My two sisters and I.

We sat in blow up boats filled with toys, floating in the pool outside our condo in Acapulco, Mexico in the scorching 90-degree weather. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, as usual. As the boats floated we paddled toward the grey cement bridge, the same one we’d taken photos of us three sisters sitting on, or jumping off of, every year for as long as I can remember. Lyndsey the oldest, me in the middle, and the little one, Marina.

The smell of fresh cooking chicken fajitas was unmistakably distinct to Bar Lanai, the restaurant my dad’s good friend Miguel owned that was attached to our condo complex, Torre Blanca. As we got older, we’d lie on the side of the same pool we’d learnt to swim in, sun tanning and still eating the same rich chocolate or coconut ice cream we’d eaten every year. There was a family with three boys the same ages as us 9, 12, and 15.  Luis Carlo was Lyndsey’s first kiss, Jordi was mine, and Mauricio Marina’s, staggered across the following few years. All three, coincidently next to that same pool.

We knew this place as our second home. My parents had been coming here since they were in their twenties and first dating, and since each of us were born we’d spend three weeks there every winter here, my two sisters and I. Nearby were our friends we’d see once a year from nearby cities, Mexico City and Puebla, and just on the side of the pool my mom, dad and grandparents. We’re as close-knit as a family can get, enjoying every second spent together, regardless of where we were, but here on holiday in Acapulco was always our favourite part of the year together.

That’s what I told the first psychologist I ever spoke to, Lynda Chalmers, when she asked me to describe what my life used to be like for my family and I.

I’ll never forget the day I came home from school, May 2007; my dad standing outside our house next to the brand new, shiny black truck. With keys in hand, he was so proud to be giving his little girl her first vehicle; a sturdy SUV, the only kind of car we were ever allowed to drive. That’s what my dad told us.

That was the day my sister, Lyndsey, got a brand new 2002 Jeep Liberty for her graduation present. I was so proud of her. A big sister with a car, big enough to fit me and my younger sister in as well. She couldn’t get much cooler.

After a year of Young Driver’s classes, private lessons and countless day and nights driving with mom and dad, and a sturdy set of all weather tires, the next spring came quickly and Lyndsey was finishing up her first year of university.  It was one of those ‘Professional Days’ where we finished school at noon instead of three, and it was scorching hot outside. Lyndsey had morning environmental studies classes at Trinity Western University in Langley, and as she sometimes would do, came to pick us up from class in Whiterock. I was finishing up grade 10 at Whiterock Christian Academy (WRCA), and Marina was in grade seven at Heritage Christian School just down the road.

She picked up Marina first that day, and brought her to my school. Marina was enrolled for the coming fall at WRCA for her first year of high school. Being a little social butterfly, she’d already made friends with some of her soon-to-be classmates and all of her friends at WRCA came out to say hi to her when I said my sister’s were picking me up that day. They pulled up to get me and I jumped into the back seat. Usually Lyndsey’s friend Melissa was sitting in the front seat to keep her company on the drive home, but not today.

Her friends Cassie, Esther, Taylor, all surrounded the car, as well as the boy she had a crush on, Kai, saying hello to her as she rolled down the window of the passenger seat. She poked her gorgeous head full of long brunette ringlets out, bearing her flawless 12-year-old skin dotted lightly with freckles that always came out as soon as the sun began to shine in springtime. Her captivating bright green and hazel eyes exactly like my mom’s.

–

She was only 12, going on 20. I was 15 and she already had a couple inches on me, was wearing more make-up than me, stealing my skin-tight t-shirts, and just recently had a boy over to watch a movie. Something I had just recently done for my first time alone a few months earlier. My dad had always been quite stern with his rule about boys – we were not to date or have boys over until we were 16. That worked well with Lyndsey, became slightly more lenient with me at 14 having a boy over if other friends were around.

The night before we’d been goofing around upstairs, shaking our bums down the hallway at the top of the stairs, doing the dance to the song, by Latin sensation, ‘King Africa’ and the song, ‘Follow the Leader.” We did this for hours, and not just on this night. That and we’d recently discovered how fun it was to use mom’s video camera to create music videos with my best friend Marika.

–

We headed towards home. Lyndsey had just picked up Ricky Martin’s new album, and it was blasting in the car, we were having the time of our lives, us three sisters. We decided to stop off at the McDonald’s near WRCA, it was a small express one and for some reason that day they weren’t serving McChicken burgers, our favourite. We decided to drive down the road towards the highway we take to get home and stop at the MacDonald’s there. It was closed for renovations, so we mutually decided to go back to Ladner and get Boston Pizza for lunch. We’d been there enough times after our swim practices or before swim meets too basically call it our swim season dinner table.

–

Marina and I would always order the rainbow tortellini, and made a game out of it. If we ate a red one we had to put on an angry face and a green one and we had to put on a sad face. We always saved at least one happy white piece for last, so we could go home smiling. Since each of us was six years old, we’d swam competitively for the local swim team. Countless weekday summer mornings were spent at the Ladner Outdoor Pool at practice. Every weekend, with few exceptions, were spent getting up at 5 a.m., heading somewhere in the Lower Mainland for a swim meet. Lyndsey would always be on time for her warm-up at 6 a.m. sharp, she was an “A” category swimmer – basically she was the one of the three of us who made it past the regional level. Marina and I, on the other hand would arrive at the pool, run for the team tent quickly set up our sleeping bags, pile our bags somewhere on the other end of the 100-person tent so our parents would assume we went to warm-ups, run back and get inside to the bottom of our sleeping bags, heads covered. We’d stay there for over an hour sometimes, giggling back and fourth at our sneaky success until our coaches told our parents we hadn’t actually gone.

–

With plans for lunch at our favourite restaurant, some Latin music and a half-day off school, nothing in the world could make us happier. We were dancing in our seats to the new track as the car began to sway from side to side, gently at first. I didn’t think anything of it. I thought my sister was sort of swaying the car to the beat of the music. Quickly, it started swaying more than it should have been. Marina shouted at Lyndsey to, ’stop swaying the car,’ and that, ‘it wasn’t funny.’ I said back to her, “Oh its okay Marina we’re just having fun.”

Lyndsey just kept saying, “It’s not me doing it, it’s the car.”

I remember the sound the road made as we were driving over the Serpentine Bridge and the change in the sound as we came off it. The road rumbled. According to a news report in The Delta Optimist, we were travelling northbound on Highway 99 just east of the Delta border, on our way home to Ladner, where we’d grown up.

At this point the car was literally crossing over from one lane to the other, and back again, with quick jolts. At that moment I knew Lyndsey wasn’t joking around. Marina and I screamed at her to stop. Lyndsey just kept shouting back she couldn’t help it, that she wasn’t doing it. Within seconds we swerved right off the highway, through a wire fence and rolled, at least seven times landing on its roof into a farmer’s field.

I remember with each roll, thinking I was going to die. With each roll we were hitting the ground harder and the roof was caving in closer to my head. Suddenly, everything was silent – the rolling, and the screaming stopped.

Trying to get grips on what had just happened I realized I was upside down and hunched over. I unbuckled my seatbelt and yelled to my sisters, everything felt numb. I couldn’t see either of them from inside the mangled truck.  My knees were pouring out blood; I punched down the partially shattered glass window to exit the truck.

I got out quickly, all I was thinking about was where my sisters were. I screamed for them when I got out, crawling through the famers field filled with reeds well above my height. As I walked around to the other side I saw Lyndsey, her hands covered in blood. I didn’t know where it had come from. I looked down and saw Marina on the ground, unconscious. Her body had been flung out of the sunroof of the car and her arm somehow through the passenger window and out the sunroof. The entire weight of the Jeep was on her upper body and a yellowish fluid and blood were pouring out of her ears.

Lyndsey and I tried to lift the Jeep off of her. But with all our adrenaline and strength combined, it wasn’t about budge. Lyndsey checked her pulse and told me she didn’t feel one. I didn’t know what to do. My only instinct at that moment was to just run, I had no idea where I was going but I had to run. I ran through the tall reeds in the direction that the truck had rolled off the highway, where they had been flattened down, I could only slightly see what was ahead of me. My knees buckled underneath me and I fell to the ground.

The next thing I remember is a blonde woman running over the hill off the highway and asking me if I was okay, saying she had called and ambulance and asking me my home phone number saying she was going to call my mom. Soon after that she handed me the phone with my frantic mom asking if we were all okay. I wanted to say we were all fine, but I couldn’t lie. I told her Marina was not okay, that she was stuck under the Jeep and unconscious but that I thought she should be okay. The lady asked me to walk with her back towards my sisters and the truck. Lyndsey is a certified lifeguard. She was doing CPR on Marina as the firemen arrived and took over for her.

They pulled Lyndsey and I away from Marina. A husky brunette paramedic put us into the back of an ambulance. She had serious eyes as she sat us down and tried to remove some of the broken glass from Lyndsey’s wrists and my knee. She checked our reflexes and told us everything was going to be okay. We continuously asked if Marina was going to be okay. She assured us she was in the best hands and was already on her way to Royal Columbian Hospital to see the doctors and that we were being taken to the nearest hospital, Surrey Memorial, to get checked out.

We sat in the back of the ambulance holding each other’s hands. “She’s going to be okay right Alicia? I think God is telling me that she’s okay.” I didn’t know what to say, she didn’t look okay to me when I saw her but I said, “Yeah, he told me the same thing Lynds, she’s okay I just know it.”

We’d spent nearly every Sunday of our lives at church, and had been brought up in a home with Christian morals. So, our first instinct was to look to God for an answer – he’d make sure she was okay. My faith changed that day.

The next thing I remember Lyndsey and I were in a small room with white walls sitting on a couch wrapped up in blankets sitting next to her boyfriend Chris and his best friend Mike. They just kept telling us, like everyone else had been, that everything was going to be fine. In our state of shock, they even managed to make us laugh a little, momentarily forgetting where we were and what was happening. But not for more than 10 seconds. They took us into hospital room again and cleaned out our cuts and made sure there was no more shattered glass under our skin.

We waited in that white room with couches for what seemed like days. We spoke to my mom and dad only once, still unsure of Marina’s condition. Finally my dad’s best friend Dave came to pick the four of us up. The doctors said we were going Royal Columbian Hospital to see Marina and my parents. He just stared forward and wouldn’t even look us in the eye when we asked how Marina was. “Everything is going to be okay guys.” At the same time, I saw a tear stream down his cheek. That’s when I knew nothing was okay.

At Royal Columbian, my grandparents who had landed from a trip home to Scotland just hours earlier, my three aunts and uncles, my dad’s partners and co-workers were all standing outside the entrance waiting for us.

As soon as I saw our Pastor Dave standing there I collapsed into Mike’s arms. I couldn’t see my parents anywhere, I couldn’t see Marina anywhere. I knew it everyone was lying to me about her being okay, I knew right from the minute I crawled out of the window and heard nothing but silence as she lie there with her entire arm placed under the truck. But this was like a giant slap in the face of the reality of what had just happened in all of our lives.

A doctor came up to me and asked me if I wanted to see my sister. He said that she was in the Intensive Care Unit. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my parents sitting in a small room to the left of the entry into ICU.

I had only once seen my father cry, when he lost his childhood best friend to a heart attack. But there he was, hysterical. My mom saw me from the corner of her eye and the doctor motioned for me to walk towards the small room. “Come in here Alicia,” Pastor Dave said. A nurse put her arm around my shoulder, walked me in and sat me down next to my mom.

She wrapped her arms around me and pushed her wet, mascara stained face right into mine, kissing my forehead. “Are you okay my baby?” she asked. I just nodded. Silence filled the room for what seemed like eternity.” Marina didn’t make it Rae.”

Those words didn’t make sense. Didn’t make it? What did that even mean?

I don’t remember much after that moment, except arriving home to my house filled with every important person in our family’s life. The smell of hundreds of flowers that were placed outside on top of the hot tub and long glass table in front of it. The smell was so pungent I could smell it throughout the house. Everyone I knew was there, it seemed.

I waited at the bottom of the staircase for Marina’s best friend Jessica; I wanted to be the first one to see her and hold onto her.

–

They were quite the pair Marina and Jess, little terrors to be honest, in the most comical way possible. They’d been best friends since they were born; Lyndsey’s best friend was her older sister Katie, my best friend, her brother Robbie. The six of us spent countless days together.

Their most recent favourite thing to do was to pop two bags of extra butter popcorn, dump a whole bottle of Kernels dill pickle flavouring on top of it, go into our small den/TV room, put on the movie ‘The Grudge” and shut the door. The room would smell like dill for days afterwards. The two were inseparable.

–

She collapsed at the bottom of my stairs when we saw each other. Had she really just lost her life-long best friend? Was my little sister really just, gone?

I don’t remember falling asleep that night, or the rest of that summer. I have a scattered recollection seeing old friends; having all kinds of people drop off home-cooked meals I don’t remember eating.

The next thing I do remember though, was sitting in the sports medicine doctor’s office telling this exact story to the physiotherapist, Diane, as she gave me some treatments on the knee I was having trouble walking on, painting the stage set for the theatre production at my school, and having constant visitors and spending all my time scanning and creating a slideshow of thousands of photos of Marina.

That and the principal of Heritage Christian coming over to our house. He brought over something incredible to show us. Marina had written one of those governmental exams essays the morning of the accident. The topic was, “If you could only choose one of the five senses to have, what would it be?”

This was her response on May 28^th, 2003 at 11:00 a.m.

“For my favorite sense I choose sight.

“I chose sight so that I can see all the things God created.

So that I can see me friends laugh, so I can see my family smile, so I will

be able to see my animals grow. To be able to see the leaves change, so I

will be able to watch the snow falling down on the ground. I may not be

able to feel it, but I will be able to see all the different colours around me,

on the houses, trees, people, animals, all the important things in life. Some people don’t

believe in God without seeing him, they may not really believe.

So to be able to see God, what a privilege. Most people don’t really ever get to

see God, but we always rely on him even if we don’t actually “see” him.

So to end this paragraph I choose sight for my favorite sense, because God shows me

things and that is very important.”

 

A funeral had to be planned, and a viewing of her body had to be done.

The smell inside the funeral home was pungent of flowers, once again. As we walked in, a tall dark-haired male usher lead us toward a room with a coffee table with a vase of flowers, two boxes of tissues and a large casket at the back end of the room. All the immediate family was there; we walked in to the room in small groups. My sister went in first, she screamed and collapsed onto the floor. I walked in silently, and slowly made my way to the back of the room. I was so scared to see her, I’d never seen a dead body before, and there I was walking towards my little sister’s.

Her face was pale, almost pure white and her freckles seemed to have faded away. The bruises were covered with make-up and her cheeks and forehead were all swollen, the shape of her face was deformed. Some parts were sunken in. She had a small cut on her forehead with stitches through it. Her eyes were closed.

Lyndsey and I had put at-home blonde streaks in her hair just a few days before, she hated them. We’d promised to fix them that week, but they were still there, tainting her long, perfect, brunette ringlets.

It wasn’t Marina, it didn’t look like her.

The way her face looked that day will be forever engrained in my memory. For weeks after that I couldn’t remember what her living face looked like, unless I stared at a photo. I had nightmares of her swollen deformed face coming to the front door, or sitting on the end of my bed, countless times.

At her funeral I read a poem. My sister fell over on the stage trying to speak about her, Chris; sitting in the front row ran up and caught her. My parents read her eulogy. A family friend sang and danced and they played my slideshow on a big projector screen. After the service everyone went outside. Her favourite colour was pink. Just the colour of her bright pink and bubble gum blue bedroom. There were over 1000 pink helium balloons, each person took a permanent marker, wrote a note to her on the balloon and we all let them off into the sky together – maybe she’d get our messages.

For the next six years I dealt with lawyers, psychiatrists, psychologists, councillors telling me I was severely depressed and needed to go on medication. My sister just died right in front of my eyes and they were trying to tell me to take some pills to make me feel better? That was not the answer, and I knew that and my Dad made sure I also knew that. I wasn’t going to become addicted to and reliant on something like that, even at 15 I knew that wasn’t what I needed.

My family was, and is, stronger than titanium. The bond we had, our whole lives, is what has kept us together and allowed us, essentially, to survive.

My dad has lived his entire life to provide and take care of his family. Not in the usual way that a father looks after his wife and children. He eats, sleeps and breaths to do anything for us and make sure that we are okay.

While our friends were allowed to walk home from school or to the 7-11 on the corner, my dad would give us a ride. Instead of a school bus or carpool, my mom and dad were the ones to drive us and pick us up from class. He took every precaution to make sure we were safe at all hours of the day.

It goes without saying, that our lives have become completely altered. I always said to myself though, that I was going to be strong. Not only for myself, but also for my family. I think we each told ourselves that, and stuck to it. I can look back today and say it has made me into the strongest woman I could have ever become, and that my outlook on life is endlessly positive. I live it with not a single regret. I know that I’d rather get hurt doing something, than to not take a risk and do it at all because in the end, nothing could possibly hurt more than what I’ve already lost in my lifetime.

There’s always going to be the thought, “what if?” What if the first McDonalds wasn’t closed for renovations, or we had gone into the express McDonalds and grabbed lunch even though they didn’t have exactly what we wanted?

But still, at this point in my life, I can say I am the luckiest woman in the world to have lived the life I have so far, and I’m just 23. I’ve gone through and done more than most people do in an entire lifetime and I can thank my sister for that. She’s given me the confidence and strength to go forth and live this life like I’m unstoppable.

Don’t get me wrong, there are days I falter and think that life simply couldn’t get any worse. The day I saw Jessica walk down the red carpet at her graduation, so tall, grown-up and gorgeous, ready to take on the world, thinking my own little sister should have been there walking right beside her.

Although it’s been nearly eight years, I still find it the toughest to answer the question, “How many siblings do you have?” to the new people that come into my life.

“Well, I had two… but now I have one,” I usually manage to say. I feel this horrible feeling inside me that I don’t want to upset the person I’m saying this to, but I also know I’ll never just be able to say, I have one sister. “I lost my little sister Marina in a car accident quite a few years ago, so now it’s just me and my older sister, Lyndsey.”

Lyndsey got married to a wonderful man last summer and just recently gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, Berkeley Robert Walter. Sometimes, I catch a glimpse of his big eyes, with his head tilted in a certain way and I see Marina, exactly as she was when she was a little girl. Other times, I see my Grandfather, Robert, who recently passed away. I think it’s just incredible how although she’s not physically here with us, her life will carry on through the generations.

She’s still with me though, every step of the way, I still feel blessed, every single day, to have had 12 amazing years with such a strong, brave little soul, who would never want me to slow down and dwell on the past, only look forward to the future – so that’s exactly what I’ll do.

My two sisters and I.

 

 

 

Settling in with chemicals and unwanted house guests.

In the news this week was a dreadful photograph of a mouse baked into loaf of bread, part of which had unfortunately been fed by a father, Stephen Frose of Kidlinton, Oxfordshire, to his children.

A mouse wandering about the house is not a conventional topic you’d hear about in any Western Canadian household (let alone one of them being baked into your breakfast) yet at my a four-floored, seven-bedroom and slightly unkempt house in Waterloo, nobody is fazed in the slightest when I frantically mention that I must have just seen a mouse run across the kitchen floor.

“His name is Jerry, it’s not a rat, it’s fine. Every terraced house in London has mice, he’s adorable.”

Jerry? Adorable? Not the response I was hoping for. Any home with a rodent is a dirty, filthy place that needs an exterminator, immediately.

It should have been expected, though. My first few hours in London were spent playing Cinderella, on my hands and knees, bleaching the floors and vacuuming dust bunnies the size of golf balls off the dirt-scuffed  hardwood of my new bedroom.
The photos were extraordinarily misleading.

Waking up to tiny black piles in my kitchen was enough to make me cringe and tip toe, with a bucket of bleach, splashing it into every corner. When I came home last night soaked in rain, wanting nothing more than to be in my cozy bed, I was about to open my door when Jerry, skittered across my foot.

This had now gone beyond humane living conditions.
My piercing and angry scream woke up the six people in my house who came bounding from their rooms.  At that moment, I was moving out of the house.
Setting up poison around the house is beyond me, but I didn’t fall asleep that night until my house was like a war zone, filled with rodent landmines and booby-traps, packed with bits of my own M&S extra creamy brie for him to feast on.
When morning came, my unwanted houseguest was lying on his back, dead in the basement kitchen.  But as they say, in London you don’t get a mouse, you get mice. I will be double-checking every morning before I make my cheese on toast.
My image of what I thought London was didn’t include mice, bleach and poison. In a dingy café on the Lower Marsh, thinking of a word to describe this city today myself, I realize the word I was looking for.

“London,” I overheard the man next to me say, much more laconically than I could have. “It’s schizophrenic.”

What London is.

One of my units asks for 150 word descriptive pieces of different parts of London each week. First one, Brick Lane:

When I hear Brick Lane, I get a strong feeling of nostalgia. My first night in London, 2006, was at a gig in 93 Feet East. That night has since become the root of my inspiration to come to be here in London.

On a side alley of Brick Lane, people are barbecuing burgers and having drinks outside. Inside there is a full café and bar, with fresh fruit, cakes and coffees. Up the steps of Café 1001 is a large, charismatic room with a grungy East London, but comfortable feel. It’s filled with slouchy mix-matched sofas, coffee tables and scattered tea lights. Soft ambient house music is playing. To my left is a man working on his laptop with a coffee. Nearby, a group of young guys drinking vodka from plastic cups and couple having wine while flipping through one of the old books they grabbed from the venue’s ‘book orphanage’ where people can come and take a book, or leave one behind.

Here I know I will get a lot of quality writing done. In a place filled with so many kinds of people, doing so many different things, I feel inspired to write and photograph what makes life in London.

On understanding British culture and learning to appreciate my mom.

England, Canada we speak the same language so we must be the same kind of people right? Wrong. News flash… Canadians are the most welcoming and friendly people in the world, the British, I hate to say this, are not. Now don’t get me wrong because I have met some absolutely lovely people since being here. Amy and her family have been fabulous, my housemates have turned out to be the most down to earth people I’ve met since being here and the best I could have found. The girls I met the other night in Epsom, after speaking to them on Facebook for a few months (one of who studied at UBC for three years) welcomed me into their flat, took me out with them and let me stay the night. So I don’t really mean in terms of things like that…

I love Mondays - First night of freshers at UCA Epsom

What I do mean is, if they don’t have some kind of personal or family connection to you, they really can’t be bothered to have anything to do with you. You go to a bar or restaurant in a social setting in Vancouver alone and 10 people come you and speak to you. You walk into a class as an exchange student and you are smothered with hellos and introductions. You walk past a group of girls on the streets and they smile at you, not sneer. That is just not the norm here. I’m not saying Canadians are better people, just surprisingly a very different culture than the British – a fact I never thought I’d learn!

Another thing I’ve learned since being here is to truly appreciate my Mom. I honestly didn’t realize how much work goes into keeping a house filled with people in some kind of order. I guess I sort of knew but definitely not the the extent I now know what its like living on my own and having to do all these things for myself: a shitload of laundry, cleaning the bathroom, washing towels, tea towels, bath mats, vacuuming nearly everyday, cleaning the stove, cleaning up after you cook, dusting, washing dishes (with no dishwasher… not cool) washing other people’s dishes… ugh. I guess basically all the things that normal people do to take care of themselves? I now realize how much of a brat I’ve been the last, nearly,  23 years of my life. So Mom, thanks for all the years you put up with me not doing any of these things, I promise you when I get home that I will be a domestic goddess who knows how to do all these things – and not because I wanted to learn – because I was forced to, my so called cleaner hasn’t  showed up since the day I arrived in London over three weeks ago.

Anyhow, I guess I could say I’m settling in here in London, but now I have to repeat this whole settling in thing again in Epsom at uni… I know it’s all part of moving to a new city, new people, new places, new everything… but I could really go for something/someone familiar right now. So um, any of you feel like taking a trip across the pond to London please do so – I bought two new duck feather pillows from John Lewis last night that are now on my bed, and a couch and pull out bed downstairs.

lunchtime.

x.

My first two weeks in… paradise?

I started writing this on the tube on the way home from drinks with some friends in Camden, and got distracted by two bottles of wine with my housemates when I got home. So this starts off last night, and finishes off this afternoon as I am still lying in bed…

So today I realize I’m finally feeling at home when I can step onto the tube without being in a frantic panic, making sure my bag is locked shut, without a fan in one hand, oyster card in the other, checking every five seconds to make sure my iPhone is still there … Instead I’m pushing people out of the way, iPod turned on for the first time while on the train, and I’m not even looking at a tube map. So I think it’s safe to say that I’m feeling at home. Tomorrow I’ll stop living like I’m on vacation and well, more like I’m in somewhat of reality.

I think if I would have written a post during my first week spent in London I would have had, minimum two family members/friends catching red eye flights to come to my rescue. Instead I decided to hold off and wait till things settled down a bit and to give my place a chance before making any decisions! But to look back at what’s gone on in my past 2.5 weeks here… it’s actually quite funny now.

So, Tuesday August 24th I arrived to Heathrow airport at just after 10 a.m. on the most amazing flight of my life… My seat turned into a bed, and came with champagne, halibut and a comforter, enough said. I arrived to the city more than well rested! Amy and her dad were waiting for me, my three massive suitcases and two carry ons, at the gate!

my pod!

dinner!

appetizer!

We had a nice catch up and drive to my new home in central London (what!?!) when we got there it was a gorgeous sunny day with the sun shining brighter than it was when I left Vancouver. After waiting outside my house for like 40 minutes, it started pouring down rain and my landlord finally decided to show up – Mr. Hussain (none of my housemates know his name after living there for a year, think it may be Abu from the mail at the door?) I walked into the place and almost died. Not in the excited kind of good way. I wanted to cry my eyes out right then and there, possibly run away as fast as possible and pretend it wasn’t actually happening. The house was an absolute disaster, looked like there were a bunch of squatters living in it and that nobody had been home in weeks. He showed me and Amy around, took me to my room. That was an even better surprise, it was not the double room I’d been told I was moving into. It was a tiny single room with dust bunnies the size of golf balls, mud skids across the floor, broken bamboo blinds, and a desk that was falling apart. The kitchen had about a month’s worth of food built up on the stove and counter tops, the bathroom was equally disgusting. Now for those of you who know me, I am not, by any means, a clean freak, or even a clean person in anyway… but this was just surreal to me. On top of that my rent went up about £60 more a month than I was planning, and I had to put down a £800 deposit (ya insane I KNOW, 800 pounds I was planning on having to spend!) Both these things, with the fact that it was a disaster area was a bit more than I could handle.

I thought when you move into a new house, it should be clean and welcoming you know like with a towel folded at the end of your bed and a chocolate sitting on top and a “WELCOME ALICIA” sign. Okay, only kidding, but I thought it would, at the very least, be ready to move into and live in comfortably. So, me and Amy decided to play molly maid and cleaned the shit out of the room, literally bleached it from top to bottom, vaccumed the mattress, scrubbed the walls, floors, drawers and desk (see below… and I know when you look out the window you’re thinking little brat it’s gorgeous, but it is ALSO what’s on the inside that counts!)

Molly Maid's of London

So that took a good chunk of my first day in London… ending with cut up hands from the broken mop and bleach stains on my new shirt. Amy thought it would be a good idea to get me out of the houseand to go get some bedding for my room, and things to make me feel a bit more at home. I wanted to cry my eyes out the whole time, but I kept it together. We took the train to Kingston and went to where she used to be the manager of the Super Dry (really cool stuff!) then headed to Primark to get some bedroom supplies! After getting some great deals we met up with Sam to get my Reading ticket, which turned into drinks at some cute bar on the river called “haha” with 3 pound cocktails… and believe you me I was in need of more than one at that point…

Later I got home and all my housemates were there (all of who are absolutely amazing!) I was shocked that people actually lived in the house, thank God haha. To make a long story short, they had all been on holiday for three-five weeks, the cleaner had also been on holiday because people need to be here for her to get in, she hadn’t been to clean the house since just before Amy and Raj came to look at it for me. They didn’t know I was coming when I did…

Anyways, I spent that first night extremely… I don’t even know the word. That day I had: arrived in London, moved into my first place alone ever that was more than disappointing a pigsty that reeked of cigarettes, opened a bank account, got a British phone, bleached out my room, decorated my room, went for drinks… and came back. All I wanted to do was go to sleep, so the housemates made Amy a bed downstairs, and I went to sleep in my little bed. I didn’t sleep more than a few minutes that night. I cried for hours, heart racing with anxiety a million miles a minute, too worried to call my family or anyone to tell them what was going on… Because I couldn’t decide if I was actually upset about the house, or if it was just a lot to take in in one day! I did send my dad a text saying that I wish I hadn’t begged him not to come with me and help me find a place and get settled in, like most of my normal friends who had moved to the UK had done… Oops. I mean, I wanted to be independent and do my own thing, because I thought I’d be just fine on my own – I definitely should have considered the fact that I’d never even lived anywhere but my parents home in a tiny suburban town for my entire life. Honestly, thank God I had Amy or there’s a more than likely chance I would have been on the next flight back to Vancouver thinking this was all a big huge mistake.

Living in London is something I’ve wanted to do since I was 15 years old and had my first look at Tower Bridge all lit up at night. I remember turning to Chelsea and saying, I’m going to live here one day and she said the same right back (its actually a total coincidence that shes arriving in 2 weeks to live too!) So that day, there I was, moving into my new home in London, with all these expectations of a gorgeous home with amazing people and in an amazing location, gone… I was actually devastated and felt so stuck because I didn’t have any time to look for another place because I was going to Reading Festival for a week the next day, and had to pay my deposit on the exact day i was returning from Reading… so I really had no choice but to stay there for the month at least… but the £800 deposit with no contract really freaked me out as well.

Anyway, before I have you all worried that I’m living alone in some infested crack shack and write about Reading Festival… Little did I know, two weeks later that same place, once cleaned, is actually was amazing, the people I’m living with are better than I could have ever asked for, and the location well… I can see the London Eye from the end of my street and I get woken up by Big Ben every morning…

One of my housemates is Mark, he’s an a&r scout for Ministry of Sound (most amazing job ever!) and is like the nicest guy ever. Another is an Irish dude, Micheal doing his PHD at LSE (the same school Chelsea is going to!) There is a cute British girl Alex, another British boy Dhillon, a girl from New Zealand, Courtney and an Icelandic guy, Kjartan… and me! Definitely couldn’t have asked for better people to live with, and I’m now excited to be able to call this place my home!

My Home!

View from the end of my street...

comic on living room wall!

Anyway, as for Reading Festival… I think photos speak louder than words in this case, but to add a few words… we drove up with a bunch of amazing Ministry albums that Mark gave us to listen to for the drive up… 12 crates of beer and strongbow, nothing to eat but pot noodle, no cooker, no pot… a tent wellies, socks, some sleeping bags and the most essential: such good pals.

Weezer. Dizzee. Phoenix. Modest Mouse. LCD Soundsystem. Hadouken. Blink 182… Were all awesome!

such good pals.

mud and wellies.

Hello from my new home!

Sorry its taken so long for me to update you guys on life in London, but settling in to the biggest city ever has proven to be much more difficult than planned! Today, two weeks later, I’m finally feeling like I can call where I am home! I’m just waking up so I’ll do a full update later today, but here are a few photos of my new place

August 23, 2010

From August 23rd…

5:39 pm: So I’m sitting on my plane to London. What?! My plane to London that’s not returning home for 6 months! I don’t really feel like it’s real, but at the same time maybe it’s just so natural and meant to be that it feels like this. Here is where I’m meant to be.

9:24 pm: Dude I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fly economy again… This is actually the most amazing thing ever? My seat electronically turned into a bed… At the angle I want it to be! Haha amazing. Had amazing salmon and tossed salad appetizer and cajun halibut with mango salsa… Had to turn down appertifs and ice cream, too full! Watched a super cute movie, plan B night time! X