Sunday, lazy Sunday

I can’t believe how fast this week flew by. It was my second week at my internship and I still really enjoy it there. Especially this Friday, because I got to work from home. I woke up early so I could finish my work as fast as possible. Around 3pm I thought I deserved my weekend and I took the tube to central London. I found this great bookshop that sells secondhand books. An hour later, I walked outside with four books that I had bought for only 14 pounds. I picked up a coffee at Costa and went to Trafalgar to sit on the steps, read one of my books and drink my coffee. This was a moment of pure happiness. Also because I still had the whole weekend to look forward to!

On Friday night, I combined the best of everything: going to the local pub with my lovely housemate Laura and my fellow interns at Netberg to watch the rugby match. This night ended with all of us in Camden, drinking more than we should have. But hey, we’re working people now and we deserve to celebrate the weekend!

On Saturday Laura dragged Lauren and myself out of bed and forced us to get ready and face the day. After a stop at Costa to get some food and coffee, we could function properly again. It was a lovely sunny day, and I met Kirsten in Hyde Park to go for a walk. I hadn’t been in a park at all since coming to London and I really missed a bit of nature. In Swansea, it took me 10 minutes to get to the beach, and just one or two minutes to get to wonderful Singleton Park. But London also has amazing parks and they are only a few tube stops away. After walking around for hours and stopping for tea and hot chocolate, Kirsten and I went home. A few inappropriate conversations in Dutch in the tube later, we finally got back to Mile End. We both went home, desperately in need of some sleep. Saturday night was again a lying-in-the-big-bed-and-watch-a-movie with Laura and Lauren, lovely!

This Sunday was an amazing lazy Sunday, and I am really surprised that I managed to write a pretty long Sunday Story on this lazy afternoon.

That said, I have to go now and get back to having a lazy Sunday night.

Love,

Yolanda

The life of a working Londoner.

Wow, this was my first "real" week in London. After settling in last weekend, I had my first days at my internship. The week went by so quickly so it's safe to say that I already really enjoy working there! We have a small, young, international team and everyone brings something different to the table. I've also been enjoying me nights off, eating with friends and going to the pub with my housemates or colleagues.

Working throughout the week really made me appreciate the weekend. In Swansea, my weekend already started on Wednesday afternoon, after my last class of the week. Of course that was nice, because I could do whatever I wanted for four whole days. But after a while, that got kind of boring too. This Friday morning, I was walking to the tube station to get to work and I was so excited because the weekend was almost there!

And what a great weekend it was! After enjoying not having my alarm clock wake me up in the morning, I went to Paddington to pick up Rachel, who was visiting me from Swansea. The trains were a disaster because of the rough weather in England but she made it to London and we managed to find each other. After dropping her stuff off at my house, we took the tube to Bank and walked over to London Bridge and I showed Rachel the neighbourhood that I work in. Then we went to the Sheaf and did what we do best: having a pub dinner with a few pints and talk, talk and talk.
After a few hours in the pub, we went outside and the weather had improved massively. The wind wasn't as crazy as before anymore and the rain had stopped. So we decided to have a little evening walk along the River.

Today we had a nice slow Sunday morning and then we went to Brick Lane with my two lovely housemates Lauren & Laura. We did some shopping and then we enjoyed the best thing about Brick Lane: food food food. We had some Dutch poffertjes, and they were pretty amazing. After that, we all had a great international dish from the food market for lunch. Then it was time to take Rachel back to Paddington. It was so nice to have her in London with me for a bit, but it also made me miss Swansea more.
I went back to central London to meet Lauren & Laura for coffee. The coffee was supposed to give me more energy, but instead in got really tired suddenly. So I went back home and had an amazing bath. (So so happy that I live in a house with a bathtub again!)

I’m now in my massive and soft bathrobe, preparing for another working week in London. This week will be very excited again, because tomorrow the beta version of Netberg will launch! Besides that, I have some lovely nights planned with friends in London and, again, visitors from Swansea!

Have a lovely week everyone.

Love,
Yolanda

LONDON BABY!

First of all, sorry about the delay. Except for spending most of time enjoying London and decorating my new room, I actually have a good excuse for posting my Sunday Story as a Monday Story again. It’s because we didn’t have internet in our house until tonight.

What a difference a week makes… Exactly one week ago was my last night in Holland before my big London adventure. And tonight, I’m already settled in in my new room, have met some amazing people, and started my internship!

So first things first: finding a room. This was not easy to be honest. Especially because of the tube strike that was happening a few days last week. It was almost impossible to get anywhere in London. On Thursday night, I decided to just try to get to East London because I had found an agency that was letting rooms in East London. So with a lot of optimism I started my journey from Greenford, where I was staying with my friend Carly, to the agency in Langdon Park. Two hours later, I finally arrived there. Like my friend Rachel said on Skype that day: you definitely don’t live in Swansea anymore.

But it was worth all the trouble, because that night I viewed a room, and decided to take it! I could move in on Friday already, so it all went very quickly. By that time I had no idea who my flatmates were gonna be, as it was a new property for the agency.

So when I was unpacking my suitcase and I heard someone at the door, I was quite nervous. I was afraid that there was gonna be a middle aged, scary man coming through the door and saying: Hi there, I’m your new housemate!

Fortunately, that didn’t happen! A really friendly girl my age walked through the door and clearly really relieved that I wasn’t a middle aged, scary man either. (See Lauren, I named you in my blog!)

For the last few days Lauren (who is from Luxemburg and is also doing a internship in London) and I hung out a lot and we’re both so excited to live in this nice house together. A day later, we met our other housemate which is a British guy, somewhere in his twenties. Tonight, our last flatmate moved in. She is our age, from Germany, and is also doing an internship. I’m very excited about my new home! My room is really nice and cozy, but because of these girls, I really think it could be a really fun new home.

And then the reason that I came to London in the first place: my internship at Netberg!

Today was my first day, and it was pretty amazing! We work with a really small team. It is basically just the co-founders and the interns. It’s a young, fresh, international team just consisting of guys. So this means lot of conversations about football. It is also really nice that we’re all international, young people who just moved to the city, so we can share experiences.

Even though it was just the first day of the job, and I don’t know exactly what I will be doing yet, I’m really excited about the internship. I think I am going to learn a lot, and will be challenged, which is a good thing.

Now it’s time for bed, as I am a working Londoner now!

Love,

Yolanda 

Double Sunday Story

Last week was the first Sunday since September that I didn’t write a Sunday Story. It was a few days after I had left Swansea, and I was too busy enjoying being home.

These last two weeks were, to be honest, very weird. First of all, I had just a couple of days left in Swansea. I spent those last days packing, walking around Swansea, and enjoying the company of my friends.

On Wednesday night, my lovely housemate Matt cooked me the very British dish Toad in the hole. It took a while before it was done, thanks to our horrible oven, but it tasted great in the end. On Thursday, it was really time to say goodbye. It’s safe to say that a lot of tears were shed that day. That was mostly because I was sad to say goodbye, but also because I felt incredibly blessed that I had such a great time in Swansea.

The first few days home, I really enjoyed being back in Holland. I enjoyed the best shower ever in my moms’ house, speaking Dutch, and seeing my friends and family.

After that it was time for, as we say in Dutch ‘’het zwarte gat’’, which literally means ‘’the black void’’. It was hard being back home, while my friends in Swansea were still there, with each other, without me. It was strange being in Holland, but not being able to move back to my house in Utrecht and start my life again. Fortunately, this passed after a few days, and I started enjoying being home again.

These past few days, I spent most of my time being with friends, and preparing to go to London.

I will leave in two days. I am really excited to go back to the UK, and especially London. The first few days I’ll work very hard to find a room. Hopefully, I will succeed in this so I can move into my own room before my internship starts. You’ll read all about it in my next Sunday Story I guess!

Now it’s time to pack, print out my bus ticket, and other boring stuff. Thankfully I will go ice skating on the temporary skating rink that is build in the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam this afternoon. After that, we plan to eat Dutch ‘’stamppot’’ and drink red wine. Sounds like a good Sunday to me!

See you next week, when I’ll write about my first few days in London.

Love,

Yolanda