breaking out the big black coat

tonight i walked down to the internet cafe wearing my winter coat for the first time since getting here. i put things in my pockets so i wouldn't have to bring a purse, my hair was really clean (still is), i had on a really pretty scarf and i was listening to a couple of epic coldplay songs. it was glorious.

i couldn't just leave my blog where my last post left it. i realized that i said really nothing about how i'm doing. so, here you go.

i'm very alone and very aware of how alone i am. but it's not really a sad thing. i love walking down the street by myself with my music and my thoughts. right now, sarah and i doing a lot of tea drinking and writing to friends and winding down after three hectic weeks of screwing in knives with butter forks. we're processing all of the time. sarah says that three weeks of processing here is probably akin to four months of processing back home. i think it's true. it's so easy to see myself clearly when my comfort zone is half way around the world from me. it's hard to be that transparent with myself all of the time, but it's been good. honest and good. i'm learning a lot. there've been some issues on the back burner that are getting their day in sun now and while i don't always like dealing with them, it was time to do it. needless to say, my journal is quickly filling up. :) i do like to think. and to pray and write and serve people really good food and talk about where my accent is from and what i think about london. it's enough for now. soon i will try to do more things, but the quiet home-body lifestyle is exactly what i've been craving without knowing that i was craving it. :)

i miss books though. i didn't bring hardly any books and i feel like i left some of my dearest friends at home in boxes. it's not a nice feeling. but don't worry, i'll buy more and then leave them behind for some other wanderer to sink into.

i'm tired now. i need to go buy tape. and something else. i can't remember what it is right now, but maybe by the time i get to the store...

screwing in knives with butter forks

so, two weeks ago today sarah and i trekked out to ikea and bought some essentials. you know, pillows, cutlery, that sort of thing. :) when we came home we discovered that the pots need some assembly. so sarah took it upon herself to figure out how to attach the handles to the pots. we really needed a screwdriver, but we discovered that if i held everything steady sarah could semi-tighten the screws with a butter knife. we were laughing and sarah was trying to exclaim about the ridiculousness of what she was doing, but she was too focused on the task and it came out as, "i'm just screwing in knives with butter forks!"

this phrase has since become synonymous with improvisation, getting by and figuring out life without the tools that we are used to having with us in a place that is not familiar. so, when you ask how i am, what i really want to tell you is, "i'm just screwing in knives with butter forks." and look! now i can.

sunday was a really good day. last week sarah and i went by the globe theatre and got £5 standing tickets to see "the merry wives of windsor" this sunday. standing tickets means that we were in the yard, the large expanse of ground all around the stage, and that we stood for the whole performance. but oh my goodness. it was so worth it. i mean, think about it! seeing shakespeare at the globe theatre!! the performances were phenomenal and the play was so funny. we had no idea what the story was about, which was actually really fun, because everything was a surprise. the two wives were hilarious. we liked them the best. oh man. what a delicious london moment. i'm sorry that i had to use the word delicious there, but i really did have to. i love theatre and i love good shakespeare and so of course i was just so happy. almost as happy as i was climbing a tree a couple of weeks ago. well, ok. it was a different kind of happy.

on the way back from the play, we ran into the most delightful tube surprise (i have no idea why the words delightful and delicious are working their way into this post, but i really can't help it). right next to us was this young couple who had two six-week-old husky puppies in a box at their feet. they were ridiculously cute. and the best thing is what they did to everyone on the tube who saw them. our train got delayed in this tunnel and while we were waiting people on the tube started behaving very oddly. this little 12 year old girl got up out of her seat to look over at the puppies and this man told his girlfriend to touch one. she asked if she could and once they let her, it was like free rein for everyone else who wanted to pet them, myself included. her boyfriend then got down by the box and started growling at one of the puppies and baby talking them. it was hilarious. he was telling this couple that they needed to name their dogs ancient names that no one had ever had before, and he started to predict what their personalities would be like. it was then that we learned that they were brothers and only six-weeks old. everyone in the near vicinity was watching this whole exchange with grins on their faces. who doesn't love puppies? especially two young husky puppies?? goodness sakes. i want a dog. so fuzzy... :) the couple got off the train and everything went back to normal. but we now knew that we were traveling with human beings.

i'll write about my job later. but for now i will say - i like it. i like the people: customers and staffers, and i like all the time for praying and processing that it gives me while i fold napkins during quiet times. and the wonderful food. that is a blessing.

there. you are updated on events. we have a kitchen table now. if you didn't know. here is a lovely, cluttered, tea-filled picture of it:

hint. hint. hint.

we have a real address! but you can keep sending stuff to BUNAC if you want, which is probably safer, since the mail at our place is just stuffed through the door and then sorted into little ledges along the wall with the flat numbers over them. however, if you want us to see things sooner (we don't visit BUNAC that often) then here is our actual english address:

Lisa Gilham (or Sarah Reid)
139 Wandsworth Bridge Road, Flat 4
Fulham, London
SW6 2TT
United Kingdom

oops! it's a 2. thanks sarah!

i'm so in love with my music

i wish you could see pictures of what our flat looked like on saturday night. we decided to do some laundry (as one does) and while all of our clothes were in the washer we tied long pieces of rope from one end of the flat to the other in order to have lines to line-dry our clothes on. the only thing is that we had to use all of the doorknobs in the flat as anchors for the yellow lines and as a result we couldn't open any of our cupboards or our wardrobe. whenever we needed to get something out, one person had to hold the line full of clothes off the floor while the other person attempted to slip the knots off of the doorknobs and grab whatever the thing was that they needed. then of course, getting from one side of the flat to the other became a maze that required us to crawl under our clothes whenever we needed to move more than five steps in any direction. it was absolutely ridiculous. :) i won't say what happened to sarah, but you would have laughed if you'dve been there.

i have a job! that's pretty important information, so i figured the time had come to let you all in on the happy secret. speaking of happy secrets and on a completely unrelated note - i have been seeing pregnant women everywhere! it's starting to weird me out. but seriously, i swear i've seen fifteen pregnant ladies in the past three days. - anyway, i got hired at Hardy's Restaurant and Wine Bar, which is the place i interviewed at and told you about a few posts ago. i wasn't sure about the hours and such, but i talked to the owner and i think i'll only have to work 2-3 nights a week, which is perfect. i had a trial shift this last tuesday and then she called me late tuesday night to say they'd like to hire me. i had my first shift last friday and i'm on the schedule fulltime this week starting tomorrow. it's a really good job and something i think that i'm going to be happy with. the place is nice (here's the website - http://www.hardysbrasserie.co.uk/) but pretty laid-back. i like everyone and i feel like i fit there.

it's funny - even though we'd had a flat for almost a week, it wasn't until i was going home from my shift on friday that i felt like i really lived in london. i think i needed that last piece of the puzzle to find its place before i knew that i was here. i'm here now. i live in london. i have a job and a flat and a grocery store. :) good things are happening.

back to saturday. sarah and i were looking forward to this weekend because it was our first real london weekend. we weren't flat hunting, or waiting to hear about jobs, or anything. so saturday morning we slept in and then found our way down to the river and went to the borough market. that place is magic. there are samples everywhere - cheese, olive oils, bread, fruit, meats. we each got some cheese and then a loaf of french bread and a bottle of wine and sarah got some pretty olives. she said they tasted great, but my mother brainwashed me as a child to dislike the taste of olives, so i just admired the colors (mom, i kid). for lunch we had the best fish and chips and ate them on little plastic stools in an out of the way alley.

so, as we were sitting in that little alleyway, eating our cod and chips and chatting, we started talking about how hard we already feel like it's going to be to leave. we've only been here about two weeks now, but we can feel that we've started to put down roots. i can feel myself falling into rhythms that i'm going to have difficulty falling out of at the end of our time here.

i do have to tell you that i climbed a tree on saturday. we went up to hampstead heath because i needed to smell grass instead of exhaust and cigarette smoke and there was this lovely, sprawling, curvy tree just waiting for me in this meadow. i kicked off my shoes and climbed around for awhile and felt something living under my fingers and watched the sky and smelled growing things again. i wonder if it's just growing up in portland, but i need green growing things around me. i need trees. and i need to be able to lean on them and smell them. it's very important for my soul.

so, that's my latest and greatest. the rest of the weekend was wonderful too. we cleaned the apartment, went to church, ate cheese and bread and jam for dinner on sunday and then spent the evening reading and drinking tea. if that doesn't sound like heaven to you, then imagine yourself doing your favorite activity, and think about that alive feeling you get while doing that thing and you'll know how happy we were to be in our own place with our own hot water for tea and our own blankets and books to keep us company.

thank you so much for reading this and caring about me and leaving comments. i love hearing from everyone. the world seems so small in those moments, doesn't it? thank goodness. :)

the godfather

saturday was bad. sarah and i knew that realistically no one would get back to us on the day that we contacted them about letting their flats, but we were hoping. really hoping. hoping in that "i freaking need to get out of a hostel and hang up my clothes" kind of way. it was depressing, frustrating, scary and uncertain. the last one is by far my least favorite. i like certainty.

then, of course, we almost got scammed. because no one can go away to a big new city and not have one semi-frightening experience, right? but - we're smart. and we give ourselves time to evaluate things. and we trust our instincts. jude micheal was revealed to be our first london enemy and our money stayed safe and ready to go towards paying for a legitimate flat.

so saturday ended. we make a point of giving ourselves really good evenings every day, so the day ended on a happier note. evenings are good. evenings are me and sarah time. evenings are when we ride the top level of the bus in the very front seats. it's like disneyland and it's our happiest place.

sunday rolled around and i had a job interview (it went fine. i'm just not interested) and then sarah and i went to go meet with an actual landlord who actually lives in the city and who didn't want us to carry hundreds of pounds around on our person before agreeing the let the flat. crazy!

here's where it gets good. :) the landlord's son(?) showed us two places. the second was a little cheaper and we really liked it. it's teense, but nice. we talked over terms and everything was refreshingly upfront and so...truthful feeling. i can't describe it except to say that karli was praying for us to have that "this is so right" feeling. and we had it. so we walked across the street to the furniture store that the landlord owns and met him. he's an older man with a bald head and an army of minions. he whistles for his employees (his family?) and gets things done. he went through the lease with us right there and we all signed it. then, he got a cab for us to take back to our hostel and bring us back with our bags. oh don't worry, he says. it won't cost very much because his cousin owns a cab company just around the corner and he'll cut the price in half for his tenants! at this point sarah and i are starting to feel like we may have just entered the world of the london mafia. it's an oddly safe feeling - being on the in with the mob boss. which we think our landlord must be. the cousin cab driver took us back and forth with our bags and we moved in. fast, i know! meanwhile, the godfather (our nickname for our new landlord. i swear i'm going to forget his real name) had one of his employees clean up the place for us. we went and got the money for the deposit etc and when we got back he took our hands and said that we are like his daughters now. if we need anything, we should just let him know. to prove this point, he found out that we didn't have a fridge yet (they were going to give it to us the next day), whistled for sonny (guy who showed us the place) and told him to get us a fridge right now. he also said that old tenants have left some appliances and kitchen things and he's going to get them for us.

today they're installing our washing machine and getting us a little table and about three chairs. they're just, you know, bringing them over from the furniture store across the street. :) we asked about a mirror in the bathroom and sonny said, "done. i'll get it tomrrow." our hot water handle was broken on the sink - "we'll fix it tomorrow." it's a good place to be - in the family of the mafia. we like it. we have a great feeling about the godfather. he likes us and we like him. and if anything happens to us, he'll just whistle for one of his employees and they'll "take care of it," if you know what i mean. :)

cheesy but true ikea advert, "home is the most important place in the world."

to sum up: sarah and i have a flat. the bed has no bedding. we have no cleaning supplies. we have no utensils. we have no food. we have no hangers. but we have the beginnings of something called home.

i'm laughing

because nothing is what you expect. and i love that.

i went to a job interview today at this classy little old place called Hardy's Wine Bar. I chatted with a lady named Dominique who told me about the place, what it was like, what they were hoping to do (sounds like they just re-opened and they're getting together a brand new team) and what my job would look like - hours, pay, etc. Honestly, it sounds perfect. I'm going in on Tuesday for a trial three-hour shift and then we'll see. But it didn't sound like a "we'll see," it sounded like a "you basically have this job." so....yay!

if you knew how blue my spirit was turning yesterday afternoon, you would know how radically different today is. i was in the middle of trying to track down this lady at a temp agency who wouldn't call me back, while sarah was running around getting offered two jobs in one day. i kept thinking about how i didn't even want a job like this. office work kills me. it is really hard for me to do. i was just about to cry when i decided instead to be sensible and go send off a few more resumes.  i finally sent off my CV to this restaurant since it was one of the only things i'd originally seen that seemed interesting to me.  i called a little later, she'd already received it and wanted me to come in for an interview! 

i have another interview sunday as a receptionist at a restaurant (i think) and then on monday i'm registering at an agency that will try to find me office stuff.  basically i'm just covering my bases.  it is such a relief to have knowns filling in the unknowns.  

things are looking up.  i like it.  i like where i am.  i like what i'm doing.  i like who am with. :) and soon i will feel even more settled when i can hang up my clothes.  *sigh*  just waiting.  but happy waiting.  i'm doing good.

a walk through the park

was probably the best thing about today.  sarah and i saw peter and everything fell into place.  well, not everything.  we are still jobless and essentially homeless, but peter is here and so are we.  

hyde park is really beautiful.  i love seeing people just moving, living and breathing here.  because now we do too.  it's nice.  we also rode in the top level of a bus today.  

in other news, our BUNAC orientation was this morning.  lots of information was given and sarah and i are feeling good.  really good.  ridiculously intensely focused, but good.  we're on the A train.  there'll be no stopping us until we have jobs that will pay the bills and get us to some fun places.  like edinburgh.  we really want to go there.  

ok.  don't worry about me.  oh!  i also have a new phone number and a plan that allows me to call the states for only 2p a minute.  so good!

how are you?  i have nothing more to write about. 

day one

i'm tired.

but good. we found our hostel and we have our own room and we found internet (obviously).

we've already had a couple of minor traveling adventures, so...that's been fun.

my brain's off. i'll write more later.