Restless

I've been in London for a little over a month now. In that time I've unpacked, organized, done some work (which you all know means my room got very messy) wrote, cleaned, reorganized, and cleaned again. This list of course does not include the part of my stay in which I've been to class or gone out and done touristy things. But the unpacking and the organizing and the cleaning and so on has bothered me the entire time I have been here; I haven't felt comfortable. I've felt like I'm living in a time-share, where I have to keep the room semi tidy, and cook for myself. The maid comes in and cleans things, but I'm just here for a very extended vacation, and because of that I've been very restless, uncomfortable, and a bit uptight.

Contributing to this general unease is the fact that I really never know what to expect. The sun shines brightly in the morning when it's only 2 degrees C. Food stores don't have the same food week to week, and the cash machines do things I've never seen before. I say words my flat-mates have never heard of, and they say things I don't understand... here I was thinking that England and America speak the same language.

Today though, I found peace. I knew what I was doing, and how I was doing it, and by the time I got home and unloaded all the things I had purchased, I finally felt like I was at home. What pray tell could do this?

ASDA

For those of you who don't know ASDA, is owned by this wonderful little company called... WAL-MART. I finally found a store that had everything I needed. They have clothes, shoes, food for miles, stationary, books, even movies and video games (not that I needed those last three but it was nice to see them there). I was able to get my food shopping out of the way, finally find index cards (I've been looking for a while), and they even had a small restaurant in the front. It wasn't MickyD's but what can you do.

When I got back and unloaded all the food from my back pack, and put my room in order I realized I didn't "need" anything. This past month I've had an ongoing list of things I needed: A backpack, index cards, post cards, paper, so on and so forth. I finally got it all, settled in and relaxed.

Now I just have to do my homework, pass all my classes, see London, and write until my fingers are numb... but those are the easy parts once you've finally made someplace your home.