Bummers and Strawberry Cupcakes

It's official - the mail has come and gone today, and I have nothing from the UK.  No documents.  That means that I can't apply for my visa tomorrow.  Really, this is my fault - I should have had everything mailed earlier.  Honestly, though, you'd think that two weeks would be enough in this day and age!  Damn volcano.

I think I need something yummy to cheer me up... I know!  I'll make myself some Fortnum & Mason Earl Grey tea (with the last of the sachets from the enormous box we brought back in August) and dream about Bea's of Bloomsbury's strawberry cupcakes.  Oh, nom.

via

If you live in London and haven't been to Bea's, go now!  Lunch, tea, whatever - it's delish!  Just be prepared to fight for a table.

You Gotta Have Faith

I should preface this post with a little bit of background.  I am Jewish; I was bat mitzvahed at 13 and, although I mostly only celebrate the holidays, still consider myself actively Jewish.  Growing up, though, I attended an Episcopalian school, sang in the Washington National Cathedral Girls' Choir, and internalized a deep understanding of and respect for many aspects of Christianity.  In fact, I chose to focus most of my studies though college and graduate school on medieval Christianity, which I found myself able to study objectively rather than subjectively (which I consider my appreciation of Judaism to be).  I joked to a friend once that I'm a "Jewpiscopalian," and it's sort of true.  I am spiritually Jewish, but culturally I feel equally Anglican and Jewish.

I bring this up because of an article in this week's New Yorker entitled "A Canterbury Tale."  It focuses on the ordination of women as priests in the Anglican Communion, especially in England.  I was drawn to this section:

There are twenty-three million Anglicans in England. They get baptized in the church, married at the church, and buried by the church, and most of them show up for Christmas and Easter services, when the music is undeniably celestial. On an average Sunday, all but a million or two stay home in their bathrobes and read the paper. They are, however, riveted by the fight over female bishops. Judith Maltby, a Reformation historian and Anglo-Catholic priest who serves as the chaplain of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, says, “To understand this, you have to understand ‘establishment’ as not just about Lord Bishops or the Queen—you have to understand it parochially. An Episcopal priest will say, ‘I have three hundred parishioners,’ meaning the people in his church.’ A Church of England priest will say, ‘I have twenty or thirty thousand,’ because legally his or her pastoral time is for everyone in the parish, no matter who they are”—or where or how they worship, or even what religion, if any, they practice.

I remember a conversation I had about a year ago with an English friend of mine.  He is a spiritual atheist who does not support the organization of religion; in fact, when I took him to a service at New York City's St. John the Divine he was visibly uncomfortable.  However, we talked about weddings once and he - he who could not wait to flee St. John and he who was coerced into going to an organ recital at Westminster only because I was a friend of the organist - mentioned that he envisioned himself getting married in a quaint little stone church on a village green.  This, from an avowed atheist!

I guess that this is what Judith Maltby means when she talks about the "parochial establishment."  The Church of England is so firmly ingrained in the English consciousness that it is a cultural identity for native Englishmen, even for those who are only Christmas/Easter churchgoers or those who never darken the doors of a religious house.  I don't know what legal basis this has - my medieval studies stopped well short of the Reformation and of Henry VIII - although I do know that the king or queen of Great Britain is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England.  I have to say, I find it comforting that many Englishmen take solace in the concept of the Church as a sort of home base (my friend included, his protestations aside).  I know it's not financially viable, but I do think it's a sign of success for the Church - for any church.

(As a side note, I wonder how I'm going to find a synagogue in London.  Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions?  I might have to resort to Google...)

Ups and Downs

Good news and bad news: which comes first?  The good, I suppose.

Things are falling into place for my life once I get to London.  That's the good news.  The bad news has to go with actually getting there: I'm scheduled to mail all of my visa materials to New York on Thursday, and I still haven't received those two documents from the UK yet.  Jon called Royal Mail about the letter he posted to me, and they said that they shipped some mail overseas during the volcano mess, which means that my document might currently be on a steamer somewhere mid-Atlantic, and who knows when it will arrive.  [Expletive.]  I called UCL about the other document, which was apparently sent on the 14th, and they said not to panic about it until three weeks had passed.  Three weeks?  What happened to globalization?  Double [expletive].  I might have been overly optimistic about mailing everything on 29 April...

1951 Glamour

In college, I had a poster of American Girl in Italy, 1951 by Ruth Orkin on my dorm wall.  A girlfriend hated the poster, commenting that the woman looked terrified of the jeering men, but I always thought that she was just haughty.  (Love her shoes, by the way!)

I came across this photograph today, and thought it was an interesting juxtaposition to the work above.  It's also from 1951, though the woman is working a very different kind of glamour.  The police officer doesn't even notice her, but she's totally checking him out - proof that women really do like a man in uniform!

Victoria Station, London, England (Toni Frissell)

Happy St. George's Day!

In honor of St. George's Day I'm posting a video of the last night of the Proms from 2009.  Call me an Anglophile, call me a wannabe, call me a sap - and yes, maybe I am all of those things - but it makes my heart swell every time I watch it.  Hopefully I'll be in Hyde Park to participate this year!  (For those of you who don't know, closing the Proms with Jerusalem is a time-honored tradition, and everyone sings along and waves flags and generally gets into the patriotic spirit of the thing.  You can read more about the last night of the Proms at Wikipedia.)

Brown and Cameron and Clegg, Oh My!

I've been reading up on the impending elections in the UK, which are scheduled for 6 May.  (I always feel like "impending" should be followed by "doom."  Maybe that's appropriate in this case?)  This blog has good resources for the elections - check it out if you're curious.  I took a test on one of the websites listed there, and it turns out I agree most with the Liberal Democrat party.  (And I'm not alone, according to this article in the Times.)  Yes, it's true I can't vote, but that won't stop me from being indignant whenever the government does something I don't like once I get there!

The Wind Bloweth Where It Listeth

(Post Title - John 3:8)

I was mean over the weekend.  I met a very young, very cute geography teacher who said he could educate me about the volcano in Iceland and about all the disruption it was causing - what did I want to know?  "How do you pronounce it?" I asked.  He looked absolutely flummoxed.  Oops.

Mount Eyjafjallajökull

Obviously, thousands of people are being inconvenienced by the volcano and the ash and grit it's spewing out.  Travelers are stranded far from home, produce is rotting in warehouses, and millions of dollars are being lost every day that airplanes are grounded.  Bother aside, I thought it was a kind of welcome, if abrupt, reminder that no matter how powerful we humans are - no matter how much we screw with the earth - nature can overwhelm us in a heartbeat.  And then I remembered: I have two documents being airmailed from London!  I need them in order to get my visa!  [Expletive], [expletive], [expletive]!

To Add Honor To

(Post title - the first entry of the definition of "to decorate" in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.  Seriously.)

I have a confession to make: I'm an interior decorating junkie.  You can probably tell since half of the "favorites/favourites" links on my blog are for design websites.  This isn't a new thing - even when I was little I loved rearranging my room; my mother and I would measure all the furniture and use graph paper and cutouts to make sure that the new arangement would fit before moving anything around.

I'm hoping that this love of decorating (and my stores of yet-untapped creativity!) will stand me in good stead when Jon and I move into our new flat.  Of course, we will both have to draw on that magical "c" word - compromise - when decorating.  He has a much more minimalist and modern sensibility than I do; I'm more classic and countryside.  (Check out all that alliteration!  My 10th grade English teacher would be proud.)  We'll both be bringing things to wherever we end up living - he has some amazing artwork that was given to him by his parents and grandmother and I have a few prints that I'm crazy about - but anywhere we rent will be partially or entirely furnished by the landlord/agency from whom we rent.  This could be a bad thing, since it will mean the place won't truly be ours, but it could be also a good thing: we won't be able to fight over sofas!

via

Since our flat will be small and storage in London houses is sort of nonexistant, we'll have to decorate creatively.  Even though I won't be moving to London till June and we won't be renting a place till August (Jon's current lease runs till the beginning of August, so we'll just stay where he is for the first two months and use it as a base from which to flat-hunt) I've begun researching both flats - see my post of 16 April for more on that - and decorating options.  My new favorite website is Tiny-Ass Apartment, which posts pictures and links and tips on decorating - can you guess? - tiny-ass apartments.  It's fab and has got tons o' great ideas, and I'm sure I'll draw on it heavily when I know what kind of space I'll be working with.  Check it out, even if you have the luxury of space - you can always learn something from economy!  (Bonus: the blogger, Simone, is really sweet and friendly!)

Anyway, right now I'm thinking that the worst thing about a studio is that there won't be enough wall space for Jon's art and my prints - or enough bookshelves!  How frivolous is that?

Cohabiting and Compromise

Jon and I met in October 2008, at the end of my first week in London, and this weekend we're celebrating a year and a half together.  That's not very long in the grand scheme of things, I know, but circumstances are forcing us to take things faster than we otherwise might.  We've decided to go all in - though I can't think of too many things more extreme than moving across the Atlantic for a guy - and move in together when I get to London.  Neither one of us has cohabited with a significant other before, so this should be an adventure - and an exercise in patience and compromise!

Jon and Betsy on Valentine's Day 2010

We have the option of living in a house with friends, but we're looking forward to making our own place.  I'd much rather be in a one-bedroom than a studio - I'm sure that one or the other of us will need a door to slam sometimes - but, because of budget constraints, we might not have too much choice.  However, I've been fantasy property-hunting online and have found some really promising places.  Of course, none of the flats I've found will still be available when I get to London, but encouraging to know that there's stuff I like out there!

We've already had to start practicing the art of compromise, actually, even in talking about where we might live.  My one condition for our flat is that it has to be in Zone 2 and within a ten minute walk of a tube station - not an overground station, not a DLR station, not a train station, but a tube station. Jon wants to be in south or east London.  Luckily for both of us, it looks like the majority of places we'll be able to afford within Zone 2 are in south or east London.  We'll have to do some exploring by foot before making any decisions, but a lot of my internet searches are coming up with properties in Camberwell, Kennington, and Bermondsey, all of which are south of the river.  Honestly, these aren't the neighborhoods I'd pick if money was no issue - then I'd be in Islington, Hampstead, or Chelsea/Kensington - but they're up-and-coming areas, and they're relatively central.  I suppose a bonus to being in a less desirable location is that we will probably find a bigger flat for less money than we would spend on the same flat in a more desirable location.

Speaking of small flats - well, no, I'll save that for another post.  I'm sure you're all waiting with bated breath!

Operation Move

I recently came across a Goethe quote while reading my friend Kate's blog:

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.

I understand what Goethe is saying, but I think that repatriation in the 21st century would have flummoxed him.

I committed myself to the idea of moving to London over Christmas.  My nightmare, back then, was that I'd make a manic decision, go for it, and then come to regret it, and so I set my departure date for early summer to give myself time to reflect.  Now, though, in April, I am just as committed to moving as I was over Christmas, if not more so, and I am even more confident that it's the right decision for me.

However, no matter what Goethe tells us, committing is only the first step.  As (my fellow-to-be) expats are well aware, obtaining a visa can be a total debacle.  Luckily, I am eligible for a Tier 1 visa, which means that I don't have to be sponsored to move to the UK - I can go without a job offer in hand.  I'd obviously rather have a job than not, but, as a UK-based recruitment officer pointed out, with a Tier 1 visa I won't be tied to the UK by a specific job; if I get a job and then lose it or switch to another job I can stay on the same visa that  I used to enter the country rather than reapplying for a sponsored visa.  (Does that make sense?)

They do make you jump through hoops to get a Tier 1 visa, though.  This is what I need:
- application form
- point-based system form
- biometrics
- certificate from University College London, from where I received my MA degree
- letter from University College London stating that it is a "recognized body"
- bank statement testifying to the fact that I have had £2,800 in my account for three months consistently
I have filled out the first two, made an appointment for the third, and am awaiting the fourth and fifth in the post.  The bank statement - well, it's hard to save that much money when you're young and just starting out as a professional!  I'll hit three months on April 29, so I've begun the countdown.  T minus fifteen days until I will have the statement and will be able to send in all of my materials!

The visa website says that 97% of all applicant for a Tier 1 visa have their passports returned to them within 15 days of submission, so it's very likely that I will have my visa in hand by the end of May.  (Does anyone know anything to the contrary?)  That means that, if all goes well, I will be in London in early June - woohoo!

Wish me luck!

playing tourist outside the British Museum, summer 2009

Let's Start at the Very Beginning

I suppose I should begin with this: I have never had wanderlust. I have never felt the burning desire to be on the move, to be on my feet, to be on the road.

My travels, therefore, have not been the result of a longing to be elsewhere. Rather, they have been the result of a longing to find a home. I certainly love my parents’ house just outside of Washington, DC, but recently I’ve been feeling pulled more and more by the need to make my own home. That pull is tugging me to London.

There are several reasons I accept London. First and foremost, the city is a good fit for me; after living there for a year while studying for my Master’s degree from September 2008 until September 2009 I know that I can thrive there. Second, my chosen career path is exploding in the UK; I currently work in development at an arts organization, and as Europe begins to assume the American tradition of philanthropy my experience will hopefully prove useful. Third and last, but certainly not least of these reasons, is my boyfriend Jon; the success of our relationship ultimately depends on us actually being together.

Why blog?

Some of you read my Parisian blog, the account of my exultant, breathtaking, whirlwind seven months in Paris in 2007 as an undergraduate student and chomeuse. It was very much a web log – an account of my travels, determining distance traveled and wonders seen such as a ship’s captain might chart.  Some of you read my short-lived attempt at keeping a blog while in London as a graduate student. The London blog served more as the distribution venue for mass emails; my complaint, and the reason I closed that blog, was as follows:

When I was in Paris, I wanted to commit everything that happened to paper and to share it with all of you. I think it was because Paris was a Life Experience, and as such we had to analyze and savour everything I did. In London, though – here I'm just living life; my everyday things are routine and normal and banal, and I don't think that they deserve being blogged about. That doesn't mean I'm not enjoying myself here. I am, absolutely. It means that I'm living here, actually living, not just having an experience, and don't feel the need to let everything that happens to me marinate and be interpreted.

That was written in November 2008; now, in April 2010, I disagree with the sentiment. Now I think that Life Experiences and the banality of living are not mutually exclusive. That is why I will keep this blog as faithfully as I can. I don’t know what this new blog will be – a creative and literary exercise more than anything else, possibly. But as much as I may be blogging for myself, I am also blogging for you. I want to share myself with you, though you may be far away; I want you to be part of this new life that I am making regardless of your personal geography.

So please, enjoy.