London Update 1

My first week is consisting mostly of settling and exploring.

I am settling in well in a beautiful 'colonial' house with a South African Christian family. I have my own room, larger than my own at home, painted blue, with two large windows overlooking a lush backyard. This morning I was pleasantly greeted with blue skies for my first time this week from my bed. I can't say enough good things about the house, my neighborhood, and most of all my new 'family'.

I keep slipping, already, in conversation, while referring to my host parents, as my father or mother. I almost prefer to do so rather than attach host in front of the title each time I refer to them, as long as they don't mind, which from the conversations I've gathered, they don't. They are, from what I can tell, very family oriented people. The father, Attilio, who was born outside of Naples, not too far from Capua where Nana was born, told me that he feels to do his best to represent himself as a father to those who are living far from their own fathers. And it is something he does very well. They both are very sweet; I feel very lucky to be with this family.

The neighborhood is turning out to be fitting as well. I live about thirty minutes outside of central London, southeast, by train, (45 min away from Emma's apartment). We are sandwiched between two train stations, Brockley and St. John, and both are about a ten minute walk. I am realizing that I will be walking a lot during my time in London. My college, Goldsmiths, is right up the road, on Lewisham, pronounced Lew-uh-shum, not Lewis-ham, as the way a proper American would think it would be said. It's only a fifteen minute trip to school by walk and bus.

My first 'real' day of school is tomorrow, and it's not even that 'real.' It is an program specific orientation. I believe I will meet my professors and classmates, which are both groups of people I'm anxious to meet. I think we will also talk about our program and what we will be studying this year, which I'm also anxious to discuss.

In terms of exploration, most of my trips have included either Emma or Allison. Emma's apartment is in Bloomsbury, just north of Russell Square, in a beautiful part of the city. We found a quick route for me to visit that avoids the tube. I simply take the train to Charing Cross, then the 91 bus to her apartment. Buses are making life for me very convenient. Emma and I have eaten dinner a few times together, although we plan to see each other most of this weekend. We are learning how to unite our schedules together, which mine in its feeble state is fairly easy to do so, but her's is far more busy.

Allison has a much freer schedule and as a result, we have seen each other a quite a bit this week. We met at Trafalgar, explored the latest exhibit at the Portrait Gallery, then wondered to Covent Garden, all of which was so refreshing to see again. Those walks make me so appreciative that I am here again and also that I have already been here. I most noticed the refreshing nature of seeing something for the second time today in Greenwich. Allison and I explored Queen Anne's, the Laban Dance theater, the Maritime Museum, and what is currently being used a filmset to the next Pirates movie (the fourth one, which God only knows why they are still keeping this series alive, oh wait $$$$$) the Naval Academy. We stalked out alongside a tattered chainlink fence along with a British family to see if we could catch a glimpse of Jack Sparrow himself. We convinced ourselves we did, or Allison did, and I am too cynical to believe that we did. Nonetheless, it was an entertaining detour to our historical visit.

All in all, I'm very happy to be in this wonderfully gray country once again, and do believe that I will have an amazing time during my stay here. I hope the months go slow so I can savor each day I'm here.

visa dilemma

so i'm missed my flight this morning. i can't help but feel jaded by this because this last reason to why this fell through simply was due to miscommunication.

basically, my visa got help up the mail. It something so preventable which makes it that much more aggravating. I should (better!!!!) receive it today. I haven't heard any news about it so far. This whole process has been a nightmare, which I think makes this sting even more.

I was rejected my first application due to two reasons: 1) my money was in the form of stocks 2) when liquidated to cash, it wasn't on formal enough paper (which it actually was but it just didn't look like it because they probably aren't used to seeing print outs directly from a stock broker).

I found this out (the formal reason) on labor day weekend. I contacted a visa expedite agency who, in hindsight, were very helpful. They answered all my questions in a timely manner and caught a mistake that would pop up in my next application. My next steps after talking them was to reapply under the auspice of a dependent rather than a dependent and use my father's bank account to prove my funds. Besides needing to get a birth certificate, this wasn't too difficult to do. It just weighed on me for the last few weeks mentally.

I got all my stuff together to mail to them last friday, which took me a while to make sure that everything was organized (I must have read the UK Visa website a hundred times), and confidently mailed it to the agency to be received for 10am on Monday morning. I left a two-day airbill in the package because I thought I had plenty of time to be mailed back my visa according to their two-day expedition policy. They got it monday, but processed it tuesday, called me to inform me of a mistake, we overnighted a new bank statement, they received it wednesday, processed everything thursday, including going to the consulate, supposedly mailed my newly approved visa thursday night, never got it friday, freaked out friday night, waited around saturday (well my dad graciously did), realized that my airbill was never used therefore speculated a new airbill was used, hoped and hoped and hoped Tim, my very nice correspondent, made it a saturday two-day airbill, waited on my parents stoop until 530pm, cried when no one showed, cried again when i saw it cost $1500 to change my monday morning flight to the evening, cried even more to see the cheapest option isn't until sunday night still costing $300, relished in a dinner in which my grandmother consoled me, cried more and more and more (and when I say cry i mean figuratively; no tears were shed unfortunately), and now i am praying that it is not lost in the mail.

i want this to evil process to END! wahhhhhh wahhhhhhh.

I've been a big of a mope the past day and a half. I just reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally wanted to go this week. I was so excited to be in London without anything to do and just get to roam around, see my neighborhood, hang out in the city. But, sigh, it will have to wait until next week.

The good news is that when I planned this, I gave myself a two-week cushion before school starts, so thankfully I will not miss anything important, and I still will have plenty of free time next week. I also am glad that I have a week to do nothing in town. Last week was very rushed, especially after going to DC, so I feel better that I can have a really slow pace before I leave.

I think I'm fine now; I just really don't want to have to deal with a potentially lost visa. That will make me cry, maybe even with real tears. I'm not emotionally prepared to have that happen.

aaaahhhhhhh

i'm goooooooiiiiiingggggggggg tooooo annndorraaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!

AND

i fffffouuuuuunnnnnddddddd aaaa plaaaaceeee toooo liveeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

getting ready to move

i'm a week and a half away from moving back to england and i thought i'd revisit this blog after seeing a few others do the same.

so, a week and half, and i feel like it's still a year a way. i can't believe i'll be in class in three weeks, more like four, but still, it's drawing nearer and nearer. I feel like I still have so much to do at home. I feel like I also just started summer vacation, at the perfect time too--weather has been so great these past three days. Today was the first day where I had nothing to do. I loved it. I could use about a week or two of a maine-like schedule.

I have a few kinks to work out before I leave. I need to go through the visa process again after I was denied over a technicality. I'm fairly certain I will be fine this time, not without a hefty price though. I also think my housing search has come to an end. Emma will visit one tomorrow morning, 8am, (she's a saint I know), and after I hear her opinions, I'll make my decision. It's between living with a family in south london in a big, old, nice house, which sounds a lot of fun, but will be far (about an hour) away from downtown OR living closer to downtown, in a smaller apartment with three older guys, in a cool neighborhood. I'm up in the air. Living with a family sounds so great. I'd love to have a british, south african step-family. It's also close to school.

And school! School is something I'm very excited about. I'm almost disappointed I'll only be there a year because the classes seem so interesting. I feel like I've been always been destined to be a sociologist and was too afraid of the structure of the profession, because of the lack thereof. I will only take two classes this semester, which I don't know if that means I will need all my free time to do the work because its so intensive or that it might be a light course work, either of which I'll be ok with.

I'm hoping that I will get to travel a bunch. I already have two trips in the works. Emma and I going to Venice in November. And Allison and I are going to Andorra in October. Venice is definite, andorra is still a maybe. I hope to add a bunch more to this list.

I can't wait to have a routine there and be able to explore the city. I really hope to know the city well. In fact, I thought about looking into being a tour guide for a part time job. I think I'd love it. There is actually a tour guide school I could attend to get certified, which I think I might do. It also might give me more incentive to brush up on my spanish because the best candidates speak two languages. That'd be quite the challenge to give a tour in spanish; I'd be nervous enough to give it in english. Anyway, I hope to have some time to follow through with this.

My last hurrah in the states includes a trip to DC to see Jordan from Chile. I'm looking forward to seeing him. I also am going to visit the Gate which I haven't been to since last winter. It'll be a fun weekend.

Keep posted for more updates. I hopefully will fix my camera so I will have a place to post pictures of my trip. I still am meaning to post my pictures of Maine and Portland/Seattle.