The First Month: Settling In

While the other entries cover highlights of my expat experience, I thought it may also be interesting to periodically provide updates on my day-to-day as well.

First things first, Bonita is settling in extremely well. She graciously lets me use her bed at night and is thrilled our new flat has many more windows to peruse than our Ohio apartment. She's very relaxed overall, I think she's forgiven me for the grueling journey here...

For my part, with the exception of our day trip to Manchester, I've been focused on getting to know my home base which I think has been pretty successful: I can get largely get around without the assistance of Google maps!

Tesco has become our go-to for most things, including Bonita's new favorite treats. Leicester also has a thriving street market in the city center where you can find great produce.

In general, it seems that there's always something going on around Leicester. The first weekend after arriving, one of my cohort colleagues and I saw Kerry Godliman perform at a local theatre. She's a comedian I discovered while watching Taskmaster to prepare for my trip across the pond, and it was super fun to see her live!

Other highlights of the city center so far include the public library, second-hand bike shop, bouldering gym, and lovely yoga collective all scattered among many cafes, pubs, and restaurants.

It's been fun to explore in the evenings and on the weekends. There's always something new!

I purchased a bike to help me get around a bit quicker. It's a solid old-school purple road bike with classic shifting levers and a nice platform so I can commute with my work stuff more easily.

With advice from the folks at the bike shop, I found a reliable route to the office and tested it out. It takes about a half hour each way (significantly more uphill on the way there, which is a great help for ensuring I'm awake by the time I make it in to the office) and avoids busy roads. It's been a great option these past few weeks, especially to avoid rush hour traffic on the trip home, but as the weather gets cooler it may be a bit less ideal. We'll see how that evolves!

Speaking of keeping warm- another classic component of the British experience is tea, of course!! At the office mugs, tea, milk, and sugar are provided (along with Cadbury hot chocolate and espresso if you're looking to mix it up), but since I arrived I've been on the lookout for loose leaf tea. I haven't found any at local shops, luckily one of our colleagues at the office suggested an online shop called BrewTea. I tried it out and am very much enjoying so far!

I've also been keeping in touch with friends and family from the states via Snapchat, Google Voice, Zoom, WhatsApp, and the like. I'm very grateful for those connections and the silver lining of the pandemic in normalizing staying connected through those avenues. It's nice to know that most everyone is still a text or phone call away, even if there may be an ocean between us.