Busy Busy Busy!

Hi Again!Sorry for the lack of posts ... My flatmate Crystal is much better at writing daily blogs than I am! (Check her out under my followers if you wanna read her blog as well - I think she's funnier than me too, haha) It has been a CRAZY couple of days here in London!
So I think I left off writing about the first day only! Wow, a lot has happened since then! On Saturday, Niki, Crystal, Marlee and I headed down to Oxford Street and did some shopping and sightseeing. Here, on Oxford Street, we made the BIG PURCHASE ... UK Mobiles (aka cell phones) We were shallow and picked our cell phones based only on the colour (I got neon yellow, Marlee got hot pink, and Crystal got bright purple - our fave colours.) Then we wandered down past Ambercrombie and Fitch to check out the studly male model they pay to stand half naked in the doorway to take pictures with random people. Interesting. Tough job?
After that we took a stroll down to Bond Street. AKA The Street I'll Never Be Able to Afford to Shop On! This is a street of crazy high end stores like Tiffany & Co., Gucci, Prada, D & G, etc. It was fun to stroll along checking out the flashy cars and crazy outfits people wore.
We continued along on our stroll and wandered into Green Park which is a lovely little park with lots of pigeons for Marlee and Crystal to chase. Crystal is not a pigeon fan and is determined to kick one before we leave. I'm doing my best to sway her from this plan as I'd like us not to be deported anytime soon. Green Park leads to Buckingham Palace and also holds the Canadian War Memorial and the Canada Gate (across from the palace) It's a bit humbling to see something so incredible dedicated to our amazing country. I'd seen the gate and palace before but not the memorial. We met a pretty decent looking dude from Vancouver at this point and Crystal has decided he is her new boyfriend. Love it. We took some pics of the Canada Gate and headed over to Buckingham Palace and the Victoria memorial. No changing of the guards as it was mid-afternoon but was still fun. We followed the Princess Diana Memorial Walk for a bit and then veered off to the left to visit my buddy Big Ben. We got to Big Ben and the Parliament buildings and snapped a few pics. Interesting lesson for some of you : Believe it or not Big Ben is NOT the large clock tower most people think it is ... it is actually the large bell inside of the large clock tower. After this we headed over to Downing Street and checked out the Prime Minister's residence thru the gates. After this, we decided it was imperative to check out some housing arrangements and get looking for a flat.
We got back to our teeny tiny hostel room and it was beginning to wear on our nerves. As exciting as moving to London is, it is incredibly irritating to live in a tiny hostel room with 2 other people and ALL our luggage. Hostels are fine for travelling but not really cut out for moving! We were getting a bit irritated and snappy and on top of this, poor Niki was still with us and no longer had a room of her own so she was stuck in a room with us! At this point in, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a text from my good Avignon buddy, Andy! Andy, Niki and I were all best buds in Avignon and had some great times together. Andy happened to be in London and was nice enough to travel across London to meet up with us so Niki and I headed around the corner to the pub and met him and his friends for a pint. Andy's friends, Tim, Ed and Sonja were really nice and we had a great time chatting and swapping stories.
We decided to split up for dinner and to meet up for some nightlife action later on. I know it's important to find a place to live etc etc but there wasn't much we could do at night about it anyways. Marlee and Crystal stayed home to do a bit of research and get some rest and Niki and I headed out to the Camden area to meet Andy, Tim, and Ed. We started at a pub and things got pretty fun from there! I drank some "posh" beer as Tim called it and we wandered to various places in Camden throughout the evening. We had a really great time and Andy's friends were super nice and showed us a good time so a huge thanks to them. We eventually wound up at a famous jazz bar that said it was closing and wouldn't let us in. For SOME bizarre reason I convinced the bouncer that I was a journalist for Elle Canada and that I'd give them a nice review if we got in. It worked and in we went. Closed? It was open for HOURS (or so it felt) later once we got in. We had a great time dancing the night away. We eventually went looking for a taxi as the tubes were done for the night and we couldn't figure out the night bus schedule. It took us awhile but we got a cab and Niki and I wandered back to the hostel and the boys headed ... actually I have no idea where but hopefully they made 'er back safe and sound. Haha.
The next morning, as I'm sure you can image, was NOT the best morning of my life. I woke up with a cold, a headache and a hangover to boot. Awesome. We mustered up the courage to get outta bed, had a cold shower, and back to searching for a home we went. We pored over the website Gumtree trying desperately to find something. We sent out countless emails and made many a phone call. We went and looked at a few places but nothing felt right. We had to say goodbye to our dearest Niki as she had to get back home for work in the AM and discovered that in just a short day or two we had MASTERED the tube. YES! One hurdle down! We still really need to learn how to use the busses tho - that knowledge has totally deserted me.
Since then our life has been a whirlwind of going into our work offices to do paper work and set up bank accounts and to sign up for National Insurance numbers (like our SIN numbers back home) We've looked at numerous apartments and have gone from depressed to elated and everywhere in between and then back again. I never thought it would be this hard. I knew it would be this expensive, but it's still mind boggling from time to time. We finally found the perfect place for us yesterday. We breathed a sigh of relief, gave each other a knowing look, and turned around to tell the guy we'd take it - even before knowing much about it! We were DESPERATE! We were so excited last night making plans in our head for the new place. We didn't hear back right away so I sent the guy a text asking if he knew if the landlord had accepted us or not ... the only way he would take us was if we would make a 2 month's rent security deposit! WE FREAKED OUT! Rent is over $1000/month Canadian each when you do the conversion. This guy was basicaly asking for over $5000 between the 3 of us as a damage deposit because we were foreigners. We said no way, that we could get references, etc from Canada. In the end, we lost out and some British girls got our lovely flat. This was depressing to us because we had thought we were SHOE IN'S! We did our best to brush it off and jumped back in. We called another few agencies, and headed back out to West London, where we were looking at moving. We looked at flats all day and the only nice one we saw, we couldn't afford (bummer!) We were not too happy about this but plugged on to our last appointment. The lady took us in her car to see 2 flats (they take us in their cars all the time which I thought was weird. Oh well - saves us a tube trip!) We walked into the first home, saw the big windows, clean white walls, leather furniture, wood floors, open & airy bedrooms and cute little backyard/garden and we knew we'd found it. We went to the 2nd home and it basically looked like a crack shack after what we'd just seen! After seeing the second place and having been so frustrated for 3 days, we handed over our money, signed the papers, and we were in business. We found the flat thru a rental agency so we had to pay them a fee but we didn't care anymore. We had a home! The rental agency gives our info and references to the landlady and the landlady has to approve us but she said she thought it would be ok! Here's hoping!
Tomorrow we have some meetings etc and hopefully Thursday we'll move. During this time, we may not have internet so that will be my excuse for the lack of blog posting. Hope everyone's doing well. I think of you often and miss you guys lots but I'm really happy being here in London and I hope you all know that! This is exactly how I dreamed my life after uni would turn out and I can't wait to see what the future holds!
Much love,Meaghan xo
PS) I tried posting this last night but it wouldn't work ... seeing as how it's 5am and I've been wide awake for 2 hours I thought I'd post it now! xx