October 2023
1: My first full month in London.Me in the 3rd airbnb I stayed at while flat hunting. The first airbnb I stayed at was in Clapham and it was so cute. I was staying with an older libertine man (whose lady friend would sometimes come over), but I underestimated how many days it would take me to find more permanent accommodation, which was stupid of me. I ended booking another airbnb in Clapton, but immediately leaving that one because it felt like a serial killer’s lair (think of those movies where you check into a motel and find a VHS tape recording of someone being murdered in the room you’re staying in – those were the vibes). Pictured is the airbnb in Aldgate, which was not the best, but at least it didn’t feel like I was going to be murdered.
2: View in Camden. I was wandering around there before a flat viewing. The flat’s in London are crazy expensive. It was £900 for admittedly a large bedroom, but barely a living room (and when I say barely, I mean what looked like a storage space repurposed to function as a living room), a tiny kitchen, and a small shared bathroom. The sad part is that I almost took it.
3: I temporarily joined a gym near my Airbnb in Aldgate. It was stupid expensive.
4-5: Renee came to visit me in London on her way to a Tuscan getaway! Her hotel was serendipitously down the street from my airbnb – a fun and unplanned coincidence. We went to the Barbican, pictured above, and spent the days day drinking and going out at night.
6: The view of the garden from my room. I remember walking into this room during the open house-style flat viewing and wanting it immediately. I moved in with 3 24-year old girls, 2 of whom I met at the flat viewing. during the viewing, the boys living in the apartment let two of the girls know that their agent wanted to give the whole flat to 4 people who were ready to move in together instead of renting it out room by room. They recruited me, and then the boys let us know there was one other girl who was on her own and wanted to move in, so we gave her a call and she agreed to move in with us. The three of us who were at the viewing met the agent that night and told him we were all family friends. It worked out in the end, and we’ve grown to really enjoy each other! I got the room I wanted and the garden view has given me so much peace while I’ve been here.
7: Went to one of the demonstrations for Palestine close to when Israel’s barbaric retaliation started around October.
8: I got a sunset lamp for my room, which has been calming and aesthetic in the evenings.
9-10: Halloween weekend. One of our neighbours invited me to a Halloween party in stoke Newington one night (I wore the skeleton onesie pictured above), and I went out with my roommate Shannon and her friends another night. I got too drunk and abandoned my shoulder bag with my keys and wallet in it somewhere in the bar the night I went out with Shannon. I went back to the bar (all the way in South London) and they told me nobody had found anything or handed anything in. By the grace of God (and air tags) I found my wallet left on a window sill of a shop nearby, and my keys thrown over a wall into a gated parking lot. I should have taken that night as a sign to cut down on my drinking, but I wouldn’t make the decision to go sober until a month later.