It seems a little bit of a contradiction that once I got a life and got busy I stopped blogging, just when I have something exciting to write about as well. 
I really do want to record my time overseas a little better so I need to get to be a better blogger.
Life is one big crazy blur sleeping in random beds for me right now. Luckily, I don’t have insomnia issues at all so I can basically sleep anywhere and never need to take anything, I’m so exhausted! God is so gracious as well, really there has been an ease to coming here that I wasn’t expecting completely, maybe part of it is that I’m more grown up and settled now too. Hey, this life is still infinitely better than my recovery from the brain injury. Infinitely.
Let me tell you, I absolutey love my proximity to Europe as well, I got so excited when I flew out to Madrid on Monday that I could just jump on a plane and be there in 2 hours. It’s quite mind-blowing for a little kiwi girl. And this means that, right now, I don’t think I really want to go back to NZ in a hurry. I haven’t really told many people at home this. Really, other than my mum and dad and my dear friends there isn’t much there to pull me back at this stage in my life. I need to get something resembling a career started again and I think actually it might be easier to do this in London than Auckland, given that it’s a much bigger market and I have no negative history either.
The good news is that I have a job interview on Monday for a role with a Charity that sounds really interesting. I’m not sure the money will be very good, but it’s in a great location in Docklands so I could very likely live very close and walk or bike to work which would save a huge amount of money. I also have good friends living about 15 minutes walk from the office as well, so it’d be nice to see them more. In London you definitely want to live near your friends as it makes life so much easier. The other option is probably to live in South-West London as Kiwis and other Antipodeans tend to congregate this way a bit, but I would rather be closer to work I think. I’m also looking into temp work, which could be fun too, just to see what is out there.
Yes, it has come as a bit of a surprise to find out that I want to live in London and do the big city thing again. But so far, I really enjoy it. It’s hard to explain how different it feels here than last time. I think I just feel more a part of things. Like I belong. I have been to a few areas that I frequented before and I think everything was so new and foreign and loud and big. But I was from a city of 150k people then. I’ve lived in Sydney, in Auckland since and things that scared me before now excite me. I must have been a funny little kiwi girl back then, that is for sure.
I think it’s also easier to just let things slide over when you’re older, the settling in period has had little ripples, not rollercoaster dips. Part of this is probably better mental discipline. To explain what I mean I’ll tell you about my friend’s brother and his partner, we were on Skype last night and she announced that she is leaving him and moving back to the UK from NZ after not even a year in Auckland. The three of us hearing this could only say, she’s young, she should have given it a year. We know… things get better after a year. I guess that’s what your twenties are for though, making mistakes and learning.
So really, I’m busy learning how to become British and European, which is interesting after a few years of being far to (in my opinion now) engrossed in a certain other country. I’m trying to ignore things a bit from the other side of the Atlantic really and focus on where I am right now. Partly, because I find some of it just too frustrating and really because adjusting to one country is hard enough without worrying about another. And chances are I’m never going to live in the US anyway (another long story) and I can’t waste headspace thinking about that unless there is something definite.
The interesting thing will be if I get this job, that I’ll be working with mostly Muslim immigrants from the worst part of the country, but within a Christian Charity. Right at the coal face! It will be an education and I’m really quite passionate that the UK hasn’t really done enough to integrate the enormous amount of people they’ve welcomed to the ‘motherland’ and then they wonder why they have some of the problems they have. Getting my head around it more will be a wonderful challenge. Watch or read Brick Lane if you want to understand more about this.
Well, that’s enough of an update for now. More to write in the coming days.
