Expat Banking

When you move to a new country and try to set up a life there, you encounter a broad range of differences in the way people do things in this new country. For instance, in Britain, everything is harder. Ha! No, it just feels that way sometimes, especially when it comes to banking. Without five [...]

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I Got a Job!

A week and a half ago, I interviewed for a social worker position within the Referral and Assessment team in the Child Protection unit of the south London borough that I had been volunteering with over the past two months. If any of you reading don’t remember, because everyone who hears that I was volunteering [...]

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Place Holder

Boy, it’s been nearly a month since my last post. In that time I have interviewed, dreamed about what I could do with my pay, ridden my bike a lot, flew to another country without my passport, gone to the beach, and gotten a bit of a tan. I also got to hang out with [...]

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The Waiting Game

Still no news on the visa front; I was told that I can check the progress of my visa through the system, when I enrolled my biometric data (no retina scan, sadly), but have been unable to find the section of the UK Border Authority’s website that would let me do that. I can’t even [...]

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It’s About That Time, Folks

Yesterday I had an informal interview to talk about doing an “internship” with a local council’s child protection services team. I have registered here in England as a Qualified Social Worker, which basically required having a bachelor’s degree in social work from a recognized school and at least one year of experience in the field. [...]

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California-bound

(though in actuality, I will be in the mountains of the Fog Belt) Saturday marks the third time in twenty four days that I will have hopped on a plane. Sleep is fractured, full of strange dreams and I awaken early most of the time. Last night’s dream was being in a flying contest [propelled [...]

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Taking Stock

Life has changed in a big, dramatic way for me in the past few weeks – in a number of ways I’m not entirely comfortable discussing online, but the upshot is that I am back in the States for good. Currently in Florida, soon to be visiting Wisconsin, and then deciding whether I possess sufficient [...]

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On Birthdays

I am about to turn 31, which is a bit of a surprise to me. These past 9 months have kind of felt like I don’t exist. I imagine that when I do finally retain employment, I will grasp the edge of December and the edge of whichever month I am in, gently pull them [...]

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Homeward Bound?

It’s getting towards the end of my tourist visa and though I have a recruiter looking for work, I don’t know whether I’ll actually find any before “D Day”. So I’ve been making plans to go back to the States for a short time. NYC and Florida are on my itinerary but for how long [...]

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*phew*

Sorry for the doom and gloom of the last post, things are looking up now. I finally asked my groupito bicicleta if anyone on board was in social work. Someone mailed me, said, “Ask this dude,” I asked that dude, and I now have a recruiter looking for work for me! He’ll help me get [...]

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