We made it a month!

In honor of us making it abroad for one month today, here's 30 pictures for 30 days:

We found some coffee shops.

We went to Hogwarts! (Just kidding, but we did go to King's Cross Station)

We went to a neat bookstore in Marylebone.

Broadway Market on Sundays just around the corner from our place. It's like a farmers' market/ arts festival every week!

We found this pretty Mosque. The picture really doesn't do it justice.

We took a train to Oxford.

We explored Oxford...

... and went to the History of Science Museum.

This is the Ashmolean Museum.

We saw Einstein's Blackboard!

We found out that Oxford is OU too.

We've spent time in the rain...

...and the sunshine.

We took Flat Stanley to Westminster Abbey.

We also saw Big Ben. Jake tried to convince Becca to go on the London eye, but she's not going.

We went to the Hard Rock Cafe after a 45 minute wait to get in. It was worth it for the free refills.

Becca broke two of the glasses in our apartment, which is kind of a bummer because we didn't have very many to begin with :(

We went to Olympic Park in Stratford.

We've been on lots of pubic transportation.

We had a picnic in Hyde Park and saw this horse!

Hyde Park was pretty.

We went to the Natural History Museum in London.

Jake occasionally goes to work at the Google building.

It's hard to tell, but this is a picture of Becca jogging in the park.

Jake finally let Becca cut his hair, and she did a great job!

Sharie (Jake's mom) came to visit!

We had a fun day going to a play at the Globe Theater and seeing the Tower of London.

We climbed the (very narrow) stairs in this clock tower...

...out of the tiny door...

...to the top! We saw our whole section of the city from there

 
On this side of things, living abroad for as long as we can seems a lot less scary. We are learning some things, but so far, not as much as we thought we would. I guess you could say we learned that we know ourselves and each other about as well as we thought we did, and the world isn't too surprising of a place (which we think is a good thing!). 

Of course, we miss our family and friends. Jake misses his work friends and Becca misses working with kids (she can't get a job here or volunteer to work with kids because we didn't get visas). We knew these things would come up --and it doesn't necessarily make them any easier-- but we know we want to be open to where our lives are taking us. Right now, we are grateful to be where we are!

Here's to another month!

Sharie's Visit

Mom stopped by for a whirlwind of a visit. Good times were had by all, and it was definitely great to see her. 

We got a chance to do some fun things with her. On Friday we went and saw a play at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, and then for a completely different experience went to the Tower of London to view both torture devices and the Crown Jewels. Holy crap right? Throw in an aquarium and a pirate ship and we would've just about seen everything there is to see. The day definitely added to the surrealness of my life.

Speaking of my life, Moms visit helped me put into words this feeling I've been trying to peg. For the last month I have to keep reminding myself that this is my life; that I don't need to wake up. My life is currently made up of living in London, working from home, and being married to the best wife ever. It has been feeling like living in a dream. What I figured out when Mom left is this feeling is very similar to the feeling I get when I'm on vacation in some incredible place, but when on vacation that feeling is always coupled with an impending end, it has a definite end and it's quickly approaching. So I have the feeling of life being awesome without the pressure of its brevity.

And it's weird.

Living in Hackney

Today it's back to work after an awesome couple of days getting to know our surroundings. So far everything is better than we expected.

Our place is awesome, the pictures pretty much do it justice, except for a strangely strong smell of carrots coming from the kitchen that I will spend today trying to eradicate. Our view of the park has turned out to be very comforting. We both think that adjusting to life in a big city is as difficult, if not more difficult, than adjusting to another country. We've already had to adjust our mindsets to different modes of transportation and smaller grocery lists. Our cards don't work in most places here (something about not having a chip? Advice on this would be appreciated) so I've found myself counting out change awkwardly and saying, "Sorry, I'm new" a lot. Also, they try to pass off fried ham as bacon here, which is absolutely unacceptable. On another note, fried ham is delicious.

Here's what we've been up to so far (I borrowed pictures from the internet to illustrate our adventures):

Yesterday we saw Lawless (it was really good) at the coolest movie theater I've ever been to. It's a very short walk from our place. We probably won't go see movies as much as we did in OKC because it's a lot more expensive than Tinseltown, but I'm sure we will go back.

We tried out public transportation in London by going to Trafalgar Square on Tuesday. We took the overground, underground, and the National Rail. It was all very successful.

We've been to this bakery every day, it's called E5 Bakehouse. I think it's going to be our place. They've got great coffee and wonderful baked goods, plus it's really neat. It's just around the corner from our place. It's the first place I ventured to on my own and I didn't get lost!

There is a ping pong table in the park! (This is it) We are going to practice our skills before it gets too cold. We've been going for walks around the park a lot and we even ate lunch there yesterday. It's a very nice and happy park.

Hasta luego

Tomorrow Becca and I finally leave the States after a wonderful couple of days spent in Pagosa Springs with my dad.

It feels incredibly strange to leave the country you've called home, even if it is for a comparatively short time. It's really hard to put a finger on what exactly this feeling is. In some ways it feels very much like an ending, the end of a vacation, the close of a chapter, and in an equal number of ways it feels like something incredibly fresh and exciting and terrifying is going on. I asked our fellow long-term traveller Deah about this and she assured me I wasn't crazy (at least, not for feeling like this).

Either way, something is definitely happening. 

Tomorrow we're going to drive from Pagosa Springs to Durango, hop on a flight to Denver, meet Becca's Aunt and cousins for lunch, and make it back to the airport in time for our 8:45 pm departure, to head directly to London. When we arrive there at 12:35 pm on Monday we'll either have to shell out for a Taxi or lug our baggage around on the over-under-all-around-ground. Then, we nap.

To all the friends and family we were able to get together with in the last month, I need to say thank you for putting up with the craziness that has been our life, because we both thoroughly enjoyed the time we got to spend with you. You guys and gals are really hard to leave.

Holidays in Vienna

Since we had some trouble finding our first place to stay, we decided to go ahead and find an apartment where we wanted to be for the holidays. As of today, we will be spending Christmas and New Year's in Vienna, Austria!

Jake and I have both been there before. It's one of our favorite places. Vienna is a special place to our family for lots of reasons, mainly that Jake's brother, Levi, lived there for a while and it's where Levi and Emily got engaged.

Vienna is supposed to be awesome during the Christmas season (partly backed by a Google image search I did for "Christmas in Vienna"). We were in Rome in mid-December last year (yes, we feel very blessed) and we are excited to see if Vienna can top the holiday extravagance. 

 Here are some pictures of our place:

We found a place to stay!

     It has been a slightly frustrating process trying to find a place to live. We thought that if we searched an entire country (actually several countries) for apartments we would have an abundant amount of options to choose from. It turns out, since we were kinda picky, we had about five options. Two of them were actually never avaliable even though they were listed, one was in the middle of nowhere, and one was crazy expensive. We've been waiting on the last and particular favorite option for about a week now, crossing our fingers and checking our email every hour. Yesterday, while we were at the Mustache Bash in OKC, we finally got the confirmation.


     So, finally, our wanderlust is taking us to London! We will be here for three months, then we will move on elsewhere. Here are some pictures:

The living area. It's a studio.

Part of the living area and the "bedroom".

Opposite the living area and bed.

 

Cozy kitchen!

Bathroom with BATHTUB!

View out the window. The apartment is across the street from a park.

The window.

    









   

















           








     The apartment is in a borough in inner London called Hackney. It's not the nicest part of London, but our place is in a safe area next to a community-oriented park. As you can see, our new (short-term) home is super small, but we are excited about being in London.

We're Employed!

Okay, so we may have jumped the gun a little on that last blog post. At that time, our decision to move was only a few hours old, and there were still gaping holes in the prospect of our departure, chief among them being whether or not my company would actually be alright with me working on a different continent (we'd been given informal winks and nods, but nothing official).

Yesterday, however, word is down from on high that no one actually even likes seeing my face around the office, and the farther I am from them the better, in their eyes.

So we proceed from here post haste and mount the next hurdle: where on Earth are we actually going?