Well, I went from not having a whole lot going on my first week in London to being insanely busy this week!

Over the weekend I went to Wales, which has beautiful countryside. I stayed in the capital, Cardiff (which is friendlier but less classy than London), and then did a day tour to a coal mine (Wales used to have  a large mining industry) and Brecon Beacons National Park. Going into a coal mine was actually pretty intense; I went over 390 meters underground and had a tour from a former coal miner. Mining in recent times has been safer thanks to advances in technology, but miners 200 years ago really had it rough: 12 hour days with barely any breaks, wearing a helmet with a candle to be able to see while they mine the coal. All I can say is I will never complain about my job without thinking about how easy I have it in comparison. The countryside of Wales is beautiful though, and actually reminded me a lot of Iceland.

The most exciting thing happened this week: I finally got wifi in my flat! It took a while to get someone to come install it, so I’m really glad its finally done now. Now I can binge watch a new show I started watching called the Vikings (free on Amazon Prime UK and US!). Also exciting news is that I’ve made a few friends here, and I’m getting a lot closer with my colleagues who are mostly in the 20-30s age range.

Work has been busy this week. I was accepted onto a project where I’ll serve as a Project and Delivery Manager working on network security for Vodafone. Basically my role (without too much details) is to make sure that the network security infrastructure is being developed, upgraded and installed on schedule. It’s actually pretty interesting work as we all know that hacks (think Target, the US government, and Sony) have become quite a big deal now (thanks to the former two, my information has been compromised twice). The only difficult part about this role is that going forward I do have to travel once or twice a week to Newbury, which is where Vodafone is based. This week, just to transition, I went three times. It’s about a two and a half hour commute each way, so I leave my house at 6am and get back around 6:30/7pm.

This weekend will be a big weekend because my mom and Markie are coming! I’m so excited for Markie to see England for the first time, and my mom hasn’t been to London since I was 9 years old! We have several things planned: We’re doing tea time, going to the Tower of London, going to Stonehenge, and going to Hever Castle (the former home of Anne Boleyn). I already got a Easter basket for Markie as well. I hope that they both like London and England as much as I am starting to.