Snowy Swindon and a Trip to Kehlbach

January 2009 started and ended snowy here in Swindon. It snowed during the night of Kerstin's birthday and the small layer of snow remained for the next two days. At the end of January there was a lot more snow, causing a traffic chaos for the unprepared Brits. Kerstin and Yana missed the majority of the snow (and chaos), because they were in Kehlbach visiting friends and family. Lindsay, however, biked to work over bumpy icey snow managing to beat the traffic on the road next to him.

Our snowy street

Our campervan, which has now got a nice protective cover

Yana's first steps on snow

Kerstin and Yana enjoyed their two weeks holiday in Kehlbach. They caught up with lots of friends and family and relaxed at Kerstin's parents' house. Yana felt at home immediately and especially loved hanging out with her uncle Kevin, who's currently holding the 'Favourite Uncle' title.

Yana is turning into quite the little artist

Yana and Teddy riding on Kevin's former horse

Yana feeding Kevin

Four generations of women: Yana, her mum, her grandma and her great-grandma

Yana all rolled up after her bath

The three of us have settled back into life in Swindon. We are enjoying the luxury of finally having a car again and we are hoping to get the remaining organisational stuff sorted out soon, so that we can start heading away on trips again at the weekends.

Yana is growing up quickly. She is starting to say more and more sounds, although a lot of them don't resemble recognisable words yet (e.g. rüdüdüt, dovedovedove, govegovegove). She can feed herself now and she sometimes even feeds us (see this is how we get rewarded for the long hard work). Yana is happy and cheerful, warms up quickly to new people, loves watching other kids and is more and more fun to have around.

Settling into Swindon

Since it's not possible to continue travelling forever, we had to end our trip somewhere, move into a fixed abode and start working again (well, Lindsay at least).

We arrived in Swindon after our summer holiday in New Zealand and it was quite a shock at first - cold, drizzly, and dark just after 4pm. But we didn't have time to get depressed. We started looking for a place to live immediately and after only a week, we moved into a four bedroom house with a little backyard in a new residential area in the North of Swindon. We were lucky and we were able to negotiate for all whiteware to be included and the rent to be reduced.


We moved in before the fridge, so we had to create a fridge in our backyard, which wasn't hard considering the low temperatures. We took everything of use out of the campervan, including kitchenware, fold-up table and chairs, matress and cushions. Unfortunately these items have been our only pieces of furniture since then and because of our container from Germany being delayed, they will remain so until after christmas. The only thing we have bought is a bed and after we made the order, we realised how silly our bedroom is designed. It is too narrow for the kingsize bed with bedside tables next to it and it only has one short wall with no window or door on it. Oh well, we still managed to fit the bed in. The bedroom (aside form the kitchen) is now the most homely place in our house. Our lounge is a bit dull with cushions on the floor, no TV and just Yana's toys as entertainment.



Lindsay started work on December 1st. He is back at Allied Telesis working in a pre-Sales-Support role now. He enjoys being able to speak to colleagues and customers in English again and he has been getting fit on his 6km bike-rides to and from work every day.

Kerstin has been trying to organise the house and find mother-toddler groups in the area to get to know other people. There is a German mother-toddler group in Swindon, which Kerstin and Yana have been to twice now. The mothers are mostly Germans, some come from other countries and have lived in Germany for a while. The children range in age from about 3 weeks to about 2 1/2 and Yana fits in really well.

Yana is almost 17 months now and turning into a cute little girl. She can walk all the way to the playground and back (with lots of little detours ;-)), she can say "Mama", "da" and "dog" and she can understand a lot. She does lots of cute (and weird) little things like: makes bromm bromm noises when she sees a car, walks around with her doll in her jersey top(!?), sit in pots, climbs into cupboards (yesterday she even got completely onto the top shelf somehow), stand in or on pots (depending on which way they are turned), sit down with a blanket on her knees and read a book, etc. Eating is also fun, but not so much for her Mama, who has to have a lot of patience and do a lot of cleaning afterwards.





Since our house is so unhomely, we are not really in a christmas mood this year. However, we had a nice pre-Christmas lunch last Sunday and we are going to spend christmas with friends in Bath, which should be great. After christmas we will have our first visitors - Kerstin's family. Hopefully they won't have to sit on the floor for too long...