Cheerio friends!

Greetings from London, UK! It's still a little hard to believe that we're here...and that we're staying here for awhile. Our trip over on Friday was relatively uneventful - we flew out of Chicago at 9am and arrived at our temporary flat around 1:30am, settled in just a bit and slept until 2pm on Saturday. Our temporary flat is in Canary Wharf, which is walking distance from the KPMG office. We're hoping to only be here for 2 weeks, but given the information we've gotten from our relocation company (read: apartment finders), it sounds like we may be here longer because there is a shortage of immediately available rentals on the market currently.

Yesterday, we explored some of Canary Wharf near our flat, picked up some groceries and then met up with friends of Matt's - Nick, Mike and his wife, Sandy - for drinks at a somewhat shady, albeit lively "Spanish" bar for a few pints, then to a fab little Indian restaurant for dinner and to the Three Greyhounds for more pints after dinner, which is in Soho, what I would equate to our Boystown.

Today, we spent some time wandering through the Clapham and Angel/Islington areas, which are 2 neighborhoods we're considering for our permanent residence. Loved Angel/Islington, not overly impressed by Clapham. We did, however, meet a group of hilarious British gents, who entertained us with some ridiculous stories over lunch at a pub in Clapham. Unfortunately, most are too inappropriate to share on our blog.

So far, we've successfully skyped with my parents and Jason - so nice to be able to see familiar faces, but strange to know that we are so far away from each other. It definitely set in sometime over the Atlantic that we were actually MOVING to London for 18 months. We are feeling more and more comfortable with each little adventure/exploration and expect that after a few weeks, we'll feel much more confident.

I think that's about it for now. We have been terrible about taking pictures so far, but promise to improve and post some pics soon. We miss everyone and hope all is well back in the States!