When I touched down in London- nothing could have prepared me for what followed next. Samantha and I, both very tired; just wanting a home and some warmth made our way through the airport and off to our respective homes. Samantha was staying with her friend Benny for a while in West London, while I gathered myself (and things) in Richmond with a family friend Charlotte.

The following two weeks were the two longest/ challenging weeks that really pushed and pulled me in a lot of directions. The idea of restarting is exciting and thrilling but also terrifying when things seem to not work out. We had a rough idea of the areas we wanted to live in and our days started with waking up early, jumping on spare room and finding places in the areas. Then making appointments with the ones we want to see and ensuring we had enough time to get between each other. The below came in handy…

Living wise- London is a mixed bag. There can be good areas with pockets of “not so good” and then rough areas with little “jewels”. One of the weirdest ones we saw was a 6-bedroom house in North Acton, which is had no occupants, new beds and no living room. The landlord expected us to just hang out in each other’s rooms if we wanted to socialise- apparently it’s a common thing here in London. They tend to turn the common area into another room as it gives them more money too.

In the end after many trials and tribulations, we settled on a similar shared house in Chiswick (a lovely residential area in West London). The house too needed to be filled by occupants and was currently going through a re-shuffle. With a sigh of relief (however not ideally located from the station)- we were content. Now we could finally unload, settle and into a place we could call home. A lot had to be done before that.

In the next couple of weeks, we had the rooms all filled up and started slowly engaging with our flatmates and actually became close to some over others. A Spanish couple in particular (Julio & Silvia) took to our liking as they were warm and welcoming and wanted to spend time with us, exchanging different cultural stories. I, having a mad obsession with the Spanish culture showed my enthusiasm in wanting to go to an authentic Spanish tapas place in London, if there was an opportunity. In our spare time we made our first trip to IKEA to style our rooms up, visited some of the London tourist hot spots and enjoyed the late summer in some parks too. IKEA is a great place to stock up on all furniture necessary within a house.

4 weeks in London wasn’t looking too bad and learning to set up life from scratch seemed to be a huge growth curve. I’d secured three interviews in the last week of September, one a second interview and one a first. The companies I used were Reed and Indeed mainly.

By the end of that week, I was ready for some good food and relaxation- that’s exactly what I got. Samantha and I ended up being invited by Julio and Silvia to an authentic Spanish tapas restaurant out west (not to far from us).

Samantha and I arrived at Centro Galego where we had some drinks in the upstairs bar area and slowly made our way down to the restaurant area where there were a couple of people seated and another guy trying to settle the tables. This caught my attention as I was surprised that this guy was busy taking care of this and the people’s comfort rather than sitting down and securing a seat for him. In the end we sat towards one end of the ‘L’ shaped table and for him he was right at the end.

 

 

When I touched down in London- nothing could have prepared me for what followed next…I met a chico called David and we chatted all night until the late hours of the morning…yes it was the very same chico that caught my attention at the start.