Almost a year

Looking back at my other blog about London, I thought it only fair for me to start one about New York. There are probably thousands of blogs about this great city and why not add another!

Let's start with a little background...how did I get to NYC from London?

Well when I initially signed up for the Mountbatten Programme, I thought perhaps in the distant future, when I had to move back to the US, I would move to NYC. While in London, I still thought about moving there and thought that my internship would lead me to having a job all set up in New York. Then I found out that most of my team (HR) would be in Stamford, CT. So I didn't really pursue much and knew I'd figure something out when I got back home.

I left London toward the end of August--went directly home to Wisconsin/Chicago. Spent about 2 weeks there and decided to book a flight and just move to NYC. My current roommate was going to move into corporate housing for a month, so I took her offer to stay for a week or so. My first weekend there was all about fun-I met up with old friends and enjoyed the good life. Then on Tuesday I went searching for a job. Actually I just signed up with a temp agency, Glocap. My plan at that stage was I would temp for a few weeks here and there, while interviewing for jobs in different areas. Although the pressure was on...I had no money and hated mooching off my parents--as I am close to 30 years old! But they were very understanding and told me to take my time and find the best job I could. My goal was any job that paid a decent wage.

My first temp job was with a small investment company. Remember that I just signed up with them on Tuesday, then went in for a meeting on Wednesday and by Friday I had booked a job with this small company. I thought I'd temp there for a few weeks then switch to jobs that I would interview for. But they really liked me. They were desperate to fill the position. And seeing all the resumes come in (I had to sort through them, print them out, etc.), I was feeling really lucky to have this job fall into my lap so quickly. I basically had a job within my first week of moving to New York! And of course it gets better...that next weekend, my roommate and I found our apartment--after only looking at 2. One was in Chinatown and the other in Astoria. While the Chinatown apartment would have been a fabulous location, it was really small and not very clean. The moment I stepped into the Astoria apartment, I knew it was perfect and we had to get it! Although there were 2 sets of roommates already ready to pounce through their brokers. But we went without a broker and we have very honest faces...so by that evening our landlord told us it was ours. (we did have to prove how much we earned, thank goodness i was right about my job! although my roommate made enough for the both of us to get the place)

So it was a crazy first week. Even now, almost 8 months later, it's still so great. I've heard some crazy and horrible stories about people getting their first apt's in NYC as well as their first jobs and I guess we just lucked out. although I really think it was due to our knowing what we wanted...I had lived in Chicago for 5 years before London and NYC, and I know what to look for in both my job and apt.