Our Home Away from Home

Part of what makes home exchange so interesting is that you get to actually live in someone else's house.  This carries with it an enormous responsibility of being very, very careful to do no harm, but it also affords us a fabulous opportunity to (as my mother always said) "see how the other half lives".

The home we are staying in is very nice - much of it newly renovated and "updated" as we would say.  See the picture of the beautiful kitchen to the right.  There are definitely differences, in terminology, style and mechanics. 

As I mentioned in my first blog entry, they have provided us with a write-up all about the house.  It included such items as 'hob', 'extractor' and 'bins', where we would have written "cooktop", "venting fan" and "trash barrels".
 
But beyond the terminology there are real differences.  Our bed has no top sheet but instead a lovely duvet.  Changing the sheets involves removing the quilt from the duvet and washing the duvet and the bottom sheet.  (A top sheet strikes me as much more practical.)

Their wall outlets have little switches on them, so you not only need to plug something in, you have to also turn on the outlet.  I learned this the hard way, naturally.

Their freezer is entirely drawers and the refrigerator is quite small. There is no ice maker, in fact we have found relatively little ice in Ireland in general.

We have a lovely garden which we need to keep watered.

We have a washing machine which I just used for the first time this evening. Fortunately, they left very detailed instructions on how to open the door - I never would have figured it out without them.  There is a dryer,  but we were told to use it only to 'air fluff' the clothes - not to dry them.  We are to dry them on the "clothes horse" either out in the yard or in the utility room.  We're not sure when we would need to air fluff them.

Heat is provided by hot water radiators.  We have to run the heat for at least an hour a day in order to have enough hot water for the day - it is the same system.  We don't have to turn on any of the radiators and by default they are all off.  We are generally heating just one room in the evening for a little bit.  To turn on the heater you press in little teeth on a timer - each tooth represents thirty minutes.

Throughout the week we have continued to exchange quite a few emails with the family we are exchanging with.  It is fun to hear about their adventures in Cape Cod and our house - which I'm sure they are finding just as curious and odd as we are finding theirs.