Hello from Durham

We have successfully made in over. Our flights were uneventful...which is obviously good when traveling with 2 kiddos. The boys slept reasonably well on the long flight to Ireland and are beginning to adjust to English time here -- it does help that we all went to bed at 20.30 (8.30 p) last night and didn't make them get up until 8.00 this morning.

Here are the main highlights of what has happened so far:

• We arrived in Edinburgh, Scotland on Tuesday afternoon with too much luggage that almost didn't fit into the minivan that we rented. (BTW, none of our luggage weighed over 65 lbs.)
• Ben quickly figured out driving on the "wrong side" of the road and how to get around the roundabouts (there's a ton of them).
• We checked into St. John's College B&B. We are staying in a dorm room built for 4 single people -- 4 single beds and a sink in our room. We took baths the first day in the bathroom that was shown to us. Luckily we are the only ones on our floor and Ben went on a hunt and found an electric shower in another bathroom that we were able to use this morning.
• We looked at houses all over the area yesterday and this morning. We decided to apply for one that is a little higher than our initial budgeting, but it has the best location and best amenities [like a "full" size fridge (about half the size of an American fridge) and a shower].
• We froze yesterday as the heat wave here is over and yesterday it was rainy and about 55 degrees -- we pulled out our suitcase that had all our coats and sweaters for today.
• We are now trying to get a bank account set up so that they will actually want to "let" a house to us.
• We did find the computer room so we will be able to check our emails and update our blog now.

That's about all for now. Oh, we did eat at a Pizza Hut buffet yesterday for lunch...nice!