Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

Sunday, January 22, 2006

follow the white rabbit

So ... I've found myself in London, cold, a bit lonely, and desperately wishing I'd given a little more thought to life beyond varsity - before I had to start it. I'm currently living on my sister's floor in Raynes Park, London, looking for work and just generally being intimidated by the sheer scale of things in London. Quite a different universe for an Eastern Cape-grown girl to find herself in.

It's not all bad, but it's harder than I thought it would be. I know probably 20 people on the continent, all of whom are spread out across Britain. I'm simultaneously missing being able to walk to a friend's house, and marveling at a complete public transport systems that functions efficiently and cheaply. You can get anywhere in London cheaply on the tube, and travel the two hours to Oxford by bus or train for a little over the price of supper (cheap supper).

I really should have found work by now (been looking for a week or so), but I'm being picky about what I want, which is essentially work in Oxford. I'm finding Central London all too big and scary to start there. I figure I'll start in Oxford, and work my way up to London. Plus, Oxford is really fantastic. It's about the size of PE, with the charm of Grahamstown and Stellenbosch.

It's been a down week in general. Jono, Si and Naomi flew back to South Africa on the 12th, and my sister works all day, so I sit around in her flat, searching the internet for jobs. This gave me a lot of time to think about my boyfriend on another continent, summer braais, and the cushy familiar life of a student in Grahamstown, and how much I miss them all! But then I realised that what I was doing was making me miserable, and the key is to keep distracted - so to this end I caught up on 4 (yes- 4 whole) seasons of FRIENDS, and if anyone tells me what happens in the last 2 seasons they will suffer a long painful death!

I've also had a really great weekend. I headed up to Oxford on Friday morning, because I had an interview with a recruitment agency there. The interview went really well, so I'm hoping I should have something by the end of the week. I stayed with Nick and Lucy in their flat in Wolfson college, watched Nick's soccer team beat St John's unbeaten side, watched movies and generally relaxed. Nice change, and good to get out of my sister's flat finally!

Anyway, I guess the point of this blog is to act as both a kind of journal and as a form of one to many communication. I'm missing everyone desperately, so please keep in touch, just dont tell me how nice the weather in SA is - that's just cruel!

2 comments:

Claire Hawk said...

Job-searching is never fun~! Not sure exactly what you're interested in, by www.charityjob.co.uk generally has some interesting options!

kevin burden said...

Hello K

Good to see you yesterday - didnt get to ask, are you in London or Oxford now?

See u Saturday hopefully! Keep well.

k