Our Compartment :)

Welcome to our compartment, aka our apartment!

If you want our address, just let us know.  No, I do not have any idea how long we will be here, it's all dependent on when we find a house, and how soon we can get in that house.  I'm pretty sure we will be here until at least after a special boy's birthday.  Also, we don't get to see any of our sea shipment items until we move into a house.  Glad I have a few toys hidden still, so they don't get bored with what they have here!

View from right inside our front door.  The kids room is immediately to the left (out of view), then the family bathroom, and the laundry closet.  The main living area/kitchen room is at the far end.

Kitchen side of the room (door to get in is at the right and currently closed in picture).

All appliances are hidden!  The freezer is the funny little door on the far left with the clear drawers.  The fridge is to the right of double convection ovens.

I'm actually getting used to the tiny fridge!

Living room, dining room side.

All the rooms have a door, kinda weird, but I'm getting used to it.  The main living room is to the right, our bedroom is to the left.

Our room.  VERY hard getting used to sleeping in this bed, which is probably about a queen, maybe a smidge smaller (UK bed sizes are different, much smaller than US sizes).

The ONLY dresser in the apartment (to left of bed)!  Top drawer is extra toiletries that aren't used daily, middle drawer is HIS, bottom drawer is mine.  Hard going from a very large dresser AND chest of drawers to this!

My closet

My "vanity".  Neither bathroom has outlets in the bathroom, so this is where I get ready!

Only enough walking space at end of the bed!  Our bathroom to the left of closets.

Our tiny bathroom, his side...

her side

So thankful this shower has decent water pressure!

Laundry closet with INTEGRATED washer and dryer.  What that means is that it takes FOREVER to wash and dry one tiny load of laundry!  THIS DRIVES ME BANANAS!  I try to do one load everyday, or I get behind!

Family bathroom, basically the kids bathroom.  As you can see we use their shower for bike storage and laundry drying.

Kids bedroom.  The left closet has extra clothes from airshipment, plus bulky suitcases.  The right closet is for their clothes (see below).  Thankfully the management company traded out the double bed for two singles for us!

Kids toys and play space!

Besides being on the small size, I really do like our apartment.  I love how the living room and kitchen are in one room, it's where we spend the majority of the day.  I do loathe that it sounds like a heard of elephants when the kids run down the hall.

House Hunting

For the past two weeks, we have been living in an apartment as we try to find a house to lease.  We've looked at 10-12 houses, but we are still looking!  Aberdeen has a very limited number of houses available to lease and many are on the market for less than a week!  We found several that we liked, but while we waited to hear back about our favorite house, the other two got leased, and we finally found out our favorite was above our housing allowance.  Here are just a few pictures of the many things we found while house hunting.

This semi detached house has only one garage, which is the norm for most Aberdeen homes, if they have one at all.

Many have LOTS of windows to let the light in, which is great except in the summer when there is less than 6 hours of darkness!

Some of the amazingly updated kitchens....oh how I would love a kitchen like this!

Double sinks....a rare find!

AMAZING crown molding on a terraced home that is nearly 150 years old!  Terraced homes are a bunch of town homes all squeezed together, there are 10-15 on a block all connected. 

All homes have radiators here (the long white thing under the window sill).

I don't even remember how many different "coloured" carpets we found!  (Should I start spelling words the British way?)

Aberdeen is known as the granite city and many houses are made with granite.  The biggest man-made hole in Europe is in Aberdeen where the Rubislaw Quarry was utilized to build most of the stone buildings in the 20th century in Britain.

Many homes have entire rooms full of windows.  I guess this way you can enjoy the outdoors, without freezing your behind off!

Many homes have unique and colorful colour schemes in the toilets (what they call bathrooms).

A separate washer and dryer, even if they are small, are quite the luxury from "integrated" washer & dryers, more on that later!

Every home needs a built-in sauna, right?!

Who doesn't need a bidet in their home?

A common sight is having a sink/vanity in bedrooms.  I'm not sure why this house had two bedrooms with them though, since there were 2 full baths and 2 half baths.

Heated towels racks, a must in every house we saw!

Every single garage we saw was exclusively used for storage!

First Sights of Aberdeen

Here are some of the sights we saw while driving around our first weekend here.

These are not even the biggest boats that take supplies or crew to the offshore platforms.

Instead of just having regular crosswalks on Union Street, they just stop all traffic for 30 seconds and the whole intersection is safe to cross.

As if there aren't enough places to purchase whisky, there is also a dedicated shop on Union Street!

Words can't describe how happy I was when I found T.K. Maxx, the UK version of T.J. Maxx!

Asda, is the UK Walmart, and you will find all the normal stuff there, you know, kitchen utensils, flasks...just the regular stuff!!

The Scottish countryside, the skies fixing to open up and pour down rain.

Still haven't tried it, but there is a Pizza Hut (and McDonalds, BurgerKing, KFC, TGI Fridays, Starbucks and Dominos).

Our First Day

Holy guacamole, we are actually living in Scotland!   Check our our stylish wagon we are rolling in for the next month!  I know, don't be jealous!

I doubt I'll ever forget my first ride in a car being driven on the wrong side, on the wrong side of the road!  It was quite an experience to say the least.  Just sitting on the right side of the car, not driving felt awkward!   

For the next 30 minutes, I felt the most anxiety I've ever felt in my entire life!  We were fortunate to have rented an automatic car, but literally every time we put on the brake, it died!  We could not figure out what was wrong!  Besides the whole wrong side driving, there are roundabouts at nearly every intersection.  I'd say I'm ok at roundabout when there is no traffic, but whizzing around the opposite way, through traffic that is whizzing by, is so nerve-wracking....did I mention the car dies every time we stop!  Needless to say, I was more than happy to have arrived safely at Polmuir Gardens, our temporary home!  (Of course. when we get there we found out that the car turning off at stops was normal for some UK cars, it's gas saving!  It will be off while you are holding on the brake, you let off, and it comes right back on!  Craziest thing ever!)

I was even happier to find that our luggage...all 14 bags, were already in our apartment, along with a bit of food, and wine!  (Even though I've never cared for wine too much, It was a welcome sight after that car ride!)

The rest of the day we just took it easy and K took the kids to a nearby park while I unpacked.  We successfully kept the kids awake until 6:15 before they crashed!