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I realised that I wrote a lot about daily life when I first moved here, and now I haven't really kept up, so I thought it's time to write another long-ish update/recap.

I left San Francisco about six years ago (it can't possibly be that long, but that's what my passport says) to move to London. I had enough money to live for three months--I had a return ticket, and when I arrived I paid three months' rent, bought a three-month rail card, and bought three months' worth of Internet access at an Internet cafe. All of my leftover money was for food, and the idea was that if I could find a job in three months, I'd stay, and if I couldn't, I'd come home, work as a temp, earn enough for another three months, and do it all over again.

I was dating someone who lived in London, and I had a few friends who I'd met mostly online.

I found work in my second three-month stint. I'm in my third job since then, and I love the company and the people I work for.

It was really tough when I first got here. I had such a severe case of culture shock, and as it turned out neither the boyfriend or the friends should really have been people I considered "friends." Most of the things I wrote about them here were really desperate whistling in the dark. When they did or said something unkind, I'd force myself to put it down to not understanding the culture, and this made me feel more and more a fish out of water.

I used to think it was a bit sad that people would move here from other countries and then stay with people from "back home." I thought that if you moved here, integrating into the new culture was the whole point, and that if I spent time around Americans, then I really wouldn't learn what it was to be English.

As it turns out, I think it depends on who you know when you come here. It's really the luck of the draw. I would probably have been much better off if I'd spent some time with some Americans who knew what I was experiencing, and who would talk me through things like how to figure out the bus system without treating me as an ignorant and ugly American.

Eventually, I met some really good people who gave me back a sense of normalcy. Glen, for example, was a really good friend. We would go on drives and he would explain the road signs when I asked, and ask about how they differed from American ones. When I told him that since I'd moved here I'd wanted to try chips in a paper cone, he insisted on not only taking me to a chippy to get said chips, but also on running through the full gamut of "high-class" English cuisine. With Glen I had my first kebab, my first Cornish pasty, my first sausage roll, and oh, so many other things. In return, I made him try sushi, twinkies, and aerosol cheese.

I think the best part was that Glen was married, and happily so, and there was never a moment of flirtation during all of this. He was just, plain, being a good friend.

Saika was also wonderful. There was this moment when everything fell apart at once. I decided to walk away from the last of the unkind people I first knew, and at the same time I slipped two disks in my back and spent about six months basically unable to walk. My flatmate asked me to move out, as he was going to sell the flat. So there I was, nearly friendless, in constant pain, having to figure out where and how to move.

Saika was just THERE. She took me to lunch on days when I was feeling like a complete basket case. She was always just a kind and steady friend.

Mike, who is now my boyfriend, was the same way. "Just" a friend at the time, but a real one. When he thought I was acting like I was losing it, he talked to me kindly about it--I just know so many people who would have simply gotten together behind my back and gossiped about it instead.

I feel so incredibly fortunate. I've come out now on the other side of one of the most difficult times of my life, to find myself in one of the best. I have a wonderful job, a wonderful boyfriend, two cheeky rabbits, three ferrets, and a house in a little farm town just outside of London.

Witham is a nice little town. It's been inhabited for ages and ages. The place used to be owned by the Templars, and just a few miles down the road in Cressing are The Cressing Temple Barns, which were built by the Templars and are still standing. It's all very Da Vinci Code.

I used to hate the idea of living in a small town, but I'm actually enjoying it. I think that this is because living in a small town just outside of a huge city is very different from living in a small town in the middle of nowhere. A large number of people here work in London (including Mike). Living here has all of the benefits of living in the suburbs, without the annoying Stepford Wife-ness of it all. (Although I am sure Witham has its share of Stepford Wives, although, come to think of it, Essex Girls are more likely). But there are some charming farm town aspects to it as well. There's something really nice about going across the street and giving the little old lady who lives there a basket of apples from off of the trees and spending a few minutes talking to her about her roses.

Getting my mobility back is a slow and steady process. I've gone from not really being able to stand let alone walk across the room, to just being kind of like a normal person who's really out of shape. I'm still working on that--the temptation is to just BE out of shape and sit on the couch most of the time.

So there we are. That's the long recap, and I am determined to start writing more so that I won't need a long post in the future.