Day To Day Living As I See It: Getting To Work

I'm learning very quickly all of the little cultural differences that I need to be flexible to.  It's been a lot of fun being an observer of the British culture and trying to figure out how day to day life is done.

Being from Orange County, I have very specific ways of doing life.  I know that it takes me roughly 12 minutes to drive to work depending on how the lights are down Harbor.  If I need groceries on the way home, I may stop at Trader Joes to pick up a few things.  If we realized that we were low on paper towels or other essentials, I may drive to Target.  Yep, Target was across the street.  I barely got out of 2nd gear getting there.  Life is very routine and comfortable in Orange County.

London isn't far off from what I'm use to but my life, in the short week that I have been here, feels extremely uncomfortable because I can't pick up some corn salsa and black beans from Trader Joes on the way home.  In fact, I'm still learning the names of grocery stores... or "stores" as they commonly call them.

Getting to work has been the most interesting change to my daily routine, in my opinion.  I miss my civic and I miss racing down Harbor.  Walking to Starbucks 2 blocks away from the office was definitely a "long walk" for me.

Nonetheless, I have a lovely "stroll" into the office now.  I thought it would be interesting to document my process of getting into the office and grabbing a spot of tea.  Enjoy the lovely sequence of events from my front door in Manor Fields...

First stretch is down Putney Hill.  This is like Main Street in Putney (They call it High Street) and it leads to the bridge that crosses the Thames.  Everybody power walks and it's as though you're passing somebody in the fast lane when you come across somebody not high stepping it.

The glorious entrance to East Putney Station.

I was told this was a mellow morning at the station.  You'll see a theme of everybody on their phones or reading a magazine/book.  Some days, it will be hard getting onto the first approaching train.

Everybody loves an action shot of being on the tube.  Notice headphones.  Definitely fitting in.

I get off at Notting Hill Gate and switch from the District Line to the Central Line.

Definitely got a little crowded on the transition to the Central Line.

The journey to the middle of the earth to get the Central Line.  The tubes are all layered on top of each other so this one is pretty far down.

Notting Hill Gate. A few more minutes to get the next tube.

Mind the gap... or you will be hit by a train.

The next stop is Bond Street where I get out of the earth and pop up onto Oxford Street.

To finally get my first cup of tea as a UK citizen... or worker.  Door to door: 1 hour.

And this is the office.  Modest, but functional.  Paul to the left and Felipe to the right.  Both extremely excited to see me of course.

Home

We made it home successfully.  I was a little worried that we would be given trouble at the border but our border agent was very friendly and understood our situation.

Once through, Virgin arranged a ride home for us.  This time around, things were a lot smoother.  We did our best to fight jet lag last night by getting new UK phone numbers and eating dinner at an Italian restaurant around the corner from our flat.  I loved that the server remembered us.  We ate there our last night here in March.

I primarily want to share with you some pictures of our new home.  I'm sure I'll be posting more as we get things together, but here are a few of the flat and the park outside our front door.

It's Actually Happening...

Talk about a roller coaster.  I'm not a writer or even a blogger but I'm moving to London from the OC bubble which means I'm about to experience a lot of things that my fellow OC friends and family may want to see and experience.

It all started with one of the craziest weeks of my life.  Allie and I found out that we were going to have a baby and my boss asked if I wanted to move to London to start our UK office.  Without hesitation (almost), Allie and I said yes and looked forward to an amazing, smooth-sailing journey.

The date was set.  We were to move to London at the end of March when we returned from our vacation to Hawaii.  All I had to do was fly to London for a week, look for a home, and come home to prepare my life for the big move.  Again, smooth sailing.

The good news was, I did just that. I found the perfect home in Putney along the Thames that I knew Allie and future baby girl would love. Our flat is in a neighborhood called Mannorfields.  Very British.

After many goodbyes and packing our entire life into 17 large boxes, we set sail...er flight... to Heathrow airport.  That's when things got interesting.

You need a Work Visa to work in the UK???  I HAD NO IDEA!
I know. What seems so obvious, now, was not necessarily evident to us at the time.  We thought we would hang out in London and wait for our Visa to come through.

Not quite.

Back to the good ol' US of A it was for us.  Thankfully, they gave us the weekend to check into our new home and rest as Allie had quite the flight of her life.


Let's fast forward a little bit.  I came back to the office, learned what we needed to do and did everything I could do to get us back across the pond.  We were in a time crunch, though.  Allie wouldn't be able to fly past 36 weeks pregnant and she was 30 weeks.  We started the process and prayed everything would come through in time.

It's Wednesday, May 22nd and FedEx delivered our Visas.  Our flight, that I booked a week ago in hopes the Visa would come in time, is for Thursday, May 23rd.  I think that qualifies for cutting it close.

So, we're on our way. I hope to update you with pictures and stories of London and our new baby girl.