A new start for the new year

While I generally focus on the lighter side of things, especially when it comes to the professional, work hasn't been so cheery over the past six months. I encountered a number of pretty serious issues when it came to the company I'd chosen, so Nicolas and I have decided to make a clean break for the new year, in a stronger and more dynamic market where my skillset will be properly remunerated. So, after spending all but a few months abroad since June '08—I can hardly believe I'm writing this—guess who's moving back Stateside? Yes, we've gone home for the holidays, and this time it's to stay.

Bye bye, Brighton!

Moving is hard work for kitties. Our little monsters have been camped out with Nicolas's mom since our highly adventurous overnight trip to France in mid-December—a story in itself. They're both booked to fly with me to the US on Jan. 5.

We rather blindly leapt into this decision to move Stateside only to be horrified by our eye-opening discoveries of the rights of US citizens to bring their foreign spouses into the US (or rather, the lack thereof). You see, Nicolas can't follow me. Since he has no means of obtaining a non-tourist visa to wait out the first 90+ days in the US before initiating his green card application, he has the complete the full procedure from abroad. Read: the full 9-12+ month procedure. And, for the cherry on top, he cannot even enter the US to visit me during this time. This means that I'll be working with an American-style vacation schedule (what, maybe 10 days per year??) and I somehow have to find a way to squeeze in as many trips to France as possible just to see my husband in 2018. (TransAtlantic weekends, anyone?) 2018's not looking so shiny from this side of the new year.

For now we've been trying to make the most of our holidays. First, we powered our way across the Northeast US, where we hit up Boston, NYC, and the suburbs of Philly/NJ in all of a week's time.

Nicolas's first trip to Boston, complete with a wild turkey siting in Harvard Square and a trip down my old dormitory hall, 5W, which is now sporting an awesome new cat Lego mural!

Nicolas not only survived but thrived at his first Repak/Aloia family Christmas. He was even this year's champion of the Cousins' Campout Cards Against Humanity showdown.

NY round two: somehow Nicolas and managed two trips to NYC in just one week, but we didn't really photograph the first.

We're in the midst of a very hectic week or so in Paris before we say our final pre-green-card-application goodbyes, hoping it won't be too long until we can start planning our next visit. (I swear, if we ever get around to going on that honeymoon we'd planned, it will be more than well-deserved!) At least you can't say our life is boring. Although these days, we often wish it would be!

And as for where I'll land, there are a few exciting leads to follow up on during the first week of January, but for now I'll keep that up my sleeve. As we've wrapped up our lives Left of the Rabbit Hole, stay tuned for future adventures at my latest blog: An Expat Homecoming.

Happy New Year!

We've seen better days

In all the hubbub of our first few months in Brighton, I never took the time to share our new home. I was planning to finally post some collages of our lovingly decorated home in the space between our wedding and the arrival of my UK visa. Little did I know how packed that space of time would become. Before I dive in to the latest chapter in the saga of our first year in Britain, let me show you the place we've loved calling home since last September.

You already saw glimpses of it in our wedding photos, but here is the street we've called home.

And the views to the sea from our front door.

Now, take a step inside. Welcome to the world's most glorious living room, just to your left as you walk in the front door. Notice how the ten-seater dining table is dwarfed under these ceilings. For the first time in our adult lives, last November's Thanksgiving, with 18 guests, didn't feel overcrowded. (Well, okay, maybe just a little.) But just check out all those shelves. So much storage space, we hardly knew what to do with it! (But we figured out fast.)

Wander down our delightful front hallway, whose walls are not quite parallel, and an image of the very modest bathroom (top right).

Off the front hallway, here's the master bedroom, with its high ceilings that never ceased to impress me. I love how the light from the Turkish lamp on my bedside dances up its walls.

Turn down the back hallway, past the bathroom and hallway closet, to reach the guest room and, finally, the kitchen.

We (okay, I) designed the Alice in Wonderland themed guest room/office in homage to the tunnel that may have inspired Alice's rabbit hole, right in our private gardens. The construction of the horizontal Murphy bed-desk, on the other hand, was a two-person effort and a real labor of love at that.

And at last, welcome to the deliciously retro-style kitchen, which opens to yet a third hallway/bike storage area. We had to buy a special tray to shuttle our dinners back and forth from this kitchen all the way to our living room.

Lucky you!, you might say. Oh, lucky indeed.

As you may remember, we had to plan our wedding in just 3 months' time since I lost my job and thus my right to live (with Nicolas) in the UK. We only moved to the UK last September when I landed a consulting gig, but after just 9 days on the job, the company let me go— they've since fired almost 50% of their staff, but it's rough to move to a new country for only 9 days of work!! Especially considering I'd left a stable job in Denmark, and my firing meant not only no salary, but no visa to live in the same country as my partner. (Hence the wedding bells.)

As luck would have it, I got a new job the week before our wedding— right near Brighton! Yay! After flying all over Europe and the US for job interviews, we were so happy to get the good news that we'd be staying in this town we love. I've signed the contract, but I need my spouse visa before I can begin working. To that end, the week after the wedding, we filled out a several hundred page application with all sorts of weirdly invasive questions about our relationship. No sooner had we finished filling out and assembling all the application (and paying immigration lawyers!), but we got a notice of eviction— for no reason!! The landlord has decided to repossess the property, likely so he can sell. That's right, the lovely home I just paraded before you, it's gone, now all in piles scattered across a new flat with overwhelmingly blank walls.

We faced the seemingly insurmountable task of finding a new home without having any written proof of my right to live in the UK, nor any payslips from 2017. (Nicolas's earnings are all in cash.) Who would ever rent to us?? Luckily, our realtors agreed to vouch for us if we stuck with them, but they only had a single flat available that was in our budget and would accept our cats— and this flat was uglier and more expensive than our actual home. Our realtors were also able to offer us (with only light begging) a bigger flat, if we "had an interested friend."

Along the waterfront, a few blocks closer to town center, this flat was tucked away behind a teensy private garden. With full sea views and ceilings, believe it or not, even higher than our previous flat, it has incredible potential. Plus, the two separate hallways leading to double bedrooms each with their own en suite make the ideal layout for flatshare among more mature renters who appreciate their own space.

A very hectic 24 hours ensued, but we found a nice person online who was also in a pinch, and was willing to pretend to be our long-time friend looking to move in with us. (This new place is pretty fabulous, actually, if you get past the idea of moving into a flatshare during the first month of marriage.)

We're now in the process of disassembling out lives and rebuilding them a few blocks away. It seems like if it's not one thing, it's another. And since 2017 seems to be going this way for us, we got another surprise: our electricity and gas company, who we contacted to close up our account, discovered that they completely forgot to charge us the electricity-half of our electricity-and-gas bills for the past year, so now we've got an extra year of electricity bills thrown at us! It seems we really can't get a break.

There is still a slight chance that I won't be able to get my passport back from the UK Home Office (the people processing my UK spouse visa application), so I may end up missing my own wedding, and skyping it in... but Nicolas will be there for sure. It will actually be the first time he even meets my extended family. I'm hoping I get to introduce him in person!

Happy one month anniversary to us.

Good news!

After months of searching, traveling, and sending CVs into the abyss, my job hunt has officially come to an end, and not a moment too soon, just before we dive into full-on wedding mode. This week, I didn't get one but two job offers. And while one of them had been a long time coming, more than two months after beginning the interview process, the other, which I've decided to go with, feels like it magically materialized only a couple of weeks ago. I'm proud to say that I have accepted an offer, and I will be joining Scientifica as a Test & Installation Engineer. 

There's a lot to be excited about here. Scientifica is a company that designs microscopy and electrophysiology equipment for neuroscientists, people doing exactly the sort of work that I've done for most of the past decade. But what's more, I was always the neuroscientist in lab tinkering with the optics. (Thank you, MIT Engineering!) As a postdoc back in Denmark, I actually worked on Scientifica equipment, the same sort of stuff I will now be installing worldwide. This position draws absurdly well on all the aspects of my academic training, both the biology and the optics, while still offering a major pro of consulting: constantly meeting new people and learning new things at a fast-pace, only now it'll be learning about new neuroscience research topics and equipment needs, rather than the travails of stocking grocery store shelves.

And did I mention that Scientifca's headquarters are only a 30 minute drive from Brighton? That's right, guess who isn't moving after all?? How amazing is that, this highly specialized company known and respected throughout the international neuro community, nestled right outside my favorite English city without my even realizing! And I won't just be trapped in a suburban office: every other week I'll be traveling internationally, anywhere from Paris to Cali to China (but often with less glamor: think Detroit). Time to invest in some melatonin and a sleep mask. I am in for one exciting professional ride!

Topping it off

Last week, I had an interview run late. That sounds great, but it left me unable to make it home to Brighton in time to be seated in front of my computer for my second interview of that exhausting day. Instead, I landed mid-route while returning from interview #1, in a town called Lewes, where I found a cafe in which to take my skype interview with the second company. Besides providing the backdrop for my latest job interview, Lewes offered me another chance finding: fascinators at an affordable price. So.many.fascinators. Suddenly, that dressy headwear that is all the rage for English ladies attending weddings and horse races was financially accessible. Many WhatsApp selfies later, my parents and I had picked out a selection for my mom, my aunt, my sister, and even for my bridal reception outfit. Yay!

Only one thing quickly became glaringly obvious: I'd forgotten about the other half of my family. That's right, I'm not just a Repak/Aloia anymore. This wedding is all about blending two families into one, which means there was a clan of Kouzan women to consider. One group email thread later and I'd confirmed their interest in this delightfully English accessory and their color requirements. It was off to races (aka ebay) for me, where the selection was anything but wanting.

The English ladies know how a thing or two about accessorising for a wedding.

With all the feather- and ribbon-topped hats tucked carefully out of reach of our enthusiastic cats, we are all set for some extra English fun when all the women gather together for our pamper party the evening before the big day. I'm looking forward to the looks on their faces as they open their hat boxes. Here's to hoping everyone likes the selection!

Final headcounts & payments & last-minute to-do's

This is it, folks. We have less than two weeks to go, which means it's time for full panic mode to begin. Our RSVPs are confirmed, the headcount finalized, and we even survived the agony of multiple rounds of reception table planning. We settled payments with our venues, our photographer, our baker, and our DJs. Just this past weekend, we chose our wedding cake flavors- yum! Everything looks like it's nicely lined up. Everything but those vicious wedding details, which have begun to rear their ugly heads.

How do we ensure that a rogue wedding slideshow doesn't chop off our heads and include the world's worst candid shots? How does that last friend find his housing in Brighton? How do we ensure that every family member knows exactly when and where to go all our various family activities across town? And in between all that, I've had a zillion phone calls and emails to write as I hunt down al our vendors for various logistical arrangements.

I find myself wondering why we've decided to have a party at all while I watch the last remnants of our bank account rapidly circling the drain. My job prospects are gleefully chasing the horizon, abandoning me as I scramble to explore the legal quagmire that will leave me spending the first months of married life forcibly separated from my husband while we fight to exercise the right to live together as a married couple.

And then there's the weather. England is hardly the place to leave a bride reassured that the big day will be sunny. That's right, between my concerns over visas and job interviews, your standard bride issues still haunt me.

Look at how sunny Brighton was this weekend? Why does the weather forecast call for "more clouds than sun" on April 15? It's not fair!

At this point, I'm my own worst enemy. Or is it the Immigration Services? <rant> The system that puts up every hurdle for loved ones to come together. The system that prevented happily employed friends from attending our wedding, friends who are living in France and Canada, with no intention of moving to the UK, who are unable to cross the British border because of the massive administrative and time requirements just to process a simple tourist visa. I watched as friends from Russia, Iran, India, and the Philippines had to decline because they aren't lucky enough to hold the "right" passport to attend my wedding, all because of where they randomly happened to enter the world. </rant>

As if the rest of this post doesn't scream it, the last bits of wedding planning have left me running around like a chicken with its head cut off. So let me try to wrap this up on a lighter note. Despite the immigration frustrations, we've anticipating a lovely crowd to celebrate our big day. Here are the numbers:

Total headcount: 58 guests
Nationalities represented: 11 (US, France, Switzerland, Ireland, Turkey, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, UK, South Korea)
Countdown to seeing all these guests: 12 days!

A month of interviews and other things

Through a blur of jetlag and your classic English fog, I'm hashing this out at the nearest Starbucks. It's been nearly a month since my last update, and I've had more than enough material. But those winter blues, unemployment, and the wedding planning have lumbered my way, taken a seat right on my chest, and have left me winded me of all inspiration. So, where to begin? First, there was Hamburg. Yep, I went to Germany.

I went to Germany, and this is the only photographic proof I have.

And that photo is all I took. Tourism had to take the backseat to my powerpoint presentation, because the day after I arrived in Hamburg, I had my first job interview of 2017. (Eek!) And as soon as that was done, I taxied my way back to the airport, with no chance to check out the town, as I'd had travel booked that weekend to fly me back to the States.

I didn't fly back to the States. Well, not just yet. Instead, I enjoyed one last weekend in Brighton and, that Monday morning, I hopped a train Cambridge (UK)-bound, for job interview #2. At least this time I had a few hours to spare for touring the town and pretending to be a proper scholar, lunching in a university dining hall and all. (By invitation, not just my trying to pass for an undergrad.)

Next stop: Cambridge

After Valentine's evening in Brighton, I caught my rebooked flight out of London on Wednesday the 15th, direct to New York.

At least that last minute interview in Cambridge gave us the chance to do Valentine's right.

I gave myself a night in the Big Apple before bussing my way up to Cambridge on the other side of the pond, and to my alma mater, MIT.

Although I spent the next three days in just one city, there was hardly more than an hour spent in the same place. It was surprisingly familiar despite the years away, though I did enjoy the snippets of the Resistance rising up in response to our new So-Called President. The three days were a blur of networking appointments and evenings filled with reunions with old friends from many places all pulled into Boston's gravitational field.

Snapshots of Boston and America's Cambridge

Thank goodness for friends. I don't know how else I would have gotten myself and my suitcases onto a 7:30am bus back to NYC. Several hours later, it was time for a family afternoon in NYC and then, in case I hadn't traveled enough, an evening ride down to the suburbs of Philly.

The trip to NY included a stop at Treat House, self-proclaimed home of the world's finest marshmallow and crispy rice treats. (This is about the only thing I thought to photograph that afternoon.)

I had two days in the Philadelphia area to power through the calligraphy on over 40 US wedding reception save-the-dates and to complete my preparations for yet another upcoming interview. (Fat chance for the latter: that deadline wasn't until Friday.) I might not have finished all my powerpoint slides, but I did manage to make my way in to the Philadelphia Union League for a luxurious reunion, complete with foie gras (guilty drool), on the night before my next flight.

Sylvia, Peter, my parents, and I enjoyed a fantastic meal at the Phildelphia Union League

Soon enough I was back in the air and discovering just how long it takes to cross the American continent. (Comparable to a trans-Atlantic: who knew?)

The flight to the West Coast spent hours chasing the sunset, painting quite the color palate outside my window seat.

But the long flight was worth every minute because it brought me to San Francisco, home of my dream job (does saying that jinx it?) and more friends than I'd realized had made the trip west. Yet again, it was time for some power-prepping on Thursday before grabbing a hearty American-portioned breakfast and an uber out to South San Francisco bright and early Friday morning for interview #3. I knew I was in Silicon Valley when I entered the office building and asked for directions to the bathroom. "Just past the bar and before the bowling alley," the receptionist said in her accented voice. But the accent did not mislead.

Hello, Silicon Valley: The office where I went to interview came complete with bar and bowling alley.

By now you'd think I'd be getting the hang of this, but nerves still gnawed progressively at my gut as I did my best to finesse my way through the six-hour interview. Luckily, I had a crew of supportive family and friends waiting for me on the other side. Friday evening kicked off the California Cousins' Weekend, with Ryan coming up from LA and Jake from San Jose. We drove across the Golden Gate, wandered through the Palace of Fine Arts, tested ice cream cookie sandwiches (turns out caramel sandwiched between two oatmeal raisin cookies rolled in coconut is a real winner), walked the boardwalk of Santa Cruz, and tested California's finest craft brews. A real weekend of champions.

California Cousins' Weekend!

At last, at the start of the following week, I stumbled across some proper down time, in between the visits with old friends. It was hard not to think too much about San Francisco's different neighborhoods and what it would be like to call them home.

Exploring SF

I even had the chance to get down to Stanford for an afternoon to visit a friend and to really experience the micro-climates of the Bay Area: it may just be an hour away by train, but Stanford is much sunnier and about ten degrees warmer than SF. Apparently every town in the Bay Area has its own pocket of local weather trends. Toto, I don't think we're on the East Coast anymore.

An afternoon discovering Stanford and the micro-climates of the Bay Area

But life didn't let me off the hook for too long. On Wednesday, a week after landing in SF, I was once again in the air, again NY-bound.

Returning to the East Coast after a week in sunny CA

Back in the Big Apple by nightfall

The Big Apple was just a pit stop once again en route to Cambridge, where I'd landed a couple of informal networking meetings thanks to my MIT connections.

Back in my Cambridge, surviving the chilly weather around MIT and Harvard campuses

And as an added bonus, I even got an early birthday party on Friday the 3rd, which turned out to mostly be a Pasteur Institute Happy Hour in Boston, with the essential ingredient for celebrating my birthday: Earl Grey Martinis.

They say history repeats itself, but normally not with such frequency: the next morning, I relied once again on a wonderfully generous friend to get me to a bus on time for another family afternoon in NYC. At least this time we made a point to explore a few sites: The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, a cathedral-come-art-museum and home of the Christa Project (a sculpture from the '80s of a female Christ on the cross), as well as the Hungarian pastry shop across the street, and a local bookshop around the corner.

The visit to the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, capped off with some delicious Hungarian pastries.

On Sunday, I awoke in the suburbs of Philly, officially starting another decade in a childhood bed surrounded by toys and artwork I'd long since outgrown. However, the day rapidly snapped me from my past to present life when the family went to my birthday brunch at Bella Tori at the Mansion, where Nicolas and I will be holding our US wedding reception. The food was as delicious as my parents had assured, and the staff was warm and welcoming, two perennially good features for a wedding.

My birthday brunch at Bella Tori at the Mansion, where Nicolas and I will be holding our US reception in July

I even found a moment to firm up a few Stateside wedding details in my final 24 hours on this side of the pond: we settled on our photographers, BG Productions, for the joy and laughter they are able to capture, just the thing we want in someone exclusively documenting a reception. And I even found a salon for our hair and make-up that's actually open on Sundays, and is less than ten minutes away from the venue! So it's still smooth sailing on the wedding front, at least for now.

The biggest scare of this whole wild month came at the tail end, after landing in the UK two days ago. The border guard was not at all happy that I'd been spending so much time in the UK (although I'd only spent five days in the country in 2017 without traveling on a UK visa). She decided to confiscate my visa, though still valid, as I made the mistake of letting slip that the job associated with it had gone up in thin air. She informed me that, although Americans have the right to six months out of every twelve in the UK, if it appears that I am living in the UK, a border guard has the right to refuse me entry. And so, she explicitly informed me, my next departure from the country had best be for more than just three weeks. With that, my plans for a weekend in Italy at the end of the month evaporated.

You better believe that, with that kind of warning, there is no way I'm about to risk stepping foot outside of this country before my wedding day. 38 days and counting!

Winner!

In the midst of unemployment and job hunting, it's hard to feel like a winner. So this email from The Perfect Pamper could not have come at a better time:

Hi Emilienne

Congratulations on winning our competition with BN1 magazine!

You have won: A pamper party for six people - six x 15 minute treatments

• OPI mini manicure
• Mini Living Nature facial
• Face and head massage
• Neck, back and shoulders massage
• Hand or foot massage

When this competition appeared in the BN1 magazine a few weeks ago, I sent in my name and contact info but didn't really think twice. I can't imagine that many people even entered the competition. But hey, who cares? I won!

All the ladies in our family will be perfectly pampered for our wedding day!

Unemployed or not, today I got to be the winner who'll be treating the ladies in her family to a pre-wedding spa package. Not bad for a rainy late-January day.

We're engaged!

To be fair, the news is a little bit old, but life has been a total whirlwind lately. So let me try to catch you up to speed. Where to begin?

Nicolas and I have known that a marriage was in the works. One doesn't just hop in a car and move from country to country as a couple without having a few good conversations along the way. Last fall, we quickly fell in love with Brighton, so when I saw a poster advertising for weddings in the Royal Pavilion, Brighton's most iconic building, it felt like fate.

We would be wed in our adopted hometown. It would be an opportunity to finally rope all our friends and family into paying us the visit to Brighton that they'd all been promising, and a chance for us to really highlight the best of our town to everyone all at once. We had visions of a multi-day affair: A day enjoying the rides on the pier, an afternoon high tea in one of Brighton's classic old hotels, a picnic in our private gardens with the tunnel to the beach that served as the inspiration for Lewis Carrol's rabbit hole. There was so much potential! I could hardly wait. July 2018 sounded like about the right time. Everything was falling neatly into place. We just had to build up a few more months' savings before we could pick the date.

Then, as my job disappeared from beneath me, we watched our dreams evaporate along with it. The only thing I knew as we prepared to go into yet another period of uncertainty was that it was time to pick up the physical symbol of the commitment we were continually making to one another: no matter what came next, we'd ride it out together. So we went to the Lanes, that narrow, winding, pedestrian maze in the heart of Brighton, to buy me a ring right before the Christmas holidays.

My antique engagement ring. Because diamonds are just so typical.

I didn't yet know what it meant in terms of a marriage timeline. I wasn't yet ready to shout it from the mountains, not in the midst of all the stress from yet another job hunt so suddenly thrust upon me. But, in quiet moments, knowing that we'd made it official made me smile.

So that's it! We're engaged! And just wait until you hear our wedding plans.

"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality"

With the Cheshire Cat's words in mind, as 2016 comes to a close, I can only hope my imagination does not fail me now.

Let's not even dive into US or British politics. This was the year I finally escaped academia after more than a decade in its embrace/clutches. I hopped continents in preparation for my big move to the UK, and even squeezed in a quick trip to country #39, Iceland. (Whether Scotland and England should count as separate countries, making Iceland my country #40, has yet to be resolved.) 

Iceland: my 39th (or 40th?) country!

We packed up our life and made it to England.

Road tripping from Denmark to England, our lives (and kitties!) all squeezed in a tiny car.

I allowed myself the luxury of 6 weeks in Brighton before beginning work to settle in. It was enough time to make our house a home, and to fall in love with Brighton. 

Brighton ❤

Unexpectedly, just 8 weeks later, my new career was cut short, on Christmas week no less. It was some comfort to know I was in good company: I wasn't the first new hire let go as the firm prepares to put their workforce "on the beach" while hoping to land new clients for 2017. And so I find myself on my couch, staring down my computer, trying once more to figure out just what I'm doing with my life.

Cat: Where are you going?
Alice: Which way should I go?
Cat: That depends on where you are going.
Alice: I don’t know.
Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.

-Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Hey, at least it's not just me.