According to the form I received from the center I had my
interview for the one-on-one teach at 10am on Friday. Exciting! This means I get to work early and get
to know people earlier and therefore longer. The place is a little far away and I
didn’t want to be late so I left early. For my 10am interview I left at 8:15am
and woke up to get showered and ready at 6am (it takes a long time to air-dry
my hair, and even by the time I left it was still wet). I went on the tube and
read my book S. by JJ Abrams until 9:10am when I arrived. Now Newham is in East
London and it is a little scary, especially for a girl who decided to wear a
dress and no panty hose and is walking outside alone. Either way, I survived. I
tried to find a coffee shop to chill in before my interview but there really
weren’t any so instead I walked around a super market for a bit, hung out under
a bridge until a man asked me in a thick cockney accent where my phone was
(odd), and then loitered by a solely Muslim apartment complex. Finally the time
came to when it would be appropriate to say “Sorry I’m a little early”. I
entered the stone building which was surrounded by a stone fence and barred
windows at 9:51 and passed the metal detector to the sectioned off receptionist
window. However once I said why I was there they looked confused. They told me
to sit down and wait, I felt like I was in trouble. Moments later a woman came by and sat down next to me and put her hands on her lap like she was
about to explain to a child why stealing is wrong. “Didn’t XX tell you? The
interview isn’t until next Thursday”. Well thank you so very much XX for
making me look like the most incompetent idiot in the world for my first
impression. Truly, my gratitude goes to you. After a laugh over XX’s mistake
she sends me off. By this point my ankles and toes were blistering and raw from
my terribly business-woman-like shoes and I pressed the heels down and limped
my way back to the station (a good 20 minute walk by the way). I was very
angry, the only thing I was truly frustrated at were these damn shoes that I
would surely need to burn as soon as possible. After an hour on the tube, I
finally reached homebase, chucked my shoes across the room, and slept for
3 hours.
Due to
my odd morning I decided to make the night much better. Keira, Tom, James and I went out to go watch X-Men Days of Future's Past while we basically made fun of James and his crazy outfits the whole time. HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS MOVIE. With thick socks and
bandaids on my wounded feet, Keira, Benedict, Tom and I headed to Shoreditch to go check
out the pub/bar scene. It was quite nice actually! I wasn’t
going to get belligerent on my first drink out so I only had 1 drink there. We went to two different bars
in Shoreditch and then went on the funniest tube ride back to Finsbury Park. I
thought Americans drank a lot, I once knew a “man” in Indiana who drank a fifth
of Jaegermeister every day but even this guy had nothing on the Brits. Almost
every man I walked by was stumbling his way along and the girls were literally
screaming at each other. Not with malice, that’s just the level of sound that
was needed to break through drunken ear drums. “HEY WANT TO GO BACK TO ESSEX?
MY HAT’S GONE WRONG” The reason why Finsbury Park was especially trashed was
because there was an Artic Monkeys concert going on and people were drinking as
though it were the last day of their life. Thanks Artic Monkeys. Once the four of us got back to Finsbury Park we went to some secret pub and had a truly
great time talking to the locals. The night ended around 1:30am and it
definitely made up for my interesting morning.
