The good, the bad and the ugly: Muswell Hill

It's been almost two weeks since we moved and we have internet again.  I'm too tired to get up and look for my camera so I can't test whether or not it's 10 times faster than our previous internet...but, really, fast or slow it's nice to have it back!

Our first week here was idyllic.  The garden is in bloom and we weeded and mowed the lawn, bought new plants and enjoyed the sunshine.  The neighbors are friendly and international and we are surrounded by children, who run from garden to garden and play for hours together. Our girls immediately joined the fray and as soon as we open our backdoor in the afternoon their new friends call them out to play.  We have access to beautiful woods and parks.  At night we sleep with the windows open and, except for the occasional car horn or motorcycles off in the distance, it's quiet.

But then...school started again.  This week has been a brutal battle to get out the door, into the car or up the road to the bus with lunch boxes, ballet bags, swimming kit, scooters, sobbing, exhausted children.  On our first school run to Hampstead, we sat in traffic for thirty minutes before I abandoned the car and walked us the rest of the way.  Our second day was spent winding through back roads with the London A-Z in hand, frequently heading in the wrong direction or stopped in our tracks by dead ends or one way roads.  Car sickness forced us, on our third day, to huff up the hill, dragging children on scooters and shoulders to join the private school crew on the 603 bus.  Alas, the 603 bus only runs twice a morning and twice an afternoon and this evening, after ballet, it was up yet another hill to yet another bus, where we spent the next hour and a half in stop and go traffic, three of us crammed into two seats and staring forlornly out of the windows with our lunchboxes, ballet bags, scooter helmets and everything else we could possibly have brought along.  We ran out of snacks.  There was almost an emergency stomach ache situation. Two buses later, when we finally made it home, I actually staggered into the door and nearly just collapsed, face in the now cat pee stained carpet.

All this AND work.

Before I moved across the world, I was a soft, soft person.  London, far away from my family, land of inconvenience and traffic jams and body odor on public transportation and relentless energy and movement, has hardened me.  This is hard.  But I'm tough and I'm going to figure it out.