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CrazyElectron
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Name: Sarah
Country: United States
State: North Carolina
Metro: Charlotte
Gender: Female
Interests: daydreaming, friendships, reading, singing, piano, football, cooking, lazy afternoons, boats, traveling, London, drawing, praying, kitchen-dancing, writing, cheese fondue, genetics, economics, horse-riding, paychecks, cheesy romantic comedies, rearranging furniture, swimming, shopping (but only in small doses), hiking, Lindt dark chocolate, white wine, falling in love
Occupation: Sales & Marketing
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  CrazyElectron
Member Since:
1/21/2004
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| Shortly after returning home in early April, I zipped up to Davidson to hang out with my friends in the class of 2006. I was amused at the number of people who'd assumed I was one of them - they kept asking where I'd been last semester, thinking I'd studied abroad. I had to explain again and again that I'd actually graduated in 2005  I returned to Europe as a tourist in May, spending several days in London enjoying the city in warm weather. Then I was off to Romania to visit Lindsay! Romania is an incredible country, still struggling to recover from Communism and rather hard to travel if you don't speak Romanian (thank goodness I was with Lindsay, who'd become fluent by then). We went all the way to the Black Sea coast, which is the farthest east I've ever been, and which looks remarkably like the NC coast. After Romania, it was back to London for a few days, during which time I met a charming Australian who has since become a good friend and travel buddy, then off to Italy to tour Rome and the tiny hill town of Perugia with my sister, who was studying landscape painting there for the summer. After Italy came a weekend in Scotland with my friend Megan - Edinburgh and Loch Lomond - and a week in southern France with Megan and her family. Home again in June, I spent the next three months working for my dad as I had in summers past and saving money to move out of my parents' house (I love my family, but oh, do I need my independence). My travels didn't really come to a complete stop - there was a mini-reunion of Davidson '05 girls in Atlanta, a cousin's wedding in Wyoming, a large family vacation in the NC mountains, and a mini-family vacation in the Cayman Islands (my parents decided they needed to take my sister and me to experience the islands, and we certainly weren't disagreeing). In August I found myself a nice apartment in Charlotte and began the business of everyday life. Next post: what that entails  | | |
| I lived in London from 29 September 2005 to 4 April 2006. As I wrote in one of the few posts I made while there, it didn't take me too long to find a job as a web editor for an advertizing agency. It started out as part-time work, 2 or 3 days a week, but they kept finding more for me to do (it helped that I taught myself how to use Photoshop because I was tired of having to wait for someone else to edit the photos I'd sourced). By Christmas, it was a full-time position, and I worked there right up until my Blue Card expired at the end of March.
In early December, I flew to Budapest to meet up with my college roommate (Lindsay, the girl in Romania at the time), and we spent a weekend in Vienna - absolutely freezing, but totally worth it! I spent Christmas 2005 with a friend's family in Speyer, a little town near Mannheim and Frankfurt, Germany. It was the first Christmas I'd ever spent away from home, and I think the novelty of a German Christmas helped stave off homesickness. I had the pleasure of showing my family around London when they came to visit me in January. I also had the chance to see the Dale Chihuly exhibit at Kew Gardens - one of the most incredible displays of artwork I've ever seen! In February I returned to Kew Gardens to see the orchids. I also took day trips to Windsor (fabulous castle) and Oxford (fabulous college). In March I gave Lindsay a trip to Venice for her birthday! I would recommend going to Venice in March; it's chilly, but there are very few tourists so you have the crazy confusing alleyways to yourself. I took over 300 photos that weekend. At the end of March, I had to leave the UK again to re-enter with a tourist stamp in my passport, as opposed to the work permit stamp I'd had, so I flew to Poland to visit a high school friend who was in med school there (random, yes). And then, a few days later, all too soon and yet definitely the right time, I packed my bags, returned the keys to my flat to my landlady, and flew back to Charlotte.
I can't believe I've managed to make it so cut-and-dried...it's been two years, but I can summon up the memories as though it all happened yesterday. I hope to write more about specific moments eventually, but for the purposes of this blog I thought it would be a good idea to have the summary for reference. The next post will be about the summer following my return from Europe! | | |
| Heavens, it's been over 2 years since I last posted on here. The changes to Xanga are quite disorienting! I expect it will take me a while to get used to the "new" site, and who knows if I'll actually be posting regularly again. I should start with a ridiculously long life update, I suppose. I haven't the time to indulge in one right now, but given my penchant for making lists, I think I'll enjoy it when I have the chance. At any rate, I look forward to the mental exercise of writing freely | | |
| It's November. That's crazy. And I've been in London for over a month...somehow that doesn't seem possible. I have a life here, friends and a job and a favorite sandwich shop and everything, but once in a while I start to think about the fact that I'm actually living in London and suddenly it all feels very surreal. I'm really going to miss this place when I have to go home again next spring.
Some of you will be very happy to know that I have finally uploaded photos of my life in London. Not all of them, because I have to use a computer with an extraordinarily slow Internet connection so it takes forever to upload photos, but I've got pictures from the first three weeks and my day trip to Canterbury online now. Check them out here.
So yeah, my life is good here. I love my job, and I've just moved into a flat so I have a home now! Just when I was getting used to hostel life...
Here's a list of the touristy/fun things I've done over here:
-picnic meals in Regent's Park and Hyde Park
-Shakespeare's Globe Theatre
-walked the Millenium Bridge
-had a drink in SoHo pubs
-the British Library
-the British Museum (yes, I saw the Rosetta Stone)
-the National Gallery
-seen The Lion King and The Mousetrap
-day trip to Canterbury
-taken pictures of London landmarks
-gotten caught in the rain without an umbrella
-gone to a Halloween rave
-found awesome local shops and cafes
-tried to do the London Eye but been annoyed by the long line (I'll do it eventually, I promise, and I'll take pictures)
Gotta run now, I have to go buy some stuff (sheets, duvet cover, coathangers, laundry detergent, etc.) for my room in the flat so I can actually sleep there tonight. I apologize in advance if I go for another month or so without updating! | | |
| I have a job! I interviewed this morning with an ad agency of sorts that creates and maintains websites for various companies, and I got the position! So I am now a web editor for this agency. I'll be earning £7.50 an hour and working 3 or 4 days a week, which is nice since I need the extra day or two to get bank and UK insurance stuff done, not to mention look for housing. Still haven't found a place to live, but then I'm being a bit picky. I've looked at some truly awful places. I don't mind staying in the hostel until I find a home.
Other than looking for work and housing, the cool things I've done in the last week or so include wandering around the British Museum (yes, I saw the Rosetta Stone), surviving the Tube during peak hours, going to a bar in Notting Hill, exploring more of Regent's Park, satisfying a craving for greasy American pizza at a local Pizza Hut, making friends with other BUNAC participants, seeing a matinee performance of The Lion King at the Lyceum Theatre (it was amazing!), and generally enjoying the unseasonably warm and sunny weather.
So yeah, life is good on this side of the puddle.  | | |
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