One Year

It's my one year anniversary today. I landed at Heathrow with 150lbs of luggage split amongst 3 bags to find out my pre-ordered taxi had already come and gone without me. This left me at a pay phone trying to find a company that would pick me up at a decent price after a 3 hour wait. No worries. Looking back I was remarkably calm about reaching my new life in Oxford. I had no idea what to expect.

In someways, I feel like I've been in the UK forever and in others I feel like I just got here. A lot can happen in 12 months though and its these types of anniversaries in life that make you reflective, nostalgic, introspective and speculative. I'm not sure what will come next, but I'm happy with where I've been.

I've explored the best of British cities (St. Ives, Edinburgh, Bath, London), some of the not so great (Scarborough, Exeter) and some of the quirky (Manchester).

I've learned Cockney Rhyming Slang

I've managed to obtain a British Driving license on the first try despite the amazingly stringent requirements and procedures.

I've traveled to the French Pyrenees, the Amalfi Coast, Madrid, Rome, Brussels, Brugge, Amsterdam, Malaga and Granada.

I've been challenged with new projects, new clients and gone through 3 bosses since I arrived in the UK. Hopefully the current one is going to stick around for a while.

I've made friends with people from England, Ireland, Spain, France, Italy, Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Ukraine, China and Sri Lanka.

I've picked up golfing more regularly to the shock of British men. It's an old man's sport in England. Perhaps one day I'll break 100 and be able to show them girls can keep up with them.

I've learned to whine about the weather alongside the English.

I can decode the English language and learned how to be self-aware of common American snafus such as not saying please and thank you regularly enough.

As a city girl, I've grown to love and appreciate the countryside.

I've passed through passport control more than a dozen times despite my seemingly invisible fingerprints that are required for visa holders. They haven't stopped me yet.

Somehow I think everything I've done leading up to this was meant to land me where I am today. The expat life is a good life.   #no regrets

Football Fodder

It's Euro Cup 2012 month... and that's all anyone is talking about. For 3 weeks, European nations battle it out for Football bragging rights for the next 4 years.

My international friends are all assembling at various pubs to watch their countries play one another and it has led to some heavy banter and constant speculating on what is going to happen next.

All of this football talk goes right over my head of course. At work it has replaced the weather for a safe and neutral subject to talk about in a corporate setting and my eyes glaze over when it comes up....

The BBC touched on this subject this week... I thought it was rather timely and appropriate as I was starting to wonder how much more I can fake interest when clients bring up last night's field goal.

In very British fashion, this piece addresses concern about how rude it might be to talk football in front of non-fans.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18518186

How much football can you talk about to a non-fan?

By Vanessa Barford BBC News Magazine

Millions of England fans are celebrating reaching the Euro 2012 quarter finals, with many wanting to talk about it. But at what point do football conversations become boring, or even rude to a non-fan?

Usually conversations about football are reserved for football fans. The less enthused tend to nod and smile, or subtly zone out, when football comes into bus stop banter or office water cooler chat.
But now England have reached the quarter finals of Euro 2012, football fever is sweeping the nation.
There are thousands of people suddenly engaging in debates about goals, free-kicks and possession.
A YouGov poll in May suggested 56% of the whole population are either "not at all interested" (37%) or "not very interested" (19%) in football.
So for those who can just about tolerate an office sweepstake, but have no interest in banal office football banter, at what point does talking about football become boring, or even rude?
Etiquette expert Simon Fanshawe, who is not a football fan, says he cannot stand the assumption football fans make about how much others understand, or even care, about the sport.

Continue reading the main story

Costa del Sol

For Easter, we get Good Friday as well as Monday off in the UK. So many places to go, so little time. I don't want to waste a single long weekend and so I convinced some work friends to book a last minute trip. We picked Malaga, Spain mainly because of relatively reasonable last minute price (everything was expensive as the whole country takes off) and it's very southern location. We needed to escape the drabby English spring weather.

Now, going to Spain during Easter means one thing - Holy Week Processions. Every city thoughout the country closes down streets and hosts these holy parades. I was excited to see this cultural event but we did hear that it would be crowded. And now I know....

What an experience to get to our rented flat after landing in Malaga.

To understand why this was a problem, you'll need the visual below. What was going on when we arrived into Malaga city center at 7pm:

Holy Week Processions

Location of our apartment below:


Needless to say, actually getting to our apartment meant the taxi dropped us off a mile away and we had to navigate through the parade crowds with our suitcases. At one point we got lost because we couldn't find the bridge he had directed us to cross and discovered 40 minutes later we had already crossed it we just couldn't tell because there was a million people around and all we could focus on was not running over toes with our bags. We had to line up to cross the parade route a few times and it was basically just madness.

I suppose it paid off because in the end, for the entire weekend we had front row seats for watching these processions pass by our apartment. People probably paid big bucks to sit in these grand stands in our particular plaza and we got an all inclusive deal.

Watching the Processions from our apartment

We explored Malaga all while stopping to check out these processions on occasion that would pop up through various spots in the city.

OK I know what you're thinking. Yes, these sights evoked images of the Klu Klux Klan for me too. I knew about these Easter traditions through years of studying Spanish and the culture but seeing it in action was something else. Of course, they had these ceremonial hoods first and that can't be disputed but for an American to be surrounded by it and watching hundreds of people pass in the pointed hooded garb of various colors was a little unsettling. I'm so glad I got to see this once a year cultural event and its an experience I won't forget.

100 men at a time carry these huge statues marching in unison through the streets

The children get involved in processions

 On Saturday, we took a bus to Granada for the day which is a cool city up in the mountains not far from Malaga. The Alhambra is its main attraction, but apparently they sell out the tickets on line for it up to 2 months in advance and only sell a handful of tickets the day of, starting at 8am. We didn't get to go in, but we saw it from the outside after taking some Segways around town for a while.

Segways in Granada

Alhambra in the background

Malaga from up high

  

Beautiful Malaga

Most of the Brits go to Costa del Sol to head to the resorts and sit in the sun for a week but I think they miss the culture in Malaga when they head straight to the beach - it's a beautiful city!