After spending a week living precariously, sleeping in couches and basically wearing the same clothes because I couldn’t reach my suitcase, I have finally moved in to my new place on Thursday – and what a difference!

6 places visited and I eventually settled for the very first one I saw – it wasn’t the cheapest, the room wasn’t the largest I saw, but I really fell in love with the place: big garden (and a beautiful one, too: what a difference from the rectangle of grass I had in my previous house here in Canterbury!), very, very bright (important when the sky is cloudy 90% of the time). It is a calm place, too: I can relax properly when coming home from the lab, and we have an interesting household, too – I really can’t ask for more!

And tomorrow I will start my teaching duties at the university – I will be doing some  demonstrations for 1st-year students’ labs, along with some marking (thankfully, that will not start right now). Looking forward to it…

There are still a couple of things on my check list that must be taken care of, though: I need to get a bicycle, urgently! (walking is OK, but so slow… the time required to go to Sainsbury’s to do some shopping actually tripled!) And I also need to re-join both the rowing club and the gym – meanwhile, I’ll run whenever the weather allows it (now that I’ve moved in, I managed to reach my running kit and did a 6k run yesterday). Running in here is quite different from running in Gaia, though – I miss those 30k of uninterrupted path by the river- and sea-side, in here I have to be forever vigilant with the numerous road-crossings (and the lack of zebra crossings mean that cars have the right of way all the time…).