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PS: I know I already talked about my blog; here’s a
link to one of my pieces:
frenchwatermelon19.com/NoobsGuideToParis. I’d love
for you to check it out. Notes and constructive criticism
are always appreciated.
At 3:00 p.m., I do a quick lap around the office, checking
to see if anyone would like a second cup of tea. Declan asks
me where I’m from. Donna jokes around, saying how
impressed she is with her excellent cup of tea—she wouldn’t
expect that from an American.
When I come in the next day, everyone greets me by name. I
bring them all their morning tea without being asked. Donna
invites me to come sit with her while she plans out her next
work trip: She’s headed to Capri on Thursday. I sit next to her
for most of the morning. She talks about traveling and asks me
where I’ve been so far.
Before the end of the day, Wendy stops by my little station
and tells me she read my “Noob’s Guide to Paris” piece. My
heart does a can-can. She tells me it was “hilarious and
charming!”
Wendy leans forward on my table and says, “You know
what? Maybe you
should
start putting together a piece about
studying abroad in London for review. If all goes well, I might
reconsider this piece. Maybe it could go live online mid-
March and, who knows, maybe be printed in the April issue.”
My feet dance over the floor under my desk.
I can do this.
Wendy advises me to take another look at their various
pieces covering travel to different cities and try to blend my
style with theirs. I spend the rest of the day using the company
MacBook to do just that.
Thursday, Wendy invites me out to drinks with the rest of the
office. Apparently it’s something they do every Thursday. I go.
Wendy buys me a drink and talks about her college days, and
when she took a gap year to travel. Declan asks me how old I
am. When I tell him
almost twenty-one
, he’s completely taken
back—he thought I was in high school. He’s a couple years
out of college. Donna tells us a hilarious story about someone
she went on a date with last week. Tracey talks to me without
a hint of disdain about a singer she’s going to see this
weekend: Lily Allen. I know a couple of her songs. She asks
me what kind of music I’m into, who I’ve seen live. I’ve only
known her to begrudgingly tolerate me, and I’m overjoyed that
we’ve connected over something. I start to get a feeling for
who these people actually are. They’re creative and outspoken
and lighthearted. And I start to feel like I … belong among
them.
Babe, Sahra, and I take a trip to Berlin together over the
weekend. I bring my notebook. When we get back Sunday
night, I write out a new post and borrow Babe’s computer
afterward to type it up and publish it. I’m loving crystalizing
my experiences this way. I love anchoring my thoughts
immediately on paper before they start to float away. I love the
triumphant satisfaction that comes with reading it all back
once the post goes live.
Little by little, I start to build a draft of the London study
abroad piece for
Packed.
Every day I try to push myself to
sample more of London: new lunch places, different
supermarkets. When I have time, I ride different Tube lines. I
get off at new stops and walk around to new areas. I keep
notes. One day, while I’m on the train, I flip the notebook
upside down, open the back cover, and start drafting the novel
I had outlined in Sawyer. From then on, I flip it over at least
once a day to keep working on it.
For the
Packed!
article, I’m trying to compile a list of my
top twenty-five things to cram into your study abroad
experience before you go bankrupt. If I want to travel more
this go-round—which I’ve now resolved to do—the remainder
of my college-student-summer-and-winter-break job savings
will all be gone by (or probably before) the end of this
semester. I put together a short blog post with the top five
cities I’d like to get to.
FIVE PLACES I WANNA HIT BEFORE I HEAD
BACK TO AMERICA:
1) Every city I’ve yet to see in Italy (at least
Florence)
2) Dublin
3) Prague
4) Amsterdam
5) Edinburgh
To be safe, I mention that I’m running low on money for
food in an email to my parents. They kindly transfer over a
small cushion, and I set it all aside for meals. I’ve been
avoiding Skype calls. Since the break, we’ve been
communicating strictly over email, with very little detail, and
I’ve been prompting them to read my blog to see what I’m up
to.
Pilot and I have been mutually avoiding each other. I don’t
know what happened with Amy after that day; maybe he did
go back to her.
Which is fine. I told him to.
When spring break rolls around, I’ve already made plans
way in advance with Babe to take on Florence, Pisa, and
Venice. I did ask her if she’d rather go to Dublin alone. She
said, “I can travel alone anytime. How often are we going to
get to travel Italy together?” We have a grand ol’ time, and I
put together a post about our touristy adventures.
At work, Donna has completely taken me under her wing.
This past week, she’s been helping me work out how I want to
format my piece, and we’ve talked about her personal life. I
have her phone number now. I think we were on track to
having a work friendship during London: Take One, but I most
definitely was too intimidated by her success and coolness to
talk to her casually about life when I was twenty. That instinct
is still present to some extent, but it’s easier to tamp it down
and ignore it. It’s weird how we have to get a little older to
realize that people are just people. It should be obvious, but
it’s not.
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