Our First Week Living in London

Our first official week living in London has been completely hectic but I will warn you that this won't be the most exciting blog post as we haven't done much exciting!

We arrived at Stansted airport in the afternoon on the 26th of August and after a long wait at customs and a long (and expensive) bus ride we arrived at our new flat!

Welcome to sunny London!

We were welcomed by one of our flatmates, a Spanish guy who has lived in London for about 5 years - the house was a bit of a mess but at least our room was empty. After a long time spent cleaning I spent the afternoon/evening unpacking! It is such a nice feeling to unpack everything you have been carrying around for 4 months!

We did find time for a sneaky pub dinner (too lazy to cook) at a British pub about 10 mins down the road called the White Hart, which served a combinations of Thai (yep) and British pub food.

As it turns out we are living right in the middle of Jack the Ripper Territory and Jack the Ripper himself  murdered a girl here and left her in the back of the pub! Charming!

The area we are living in is very central, it is in East London, about 15 mins walk from the Thames and right near Shadwell Station (this is easy to google) and also a famous market called Brick Lane Market. We are basically right in the heart of what I like to call 'Little India' - there are Indian and Turkish restaurants and shops everywhere - the up side of this being that every time we walk out the door the smell of amazing curry greets us and also there are plenty of cheap and 24 hour stores =) 

We have pretty much everything we need within very close walking distance - buses to everywhere, the Tube and Overground, 24 hour shops, ATM, supermarkets, every take away you can imagine and even a 24 hour Maccas! 

If we walk around 15 mins from our house there is a giant supermarket and plenty of cool little eateries and English pubs! Pretty sure they are all on our list of places to visit. I also joined a Fitness First that is about a 15 min walk from our house.

The bottom two pictures are (on the left) of the little backyard area for our apartment block (I am yet to see anyone use this but it looks nice) and (on the right) is the view from our bedroom window - luckily both these photos were taken when the sun was our for a brief period of time!

Our house itself is really fun, we have 4 room mates: an Italian guy, a Spanish guy, a Columbian girl and a British/Italian girl - they are all around our age and working/studying, everyone has very different schedules so we are never really home all at once but everyone has been super friendly and welcoming!

We are pretty lucky because unlike many apartments in London we have a lounge room (above), just with the basics, two couches and a dining table. With 6 of us living in the one house someone always has their washing out to dry so it gets pretty crowded but there is still enough room to chill!

These photos are also of the lounge room (top two), including our little roomie dinner we had one night (with those of us who were actually home). The bottom two photos are of the kitchen - yes that is a washing machine in the kitchen because laundry rooms are nearly unheard of in central London because nobody has any space! Please excuse the full bin etc., it's hard to get a super clean photo of a house that's being lived in!

Finally, our bedroom, we have the biggest in the house, it's still not huge but it has huge wardrobes with plenty of storage space! Almost straight after we arrived we headed to Primark to buy some new sheets, towels etc so these are brand new! We also have a desk (which at the moment is covered with stuff I have bought in preparation for my teaching job) and a comfy chair.

I also bought this cool poster off eBay for our room - it's a scratchie world map and you scratch off the countries you have visited, we traveled for 4 months and barely scratched the surface!

For those of you who don't know I have a full time teaching contract until Christmas at a school called Hadley Oasis Academy in Enfield. It's a pretty easy commute for me, I can walk to Liverpool Street Station in about 15-20 minutes (or catch a bus from outside our house if I'm lazy or it's pouring rain) and from there it's an 18 minute train ride to Ponders End (from this station it's literally 100m to my school). My first day is on Thursday the 4th so I will make sure I get an update up at some point (or when I have time to breathe).

I visited my school one day this week and took this cute little picture on my walk to Liverpool Street Station (which still excites me because it's on the Monopoly board).

In between boring things like changing our addresses at the bank and organising phone contracts we have had some time to wander around our local area. Like I said above, our immediate area is mostly ethnic foods and people (which I can't wait to eat but I think I need a break after eating Turkish food for three weeks straight) but walk a tiny bit further and there are heaps of funky, alternative but also quite modern cafes, bars, restaurants and pubs. The top two photos are of a cool little cafe Michael and I visited in Whitechapel (about 10 min walk from home) called Fox and Ginger - I got the most amazing brocolli and pumpkin sandwhich (sounds weird but it was amazing). 

The bottom pics (left) is of a nearby British Pub (lots of them have these pretty cool flowery decorations) and on the right is a photo of the street that runs by our building.

Sorry for the not too exciting update - hopefully once we are all settled in and both start work (yes, Michael has a freelance job but I will let him tell friends and family the details) we will be able to get out and about more and have some fun in beautiful, crazy London!