It Took Going Away To Come Back

My fellow friends and relatives,

This is the story so far:

I got back to Phoenix from Germany on the 3rd of August, and by the 16th, I was starting my last semester at Arizona State University taking such barn-burners as Security Analysis Portfolio Management Financial Cases and Modeling.  One day in International Financial Management, I was told about an organization on campus called AIESEC (pronounced: I-sic).  They find international internships for newly-graduated university students.  I looked them up, joined, and (long story short) got a year-long internship with Mangahigh.com in London, England.  After some trials, tribulations, and a lot of waiting, I got in to London Heathrow at 1:30pm GMT on Saturday.  This was lucky, because a couple of hours after I landed, it started to heavily snow, and half of the flights out of Heathrow were cancelled, and a lot of flights that were coming in were diverted to Shannon, Ireland.  While I very much want to visit Ireland while I'm here, being stuck there on my first day would not have been my favorite thing in the world.

I have now worked for 3 days at Mangahigh (I'm sitting at my desk right now, waiting for the rest of the team to arrive so we can continue training.  Ross is the manager of customer support, and Jenny is pretty much the goddess of getting things done.  I am going to be taking over her duties for the US and Canada.  Good thing I know the US school system, right?

Everyone here seems to be incredibly nice.  I think I am going to be really happy here for the next year.

In regards to living arrangements, things havent gone as well as I could have hoped.  I spent the first three nights here with a fellow AIESECer named Ben.  He has a fold-out couch that he was kind enough to let me sleep on.  The last two nights have seen me sleep on the dorm room floor fo another AIESECer named Shivam.  He is also quite nice, but I am waaaaaay too old to be sleeping on a bare floor.

I have been looking all over the internet for a place of my own.  Sent a lot of emails and texts, made several phone calls, and haven't really gotten any responses until last night.  I got a call saying an agent named Debbie would show me a room in a flat (I am way too poor to actually rent an entire flat for myself) right next to the Bethnal Green Tube Station.  I went there, took a look around, and snapped it up.  I just need to come up with £1,350 by tonight.  I should have that without a problem as long as my tax return comes in.  I don't know if it will be in tonight or tomorrow, so it might be one more night on the floor for me.

That is pretty much all I have for you all right now.  I hope you are well, and I will hopefully keep up with this blog quite a bit better than I did while in Heidelberg.

Miss you, love you, and we will talk again soon.

--Grant