A Lady in London

My new life motto: Pay As You Go

I have spent a lot of time living and working overseas. I never realized before that all of my prior experiences abroad were short-term jaunts that never required me to put down roots. I floated over to Nice and Prague to study and play, gallivanted through Paris and Brussels for fun summer internships, and went on exciting vacations that never caused any more pain than a few “foreign fee” charges on my credit card or bank statement.

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I’ve been living out of a suitcase for almost two weeks now, and I’m itching to find a place to live. The flat hunt started out on a discouraging note; every time I saw a place that I liked online, the agent on the phone would tell me that it had “just gone.”

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I finally made it to London!

My week in Paris went by in a wonderful blur of crepes and croque monsieurs, Marais and Montmartre, fondue and falafel, and just about every other wonderful thing about the city of lights. My friend and I explored areas of Paris we hadn’t previously visited, including the Montmartre vineyard, a great farmer’s market near Bastille, and a beautiful park in the 17th.

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Today I found a great website for teaching Americans how to speak British English. I knew there were some words they use that we don’t use and vice versa, but I had no idea how many there were!

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Today I finally got to send in my HSMP application for my UK visa! I’m so glad to finally have it out of my hands and in the mail.

I was held up for a few extra days when the awful translation company I was working with (see earlier post) sent me a finalized copy of my diploma translation in the mail and there were STILL grammatical errors (who knew that the “year of our Lord” could double as the “year or our Lord”?). I was pretty upset.

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This week I became a Latin scholar. This was not by choice, but by necessity. The story starts with the tedious application process for the HSMP UK visa I’m applying for.

The rules state that I have to send in my original university diploma. Easy enough. However, they also state that if any of my application materials are in a language other than English I have to get them translated by a certified, professional translation service.

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