“Excuse me, do you know where the cafe is?”

The man with the question seemed utterly perplexed, and rightfully so – the Main Building of Cardiff Uni has hundreds upon hundreds of rooms and secret staircases and back corridors. It actually took me a moment to realize he was talking to me, as I get lost there almost daily. But as I prepared to apologize and tell him that I didn’t know any better than him, I realized that I knew exactly where the cafe was and exactly how to get there from where we were standing.

And so with kind of a funny feeling, I sent him on his way.

I returned to my flat for the afternoon, enjoying the crisp air on my cheeks above my scarf and making a mental shopping list for the week. I realized with a bit of a laugh that even in my head, I used the term “bin bags” instead of “trash bags.” It’s one thing to do it when speaking to locals, but apparently my brain thinks a bit in British English now.

By the time I reached the gate to my complex, it occurred to me that I had done the fifteen-minute walk sort of on autopilot – my feet have walked the route enough times that they know exactly which crosswalks to use and which street corners to stop at and which puddles to avoid. No fretting about making incorrect turns or accidentally passing through the drippy spot on the overpass ahead.

Heading to the mail room on my way in, I check the post box for my flat. Nestled amongst small packages and ads and bills for my flatmates is my first-ever piece of mail to my address here in Cardiff (thanks, Love!). On the front of the envelope, my name shares real estate with the word “Wales,” and for some reason, this strikes me as something special.

There’s a point when a place shifts from being more-unfamiliar-than-familiar to more-familiar-than-unfamiliar. A point when you know that bananas are cheapest at the grocery store by your Wednesday afternoon class and that you can save two minutes in the morning if you take this road instead of that one and that you stop using your GPS to get anywhere because you can see how all the streets connect in your head better anyway.

In short, just existing is no longer immensely overwhelming.

I feel settled here. I take my time when grocery shopping, no longer scrambling for just the necessities. I bought the necessary supplies for hosting friends as they crash in Cardiff for a night or two. I officially have a favorite cafe (but that doesn’t mean that I’ll stop exploring all the others). I know within a minute or two how long it will take me to walk to most parts of the city, and I can almost tell just by the look of the sky in the morning if I should wear a raincoat or just throw an umbrella in my backpack.

I know what time the first train shuffles past in the morning and that the seagulls will be laughing long before then. I know exactly what time of day the light hits the government buildings just right so that they glow golden.

My friend dear friend Meredith came to visit for the weekend, and I was mildly shocked at the easygoing confidence with which I navigated us across rainy sidewalks in the dark and into back streets in search of takeaway Thai food and in and out of arcades all over high street. On one particularly blue-sky day, I took a deep breath of cold air, linked my arm through hers, and said, “Welcome to my city!”

So yes sir, I do know where the cafe is. And a bargain of a grocery store and a delicious cheese shop and a crazy-cool speakeasy and an amazing gelato shop and a beautiful park and a quirky tea room and a rad thrift shop and the bus station on the other side of town and a gorgeous old cathedral and the perfect spot to get a perfect photo of the Castle.

And somewhere, a horseshoe crab realizes that it is no longer buried deep in the sand but swimming, swimming, swimming through a sea of possibilities.

Cheers!

Is this how it feels to be a horseshoe crab?

It’s an odd question, but nonetheless a question that I found myself wondering one night. For any of you who may not know, I spent the summer of 2017 working on a research reserve in horseshoe crab central: the Delaware Bay. I learned a lot about the little buggers, and they quickly joined the ranks as one of my favorite creatures.

Tough but docile sea-dwellers, horseshoe crabs are a bit of a mystery, because they only leave the ocean once a year to spawn. With the exception of full- and new-moon high tides between April and June, horseshoe crabs live out their days in the sea. Additionally, they’re particularly hard to tag/track, because they shed their exoskeletons upwards of fifteen times from hatching to maturity, about ten years.

And so I return to the question, is this how it feels to be a horseshoe crab?

Because when a horseshoe crab climbs out of an old shell, it doesn’t hunt around for a new, bigger shell to inhabit like a hermit crab. It’s not like a snake, with a fresh-and-ready shell waiting underneath; no such luck. When a horseshoe crab leaves one exoskeleton behind, it’s kind of soft and mushy underneath – vulnerable, fragile, and dependent on time to toughen its softness into a new, hardened exoskeleton.

I’ve never related to a prehistoric spider-relative more than I have this week of my life. As magical as it’s been, it’s been hard. It’s been hard to fight slowly encroaching jet lag and wander my way around the streets of an unknown city and search stores for any shred of familiarity and play a constant game of UK-to-US language translation.

It’s been hard to live without hugs.

And there are moments where I feel like that crab. The fragile, vulnerable feeling that comes along with stepping into a new adventure resonates with me. I understand the difficulty of shedding certainty for something entirely new. The anxiety of facing a big ocean, you could say, is rather palpable. So what’s a horseshoe crab to do?

The tried-and-true answer is a difficult one to hear: wait. Hunker down in a safe place, peek out every once in a while, and emerge when the time is right. Horseshoe crabs know what to do, burrowing into the sand on the ocean floor until their shells are strong enough to keep them safe.

So I take a cue from the crabs. I spend some time on my own, getting comfortable with where I am and who I am. I walk a few miles in the sunshine, admire a landmark, sip a latte in a cafe, explore my uni campus, cook a nice dinner. I find a store that sells yarn.

I learn how to sit in the sand. And while it can be a bit lonely sometimes…

…it can also…

…be entirely…

…hope-giving…

…fulfilling…

…and restorative.

And slowly, slowly, I feel myself settle in. I feel my shell growing stronger every day. And I pray every night that God will equip me with the patience and trust of a horseshoe crab, confident that soon I will wiggle out of the sand. As I sit, I plan and dream.

Because, after all, there’s a sea to be explored.

Cheers!

Okay, so it’s been three days since I officially moved into my “uni accommodation” (read: dorm), and as the orientation has been on the meager side, I’ve run out of opportunities to eat free food. And as inexpensive as cafes and street food vendors appear to be, I have to remind myself frequently that those prices are in pounds, not dollars, and I’m paying more than I realize. And as easy as it is to drop into a corner store and buy a sandwich (always with chutney, for some reason?) instead of trekking back to my flat, it will add up quickly and is not necessarily a habit I want to develop.

Grocery shopping it is!

Grocery shopping proved to be an experience. I wondered when I arrived why everyone seemed to be carrying shopping bags all the time, and I’ve come to realize over time that people spend a fair bit more time shopping here than in the states. In Cardiff especially, there is very little one-stop shopping. You get your toiletries at the pharmacy (Boots is basically a fancier CVS) and your basic groceries at Lidl (similar to an Aldi) and your more specific groceries at M&S (kind of Trader Joe’s/Whole Foods-y).

Each store is a mix of familiar and unfamiliar; they have Doritos and Coca-Cola and Colgate toothpaste, but I don’t recognize any of the brands of laundry detergent and cannot for the life of me find hummus anywhere. Eggs sit unrefrigerated on shelves and there are entirely too many scone varieties and entirely too few coffee options.

A prime example of the familiar-unfamiliar dynamic is “salad cream.” Heinz brand, it sits right alongside the ketchup, mustard, and even mayo that I know and love. But what exactly is it? I read the ingredients label – all recognizable components combine to make this foreign yellowish-tan sauce. According to Google, it’s one of the UK’s most beloved condiments and is also known as “sandwich cream.”

But barring the unfamiliar, you search high and low and take your best guesses on what you want and need. You’ve found your groceries in a variety of stores and now realize why everyone has so many shopping bags (a large backpack has come in handy). And then you maybe realize that although you now have fruit and veg, you have nothing to cook said fruit and veg in or with. So, loaded with a week’s worth of food, you venture out into the city centre in hopes of stumbling upon an inexpensive pot and pan.

The familiar-unfamiliar continues in the discount shop with a giggle. Along with more salad cream, the shelves are stocked with “noodle dusters” and puns that are only funny if you’re catching on to the lingo.

It’s funny the things I’ve become more comfortable with – the walking, for one thing. I’ve never lived in any semblance of a city, but I now understand the struggle of walking back home loaded with parcels (even if it’s only half a mile, it feels like more with detergent, almond milk, bananas, and a saucepan in your backpack). I wish I had a pedometer to see how much I walk in a day! Though the amount of walking is new for my feet, I enjoy it a lot. The air is usually crisp but not too cold, and colorful coffee shops dot the street corners. This really is a gorgeous city, and striding through the streets each day is a treat for my eyes and my soul… but ask me again after I’ve had to walk to class in the rain.

I’ve gotten much better with the cars driving on the opposite side of the road than I’m used to, and as my friend Grace so aptly put it, “left-right-left” before crossing a street has already become “right-left-right” (heaven help me when I get back to the States). What I am still not used to, however, is walking on the opposite side in stairwells. It still feels entirely incorrect – that is, until I almost bump into someone coming down the same way I’m going up. (The Student Union actually has arrows on the left side and is red on the right side in stairwells, which is tremendously helpful.)

It’s a pretty good illustration for how I’m doing, actually – I might be walking on the wrong side of the street sometimes, but I’m moving forward nonetheless. I have to stop every so often and remind myself that it’s been approximately three days and I’m in a foreign country and it’s very much okay that I don’t have everything figured out yet. This journey is one foot in front of the other, slow and sure, savoring as much as I can. Because as Aristotle said, “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”

Cheers!

To answer the question I’ve been asked by so many: yes, I made it! Thank you all for your prayers and well-wishes for safe travel. The traveling itself took more than a full day, but I was able to watch from the window of my plane as we chased the sun into England and from the window of my bus(es) as I passed pastel houseboats bobbing on the Thames and a sunset over the moody British countryside.

So, after a 30-hour journey, I’ve arrived in one of the most charming cities I’ve ever seen. And how am I feeling?

This face says it all – I can’t quite believe this beautiful thing that has been set in front of me (and I’m not just talking about the cheese platter).

I felt all sorts of ways in the week leading up to my departure, some of which you can read in the preceding post, and some of which included crying when my favorite umbrella did not fit in my suitcase. There was anticipation and angst and excitement and fear and joy, all mixing thoroughly in my brain and my heart. For a girl who doesn’t always feel very secure in unfamiliar situations, picking up and moving to Europe for five months is quite the undertaking. But I could not have imagined the way I’d feel in those brief moments when I correctly navigated a bus schedule or identified my university building on an unmarked map, converted pounds to dollars easily in my head or strode down the cobbled streets as if I knew just where I was going. There are little blips of confidence, little moments of “I can do this.”

The day was spent exercising this empowerment and exploring the City Centre, a beautiful hodgepode of old and new, modern and traditional. There are wide cobbley streets and “arcades” housing shops and cafes in original Victorian (?) architecture and oh yeah, the Castle right in the middle of it all. No big deal.

I move into Uni residences tomorrow, and while I’m sad about leaving behind this precious Welsh-themed hotel, I’m excited to see the place where I’ll be living and learning for the foreseeable future. Jet lag hasn’t really been an issue as of yet, but I’m still trying to take it easy and balance time between exploration and relaxation. Last night, my travel companion and I opted to order some “takeaway” Italian food for dinner and settle in for an evening of Harry Potter, of all things. I think the pajamas and ravioli did us well (as did the thirteen hours of sleep), and we took advantage of a beautiful day to poke around in cheese shops and coffee shops and Welsh shops before retiring with Tim Horton’s (which, yes, they have here!) for a few hours of rest before dinner… which will probably be Indian food.

Pro tip: when traveling to foreign countries, Em’s a good one to have around. Isn’t she the cutest?

It’s hard to believe that it only took this city a day and a half to make me love it. Speaking of days, you can also follow me day-by-day with the “Daily Photo” page, where I’ll do my best to capture the essence of each day in one photo with one caption. These longer blog-style posts will probably be weekly or biweekly, but my daily photos will do their best to fill in some of the gaps.

You read this far? Really? I’m glad to hear. I hope you enjoy my newsy ramblings and are able to live vicariously through this great adventure that I’ve undertaken!

Cheers!

I’ve never really understood wanderlust.

That’s not to say that I didn’t understand what it meant. I’ve seen the deep desire to travel manifest in many of my friends and my own sister (who, in the past ten years, has lived in six states and had visited at least seven countries by the time she was my age). I can imagine that there are individuals who get as much of a thrill from a new journey as I get from talking about science or drinking a really good cup of coffee. I can comprehend that there must be people out there who want nothing more than to see the world, to venture into the unknown.

(The unknown and I have always had a complicated relationship.)

So yes, I understood the definition of the word. But it never resonated with me. Why trade comfort and familiarity for uncertainty? Why leave behind what I know and love? Where is the drive and excitement in free-falling out of your comfort zone, jumping out of a plane and hoping that this parachute of new places and people will catch you?

As I’m sure you’re probably aware (because you’re reading this blog-y thing that I plugged on my own Facebook page), I’ll be spending this spring semester in Wales, studying and researching and exploring as far as my feet (or a train) will take me. I plan to write about my time as often as I can, because I know there are people who want to keep up with me and also because I want to document this season of my life well. The name “Annie Actually” has twofold meaning: first, the nickname that didn’t really stick is the moniker I’ve chosen for my time abroad (there’s also a Parent Trap obsession in me that never really died). The title is also seemed fitting, as it’s a nod to a classic British film that I make a point to watch each Christmastime.

That was the original intention of the name, but it’s come to mean something else to me. Because as I research and read and learn and consult maps and guidebooks and train schedules, I am filled with a strange feeling–a bubbly, fuzzy anticipation-like feeling. I see pictures and imagine myself standing there in person. I’m enchanted by bus lines and ferry routes to towns I’ve never heard of. I want to taste foreign food and hear unfamiliar accents. I long to be a sojourner in someone else’s world, just me and a backpack and the name of a hostel in a city far away.

And so I find that this blog is aptly named–because for the first time in my life, I think Annie actually understands wanderlust.

Cheers!