sambecker.com/blog

Welcome, bienvenu, thanks for stopping by and cheerio! This is a momentous occasion indeed, and for two very good reasons. The first one (obviously) is that this is the very first article posted to the new and wonderfully redesigned sambecker.com—a high watermark for personal web destinations around the globe. It truly sets a high standard and merely cost me backbreaking labor and a reduced diet in order to complete! Please feel free to enjoy the product of my masochism.

The second, possibly more obvious, reason is that this is the first post/log/musing/journal entry that I have produced since I stepped onto the (rhyme alert) royal soil of the UK; just some sailor with nothing but a tube of chapstick to his name (Waiting for Guffman reference). So I’m here now and will share with you tales of my travels, keen observations I have recorded and all of the trials and tribulations I have experienced being an American overseas. In other words: get ready for a ripping good time!

It was the best of times it was the worst of times … So I’ve already found myself an apartment or ‘flat’ (rhymes with ‘cat’) as these crazy British people call them! And what, please do tell me, would a ‘flat’ be, without ‘flatmates?’ Not a whole lot! So here is the lineup:

Me
Mollie
Tom (Mollie’s better half)
Gill (The one and only)
Karen

Our flat, is of the ‘Mews’ (rhymes with Jews) variety, which means that it is like a small house in an alley (we have our own front door!). It’s three stories and includes three bedrooms (three girls in one and Tom and myself have singles—yes!), a kitchen, laundry equipment, a bathroom and a living room for our posh and sexy parties. When I look out my window (into a cavity of rooftops and neighboring buildings) it looks like the set of Peter Pan or Mary Poppins—which, needless to say, makes some of the more routine parts of my day just a hint more dramatic. For the more visually-inclined person, you can see plenty pictures of this and all other parts of the ‘flat,’ by perusing the pictures section of sambecker.com.

Now the important info for all fellow Londoners: our closest tube stop is Baker St. and I simply take the Hammersmith and City line (the pink one) to Ladbroke station to get to class. We’re located in the romantically titled neighborhood of Marylebone, which is just as lovely as it sounds, and are in very close proximity to a grocery store (Waitrose), book store (Daunt’s), pub (Tup’s—10% off on Thursdays for students) and all sorts of cafés and restaurants (including a Starbucks, which I shouldn’t be happy about, but am!). I’ve been running either in Kensington Park (when I was at our hotel) or Regent’s Park (now that I’m settled in). I’m a close walk to Oxford Circus, Bond Street and the zoo. I’m really enjoying the area that I’m living in and the people that I’m living with.

This post is quite simply getting out of control so I’m going to try to wrap it up. Some quick tidbits might include: my roommate (Karen) came into this country with an expired passport and had to spend several days in government facilities and paying for fees in excess of $500 in order to stay in the UK. She finally came home tonight and we are all relieved that she is home, responding to stimuli and does not have bamboo shoots stuck up her fingernails. I know if I was in her position I would have been crying like a little girl the whole time. On a lighter note, we have satellite TV included in our flat and the Simpsons are on every day during dinner time showing between three and four episodes consecutively—which is amazing and I will be going to Oktoberfest at the end of this month will all of the kids in my design program. I fly to Berlin on 9/23 and return on 9/25 and it’s only costing me £53! I sure hope my plane is more than a Volkswagen with wings and they have some type of reasonable security measures in place—oh those Germans!

Anyway, I’ll shut my bloody (darn) gib (mouth) now! I want everyone to know how much I miss them at home and Syracuse, and wish I was back at those places all of the time. It’s fun being abroad, but everything has a cost! I hope things are going great with everybody and that this post reaches them safely. Have a great summer/fall and check back here for more postings!

Love,

The Samma Lamma