Hello Everyone!!

....and welcome to my new blogging website!  Anthony and I thought it would be a great idea to keep everyone updated on all of our travels while we we're across the pond and wanted to record all of our experiences which later in life would be good to look back on. 

Day #1 - December 31, 2012

Well, today is finally here...the day that we leave Canada for at least the next year!  Can you believe it?  I honestly am still in shock to the fact that we are still moving to England to teach!  We're so excited but so nervous.  What if they don't let us into the country?  What if we can't find a place to live?  What if there isn't many teaching opportunities?  What if we don't have the money to travel back home? 

So many questions, so little time and no answers yet, but we just have to trust in the fact that when God has a plan, he will provide.  And did he ever!!!!  All the packing and moving has been stressful, but it has all come to this.  We made it to the airport and got all ready to go.  Finally our boarding tickets got printed and we checked all of our luggage.  A very nervous feeling when your whole life is literally packed into 6 bags!  Crazy!!  But we made it this far... once we said goodbye, tears were shed and emotions were flying high but we made it through security with no trouble and onto our flight.  

We flew British Airways and their service was amazing!  The flight attendants were so polite and very nice and they took care of us the entire flight.  It went by pretty quickly, even though Anthony seemed to get food poisoning from dinner near the last couple hours of the flight.  However, he turned out ok after a few trips to the washroom. 

Once we arrived at London Heathrow airport, it seemed like we had been up all night, and pretty much had been.  We had about 1-2 hours of sleep in total and the time change was a killer!!  It was about 6:30AM when we landed and we were off to go through customs and collect our baggage.  Customs was the only thing we were dreading this whole trip and it turned out to be the easiest thing.  God is definitely good - he watched over us the entire time and this is just more proof that this whole trip/move was a leap of faith and a sign that we were being called to move halfway across the world.  We finally received all of our luggage with no issues at all and we were on our way with 6 bags to take the train to Paddington Station where we took a cab to our hotel.  This was an interesting feat that we managed to accomplish (barely) but I'm sure it was fun to watch. 

Once we got to the hotel, we were very pleased until we learned that we weren't allowed to check in until 2PM!!  We had been up all night and the last thing we wanted to do was stand around for a few hours waiting for a room.  With no energy, we left our bags at the hotel and tried walking around the area.  This proved to be more difficult not to mention that Anthony still wasn't feeling all that well.  We decided to venture all the way to McDonalds!!!! LOL ...it was delicious and refreshing but once we left there, we were in the middle of a rain/wind storm.  Quickly we headed back to the hotel to wait out the next 3-4 hours until our room was ready.  

We found a lounge downstairs and set up a movie and you guessed it...we both feel asleep within the first few minutes of watching the movie and luckily enough, woke up around 1PM to check in early.  With a little argumentative reasoning, we got checked into our room and to our lovely surprise, there was barely any room to walk.  What were we thinking?  Anthony blames this on me because I thought it looked cool and it did, but it wasn't exactly what we were hoping for.  Nevertheless, we made it work and Anthony just had to shrink himself down everywhere he went.  The bed was big enough for a 10 year old but we were so tired, that we both just crashed for a few hours to catch up on some zzzzzzzz... :) 

After a lovely nap, we headed out to take in the New Years Eve Festivities!  We were pretty excited to take in all the lovely fireworks and see how London celebrates the New Year.  Well folks, it's not that glamorous.  What we should have done, was take a cab into central London to watch the fireworks from the London Eye on the Thames River right next to Buckingham Palace and Big Ben, but instead, we walked around Hyde Park which turned out to be like Central Park at night...not exactly a comfortable place to be.  We decided take out and fireworks on TV were just a sufficient so we opted for that.  

It was so nice to call home too and be able to say Happy New Year to Mom/Dad 6 hours ahead of time!!!  What a weird feeling but it was fun :) 

Hopefully tomorrow will bring better news with our next hotel in Brighton so we're really looking forward to that.  Oh and by the way, here are a few words that we've learned so far: 

lift = elevator

pavement = sidewalk 

love = dear/girl (I've been called this a lot since being here...haha)

Cheers! 

Steph & Anthony xoxo