Arianna O'Dell

Dear London,

I love you.

It is with great sorrow I will be leaving you in two days. The past four months I have spent with you have been the best of my entire life and will never be forgotten. Not only have I learned so much about myself, but I have had the wonderful opportunity to meet so many great people residing throughout London, England, and the world. I have never felt a greater sense of belonging and acceptance since I arrived on your streets months ago. My first extended period of time away from home was surely a fantasic one that I will hold close to my heart forever.

London, I will miss you so much. 

I’ll miss your sexy accents. I’ll miss riding your tube. I’ll miss your 5 o’clock rush hour when the tube is filled with gorgeous men in suits. I’ll miss your high streets. I’ll miss the tech events. I’ll miss Primark and H&M. I’ll miss peer cider and chatting in pubs. I’ll miss your classy sense of fashion. I’ll miss watching the world cup with enthusiastic fans. I’ll miss Embankment and the London Eye. I’ll miss your double decker buses and red phone booths. I’ll miss Abbey Road. I’ll miss your gorgeous parks. I’ll miss your concerts. London, I’ll miss everything about you. Please London, keep in touch.

With a heavy heart I will be leaving you. Don’t worry, I’ll be back.

Love,
Arianna

*London, let me know if you want to grab drinks tonight or tomorrow. I need to drink as much cider as possible before leaving you.

This afternoon, I went to go visit my homeless friend Joanne, who lives around the Euston Square tube station.

I met Joanne, through the Contemporary Britain course I had partaken in over the past three months. During one of the classes, my professors brought Joanne into our classroom to speak about homelessness in London. After hearing about her life, and the story of how she got to where she is today, I was in tears. Joanne has been raped, attacked, and abused in so many ways throughout the course of her life. She had to give up her children, she was forced to move onto the streets, and she has been unable to improve her situation for years. For Joanne, every unfortunate event, just seemed to follow another. This poor women, has so many factors that should have made her bitter, yet she was absolutely pleasant to talk to.

Joanne has been homeless for 19 years!  Prior to hearing her story, I was very ignorant about the homeless. Living in Seattle for the past two years had hardened me. In my fast paced life, I quickly became immune to the problems of the city. Like many others, I would rush past the problems, instead of trying to resolve them. I know that yes, it is very hard to help everyone, but that should by no means be a reason to refrain from reaching out to help even one person. It only took a few minutes of Joanne’s story to remind me of how fortunate I am.

Today, I spent my afternoon sitting and talking with Joanne while she tried to sell The Big Issue. Her daily routine is to get up (from sleeping in a park or shop nook), buy copies of the Big Issue, then head to the tube station to sell the magazines. In an entire day of work, she only sells about 5-10 copies leaving her with barely enough to afford food. At the end of her full day, she finds somewhere to sleep, only to wake up and do it again the next day.

While I was sitting with Joanne, I watched. I watched as people would smile at me, seeing as I was keeping her company. I watched. I watched as people made disgusted faces at the both of us. And I watched. I watched while people completely ignored her. Even though I had only been there a few hours, it was heartbreaking to see. From my experience today with Joanne, I felt there are a few things I felt I needed to share:

The homeless are people! Joanne told me about one instance where a man stepped on her hand, saw what he did, and simply grumbled something rude to her.  It appalls me to hear about humans treating one another like they are worthless. Just because someone is not as fortunate, it does not give anyone the right to treat them poorly. If you can’t say something nice, please, just don’t say it all. Just because a person doesn’t have a house, doesn’t make them any less a person.  Why wreck someone else’s day, just to have a jab at someone else’s misfortune.

“Just get a job!” really isn’t that simple -On multiple occurrences, Joanne has had someone tell her this. If getting a job really was that simple she said she would get one. Without a permanent address, clean clothes, and shower, getting a job is near impossible. Homelessness is a hard cycle to break, it is not as simple as just getting a job. This is something that is now much clearer to me.

Words can be better than money – I had the same kind of talk with Joanne that I would have with a close friend. We talked, we joked, and we shared experiences about travel, music, and even boys. Being on the streets does not eliminate a basic human need for interaction, conversation, and understanding. Understanding and compassion can be worth even more than a few dollars.

I am by no means perfect. Ignorance was my main reason for never reaching out more over the past few years. I definetely think there needs to be much more education offered that shows people that the homeless are not scary and violent people, they are simply people. In the future, I hope to become much more involved in helping people get off of the streets and live a normal life.

While you are sitting at your warm house, eating a nice dinner, I would just like you to think for a few minutes about how lucky you are. Please take the time to reach out to a person on the streets, it makes a world of difference to them.

I am officially at the halfway point of my trip. Three more months until I will be back in Seattle. Thinking about this is very bittersweet, but mostly bitter. I have fallen in love with London and do not want to leave. Sadly, I will have to eventually, but I promise I will return! I will however, be very happy to be back in Seattle to see all of my friends and have good coffee

Since coming to London, I have had an extremely smooth transition. Remarkably, I have Twitter to thank for this. Through Twitter, I have found out about various happenings and have made a lot of great friends and connections Prior to London

Even before coming to London, I had two offers to meet up for coffee. Shout out to @JamesProud and @JoshChandler for this! You both helped shape my London experience more than you know. After meeting with both of them, they both gave me some great information about the London Tech and Startup scene. I then followed some of their Twitter friends to get more connected in London and took their advice about upcoming events

After coming to London :

Geek’n'Rolla - I attended the after party. Everyone was basically drunk. It was awesome.

The Next Women - Found through the London Startup Digest, I attended this business pitch night and met so many fantastic women that had exciting startups in the works.

Mashup Event - This event was a debate about Facebook. Sadly, not worth the 35 pounds, but I did meet quite a few cool people. Still had a good time nonetheless.

After all of these events, I was able to meet up with people who had attended for drinks and got even more info and insight about the London startup and tech scene. Thank you to everyone that met up with me! Everyone I connected with after events has been so helpful and I have learned so much from them. Here are a few businesses I think you should definitely check out:

My E-Hive – http://www.myehiveit.com – “Create online stores and pop-up shops for handmade, reclaimed, recycled, and customized vintage gives in the UK & Europe. Louise, the founder was very kind, fun, and had a lot of great insights.

Caffeniehit – http://www.caffeniehit.com a top-rated web design, web development, graphic design and iPhone development company in Shoreditch, London. Go follow  @devioustree @caffeniehit @flashingpumpkin now! They are all awesome.

PieDogMedia - http://www.piedogmedia.com  - At PieDog Media we can handle more than just design. Maybe you need some development done? Perhaps custom programming, scripts & web based applications” These guys were all a blast at Geek Quiz. Check them out!

The Twenty Ten Club – http://www.twentytenclub.com “The Twenty Ten Club connects, inspires, and supports black female business owners.” The founder, Octavia is wonderful; a must know in London, and has exciting projects in the works.

Giglocator - http://www.giglocator.com -”GigLocator is a unique system created so like minded lovers of live music can find and keep up-to-date with the gigs they want to hear about”

The Startup Digest – http://www.thestartupdigest.com – Great resource for looking for upcoming events in any city.

During last week, I was able to attend two fabulous events which enabled me to meet even more fabulous people.

These events were:

Geek quiz – Geek quiz was organized by Desigan Chinniah and hosted at the Gumtree/Paypal/Ebay headquarters. Everything about this event was spectacular. The people were great, it was fun and entertaining, the venue was awesome, and they even had peer cider. At geek quiz, I got to meet a few of my Twitter friends including @iamluca &@cyberdees. Go follow them both!

Startup Weekend London :

This was so much fun. Wrote too much in this post so will do another one just about that.

What’s next?

For the next month I will be in London. After this I am not sure. I might travel a bit, or possibly extend my stay in London. My ticket back to Seattle, Washington is on September 8^th so I will definitely be in Europe until then. Will just take it day by day. PS – Thanks to @raphelleheaf and @DaveTreadwell for answering all my London Twitter questions!

I have fallen in love with London. I like the way it walks, the way it talks, and how it lives.  Over the past two months, I have found very little to complain about here. Any tinge of homesickness is now gone and I find myself saddened that I will have to go back to the states in four months. As each week passes, I only find myself loving the city more and longing for the states less.

Originally, I had planned to go to Spain for the summer, but recently changed my mind. I have officially decided to spend my summer in London. I love the tube, the people, and everything in between. While yes, I would like to travel and see more of the world – I have my entire life to do this. I have only just started building relationships here – it would seem silly to pick up and leave after only 3 months. I would much rather get to know one person well, than ten only briefly.

So far, I have gotten to meet so many great people. From meeting up with Twitter friends, to attending networking events, to Couchsurfing – the transition here has been very easy. Everyone I have met has been extremely welcoming and I am so appreciate for this. Thank you so much to everyone who has met up with me, offered help, or showed me around.

While I do miss all of my amazing friends in Seattle – I don’t think I have ever felt the sense of belonging that I do here. I’m not sure as to why that is. Maybe I’ll feel different in four months, or maybe I will want to move here permantely. Who knows?

If anyone knows of a place in London for rent let me know!

Along with the British accent, I have already fallen in love with the marketing efforts present in the United Kingdom. Many travelers fill their cameras with pictures of architecture and scenery – I fill mine with advertisements. If you know me personally, you already know I am obsessed with marketing. It’s a healthy obsession I swear! The group I am traveling with are almost all seeking jobs within the English or Drama field; I am probably boring them to tears with my constant fascination with ads and the repetitive “hey look at that ad! – what do you think?”

I have found the advertisements in London to be much more direct than that of the US. Many of the advertisements I have seen so far consistently catch my eye. This doesn’t happen as often for me stateside.  The range of marketing efforts I have seen here tend to be much more dramatic and provocative when compared with ads of the United States.

Great marketing spurs conversation, starts debate, and gets people talking. Recently, I have been disappointed by what I have seen in Seattle. I watch television going “really?” and flip through paper publications going “who created this garbage?”. Since I have been in London I constantly find myself going “that’s brilliant!” or “I wonder who created that”. Maybe it is because they are different from what I am used to, or maybe they are just very effective – this is still yet to be decided.

An effective ad I have come across a few times already is a preventive ad for injuries and death while intoxicated. The ad reads “Don’t let your friendship die on the road” and has a picture of someone lying dead in the middle of the road. The image of the advertisement seems to defy many of the typical ads I tend to see in the US. Even though more graphic – the ad does it’s job. The ad pulls on the heart strings and makes you think. I commend the marketing efforts of the Transport for London.

Another ad that caught my eye was a underground tube ad featuring a women in a provocative outfit. The suggestive text then advertises a website called “Naughty London”.The ad definitely made me go huh? and made me want to go see what exactly the site was – not to join of course.

Even though people may deny reading an ad of that sort, I saw at least 7 people on the underground staring at the ad for an extended period of time (both men and women) Again, another brilliant example of an effective ad.

I would love to see more American marketing campaigns go more outside the box and take more risks as I have seen here so far. For the remainder of my trip I will strive to find out as much as possible about the British marketing field. I think many companies in America could take away some helpful lessons from them.