Here’s a behind the scenes of Sofi taking Naga and Saki’s cover picture.
Hello, old friend.
I’ve been wanting to write to you a lot this week. It’s been a bit hard for me to exist lately. We had a lot of stuff happening at work, and with that came it’s own deal of social anxiety.
I think one of the things that have really gotten to me since we got to the UK is that my social anxiety has really ramped up because of interacting with people in a different language. I find the Sofia Vergara meme from Modern Family where she says, “Do you even know how smart I am in Spanish?” much more relatable now.
I guess I’ve had to deal with the expectations I had of myself over how well I can speak English. While living in Colombia I think I had a better English level than the average of my colleagues. I guess that gave me the impression that I wouldn’t need to worry about communicating here. Boy, was I wrong.
I feel like I am going through a very similar experience as what we went through when we first moved to Colombia. I’ve found that I need to be very intentional with the words that I use, because if I’m not, people find my pronunciation hard to understsand. This has caused me so much social anxiety that I feel like I started isolating myself to prevent social interactions.
I’ve been working on this in therapy and what has helped me deal with this the most is trying to be very aware of when I start feeling panicky. What I’m trying to learn to identify is the tightness in my chest that I usually get when I just can’t form words anymore. As soon as I start feeling it I try to take a moment to remind myself that I am doing okay, and that having an accent is okay.
Being mindful of my feelings I think is very important.
It’s my first time living, so it’s okay if I don’t have everything figured out.
Changing topics for a bit, I finally went to get my eyes test. I feel very lucky to be working for a company that provides really good health benefits. We didn’t have this back in Colombia even if we worked for the same company.
Apparently, the store where I went to get my eyes tested has a promotion on specific pairs of glasses where if I bought a promo pair I could get prescription sunglasses as well!
I went with this pair of glasses which I found suit me well. I also let Sofi give her seal of approval, so I am very excited for them to get here!
They are supposed to deliver them next Monday, so I just need to deal with my current glasses for a week more and I will be UNSTOPPABLE.
I was very surprised that my nearsightedness got much worse since the last time I got my eyes tested.
I really need to take better care of my eyes. 😅
This weekend we had the daughter of one of our Colombian colleagues visit Brighton. She is in the UK studying English, so it was nice to meet with someone from back in Pereira!
Sofi and I took her around Brighton to all of the cool places we know, such as the Brighton Open Market!
Since it was the first Saturday of the month, a lot of shops and small businesses set up their products in tarps inside the market.
That’s where we found a really cool guy named Tiago! He is one of the founders of Plantuguese, a vegan portuguese food business from Bristol.
I ordered a no-chicken soy dish that had an AMAZING sauce. It was spicy, but super tasty! Definitely thinking of going all the way to Bristol to get a chance to have this dish again.
On Sunday we had a day out, and we finally got a chance to go to Queen’s park! We had only seen the outside of it the last time we went to have dinner at a brunch place nearby.
I had such a lovely time walking around the park! There is a duck, gueese and swan enclosure where they are roaming around. There is even a food dispensary inside that you can use to feed them!
Here are some pictures I took from our visit:
I had a chance to get close enough to photograph this family of gueese. I love how different the color of the leaves is between all the different trees that are in Brighton. I found this flower beautiful. It apparently is an endemic flower, but I can’t remember the name of it! Maybe I’ll add it on next week’s entry.
After the park, we walked all the back to the laines. On our way back, we found this street full of very colorful houses. We stopped for a bit to take some pictures. I think we even stopped traffic on accident while taking pictures. 😅
We spend the end of our day chilling at home before we took our friend’s daughter back to the train station.
For some reason, instead of taking the train there were replacement buses going out of the station. I found it quite weird, but I figured it had to do with the bank holiday.
While at the train station, I took this picture of the clock that is hanging in the middle of the boarding platforms.
I wonder how old is it? Has it been renewed throughout the years? I still haven’t gotten used at how old stuff can be over here!
I mean, we had old stuff back in Colombia and Mexico, but reading about a pub that has been open since the 1700’s sure is something.
Well, that’s the end for me today. I’ll be back next week with more stories!
Don’t be a stranger!
This is your digital ghost signing off.
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