The Times and Traveller

Being employed!

2009-11-01T03:03:00.000-08:00

This has been an interesting year where employment is concerned. I'm sure that sentiment is shared by many friends, family and strangers, to say the least, in these difficult economic times. I certainly am not where, in the farthest reaches of my imagination, I thought I might be when I decided to start travel nursing in summer 2008. As a nurse especially, I went into my profession with pretty much absolute confidence in job security. Hmmm.....

In my mind, I was going to travel around the states for a year or two, experience exciting city life with expenses (mostly) paid in places like Manhattan, Washington DC, Chicago. Maybe spend some time in the south, peachy Georgia perhaps? Maybe even venture to the drizzly northwest of Seattle! The nation was my oyster. When I was sated I would return, of course, to California and buy a house. I guess God doesn't always let everything go the way you expect so you remember to turn to Him when a bit confusion hits.

So as I've mentioned before, I was in Boston for 6 months. Late summer changed t0 glorious fall and eventually into the much colder and not-quite-as-glorious-but-at-times-still-stunning winter. My first real winter. I was contracted to stay until May which thrilled me. Filled with premature spring fever, I looked forward to seeing the snow and sub-zero temperatures retreat into soft, sunny spring days, the trees in the Public Garden budding with new life, people converging on the lawn of the Common in tees and shorts to bask in the warmth of the new season. The changing of seasons was a foreign experience to me and I waited with impatient expectation, and cold toes. As it happened my contract wrapped up in January. No spring in New England after all. I returned to the land of perpetual summertime: California.

From Boston until now, my professional life has been unremarkable. Unemployed from February to April, working registry or agency from April to July (when I could get shifts), which brings me basically to England and once again, unemployment.

It took seven months from start to finish to wade through the process of getting a license to practice nursing in the UK. Correction, seven months to get to the UK. Nine to actually be licensed. And it's less of a wade than swimming against a riptide, really. Lots of feeling powerless. More on that later though. Arriving in England in mid-August, I had a new plan: complete Overseas Nursing programme (one month course that teaches foreign nurses about the intricacies of the National Health Service), get contracted to start work in the meantime, begin working by middle October.

It's two weeks later than expected but I finally have a job! As luck would have it, the British postal service, Royal Mail has been striking throughout the country since my arrival, delaying important documents I have had to send and receive. Also, my company was working hard to get me placed in a hospital in Bristol, which was my preference. Alas, this was not to be, at least not for this contract.

I have signed on for a 13 week assignment at a hospital in Gloucester, a city roughly 30 miles north of Bristol. Gloucester Royal Hospital. Forgive me for seeming to complain even when things have gone right, but this job presents a whole new set of challenges. First of all, let me say I'm glad to have a job, ecstatic. But here are some of the finer details. The unit I will be working in is actually divided into 2 sections, the neonatal intensive care, and the special care baby unit. These two sections are on two different hospital campuses. The special care unit is in Cheltenham, the next city over and about a 25-30 minute shuttle ride from the Gloucester unit. The shifts are 13.5 hours long and all staff rotate, meaning work alternating days and nights. The travel company I work for let the lease go on all their housing for travellers in the area because none of them renewed or extended their contracts for various reasons. So the only housing available is "hospital housing" which looks like dorms or jail. For this and other reasons, I have decided to stay in Bristol and commute to work via train. That will add a one hour journey to either end of the super long shift.

All things considered, I think it will be ok, I am optimistic. At least it's only 3 shifts per week. If it doesn't work out to commute from Bristol, I will go live in hospital housing, aka jail. All I can say is that it's great to have a job again.

Being here

2009-10-05T04:06:00.000-07:00

"If I had to show a foreigner one English city and one only, to give him a balanced idea of English architecture, I should take him...to Bristol, which has developed in all directions, and where nearly everything has happened."

--Sir John Summerson

Allow me to elaborate on the opening statement in my last post about living in the heartland of the English countryside. It's true that I am, but this may be confusing to those of you who have been told by me that I am living in a big city called Bristol, which is also true.

In the past when I have met Londoners, the mention of Bristol seems to bring on the slightest upturning of the nose followed by a statement of mild disinterest along the lines of, "Oh, that's the west country...." From my experiences here so far, I have been perplexed reflecting on these exchanges because there is no denying that Bristol is, in fact, a big city. It has all the classic characteristics including being a major center for commerce, greatly multi-cultural and diverse and an educational hub with the University of Bristol and many other colleges. However, after several trips outside the city heading in various directions, I have realized that if you drive in any direction as little as a couple of miles, you are surrounded by farmland. Beautiful farmland on soft, rolling green hills that are dotted with cows, sheep and occasionally horses. So in a way it is the best of both worlds.

Here's a little more about Bristol, for anyone interested.

With a population of over 400,000 people, Bristol is England's sixth most populous city. It became a city by royal charter in 1155 and gained county status in 1373. Until the industrial revolution of the 18th century, Bristol was one of England's three most important cities after London, along with York and Norwich. Situated in a valley on the River Avon which runs west into the Severn River until becoming the Bristol Channel, the city originally developed as a port in the 11th century. It's location made it a major trading center for centuries with Wales, Ireland, other European ports on the Atlantic coast and later with New England.

The 17th century saw Bristol become a major player in the slave trade with the Americas. Manufactured goods were traded for Africans who were transported across the Atlantic and sold into slavery for American plantation goods such as cotton, sugar and tobacco. Much as the deep south and all of the states still feel the burning cheeks shame of the ways of the past that cannot be forgotten, it lingers on here in Bristol as well.

Bristol also suffered major damage from air raids by the German Luftwaffe during the second World War, being a target due to the presence of a harbor and an airplane company. Nearly 1300 people were killed during raids that occurred over the course of a year along with almost 90,000 buildings.

I am reminded a lot of San Francisco when I am out and about in Bristol, especially whilst hiking up and down all the hills that make up this city. Both are harbor cities that feel alive and are bustling with culture and activity. Both are filled with little communities throughout but make an effort to draw people together through festivals and events year round. Both are crisp and cool but manage to have fresh clean air despite city pollution thanks to their close proximity to the sea. There are definitely areas here where you feel like you are in a dirty, dingy, possibly shady part of town, but just around a corner you will find yourself in a charming square bordered with beautiful 17th century terraced homes that make you smile.

Despite having been here nearly two months now, I do not feel like I know Bristol very well. I'm not referring to the physical layout of the city, per se, though I still have a lot to learn there too. But I mean more of a sense of Bristol, getting to know the heart of the place. During this transitional time of adjusting to a new culture, waiting to find work and trying to fill my time with productive activities, I wander a lot. I get lost a lot. I find myself pining for home and familiarity in my frustration, disinterested in the novelty of being somewhere new.

Very recently, however, I've noticed a vague sense of familiarity in my feelings towards Bristol. With my few dearest, closest friendships, the beginnings are often marked for me with feelings of ambivalence and sometimes even initial dislike for them or their attitudes. It takes awhile for me to get to know new people and to decide how much I wish to let them know me. Having true intimacy with someone requires that you really know each other, and it is natural for that to take some time and mutual revelation. Gradually, I was able to learn who these amazing people are and out of that develop friendships that shape my life in many ways. I'm beginning to think that this will be the way with Bristol: give and take, a little at a time.

Debut/Getting There

2009-09-27T02:11:00.000-07:00

"Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of the living."

--Miriam Beard

Two years ago, I would not have imagined that I would be here, living in the southwest of England. In the heartland of the pristine English countryside that I longed to experience as a lovelorn young girl watching films like Howards End and Much Ado About Nothing. Two years ago, I was preparing for the vacation of a lifetime. My good friend had invited me to join her and her family on a two week cruise leaving and returning out of NYC, and travelling to Panama and the Caribbean, aboard the legendary Queen Mary 2 oceanliner. The timing of the trip and choice of ship were no accident. We were going to celebrate my friend's "granny's" 100th birthday, an extraordinary woman who had sailed on the return maiden voyage of the first Queen Mary in the 1930s! Needless to say, it was an amazing vacation. But at the time I did not realize that trip would change the bearings of the course of my life.

A native southern Californian by birth and a nurse by profession, I returned home with a nagging urge for more. The taste of the sheer unfamiliarity of different cultures and exotic landscapes had intoxicated me. Having never lived anywhere outside about a 10 mile radius in Orange County, albeit a beautiful, sunny radius, and without any obligations for me to stay put, my restlessness smoldered and grew. Thankfully, I happened to choose a profession that offers incredible flexibility for relocation and availability of work. You may be aware that there is a nursing shortage pretty much everywhere in the world? So I signed up with a US based travel nursing company and late summer last year relocated to New England. Ok, maybe not that exotic, but it was completely new to me. I lived and worked in Boston for 6 months where I had the opportunity to witness the amazing fall colors, a real winter, and bonafide bustling, noisy city life. I loved it.

You may also be aware that there is a global economic crisis we are in the midst of. To my dismay, the field of nursing was not left unaffected, and by February I was out of a job. I returned to California to figure out the next step. This seems like a fine place to introduce a small detail not mentioned earlier about the Queen Mary 2 cruise, and a huge reason to move across the Atlantic.

Love and adventure, that's what has landed me here. On board "Mary", I met a gorgeous, charming, funny and smart Englishman, Rich. He came to visit me in California a few months after the cruise, having moved back to his homeland shortly after we met. After a week together and perhaps contrary to what we expected, we were smitten. Against the odds of long distance dating, we determined to get on the same land mass. When the door closed on my continuing travel nursing in the US, my pursuit to live and work in England began.

The process of getting licensed to work as an overseas nurse is a test of will. Working as quickly as possible, efficiently and highly organized, it still took months to wade through the paperwork and wait for documents coming and going in the post. Months of perseverance and determination. Alas now here I am, smack in the middle of culture shock. And so the adventure begins...