British Moment #4

From our Book of Common Prayer: Lord, help me to look the right way when crossing the road!

A Tour of Our Neighbourhood

Hi, everyone! For a handy reference map for our tour, click here.

We leave Asbury House (the red star on the map) and turn west toward Bristol Road, a busy dual carriageway street.

Just to the west of our flat before Bristol Road is Elmfield House, the location of the University's Graduate Institute for Theology and Religion and Michael's supervisor and seminars.

Heading north up Bristol Road at Langley's Road is the church we attend, Christian Life Centre, a lively church with good children's programmes, about 5 minutes walk.

Along the way is the local parish church, St. Mary's, built in 1860. We are looking forward to attending special services at the church during our time here, and in the mean time we can enjoy the church bells which ring beautifully throughout the neighbourhood.

Sainsbury's, our local grocery store much like a Safeway back home, is about 10 minutes walk up Bristol Road at Chapel Lane. For a little less expensive grocery shopping, we need to take a bus further south down Bristol Road.

Beyond Sainsbury's northward up Bristol Road is the main University campus, the train stations, and the city centre.

Heading back down Bristol Road and south of our flat is the Orchard Learning Resources Centre, the south campus library and centre of Michael's studies, about a 5 minute walk from home.

Birmingham Christian College, where Michael is lecturing this term, is about 8 minutes walk from home on Weoley Park Road.

A little to the northwest of this is Selly Oak Park, a beautiful open green space with a kids' play park, about 15 minutes away. The University clock tower is in the distance in the first picture.


To the south of our flat down Oak Tree Lane is Dame Elizabeth Cadbury Hall, where Amelia has her ballet lessons, about 7 minutes from our flat.

A little further south is Bournville Park, with a nice little stream and a kids' play park, about 15 minutes walk from our flat.


We head back north, and we're back home at our cozy Asbury House flat. Thanks for coming on the tour!

British Moment #3

Playing football on the front lawn of Asbury House.

British Moment #2

Dueling bright red British telephone boxes in downtown Birmingham.

First Impressions: Smaller and Older

Things are smaller here.
Vehicles are smaller. Even mid-sized North American-style vehicles stand out here--an average-sized American SUV makes you look twice! Most people seem to have one of those zippy little two-doors that drives forever on a pint of petrol, or one of those four-doors that's twice the doors and half the leg room.
The streets are certainly narrower, which partly explains the previous point--and which makes the cars seem as if they're going faster than they are, which is generally faster than they should be.
Fridges and stoves (cookers) are hobbit-sized versions of North American ones. Milk jugs and similar products are made to scale, making it difficult to keep up with three milk-guzzling children. (For some items like fridges and cookers and cars you can buy 'American-style' versions.)
Food portions are smaller, which partly explains why people are smaller. There's no 'Super-Size Me' here--a trip to Burger King at the Bullring gave us regular-size drinks that were equivalent to smalls in North America, and just enough fries instead of far too many. The American obesity epidemic is one cultural export which is 'largely' absent here (couldn't resist that!).
Even the ants are smaller. Well, at least the ants we have in our flat compared to the ants we have in our house back home...

But some things are bigger.
Especially prices, particularly for certain luxury items like food, clothing, and shelter, but also for a few necessities like fuel, which also explains the first point (you can, however, find comparable prices on many items if you shop patiently and shrewdly).
Buses are bigger, or at least taller--double-decker buses are the most common kind on the main routes, and we've already had a few rides on these, fulfilling childhood fantasies for all of us.
Electric wall plugs are bigger, nice and solid so you don't have to worry about pulling out the plug and bending it when you're vacuuming just beyond the cord's reach (surely that's happened to you!).
Toilet flushes are also bigger--more water, faster. This doesn't seem to be confined to our building either. Comes from living on a rainy island well-stocked with rivers and streams and canals, I guess. One flush of a toilet like this back on the prairies would send the entire region into drought...

Things are older here.
Certainly the buildings generally are, which won't shock anyone who's done any comparison of British versus western Canadian history. Whereas in North America we might be more inclined to gut a room entirely or tear a house down completely when it gets too old, here people will just put up with old things or at most renovate carefully and accent modernly. And most people don't seem to appreciate the history all around them. In the world of western Canada, anything 50 years old is old, anything 100+ years old is ancient history. In our area there are loads of buildings in the 75-year old plus range, and that's not even old compared to some other areas around here, or certainly other places down the road like Oxford or Bath with their Medieval and Roman architecture. Buildings all around us are oozing with history, almost calling out for someone to hear their stories. But although many stories are told here, there are many more left untold.
Streets and names are older here. When you see a 'High Street', it's the main road from when that part of the city was a separate town. When you see a 'New Street,' you know it's probably actually an old street that was new a few hundred years ago, sort of like 'New College' in Oxford which opened its doors as recently as 1379.
Trees are also older. There are lots of trees here that were old already when the first settlers planted the first trees on the Canadian prairies over a hundred years ago.

But some things are newer.
Cars are newer here, on the whole. There are no big old gas-guzzlers here (see above).
For some reason it seems that technology is newer here... or maybe that's just because I always see this new technology sitting in one of those ubiquitous old buildings.

Do we miss the bigger and newer? Sometimes, especially the bigger. But there's certainly a richness about the older that we drink in every day that we're here...

British Moment #1

Riding on the top of a double-decker bus.

Our Trip to England (or, 'a regular Swiss family Robinson')

We're here! Sorry for the delay in updating but internet access is not as handy as we'd like yet, with home access not likely until the end of September or early October.

The trip here was about as arduous as we had feared, yet somehow smoother than we had hoped. I drove our van to the airport in Calgary loaded down with luggage while Larissa and the kids came in separately with her Mom, and just as the small mountain of duct-tape and Rubbermaids was created, a small army of family and friends showed up to help haul it into the terminal.

After a joyful and tearful goodbye, we made our way onto the plane. No, that sounds too easy. It was more like, 'We dragged the kids onto the plane through a pressing crowd of impatient, childless business travelers, leaving carry-on debris strewn in the aisle.' After only two or three trips back and forth to the front of the plane, we finally settled in with all our debris.

The plane trip was a breeze after all that: 9 hours of travel time through the night, 26 trips to the toilet, 45 minutes of sleep, 2 surprisingly good meals and 2 suprisingly bad movies, 7,000 kilometres, all at 35,000 feet. The experience of flying across the Atlantic to England? Priceless.

We flew down the west coast of Great Britain, so the first glimpse of our new home was of the lochs and glens of Scotland. We flew right over Birmingham, then Oxford, and finally landed at Heathrow airport. The flight attendant who came and took Matthew to the front of the plane for us deserves an extra Christmas turkey from Air Canada (we wondered if we should let a complete stranger take our youngest child without us, but then decided at that point we didn't care).

Heathrow is not exactly the best first introduction to the UK, as it is simply a busy, dirty, smelly, teeming mass of people, baggage, and jet fumes. But we were all happy to have landed, and we quickly got our luggage and made our way to our awaiting mini-bus. No, that's not quite right either. We did have a quick trip through customs, thanks to an attendant who noticed our plight and sent us through the short lane, and the customs agent who quickly stamped our visas with some comment about 'a regular Swiss family Robinson, eh?' But after that things got tricky. We realised we had to navigate from the baggage area to the reception area with three top-heavy carts of duct-tape and Rubbermaids, a stroller laden with carry-ons and Matthew (now recovered from the blessed flight attendant), a few pull-suitcases, and two weary children. A porter soon helped, and once we made our way to the reception area the friend who was to pick us up helped as well. After a quick and merry procession (okay, a lengthy and teary procession) we made our way to our awaiting mini-bus.

The drive to Birmingham was a pleasure--no need to correct that statement. We did have a little trouble finding our place, but even that was manageable with a little sleep and very enjoyable company along the way. And thus our story ends at our new home, Asbury Overseas House, with the adventures just beginning.

Many thanks are due to many who helped get us here: Mom for driving in to the airport and staying with us there, Jan for driving our van back to Three Hills, all the Pahls and Sennekers and Hooges who provided the entourage at the Calgary airport, the unnamed flight attendant and customs officials and porter who more than did their jobs at Heathrow, and our new friend Brian for setting aside an entire day to drive us to Birmingham (and enduring a broken-down mini-bus once we got here--that's another story!). Each one of you was a Godsend, just when we needed you.

Ready or Not, Here We Come!

England-Day (aka the Big Move) is here! All the months of planning and praying and preparing and packing have culminated in this: a trip to the near side of the world on the other side of the ocean, with a land of many adventures waiting for us to explore. Thank you to everyone who has made this move possible so far, and once we have internet access and a minute to spare we will be sure to post an update.