Life Since Christmas
1st Month in London
Stephen and I celebrated our one month
anniversary of being in London and our 9 month
wedding anniversary by. . .unpacking!!! We
finally got our shipment of household goods from
the US, after a huge hassel and another large
chunk of currency. This has perhaps been the
single most insane experience of my life, but,
hey, live and learn and know better for next
time.
Amazingly enough everything seems to fit in our
little bitty space. It's a bit squishy, but
everything more or less has it's own spot. Over
time we'll obtain more tupperwear type storage
units to get everything accessable, but for now
it's comfortably cluttered. =)
Sunday we went out and wondered the Piccadilly
& Oxford Circus area of London. I'm
endeavoring to find a pair of knee high brown
leather boots that won't cost me a fortune, but
shopping in London is really quite fun in and of
itself as they have cutting edge fashions, some
of which are scary, but quite a bit is really
tasteful. I'm pleased to see that the tailored
look is very much back "in". So good stuff there.
As most of your know, I received the best
birthday present imaginable. . .a job!! It's a 3
month contract through a temp agency with a huge
financial services firm. My job is a secretary to
two different "teams" of analysts--making copies,
scanning documents into the system, binding
reports, making travel arrangements, filing, etc.
My coworkers are pretty nice; my cube-mate speaks
Russian! So there will be much Russian practice,
though hopefully without too much cringing on her
part (she's a native speaker).
I'm also starting to get a feel for the kind of
work financial analysts do. . .and micro-economic
analysis is not for me. Hey, at least now I know.
If nothing else, temping is going to give me the
opportunity to at least get a feel for a couple
of different career options and maybe help figure
out what in the world I want to be when I grow
up. In fact, I'm really starting to learn that
maybe I don't want to work for a big
multinational, while the atmosphere at work isn't
unpleasant, it's very impersonal on the whole.
Lots of individual work and only superficial
interaction with other human beings. Not liking
that so much. I found an advert for an Assitant
Program Manager with a nonprofit specializing in
conflict resolution, so I'm going to work on the
essay portion of it and turn that in at the end
of the week. Another nice thing about temping--24
hour notice to leave the job.
So things have officially settled. We're living
in London!!