Getting Ready to Go

We're gearing up to move out of Newcastle. Penny, Dan and I spent much of last week packing 16 boxes and a table to ship them directly to Grenada. One of Dan's classmates has family in the shipping business, so was able to arrange a container for all the students to ship their things directly to Grenada. It was tough squeezing packing into our busy feeding/burping schedule, but most of our belongings are now on a slow boat to Grenada and shoudl arrive sometime in late December or early January. Then we just have to figure out how to get them from the truck to our apartment.

We did finally get an apartment. Dan will arrive first, and have a fun time finding it since there are no street addresses as far as we've been told. The landlord told us the various closest landmarks, so hopefully it will be fairly straightforward. All the other tenants are St. George's students and several have young children, so we should have plenty of fun people to hang out with. Now it's just a matter of packing up our few remaining belongings and getting them home with us on the plane (my brother John is going to help us with that).

We also have to figure out how to survive our last few weeks in Newcastle with just the bare necessities we have left. It has gotten colder lately and now that we know how our heaters work, we are trying to use them properly. Sadly, they arent' quite as effective as I'd like. We also suffer from a difference of opinion with the British as to what constitutes comfortable home temperature. As you can see from the handy thermometer I picked up at the library, "Comfortable" in British begins at 16 degrees celsius (64 farenheit). I start to feel comfy when the sun streams into the bedroom, heating it up to 27C (about 80F). Perhaps this derives from having our utilities included in our rent in Silver Spring, MD.

The thing that has surprised me most has been Penny. According to our British baby book, at 16C, we should have four cellular blankets and a sheet on her. I have found her getting sweaty with one blanket folded in half, though. Because Dan needs his sleep and Penny tends to be kinda noisy upon waking and upon going back to sleep (see video), we usually don't spend the night in the bedroom with Dan. I huddle in a sleeping bag on the couch with Penny uncovered on my chest. More often than not, I wake up shivering and she's all sweaty! I hope she adjusts to Grenada as easily as she seems to have adjusted to the temperature here.