NO LONGER HOMELESS!

Yes, everyone, it's true! I found a place to live! I'm pretty excited about it. After talking to a lot of people who're currently making the move to London (other international students coming to Birkbeck, my new roommates, etc), it's apparently extremely difficult to find places to live in London right now.

And from what I discovered while house-hunting, I'm extremely grateful to have found a place that isn't dirty or scummy or sketchy, and within a reasonable price range. The places I looked at before finding this one had one or more of the following: no living room, sketchy areas that looked pretty bad in the daytime so I can't imagine what they would have been like at night, an extremely high price for a room the size of a shoebox, a landlord who didn't speak English and wanted your money in cash on the spot and promised to get you a key soon, no windows, no tube station anywhere remotely close, and and live-in landlord who was gross.

I imagine it's a somewhat similar situation to finding a place to live in New York City or Jersey, but I thought this city was huge and big enough to find something decent. I guess it's just the times.

Anyway, I moved to an up and coming neighborhood in Dalston, a pretty decent place to live. I don't live near any underground stations, but I live about a block away from 2 overground stations, which I like way better than the underground. It's not too difficult to get around, and it's actually fairly close to my class in the London Metropolitan Archives. I've wandered around a bit today and discovered a nice Sainsbury's (grocery store), post office, organic food store, and independent cinema all within a few blocks radius! And there's a bus outside my front door that will take me straight to an IKEA! Paper lamps ahoy!

That picture up top is my room, a decent size with an incredible amount of storage because of a nice built-in wardrobe, and a window that lets in a lot of light. I live off Balls Pond Road on a third story apartment with 3 other girls, 2 of which have already moved in, and one who'll move in this Tuesday or Wednesday. One of the girls is a friend from Leeds, and the 2 other girls already knew each other from doing their undergraduate degrees together. The two who were already living there are German and Ukrainian respectively, and they're so much fun! I've just met them, really, but I already really like them.

I'm posting photos of the place on here even though they're already on flickr just in case you don't get a chance to check out my flickr, Mom. :) Check out that toilet seat, isn't it hilarious?

(I technically live in the last block of Islington on the edge of Hackney, but since Hackney is more exciting, I'll say I live there!) 

This last photo is of a strange phenomenon in British food: a vegetarian scotch egg. Apparently regular scotch eggs are just a hard boiled egg covered in a strange breaded meat substance, but this one was covered in a breaded chickpea substance and served with spicy mustard. A weird sensation. Not my favorite, but not as gross as I thought it'd be!

This past weekend my friends Joe and Nick came down from Leeds to go to a house party that was being thrown by one of their friends, and they invited me to tag along. Another friend, Matt, who I'd met in Leeds, has since moved down to London and lives with his girlfriend in Kentish Town, near Camden. Matt works at an awesome pub called the Southampton Arms, which has actually just been voted the best pub in greater London and is head-to-head with another pub for best pub in the whole UK! It's a neat little place, and the only one in London that's completely devoted to small or independent local breweries. It's the classic Ales and Cider joint that everyone in America imagines. It was a pretty great place, and pretty cheap, too, so I'll definitely be taking friends to visit it (because you're all coming to visit, right??)!