Happy turkey, everyone

It was a good day.

A couple of pictures, and test-driving a new (threadable) comment system. Try it out!

It's Christmastime in the city

In old London town for the week. Bit hard to believe, but I finally shook hands today with the recruiter, Aine, with whom I've been working via phone, email, and post for the past 11 months. I suppose that's a small victory in and of itself - God knows (well, Aine and I know, at least, and a lot of you have a pretty good idea) what it's taken to get me to this point. It was really good to talk to her and glean some more details about what actually living and working over here will be like; somehow I found that it reassured a lot of the doubts that the ONP raised for me. I feel slightly more confident now that I will not forget all my nursing skills and become destitute as a result of this little venture.

Now for more interesting things. Usually I'm a stickler about no Christmas music earlier than 12.01 a.m. on Black Friday, but this year I'm bending my rules and striking up the Josh Groban early in deference to my current location. After all, there's no Thanksgiving to act as a buffer between Halloween and Jingle Bells here, so everything's been thoroughly decked out for a few weeks now. Not that I'm complaining, mind! Although I have to admit that it does add to the flashes of surreality I still occasionally get about being here.

So I had myself a little (10-mile) ramble about town yesterday to drink it all in. Started in Covent Garden:

Two classes down, one more and seven workbook activities to go. Hopefully that'll get done today, as there are some exciting plans in the works...but more on that later.

I have to say, I wish I'd gotten some of the information from this past class, oh, back when I first started this whole process. I knew it was going to involve a pay cut, but I wasn't quite aware of exactly how dramatic that cut was going to be. The tradeoff seems to be that nursing education is hugely subsidized by the government over here, which unfortunately doesn't help me much at this particular point. I just have to keep reminding myself that I'm not here to sock away a boatload of money; the main point (besides snagging Prince Harry, obviously) is having a much more convenient base from which to launch my plans for world domination see more of Europe and, hopefully, beyond.

And on that note, the exciting plans: I think I'm headed to Vienna! I've been so tempted by the idea of a real, proper Christkindlmarkt so (relatively) nearby, and I finally bit the bullet and priced out some flights, which are actually not as bad as I thought they might be. As a bonus, I actually have a friend who lives in the city, so hopefully she'll have some free time and enough German to help me bash my monoglot American way around town for a few days. Very exciting. I don't think apfelstrudel will ship well, but I promise to take plenty of tasty pictures for you all :-D

Remembrance Day

Well well. Here it is, over a week now since I touched down in old Blighty, and I've had this barely-started attempt at a post sitting and mocking me since then. In the spirit of procrastination (though more on that later), let's see if I can actually get something written and stuck up online for all you folks back home.

I think I'm beginning to see how Europeans stay so thin: my perambulations about town today have netted me nearly five miles of walking, yet all I've had were some eggs and toast for breakfast and about half a chicken salad for lunch. Isn't the bracing sea air supposed to whet your appetite, not suppress it?

So my original post began, all cute and optimistic-like. Alas, my appetite is back with a vengeance, not least because -- Bournemouth being a town of multiple personalities -- there is a rather generous assortment of cuisines to choose from here, all of which are more interesting than my original virtuous plan to cook most of my meals in my hostel. Ah well...I am still walking more, at least, so maybe I'll manage to stave off the extra poundage until I get home (and proceed to pack it on over Christmas).

But, yes, Bournemouth. An interesting character mashup of a town. If I've got my history right, it began life as a seaside resort back in the 19th century, and there's still plenty of Victorian flavo(u)r about the place. It continues to be a major tourist destination during the summer, but, this being decidedly not summer, the pier and surrounding beachfront feel a bit seedy, in the way that tourist destinations are prone to in the offseason. Nevertheless, there's still prettiness like this to be had:

And there is something to be said for visiting during the offseason. For one -- it means I'm paying about £65 (i.e. less than $100) per week to stay in the hostel I'm living in. Not too shabby.

And here's the thing about Bournemouth -- it's not just a tourist-town-minus-the-tourists, because it is also home to Bournemouth University, with an enrolment of about 17,000 students. And then, if you follow the main drag to the west end of town, you come to a real commercial centre, such as you'd find in a proper city. So, while I'd hardly call it a bustling metropolis, it's not quite the offseason wasteland I'd expected.

So anyway -- why am I here in the first place?

If you read through that first post of mine, you'll have seen mention of this class I'm required to take to obtain licensure over here. It's called the Overseas Nursing Programme, and I was given to understand that it would be three on-campus days, with a workbook to fill out -- during my spare time, presumably. After all, they promise up front that

We appreciate that you are a registered practitioner in your own country and very probably have a wealth of experience in nursing, and we have tried to respect this when developing the study guide. It is not intended to ‘teach you to nurse’, rather to introduce you to the nursing environment within the UK.

Yes, well. Turns out that little study guide is a whopping 226 pages long, and spends exorbitant amounts of time gnawing on old bones like cultural competence, quality assurance, and evidence-based practice. The irony, of course, is that the way the course is designed -- the reason why I'm over here for a month, when there are only three actual class days -- is due to the fact that the NMC (short for Nursing and Midwifery Council, the national licensing body) wants students to spend all that time "experiencing life in the UK." Because of this workbook, however, I've spent the bulk of my time in my room, in the library, or in various coffee shops in town, writing until my entire arm is in spasm.

Cultural immersion: ur doin it wrong.

Sadly, I've taken about all the time off from that I think I can afford for now, so I'm going to go back and bash away at it for a while longer. Meanwhile, in case you didn't see on Facebook, I've finally given in and set up a Twitter account, as very few of the random observations I have on a day-to-day basis (and think, "this would be great for the blog!") have been making it online. Hopefully this will make it easier for you all to check in/up on me (and make sure I'm still alive, for that matter). Go see!