Post Script

I neglected to mention something didn't I? I know what you all really want to know...

What happened to the tree, right?

Did we ever get the Christmas tree lit?

Story short: yes, we did. Thanks to giving in and buying overpriced lights from a local hardware store (I am convinced they bought out all the Walmart lights and charged double, y'know, in the spirit of American entrepreneurialism and according to laws of supply and demand) and Sister-in-Law-to-be's partner's gift of a few strings, Christmas was saved and the day was light. Everyone loved their gifts.

No?

Of course I said yes.

This changes everything. I felt a bit awkward about outlining such a personal story, but it would be anticlimactic to say "I got engaged, so now my career plans have changed." It would also be incorrect. But along with falling head over heels, the rest of my life has also been turned upside down, so the most romantic moment of my life must be post-scripted by notions of a more pragmatic nature. Boo.

Coming back after Christmas has been hard, so much harder than when we parted in September after the end of our studies. The overly seasonable weather hasn't helped, and I found myself snowed in, with an extra few days off work, and much to consider. For the first time in a while I found myself frustrated with my situation, which sounds rather ungrateful for a girl who just got engaged!

We have the kinds of obstacles that are not present in some other relationships. We have jobs to find, visas to apply for, and money to raise. For those who have no experience of this, the spouse visa process is a stranger and more bewildering realm than I could have imagined. It seems to be a slow-moving bureaucratic cruise through oceans of paperwork... Visa Journey is not a tourist site or a travel brochure.

So the wedding will not take place for a while. As for 2010, my short-term plans remain the same, although I now have more to consider as I pursue my goals. We. We have more to consider as we pursue our goals!

As soon as the snow melts I will start driving. I will then start applying for internships and jobs. However, as I now have weddings and visas and travel costs to think about, money is going to become a greater concern... for both of us. We are both from families of modest means. Doing long stints of unpaid interning in an expensive city (be it Brussels, London, DC...), even after my time living rent-free with my parents and working and saving, may not be as feasible an option while I save for other items. But we will wait and see.

This new decade has begun with 2010 as a huge turning point in my life script. I feel that from hereon in, nothing is going to be quite the same again. It's going to be interesting, and probably exciting, but also potentially a mundane struggle. January feels like a limbo month, where I have all the information I need to take the next steps, but I have to sit and wait for further instruction on where to go and how to get there.

For now I'm working a seven day week, making up for my time abroad and allowing my manager to take some much-needed time off before it all gets busy again, and saving my wee pennies for future plans and pipe dreams.

Yet there is something else I haven't mentioned. Fiance(!) and I are waiting for news that could potentially change everything yet again. But that is another story for another day...

Without a Hitch

T'was the week before Christmas, I was wearing a dress,
I had been told earlier to put on my best...

Incidentally, the bulldog loved me. He would wait for me to emerge from my bedroom each morning and barked defensively whenever Boyfriend came near me. He would joke "your boyfriend's getting jealous" and I'd appease the dog with some good ol' backscratching. Approval from the family dog must count for something, right?

I was told to wear formal dinner clothes, but with shoes I could walk in. As I brushed bulldog hairs from my overcoat, before we left, my boyfriend reminded me about the favour of picking out a locket for his sister in the next couple of days. He was really anxious about making sure the jeweler had it in time for Christmas, and the weather report was looking treacherous for Christmas week, which could only impede things. "Thank you for helping him out" his Mom/Mum added, "we want something really heirloom quality for his sister, and it's been a hassle to get this all sorted in time."

Boyfriend and I had only met in February, when some small freak snow had littered our University city in the UK, and on our but second date we strolled through the local botanic garden, him trying to impress me and me sliding on the ice like a kid. I was now being taken to a botanic garden (in the USA!) and for a formal dinner as a pre-Christmas treat. Wrong time of year to see a garden maybe? Yes, all of the trees were bare. The flower beds were empty. But the weather was clear (luckily) and the garden trees were lit (beautifully) with festive lights that slowly illuminated as we walked around the park as the cold sun fell. We entertained for a moment a plan to strip some of the trees of lights for our still as yet naked tree back at the house. Sadly, wearing a dress is not conducive to climbing trees. Or walking in the cold.

We spent ages in the network of conservatories, indoor and warm, travelling from subsaharan Africa to ferny jungle. Each room had its own themed Christmas wreath, made of palm trees, ferns, succulents, or roses. As evening wore on the gardens filled with more people.

We queued for dinner in the conservatory restaurant, and Boyfriend's heart sank as a denim-attired group with long hair and baseball caps were given a table in the restaurant. It claimed to be a fine dining restaurant, but it seemed that we were both ridiculously and hilariously overdressed. I could only laugh. We were given a quiet corner table though, and dinner was delicious, the service was great and our tip was complimentary.

Afterwards I was led to a hall where we were treated to a wonderful gospel choir concert. I have loved gospel since I saw Sister Act II at the cinema as a kid, always wanted to experience it live, and I have a secret desire to be reincarnated as a gospel star. It was a gorgeous Christmas experience to hear their jubilant hymns, and I should let you know that it even beats the Coca Cola ad for bringing out the festive spirit in folks.

As the evening drew to a close, the stresses of the holiday season were behind me. After dinner had finished and my anxious pre-emptive speculations about the evening had been proven false (come on, jewelry store? locket? posh dinner?), I melted into the thought that this could be one of many lovely dinner evenings to come. How deliciously pleasant.

That was until we were walking to the car, and we meandered to the museum house to have a quick saunter round. It was a typical colonial American building, full of artifacts about the estate that Boyfriend could only feign interest in. He started to walk faster and more agitatedly through the display rooms before proclaiming brusquely "I need to get outside, there are too many people in here and I don't feel well."

I rolled my eyes, and followed him out and round to a dark corner of the outside porch. The fountain light show was going on just behind some tall evergreen trees. I slumped down next to him on a bench.

It was cold. The fountain light show played its classical Christmas music in the background. He apologised, and he spoke to me for a bit.

And he asked if I would marry him.

And it was a ring, not a locket, of course.

And yes, he had been anxious all week: he wanted Christmas to go without a hitch, but with the promise of getting hitched.

Miss-Stress

The holiday season is a stressful time by default. I already mentioned some of my fears about spending Christmas with the boyfriend and about meeting his parents and potentially being dismissed for my dubious gift of Twiglets. Also, the fears about careers and jobs and money didn't go away at this time, as far as I tried to put them to the back of my mind.

I wasn't the only one with seasonal jitters. I could see that my boyfriend wanted to make sure that the all-American Christmas that he had envisioned for me went off without a hitch. He tried his hardest to make sure that everything was perfect, from the brand of mincemeat (so I could bring a taste of British Christmas tradition: drinking mulled wine and eating Jus'Roll Pastry mince pies with a Dr Who special on the telly) to the order of seasonal DVDs chosen to background the family festivities in the run up to Christmas day.

The day after I arrived we took a family trip to the Christmas tree farm to pick our sprucy ornament, all 12 feet of it. I appreciate that choosing the perfect Christmas tree is imperative to set the mood for the year's celebrations. However, my boyfriend takes tree shopping to another level. He traipses around the rows of trees and gives a full 360 degree analysis of the specimens on offer, making assessments on height, vertical infallibility (no leaning allowed), corpulence and needle retention. In no other situation is the sight of grown men wandering around shaking trees by the trunk considered acceptable and normal behaviour.

"It's just not the same anymore," He lamented. "We looked up and down the state for the right farm for you to visit. All the good trees are usually tagged before they get to the height they should be. These trees will be excellent in a few years' time, but only if they are given a chance to grow."

As it happened, we did get a beautiful pre-cut tree from upstate, but he remained sorely disappointed that I wasn't going to get the experience of chopping one down for myself. I think for the sake of my fingers that this was a good thing. At least I still have ten of them.

But you heard it kids: give trees a chance to grow. Just $2 a month will help these poor undernourished trees achieve...

Anyway, another cue for stress came when the men performed the ritual of bringing the Christmas decorations down from the attic for a dust-off, with the ceremonial untangling and pre-tree trial of the lights. As per Santa's Law, only one set of lights was working. We travelled to all the supermarkets in the land but there were but no white lights left. The three wise men definitely didn't have this problem.

"Do you have any white lights?" Boyfriend enquired at each establishment.

"Alas, not anymore, dear sire" they didn't reply.

"Will you get anymore?" Boyfriend asked. He was greeted with perverse looks and shakes of heads, and derisory comments that next year he should try Christmas shopping more than a week in advance. This set him into an electric rage, while I had certain pumpkin-themed flashbacks and convinced him to calm down.

The weather didn't help. Snow storms and weather warnings and mayor-proclaimed weather emergencies meant that plans had to be canceled or rearranged. Buying gifts for all, with the snow and the money concerns, was another stress. And I had my own secret worries that the gifts I was giving to the boyfriend's family weren't going to be good enough. Girl wants to make a good impression on her first yankee Christmas (and don't worry, I knew that a hold-baggage battered box of Twiglets wasn't going to cut it).

Until the phone rang. And Boyfriend picked it up. And left the room.

He came back and look flustered.

The phone rang again. He left the room again.

He came back and looked even redder.

"I'm having an argument with a jeweler's," he eventually explained.
My blood ran cold and my eyes widened.

"We're getting an heirloom locket for my sister, and it's been no end of trouble. We'll need to go out to the mall across the state on Saturday I'm afraid. I need a female eye to make sure it's going to be acceptable." I agreed, shoulders relaxing.

Anything to be part of a perfect family Christmas. This could only win me family favour, I reasoned. With the weather, lights, and tree providing enough havoc over the season I was only too glad to help. And as I said, he was desperate for Christmas to go without a hitch.

Post Grad

I am now in the land where Santa rides a fire truck giving candy to kids and dog biscuits to, erm, dogs; where banks are drive-thru, marshmallow comes in a jar and peanut butter comes on a cheesy biscuit; where the houses are sparkling with their Christmas lights and festive wreaths; where you can win $1000 for eating 105lb of meat, viagra is advertised on daytime TV and VAT is added onto consumer goods after you take it to the till.

Really, it's very beautiful here, and I am having a great time. Americans certainly know how to do Christmas.

On the flight over, I spent about 4 hours playing Bejeweled on the touch screen computer (a game that takes me back to the guilt-filled moments of procrastinating when I should have been writing my Master's thesis). I also watched some of the comedy shows on offer, and flicked through the 40 or so movies available on-flight, stopping at one called Post Grad.

Post Grad? Hmm, that phrase sounds familiar.

It's about a girl who graduates from university and finds herself unemployed and living with her parents. Oh yes, it certainly sounds familiar. Funny how I hadn't heard of the movie, but already knew the plot.

It's a truly terrible piece of cinema, with an ambling unfocused plot, neglected character development, and a love story completely lacking in chemistry. But there are some familiar moments - the misplaced confidence of graduation, the disillusionment when the degree parchment finally arrives in the post, the upturning of a life plan/the lack of life plan.

For some reason, I watched this movie not just to kill some hours while cruising over the Atlantic Ocean and floating above North-East Canada, but also with the hope that it would offer some answers to my own Post Grad questions. Why I thought that a piece of in-flight Hollywood fluff would be able to do that, I don't know. The main character gets the job of her dreams when her arch-nemesis is inexplicably sacked, and seeing as I don't hate anyone enough to have an arch-nemesis, I doubt that's going to happen to me. Back to the drawing board I guess!

A far more realistic depiction of post-graduation lounging and floundering is captured by 90s UK sitcom Spaced, which, despite its off-beat surrealism, is far too real to me for me to find it amusing any more. The Dole episode is too familiar to be truly funny.

After the movie I watched an episode of Hannah Montana. It was much more comforting and the acting was even relatively convincing, or at least entertaining.

I'm now getting my kicks out of trying to explain the uses of HP sauce to Americans (chilli-cheese dogs, fries and brown sauce is almost a complete cross-cultural experience!), visiting a Christmas tree farm, and out of sharing my Christmas traditions with another family, and long evening drives around the sprawling neighbourhoods to enjoy the Christmas decorations while listening to big band music and the Sufjan Stevens festive album. Even the bulldog ain't so bad.

Us of A

There's something I didn't tell you.

I'm sorry. I wanted to be open and honest on this blog. I didn't think it was that important, and I didn't mention it.

But now I realise that I should have told you earlier. I hope it's not too late.

I'm spending Christmas in America.

And I leave tomorrow.

I've been so busy at work (and tired afterwards) that I haven't scheduled any posts while away, so I'll try to keep up.

I have to say though, if I had been told a year ago that I would be spending Christmas 2009 in the States I wouldn't have believed it. Since finishing Uni, my boyfriend and I have both been living with our respective parents and trying to figure out how to take the next steps of our careers. We have been with each other through daily job applications, job rejections, interview nerves, interview analyses, website trawling, decision-making, and work rants. But it just so happens that we are half a world apart.

It's certainly been a strange year, and possibly about to get stranger yet... I am meeting THE parents for the first time.

Things I am afraid of:

Accidentally and inappropriately swearing like a true Scot.

My British sense of irony and sarcasm being misunderstood.

The boyfriend's pet bulldog.

Putting on weight over an American Christmas season.

That the Marmite I am taking won't be well received.

Or the Twiglets.

Or the Bird's trifle.

Or the Tetley's tea.

Or the HP sauce.

Or my quirky aunt's homemade brandy-drenched Christmas pudding.

My family's copy of the Radio Times is currently sitting on the dining room table, sadly untouched by me, because I do not need it this year.

Something to Shout about

I made a joke with Shouty Girl, and she made one back!

(So, maybe we do all judge each other too quickly. Maybe lame jokes really are what keep this world going round...

that, and the ubiquitous "weather smalltalk" topic of conversation.)

stairmaster 3000

As you will have noticed, I have had little to say about job hunting recently. That's because I am taking a break, and I've put the career search on hold for a short time. My current job is great fun (tinned pumpkin aside) and I'm also very excited to announce something else:

I have paid off my overdraft!

I am indeed back to black. As you may recall, this was the first step in my five step plan, so now I can concentrate on saving a bit of money, and (gulp) learning to drive, which I promise, promise will start in the new year.

So this, along with graduating a few days ago (woohoo!) has made it a very good week for me.

But it's difficult to see my friends in different states of post-graduation despair. I see facebook status updates, receive text messages, and have conversations with people very close to me who are struggling in dealing with this time. I hear bitter words from friends who don't know what they want to do with their lives; those who do know what they want to do but are finding it impossible to get on the career ladder; those who thought they knew but it's not quite working out.

Some of my friends have just left Universityville, and have also just begun the rite of passage of uncomfortable disillusionment that occurs in the period between Uni and starting a career. I know how it feels. I spent 2 years reading up on jobs and job hunting, because I was doing the awkward shift into entry level work while still studying. I had the panic-ridden thoughts of "what am I doing?"
"what SHOULD I be doing?"
"am I doing the right thing?"
"Is this all I am worth?"
"Why can't I get where I want to be?"
"Is this it?"
"Why didn't I do things differently? Would it have made a difference?"
"Why won't someone give me a break?"
"What else can I try?"
"If this is all I can get, why even bother?"
"Where does all my money go?"
"Why is everyone else getting better opportunities than me?"

It's difficult to know what to say back to my friends though because I can relate all too well. Practical advice is usually not what they want to hear, and empty words like "I am sure it will turn out fine" are meaningless and insincere.

Most people find their way during this horrible period. Some shake up their lives a bit, go travelling, sign on, reconsider their priorities, find their own coping mechanisms and then find a way of making money. It's not easy, and there's little to say to reassure people.

I can't pretend to be a careers expert; for a start I don't really have a career, but I do have a lot of experience of the job-hunting mill (at least more than one of my student friends who stepped inside the Uni careers centre for the first time recently and was so scared she ran away).

I already went through these thought patterns and now have a clearer idea of how things work as well as a clearer idea of where I want to be. I don't have a problem with admitting to people, or myself, that I am living with my parents and working in a deli and that my career is currently on hold. When I started my first job out of University, as a staff assistant for the government, I was thinking too much about what my next step would be. When I was studying for my MSc, I was thinking too much about what I was going to do when I finished and how I would afford to live. Panicking too much about the next step made me panic too much about the one I was currently sitting on.

There are lots of approaches to job hunting and career starting, but the one that has worked best for me so far is to take things slowly, to take things one silly step at a time. When I moved back home in September, I set myself some very small goals indeed. But as silly as these goals may seem, and no matter what happens next, achieving the first one this week has made me feel like everything is on track.