Well it's Monday again and come tomorrow, we will have been here 2 weeks. There is good and bad news (isn't there always). The good news is that we have found ourselves a new home, so we can stop taking over Gary's study and having to make ourselves scarce for his romantic interludes. The bad news (which will hopefully soon be resurrected) is that British people seem to have a hard time recognising our talent and hence, giving us a job.

Saturday was spent in a state of confusion as we were continuously late in getting to appointments to see flats. Now, I can tell you first hand that when you hear horror stories of peole living in flats with a billion other people, and only 2 feet on either side of the bed - they aren't joking! Before looking at these places, we'd politely declined about half a dozen others that involved living with more than 5 other people.

On the way to the first flat we looked at, Aaron almost got mugged in broad daylight by some guy who asked him if he could give two 10p for a 20p. Aaron has learned a very important rule about trusting big, black, homeless, scary looking guys. The flat itself, was ok I guess. Two reasonable sized bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom, but it was wildly obvious that the inhabitants were a bunch of hippies, and when we asked about local shopping facilities - the girl pointed out the 'After-hours' (kiwi translation: liquor store). We walked back to the train shaking our heads at each other (and Aaron kept his wallet tightly closed).

The second place, the girl never showed up to meet us at the tube station, so we had a brief look about the area - the conversion of balconies into rooms and the bars on the ground floor windows put us off that one. Oh, and the graffiti on EVERYTHING!

A friend of a friend of Gary's was next on the list. Aaron had already talked to her on the phone, and said she sounded pretty cool, but the proof is in seeing the place. It was such a relief to see that the place was normal and actually really really nice, as was Kate. It is a 4 story terrace house, with a self-contained flat on the ground floor, and 3 bedrooms in the top 3 floors. The kitchen and bathroom are less than a year old, and it has a backyard perfect for BBQ's. Our room is pretty big, and we'll post photos later in the week. Kate also has all the episodes of 'Sex in the City' and 'Friends' on VCR, so I'm set...

After promising Kate that we were pretty much sold, we thought it was only fair to show up at the last flat we'd arranged to see. Afterall, we were only a little over 2 hours late. Daisy, 'a 45 year old, spiritual lady' who was most worried about the 'vibes' she got off her soon to be inhabitants managed to talk to us for about 2 hours and take us on a tour of the town in her tiny little car. Her definition of a double bedroom was a bit of a stretch, yes there was a double bed in the room, but god knows how they got it in. The kitchen was the size of my wardrobe, and Aaron hit his head on the windchime thingys hanging over every door.

By this time it was 4ish, and we hadn't even got around to having lunch. We jumped on the train and texted Kate to confirm, before heading all the way home to Staines on the train.