sorry for being such a crappy blogger. a lot has happened since my last post. so here’s a summary of life over the last few months:

in september, i went to croatia for a long weekend with betsy, karen, and celia. we flew into pula and stayed in the small town of porec.

it's on the coast, but there aren't really beaches because it's so rocky and steep. nevertheless, the water is an amazing teal color, and the town and surrounding countryside was really charming. we saw a roman amphitheater, the cavern that inspired jules verne to write journey to the center of the earth, and some creepy catholic mummies that betsy forced us to see. despite the mummies, it was a good trip, and i would really recommend it.

at the beginning of october, betsy's household split up, and i went to stay with my coworker, taryn, and her husband, paul. the next day, noelle finally arrived! and that afternoon, we finally found a flat!

searching for a flat was pretty difficult for me. since there are a group of americans that came over at roughly the same time, there were discussions about living with some of them. there was a lot of back and forth, and some unfortunate drama, but it ended up that just noelle and i are living together. the other difficult part of the flat search was the actual finding of a flat. i had my eye on one neighborhood, which is super cool and artsy and has a wonderful farm and flower market, but the 2 flats that i found there fell through. then another flat in bow (where we live) fell through. all fell through for random reasons, and it was really discouraging.

anyway, noelle and i found a flat. in bow, which is in east london. right in between central london and barking, which is where i work. it's pretty residential, but it has a few pubs and stores. and the olympics will be in stratford, which is right around the corner, so it will probably be more developed in a couple of years. the flat is furnished, so all the furniture we had to but was a coffee table and a couple of end tables. we still need to put up some art, but other than that, we're all settled.

in october, a group of us went to bath for a day trip to celebrate my friend joan's birthday. bath is known for the roman baths (duh), and for being a social hot spot that jane austen wrote about. it's really lovely. the baths are beautiful, as is the city, and there are lots of shops. plus, there's a fashion museum! i'm confident that i'm way more excited about that than anyone who will read this blog, so i won't bore you. but i will say that i loved it, and we got to try on corsets and crinolines. let me tell you, it's hard to feel like a lady againonce you're taken off that skirt. (words to live by.)

we had a bunch of americans (and one brit) over to our new flat for thanksgiving, and it was great! we had quite a lot of food, and were able to find ways to make most dishes authentically. there were issues finding greens, and karo for the the pecan pie (we ended up making simple syrup from scratch), but the meal was great, and it was nice to have so many americans together.

a few weeks later, i headed home for a 3 week holiday, which was wonderful and exhausting. now i'm back to work and life in london, and it's officially winter. it's snowing as i type, and has been off and on all week. they say it's the coldest winter here in 30 years. i love snow, but it's an adjustment. i don't like walking on ice, and i'm having to do a lot of that. but i'm glad to be back in the city and back in my routine.

new year's resolution: travel more.