Home Away From Home

I suppose when I say the word "home," I'm not really sure where that is. It's a strange feeling--going back to your high school/ childhood home because it doesn't quite feel like home anymore. At least not to me. It's really nice the first few days, but after a while I start missing independence. When I'm there, I call my dorm room in Cambridge "home," but when I'm in Cambridge, I call Phoenix "home" so now I'm all confused as to where home really is. I guess that leaves the place I'm living now completely out of the picture, huh?

My flat here is a cozy little two bedroom, two bathroom complete with kitchen, living room, and dining room. But when I say "cozy," I do mean cozy. The size of the place is about the size of 3 regular sized rooms at my place ("home") back in Phoenix. I think it's not uncommon here to have limited living space. It's in Fleet, which is about a 50min train ride from London. To give you a complete tour...


this is my kitchen! The company chose this place specifically because it had a kitchen en suite-- I think they're trying to save money by having us cook rather than eat out all the time. I tried cooking several dishes, and found I'm not as good at cooking as I remember >.<;;; I blame it on the useless cooking tools available; more on them later...
living room! Quite stylish furniture! The flat is actually owned by the COO of the company-- I guess he just uses it as a place on the side to crash when he works late or wants to stay the night somewhere relatively close to work. This doesn't at all imply that it is in fact easy for us to get to work from here, however... I assume he has a car, but we have to walk a mile and a half to the train station in the freezing cold, take the train, take a bus, and then get escorted from the front gate into work.... and then do it all again after work! (whine whine whine, I know... but trust me, I'll never complain about the walk from Next house ever again).


my bed with view of bathroom. Couldn't quite get a good picture, but this is the best I could do. Now if you're wondering why the man (company COO) has a pink, flowery bedspread, it's probably because most apartments come fully furnished here. That means the towels, linens, furniture, cooking utensils, etc all come with purchase of the apartment. Now about those cooking tools-- you can tell they're pretty much just for show. The first time we cooked with the frying pan, the nonstick coating started peeling and I could probably bend the cutting board in half with my hands! I think a lot of the things in this flat are just for show-- take the placemats for example. This is them by themselves


Quite posh, eh? Well here's what happens when you try to put a normal sized plate on them...


Not as practical as I'd hoped... I bet you can't even see the placemats! Can you guess where the washing machine is? That's right...


In the kitchen! Took me a little while to find it too >.> There's no dryer (as is common here), we just hang our clothes on a heated rack in the bathrooms or wherever we can find space to hang them.