How We Live

I've noticed that we live differently than we had in the States. However, we live very similar to other Newcomers or couples we know living in Oxford, who are connected to the academic life somehow like us. We're living without many American necessities. But we also are pretty tech and eco-savvy, so in way, it makes up for things we don't have. Let me tell you what I mean.

Major items we live without in Oxford, which we had in the U.S.
- Car
- TV
- Microwave
- Clothes dryer
- Shower

Items we do have in Oxford, which we use in place of the above:

- Instead of a car, we bought used bicycles to travel around town. There are many reasons for this. Much cheaper than buying a car or using the bus system. It's also difficult to drive a car within Oxford, as Oxford wasn't built to make room for cars thousands of years ago. They also drive on the other side of the road! And when we need to, we can easily catch a bus two blocks from our flat to get to the city centre, and it runs every 7 minutes.

- We still don't have a TV. We could probably find and buy a cheap one. But remember, we still have to pay monthly for a TV license to watch even the basic channels. And British television isn't that great. They mostly have U.S. shows programmed anyway. We can watch TV at the gym and we've figured out how to download and watch our fave American TV shows on the Internet. So I'm caught up with Desperate Housewives and we're watching a lot of Scrubs. We can also download video podcasts from iTunes of the ABC and NBC evening news, so we can keep up with what is happening with the national news. We have an awesome Mac mini computer and 19" flat screen monitor and high-speed broadband. We can rent and watch movies from Blockbuster on our computer screen and it's better quality than a cheap TV would be. We also have two additional laptops and a wireless router. So all three computers can be online, wherever we are sitting in the flat.

- We don't have a microwave. They aren't too expensive to buy a basic one, but I haven't been in a situation where I was thinking I really needed a microwave. We have a electric kettle to heat up water (which supposedly is a necessity here so you can have tea anytime) and we just use the hob (stove top) to cook and heat up food. (We also have an oven, but the standard size is much smaller than American size.) We typically buy and eat our food within a day or so, and cook smaller portions (mainly because food is sold in smaller quantities than in the States). So there isn't much for leftovers to heat up anyway.

- In Oregon, we had a laundry room with washers and dryers and just had to plug quarters. Well here, I'd have to walk our laundry down to the laundrette and pay an insane amount of money to wash there. So we realized it's more economical to buy our own washer and install it. We do have room for a dryer, but it's not common to have a dryer here, and they don't work that well anyway. They also use up a lot of electricity, so your electric bill is higher. The washers are very different than in the U.S., and it takes about 3 hours to do one load of wash (which is a smaller amount too). But they are energy efficient, don't overuse water and have a very high spin cycle. Therefore, most of the water is already out of clothes before we hang dry them in the flat, and they are dry usually within less than a day.

- Well you've read the story earlier about the lack of a shower. This is the one American luxury we wish we did have. But we've learned to do without, and we can still get clean. We are just used to baths now! We have the little hand held shower thing, but I'm finding it more annoying than helpful at this point. We can also shower at the gym, which is what Brian does most of the week.

I'm sure there are more examples, but these were the main ones I thought of so far. If I come up with more, I'll add to this post.