Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

What a year this has been for us. There’s much to report, but we don’t want to completely bore you, so the gist of our news is written below and you can follow the underlined links if you want to read more.

For those of you who don’t know (which is many, because we haven’t done the best job at keeping in touch lately) we left Boston in August and moved to London in September. Dave started a year-long masters degree in print media management at the London College of Communication. It was a bit of a whirlwind departure, leaving the security of Boston and all the wonderful friends we met there to venture on to pastures, that at the time, were still uncertain.

We managed to find an excellent, centrally-located, newly-furnished apartment (“flat”) about 20 minute’s walk from Big Ben, and more practically, 10 minute’s walk from Dave’s school. As we learned, establishing yourself in a new country involves jumping through an enormous amount of time-consuming, bureaucratic hoops For example, a landlord won’t rent to you until you’ve got a UK bank account. A UK bank won’t give you an account until you’ve got a local address, and so goes the joy of getting yourself set up in London.

Another thing we were completely unprepared for was how difficult it is to find a job in this city. After 7 weeks of being in London I finally managed to find a job at an architecture firm. The firm is one of the leading firms in the UK for eco-friendly architecture and the office itself is very environmentally conscience. Combine that with the fact that about half of the firm is from places other than England and you have an environmentally-friendly, international workplace thus making it right up Marcy’s alley! One of the best perks was the office Christmas party… a weekend in Copenhagen, Denmark!!

Since Dave is studying full-time and I'm the only one working, we’re living in London, which is nearly twice as expensive as Boston, on less than half of what we were accustomed to in Boston. Needless to say, economizing has become a major part of our existence here!

We’ve been settling in here pretty well now. Dave’s enjoying school despite its sometimes unorganized manner due in part to it being the pilot program. Last month he got to spend a week in Heidelberg, Germany for school which was extremely interesting for him. He’s also playing on his university’s basketball team. He’s 10 years older than any of his teammates but he manages to keep up with the kids... despite some sore muscles.

We had some unfortunate news earlier this month. Dave’s 99 year-old great grandmother fell extremely ill. Dave booked an immediate flight back to Wyoming and made it there a few days before she passed away, and was also able to stay through until the funeral. She would have reached 100 in April, but all be told, she had a very healthy life, living on her own in her home until just this past summer. She will, however, be greatly missed.

We’ll be spending Christmas in London this year. Although we’ll miss our families at home, we are looking forward to celebrating an English Christmas (we have our mince pies and Bucks Fizz in the fridge).

We’ve posted some photos on our photos page so please take a look! We also hope to update this site from time to time so please check back in the future.

We wish all the best to you this Christmas season,

Dave and marcy.