A Week's Worth

We've only been here just over a week, and if I tried to recount every memorable experience we've had I'm sure I would leave some out. Our first week in London was important though, as it marked our attempt to find a temporary home in a city where we arrived as foreigners with few contacts and limited resources. It should not go unrecorded, as it was revealing to us and will hopefully be interesting to you.

Before I go into that, however, let me introduce our little journal here. In case you didn't know, Lauren and I have come to London, England, to live for 4 months as I finish law school studying abroad. We've begun this blog partly for ourselves (so that we can have a record of our experiences here) and partly for our friends and families (to keep them updated on our travels and to reassure them that we're alive and well, and not captives of the trafficking trade or victims of all the other dangers that our imaginations convince us lie abroad). This will be a joint blog, as in both Lauren and I will contribute individually. Hopefully our dual (and sometimes maybe dueling) perspectives will make for a less one-sided account of all this, and will provide us with some insight on how we view a set of otherwise common experiences differently. We hope this blog will prove beneficial for us and anyone who takes the time to read it.

That all said, let me try and capture the last week or so with some brevity.

We arrived at Heathrow Airport, as many of you may have, grateful for the end of a tiresome but crash-free flight. Our trip from the airport to the hotel was an easy one, except for the part after we exited the tube station and proceeded to pull our luggage through an inch or so of snow, once or twice in the wrong direction, to our hotel which probably took 15 minutes of walking. I only got lost of course because I couldn't see the sun, which I regularly use a directional tool.

We arrived on the evening of the 6th of January, classes to begin for me on the 12th. We hadn't rented a flat (or apartment) in advance, as we were wary of sending money overseas to people we'd never met to reserve a place we weren't sure really existed. What this meant of course was that we had little time to find a flat and move in. After getting settled in the hotel room, I set out to the nearest free-Wifi location (which happened to be the hotel Radisson about three blocks away, whose staff seems weirdly okay with random people sitting in their lobby for hours using their free internet) to call people offering flats for rent in London, whose numbers I'd found on UK websites. After getting in touch with several, I was able to set up viewings where we would be able to meet the landlords or renting agents and see the flats in person. This process- walking to the Radisson, connecting to their Wifi, calling people and setting up viewings- this was what we did for 3 days, really without much luck. We saw a number of flats, some of them brand new, others very old, all very small and very expensive. And may I please emphasize the word small- 150-200 square feet were the dimensions of several places we viewed. Nevertheless, on Friday evening we came upon a 1 bedroom flat just around the corner from the hotel (and incidentally the school where I am studying) which was big enough (several hundred square feet- I kid you not!), was the right price, and the right location. Despite some of "our" hesitations about the cleanliness of the flat, we shook hands on it (not literally) and put down a deposit.

Unfortunately our flat didn't really become "our flat" right away, since on Saturday I managed (in an attempt to turn on the electricity) to damage our electricity meter by sticking the wrong key into it. Here in the UK (as they might do in some parts of the States, unbeknownst to me) they sometimes provide electricity to flats by giving the tenant a key (a sort of plastic key with computer chips embedded into it) that they can take to any number of "pay-points" (convenience/junk stores) where they can pay to "charge" the key or put a certain amount of money on it. Once the key is charged, the tenant takes the key and inserts it into the designated meter for their flat (which is probably in the flat or the building which houses the flat) and the meter reads the key and gives the tenant electricity credits corresponding to the amount of the money on the key. When I inserted the wrong key into the meter, it became stuck, and upon wrenching it out I damaged the meter so that it would no longer read the correct key. This resulted in the electric company coming out and replacing the meter on Wednesday, a mere 4 days after it happened. The only reason the electric company came so soon, I've been told (by a nice man who works in the restaurant downstairs) is because the electric company was informed that a very old and fragile woman lived in this flat and would simply freeze if her electricity was not restored promptly.

Now I mentioned that there is a restaurant downstairs, and this is indeed true: our flat is above a restaurant called the "Shaftesbury Bar and Grill." Some time ago this restaurant was originally called the "Moulin Rouge," and in our very flat was born a man who formerly went by the name of Cat Stevens. When Warren, the manager of the Shaftesbury who showed us the flat told us this (with some enthusiasm), I became rather excited and Lauren simply asked who Cat Stevens was. If you don't buy it, follow this link and you'll see that we are most certainly living in the birthplace of Cat Stevens, now known as Yusuf Islam: http://the-shaftesbury.net

With an electricity powered and somewhat warm, much cleaner than it was when we moved in place to call our own, we began to assimilate. Unfortunately our flat didn't contain many of the items we realized we would need to survive comfortably, so we spent the next few days supplementing the flat's furnishings. This was a somewhat laborious task, in that finding the items we need is made more difficult by a language barrier that we didn't know existed before we came. This is exemplified in the varying names that the English have for every type of thing, some being things you would think couldn't possibly have any other name in English than the name we give them. For instance, a pot (as in a cooking pot) is here called a hob. An oven is called an electric cooker. A laundry rack is called an indoor airer. A curling iron is called a curling tong. A weatherstrip is called a draft excluder. And meat is called dead animal flesh.

I made that last one up. But seriously, there is a small language barrier that doesn't hinge on pronunciation (although Warren, an individual mentioned earlier, did pronounce Wifi as "wee-fee"). Luckily for us, we found all the items we needed at a store called Argos, which is essentially a catalogue store: in the store there are probably 40-50 catalogues, all identical, which people come and look through. The catalogues have every item (except food items) that you might find at a Walmart. All you do is write down the number of the item, take it to the "tiller" or the cashier, and if it's in stock they go and retrieve it from some invisible warehouse-like room where they keep everything in the catalogue. The area for customers is probably not much bigger than a store you might find in a mall. Argos' slogan is "Argos-it".

After all the cleaning and furnishing and getting settled, we're beginning to feel like we have a home here. I've finished a week of class, and I feel confident that class is a whole separate sphere I will write about in the near future. Fortunately for me, my classes are peppered with interesting characters who I'm sure I can safely describe using pseudonyms. And fortunately for both Lauren and myself, we've met at least one couple who look to be a promising set of friends for the next 4 months, not to mention a number of individuals who we look forward to knowing more thoroughly. Of course, no one can replace the people we left behind at home, and by the time this is over we will be so ready for the incredibly lavish party that everyone will throw for us in honor of our homecoming.

This entry really being an effort to "catch-up," I hope the rest are more current and about more interesting things than the story of our arrival in London. As time passes I'm sure Lauren and I will entertain a wide range of thoughts, emotions and perceptions about this place and others that we visit, and if nothing else this blog will give them a place to be aired, much like the clothes hanging on our indoor airer.


Nathan