We have moved and we have watched all of Love Is Blind UK twice. Ollie dropped an avocado on the floor of his kitchen and said, “There’s bare avocado all over the gaff,” which we all thought was the funniest thing in the world. We have started saying it in reference to many things including the state of our living room after moving our entire lives from a storage locker, up three flights of stairs, and leaving everything in our living room. Please enjoy this very chaotic week of moving, couch surfing, cleaning, and moving again!
Tuesday August 27
Z: I started my morning by finishing up my last bits of personal packing and then started on the communal cleaning. I dusted and scrubbed the skirting boards and door frames before heading outside to clean up the garden. I took apart the garden furniture, did one last round of weeding, and cleaned up the random pots at the bottom of the stairs. I ended the day by cleaning the oven, which was a rather satisfying experience.
C: I’d started packing small bits and bobs in my room as dissertation breaks over the past few weeks, but there was still so much to pack before I could do a deep clean. I asked Hebe for good book recommendations, and I borrowed the Divine Rivals audiobook to keep me occupied while I packed (10/10 recommend!). I spent most of the day in my room, scrounging up Amazon boxes I’d been saving, desperately scraping off blue tack from my wall, and vacuum sealing my bedding and sweaters. Midway through the day, we collected all of our plants and hopped on the train to the boys’ new place. Callum kindly agreed to babysit our plants for our week of homelessness. We also stopped by a charity shop to donate old clothes and free up some space in our suitcases.
Back home, we said farewell to our height chart and kitchen calendar, took a tea break and ate a Colin the Caterpillar cake with Lucy to celebrate Hebe’s birthday together, and practiced doing the gen z heart fingers (see album for an excellent photo of Hebe’s super focused face).
Wednesday August 28
Z: Hebe, Lucy, and I joined forces today to clean the kitchen, living room, and bathroom. We scrubbed the pots, cabinets, and fridge, making sure that all the appliances were spotless. Hebe even climbed behind the fridge to clean the floor and walls that looked disgusting. After cleaning everything in sight, Hebe and I began our staging process. We assessed the weight and size of all of our items to determine which could be moved on the tube if necessary and which had to be transported in the van. We decided the best way to prepare was to move all the items in a line up the stairs and down the hallway in order of transportability. Hebe and I then discussed and planned roles for the next morning. I would head to the storage unit to organize before the van arrived. Hebe was driving the van and in charge of floating wherever she was needed. Catja was “the provider,” meaning she would move items down the hallway as they were placed in the van. Ethan would be in charge of organizing the van. Luke would be at the garden path to lift things from the stairs to the van, and Lucy would slowly move things down the stairs.
C: I don’t find joy in cleaning like the girls’ do. I do, however, find immense joy in painting, even when it is just grey walls with blue tack stains and scuff marks. I got out my fine grain sandpaper, paint roller, and masking tape to start touching up our walls. Lucy took a tiny paint chip to a hardware store and got a near perfect match to our wall color, so I got started freshening up the paint job. All was well until I pulled off the masking tape. The paint on our walls is so bad that PAINTER’S TAPE PULLED OFF THE PAINT. WTF. I sanded down the newly chipped paint and fixed my mistakes before wandering around the flat and touching up the wall in various places.
A highlight from today was watching Lucy demolish our broken plastic lawn chairs so they would fit in the recycling bin. Our stairwell became a DIY rage room, and Hebe, Zoe, and I laughed while watching her from the safety of the bannister above. We ended the night with a gorgeous sunset over Dollis Hill station and a line of bags, boxes, and miscellaneous furniture running from the front door, up the stairs, and down the hallway, ready for a speedy move out tomorrow.
Thursday August 29
Z: I left the house with three bags and headed off to the storage unit. I wandered around outside trying to figure out how to get in, only to figure out that the button I had pushed three times was the correct button after I had to call the main helpline. Apparently the guy just had headphones in and didn’t hear the buzzer. Anyway, the guy talked me through how to get in and out of the unit, so I was all ready when the rest of the gang arrived with the van.
C: I woke up bright and early to be Hebe’s co-pilot with the moving van. We walked to the nearest Zipcar pick up location, where Hebe unlocked the car via Bluetooth on the app. The future is now! We drove down the high road back to our place, where Ethan and Luke had arrived surprisingly on time to kindly help us carry our heavy bags into the van. After a few disgruntled comments about their roles (Hebe assigned the strategic van loading job to Ethan and the brawny muscle man delivery to Luke) we began our load out.
We managed to squeeze everything into the van, so we only had to make one trip to the storage unit! Luke went on a coffee run before meeting us there, while Hebe drove Ethan and me in the van to the storage place. After attempting and failing to pull the van into the loading dock, we ended up parking just outside the gates and rolling our bags down the creepy fluorescent hallways on trolleys. We squished and stacked everything in the unit, locked up, and returned the van before picking up the carpet cleaner from the library.
Z: We had to carry this stupidly big carpet cleaner all the way from the library. It was quite annoying. I was very excited to use it though because I am an avid watcher of carpet cleaner TikTok. As Catja and Hebe started on some of the other finishing touches, I vacuumed and shampooed all the carpets. By the end I was less excited. It ended up taking like 2.5 hours to clean all the carpets. Lucy, Hebe, and I left Dollis Hill for the last time and Hebe and I dragged the carpet cleaner all the way back to the library. Hebe steered the cleaner with a mop all the way to the high street, where it needed to be carried the rest of the way. I volunteered to carry it the rest of the way and ended up jogging all the way to the library because it was just too heavy. We then headed to the boys taking a pit stop to get milk and cookies.
C: My severe dust allergies flared up as I scraped the carpets and cleaned off the blinds, and I was struggling to breathe (#asthma), so I ended up leaving the house early to bring our bags to the boys’ old flat in Harlesden. Their lease ran until September 4, so we camped out there for the first four days of our couch surfing week. I ordered an Uber and piled the rest of our bags in there before pulling up to the Harlesden flat, where Ethan and Luke came down to help me carry everything. The driver pulled into the parking lot, where the boys were sword fighting with metal rods from the trash. The driver asked me if I had someone to help me unload, and I said, “Yes, it’s those two boys right there.” He seemed bemused but content to leave me with the sword fighting rascals. Ethan promptly complained about how much stuff we brought (a bag of clothes and bedding each, a food bag, a cleaning supplies bag, and a misc stuff bag to last us a week, perfectly reasonable if you ask me), while Luke led the way upstairs. We returned to the parking lot to sword fight a little longer. I am absolutely terrible at it, which crushes my dreams of being a medieval knight.
After recreating the baseball scene from Twilight with a tennis ball and the rods, we went back into the flat, where the boys were doing their own deep clean. I helped paint their walls, which were somehow covered in pen marks, coffee stains, and mysterious brown smears in the hallway… I didn’t ask too many questions. We laughed, listened to music, and bantered about questionable communications practices. Hebe and Zoe arrived a few hours later, exhausted and hungry. We ordered McDonalds as a treat before showering and heading out to meet some friends at a bar in West Hampstead. We were sleepy and mildly chatty while catching up with our friends, but after a few hours, we were asleep on our feet. The boys made fun of us for having to go all the way back to Harlesden when our new flat was just down the road. We ignored them and practically sleep walked back to the flat. Bye bye Dollis Hill. Thanks for the memories.
Friday August 30
Z: After spending days in the house cleaning, we decided to get some fresh air and hot girl walk to Asda for a little grocery shop. We stocked up on food we didn’t have to cook aka salad and yogurt. We spotted a dozen donuts for £3,, which after some debate (C: very little debate, let’s be real) we ended up getting because why not. As we went to check out a man passed us with an entire shopping cart FULL of Quality Street candy boxes…I’m not one to judge candy intake, but that’s a little much even for me. We then took the bus to Willesden to turn in our keys. I won’t say much about that, but let’s just leave it at MEN.
C: Bloody motherfucking MEN!!! Legally we cannot elaborate yet, but good lord why are some men just sexist, condescending pigs?? Anyway, Hebe, Zoe, and I ended the day watching Love is Blind and eating donuts. Luke joined us after work, baited by the chocolate sprinkle donut photo we sent, but was not a fan of the cheesy romance that is the show. Hebe also basically proposed to Luke by asking if she could link his Amazon account to her brand new Kindle so she can buy discounted books. Now that is a lifelong commitment! Luke was unamused by our shenanigans.
Saturday August 31
C: Literally no memory of what we did during the day… According to texts in our group chat, we tried to vacuum but the vacuum wouldn’t charge. Zoe probably cleaned. I probably did some GSAF work. Zoe and I discussed the consequences of getting married on a dating show while watching the Love is Blind reunion episode. Then we ate marshmallows and watched Who Do You Think You Are, one of my favorite genealogy shows because they take celebrities around the world (usually just Europe for the UK version) and show them primary sources about their ancestors. We learned all about Kate Winslet’s thieving family and all about Daniel Radcliffe’s jewelry owning-family who grappled with a massive, headline-making robbery.
Sunday September 1
C: Hebe told us that Traid, a charity shop, was having a big sale this weekend, so we decided to leave the house and have an adventure in Camden. It was a hot, sunny day, perfect for a little outing. We did a little try on haul in the dressing rooms, resulting in nothing fitting my curvaceous figure (aka I just don’t know how to convert US sizes to UK sizes correctly lol (Z: the sizing literally makes no sense)) and Zoe purchasing an all beige outfit (Z: I’m usually not a beige girlie but I proceed to wear this beige shirt for like four days straight…mostly because I had basically no other clothing, but regardless) (C: it’s actually a cute beige cardigan, it’s grown on me). @Viggo, your love for monochromatic beige fits is spreading.
Z: We then strolled the canals in Regents Park for a bit (C: and witnessed a man playing a love song on guitar to a boat of 5 year olds and one exhausted teacher), ate some lunch, picked up snacks from Co-op, and arrived at the movie theater just in time to watch all the previews. We saw It Ends with Us because the drama online was simply too much for us not to go. Overall we enjoyed the movie, but it definitely had some questionable moments.
Monday September 2
Z: I woke up bright and early and crept out of the bedroom to hop on an online job interview. The interview went really well!
After seeing the state of the boys flat, I insisted on helping Luke do some deep cleaning. So after finishing up the interview, I went back to my favorite activity of scrubbing skirting boards and cabinets. I will not expose the state of the flat, but I will say it was kinda really gross. After a few hours of cleaning with Luke and Catja, we all rode the bus to their new flat to drop off some last bits of leftover things.
C: We tried Basil Broasted for the first time after Luke’s rave reviews, and it did not disappoint! After a quick lunch in the flat, Zoe and I departed to head back to Harlesden. We stopped by yet another Traid to find a nice top for me to wear to a Fulbright panel on Wednesday (I only packed t-shirts and tank tops because I am silly and forgot) and shopped for some other fun bits and bobs since everything in store was £3.50! We bused back to Harlesden to chill out for the rest of the day. Oh also I went on a date and it went well knock on wood AH (Z: AHHHH).
Tuesday September 3
Z: I again headed out bright and early for an interview at the Natural History Museum. After the overground being delayed, getting on the wrong train, and running 15 minutes, I arrived right on time and was rather sweaty. I was dying of thirst as I sat down to answer questions. When I moved rooms for the assessment a nice woman brought me some water, which I promptly downed. I tubed back to Harlesden to help Luke and Catja finish cleaning and move all the stuff out of the flat.
C: After spending a good chunk of the morning cleaning (and me finally submitting my dissertation WOOOO), we Ubered the rest of our belongings to the boys’ new place and said farewell to Harlesden. Onto the next chapter! We met Callum, who gave us a quick tour and laid the ground rules for our visit to Casa Calluke. Zoe and I got settled in the living room, where Zoe blew up her camping mattress and looked like a girl lost at sea in a dinghy. I was bored and made a fun canva mock up of her.
Later, we went to Aldi to find dinner and TK Maxx with Callum to shop for new shoes and house supplies. I finally found a pair of cute kicks in my size! The other TK Maxx we went to in Camden did not carry shoes big enough for my dogs. We returned to the flat and heated up our beige dinner in the oven: cheese balls, spring rolls, and mysterious goat cheese pastries. We offered Luke a spring roll and he sat on the windowsill holding it like a cigar and channeling angsty teen smoking on the roof energy. That night, we discussed ableism and bodily autonomy, and I learned that taller people apparently have a lower resting heart rate. Who knew? Zoe went to sleep like a mummy (the dead kind not the British mom) and I curled up on the couch like a cat(ja).
Wednesday September 4
Z: I was determined this morning to assess our inventory report and email our landlords for the deposit back, so I walked to a cafe on the high street. I got myself a cup of coffee and a croissant and got to work on pointing out everything that was there before we moved in. After an hour of work I received a VERY exciting email and that I had a job offer from my interview on Monday AHHHHHH. Contracts have been signed so I am officially a Client Training Consultant at Compass Education. YAY! I called Catja to share the news because as I looked around this cafe I realized I had no one to share the news with other than the barista who probably would not have been that excited for me. I waited for a call from the company, so I spent the rest of the morning walking around and ended up sitting on Primrose Hill and eating lunch.
C: Zoe called me to share her big news while I was on the Metropolitan line. Zoe rarely calls me, so I knew it would be either 1. Juicy gossip 2. An emergency or 3. SHE GOT A JOB! I was so proud of her but I also was trying not to annoy the people around me and then I eventually lost service in a tunnel so I just texted her in all caps.
I started my day meeting an old Conn dance friend, Kaya, for coffee. She was a senior when I was a first year, so we only danced together for a semester and a half before Covid hit. She is also getting a dance masters in London, and it was so cool to catch up and talk about our experiences since Conn. She was a huge inspiration to me at Conn, and I still continue to be in awe of her.
Later, I walked to Bloomsbury for a Fulbright orientation event, the same one I went to a year ago when we first moved here. It was a bit surreal to return as a panel speaker to talk about life in the UK and give advice. Last year’s Roehampton scholar was also on the panel, and he helped a lot by answering all of our questions honestly. I was a little stressed because I haven’t done any public speaking in a while. Literally had heart palpitations which I haven’t had since Conn (the caffeine didn’t help). Luckily, my dear friend Jessi was also a panelist, and she made me feel so much more myself. We ended up bantering and sharing our experiences together in London. We shared candid stories about navigating hyphenated identities in the UK and became overly excited about sharing our flat-hunting tips with struggling students. I bonded with another Filipino scholar (#pinoypower) and chatted with a bunch of brilliant scholars. I miss my cohort so much already. The panel went very well, and I said farewell to the US-UK Commissioners, who are such a lovely bunch of people.
Z: Our new Wednesday tradition is the pub quiz near our new flat, so we all headed over to meet Anna, Jake, Blonde Luke, Ginger Luke, Callum, and Kári. We split up boys vs. girls, which ended up being not a great decision because the gals simply did not know enough (C: mostly about football, except for England women’s players). Hebe and I giggled in the corner as we tried to figure out the name of songs by singing the lyrics in different styles. We're both not very good at pub quizzes, so we have to find our own way to have some fun. We also spent a lot of time looking at pictures of fictional cats trying to determine their names. Although we did not get any guesses right we were closer than the boys, who named every one “Mittens.” We ended up getting second to last and the boys second place, so really we both got the worst positions.
Thursday September 5
Z: Catja and I were determined to crank out some of the blogs that we have to catch up on before leaving for the US, so we caught the tube to central and found a cafe in Kensington. We worked all morning to finish our previous blog post before spending the rest of the morning at Traid. We were on a mission to find Catja some good pieces, but unfortunately struck out once again.
C: We made our way to the V&A Museum and met Hebe fresh from school by the entrance. We made our way to the Taylor Swift exhibition, a mile-long trail of her iconic costumes winding all around the museum. It was really well done, and we had fun reminiscing on all of her eras while also seeing bits of permanent exhibitions. I realized that my lack of eating lunch made me really lightheaded, so I think I blacked out for half of it, but it was very cool. We stopped by Tesco on the way back to get some food and went back to the boys’ place to chill. Callum’s Icelandic friend, Kári, was also in town to visit, and we had a fun conversation explaining how my Ikea stuffed shark, Blåhaj, was pronounced “blah-haj” (like an American) instead of “blue-hi” (closer to the actual Swedish pronunciation. I’ve never actually met anyone who’s actually Nordic and knows how to correctly pronounce Blåhaj oops. But he’s been blah-haj for 4 years now and it’s too late for me to change. Shout out Kevin Scannell for gifting me this bad boy.
Friday September 6
C: IT’S MOVING DAY YAY!!! We woke up bouncing and ready to finally move into our new place. Our inventory meeting/key pick up wasn’t until 12:30, so Zoe spent the morning sending me tons of job apps that I should apply for, and I spent the morning applying to them. 12:30 finally came along, and we excitedly entered the flat! We like it so much more than our old place, and we hoped Hebe liked it too. We dropped off our bags and made our first trip to the storage locker, just a few minutes walk away. We borrowed a trolley and loaded up, but I forgot how many hills there were on the short journey back. I like to think I’m a strong independent woman, and I am, but when I was halfway up the hill pushing a trolley with our lives’ belongings, I was wishing I was a minimalist and also a strongwoman. Nonetheless, we sweatily made it back to the flat and began carrying things up four flights of stairs.
Luke and Kári met us later and very very kindly helped us with the rest of the move. Without them, it would have taken us hours longer to move everything. We made a few more trips to and from the storage unit, chatting and joking along the way (Z: See a lovely video of Luke carting down the road). It’s times like these that I wish the UK embraced AC-culture like the US. I plugged a fan to cool down during one of our water breaks, but it barely made a dent. We gave the boys a brief tour before continuing on our journey to and fro. Luke wants us to point out that he carried Zoe’s absolute monstrosity of a bag (I hope she has a picture of it because it is actually insanely big) all the way up by himself. I’m not even just hyping him up here, that bag gives me nightmares of back pain (Z: THANK YOU LUKE!!!!!!!!!!!).
Callum joined us later to help with the last few bags, then we said goodbye for a few hours as we began to unpack. Hebe joined from school, and luckily, she liked the place! We separated for some room sorting out time and digging in bags to find all of our things. I did our first load of laundry and was excited when the washer had a “drying” setting. Alas, when I tried it out, it just made my clothes extremely hot, steamy, and damp. Almost ruined my favorite Måneskin shirt because the print started melting off. Oops. Hebe lent me her fancy heated drying rack which worked much better.
Z: After a few hours, we walked to an Indian restaurant between our flats for a delicious and chaotic dinner. We discussed jobs, Catja’s date, and Hebe joining the army over lots of food. Hebe, Catja, and I split three dishes so we could try a bit of everything and it was all fantastic. We were the only people in the whole restaurant making the service excellent. We have decided we would like to become regulars so expect more trips in the future. We ended the dinner with shots of Bailey’s. I obviously drank water. (C: I obviously took her shot).
We then stopped across the street to grab some sodas and drinks for a little pregame before the boy’s big night out on the town. We spent the rest of the evening playing cards (some were paying more attention than others…cough cough Ethan) and ended the night with the boys singing songs and drinking some awful looking beverage. For some reason we’ve now had multiple nights with them that end in a rendition of “The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond.”
Saturday September 7
C: I woke up bright and early to say goodbye to the gals and our cute new home and hopped on the Tube to Heathrow. I can’t wait to see my family!!! Security took less than 5 minutes, so I ended up having plenty of time to sit, eat lunch, and scroll on TikTok before boarding. The flight was uneventful other than my seatmate, an older woman, (wo)mansplaining the in-flight entertainment screen to me (basically I was using the touch screen but she kept trying to get me to use the remote and I got a bit annoyed but she meant well). I arrived safely and met Viggo at arrivals. He drove up from school to see me and was sleepy, so I hopped in the drivers seat for the first time in 9 months and drove down 66 all the way home. Jet lag hit me like a truck, so I started falling asleep at 8pm as Viggo and Mikka played Super Smash Bros and my mom hugged me.
Z: After saying goodbye to Catja, Hebe and I made a to-do list for the day. We were on a mission to set up all our bills, get some food, put together furniture, and unpack the living room and kitchen. We made a quick trip to Aldi for breakfast and lunch food, before working on the list. Hebe took bills and painstakingly called too many wifi providers just to be told they don’t service our property, while I put together all the shelves and tables. After giving up on bills we sorted through all the kitchen supplies, assigned and organized cabinets, and put away all the kitchen materials. We then got to the living room where we put out all the books, set up the tv, and decorated the shelves.
We took a small lunch break and met up with Luke at TK Maxx for some random bits we needed. We picked up some towels, command strips, a pot, and some oven mitts. We did spend far too long deciding what towels and oven mitts to buy, but totally worth it since digging around in the back got us an orange mushroom oven mit. (C: OMG SEND ME A PIC!!)
Luke invited us over for Ethan’s goodbye evening of pizza and a movie, which sounded heavily after our looooooong day. We chowed down on pizza and watched 3/4s of Drive before Ethan had to go to an urgent care with Hebe and Luke. An exciting end to his month of leave :/.
Sunday September 8
Z: Hebe returned home from the boys in the mid morning and we headed off to Ikea shortly after. We wandered through Ikea on a mission to get everything left on our list. We got pretty much everything, however we forgot the trolley so we had to carry a large Ikea bag between the two of us. We took a pit stop at Tesco for some bowls and lunch. We sat on the sidewalk eating lunch and discussing Hebe’s course before heading back home. We set up the last of the kitchen and living room and settled in for the evening. As we don’t have wifi yet, we opted to do a puzzle for the rest of the evening.
C: For my first full day home, Viggo and I met our mom and Mikka for a softball tournament! I haven’t seen Mikka play in over a year, and she and her team have gotten SO strong. They came back from behind to win their first game in style, and they battled but lost to a really strong team in their second game. They ended up third in the competition though. I got to do her trademark braids for this game, and I saw her make some stellar throws as a catcher. Sadly, Viggo had to drive back down to Virginia Tech in the afternoon, but it was really good to see him.
Monday September 9
Z: I needed to pick up a few things from B&M this morning and also needed to do some onboarding for work, so I walked toward B&M on the hunt for some wifi. I stopped for an hour in Gails to finish some work and then wandered about B&M. I got some snacks for home, searched for a light bulb that I am not sure actually exists, and found a trash can for our new place. I was feeling a bit silly on the way home, so I sent Hebe and Catja photos of the trash can and I on our journey home. This included the trash can sharing a Wagon Wheel cookie with me on the bus. Yes, I did get some weird looks from a man on the bus, but I was having a great time so who really cares.
C: The photo of Zoe eating cookies with her new trash can was hilarious! I can’t wait to fully move into our new place. Here in good old Northern Virginia, I woke up to the exciting news that I have an INTERVIEW for a dream job!!! I’m terrified of jinxing it but please send me thoughts and prayers and good luck for next week! My mom took me shoe shopping because my white sneakers are falling apart and, as Mikka said, “With those stompers, you’d get bullied.” She keeps me humble. I found some nice work shoes to manifest my imminent employment (please please please).
Later, I witnessed my mom brushing out Madss, our massive Old English Sheepdog puppy, and giving him a fresh man bun. Mikka was exhausted from school and her weekend tournament, and Madss ended up sitting on her napping body. She also fell asleep face down on his stinky bed and laid there for at least an hour. Weirdo.
Stay tuned for our hometown adventures next blog!
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