM; DAMN IT GET YOUR PASSPORT SO YOU CAN COME OVER HERE! You too Nick, so you can visit! I love you both!!!!