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Film Japan United Kingdom York

A few random film photos from the past few years

The ones of people that regularly read this blog likely are aware that I have a film camera to take most photos these days. That isn’t saying a lot really, I don’t actually take that many photos nor is my heart quite in it the same way it was back in university days. That said, I wanted to post a few random photos from the past few years as I just recently FINALLY was able to go through and scan my film photos from our time living in the UK.

The photos from Japan I actually have had on Flickr for about a year now – there was a photo store in the mall in Koryo ( エコール マミ ) called Kitamura and I was able to cheaply get all of my film developed there. When I moved to York, I had a few last rolls of film from Japan to develop and there was York Camera Mart that was great. Unfortunately because of covid, I wasn’t able to developed most of the film I shot in the York so ended up developing the rest of it in San Jose when I moved out to California (where we live now – Oakland!).

Anyway, here are some photos.

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United Kingdom

Living in York in the United Kingdom during COVID-19

I don’t get really really sad all that often, but last night and today I’ve been pretty bummed out. Last night, Sunday May 10th, Boris gave an update about measures and next steps being taken in the UK to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The tl;dr; for me is that the country is not opening up (much) again anytime in the near future. My family, who was planning to come for almost an entire month in June, will almost certainly not be coming (this already seemed fairly unlikely, but I was holding out up). Lindsay and I will more than likely not visit another restaurant, museum, coffee shop, library, or pub while living in this wonderful country. We won’t visit Ireland or Northern Ireland. People we are just really starting to get to know and form friendships with we likely won’t see again before we leave.

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Finland Germany Sweden Travel United Kingdom

Three and a half weeks working and traveling between Berlin, Stockholm, Helsinki, and London, and an analysis of working while backpacking

For the month of December Lindsay and I decided to take advantage of the long break Lindsay had from school between classes and the semi-flexible work schedule I have by spending (most of) the month “backpacking.” We actually JUST arrived home last night around 8:30PM.

I’d say the theme of this trip was “work a lot.” Honestly this isn’t a complaint or a problem, in a way this was a “bucket list” item for me – doing the “romantic” backpacker thing all while working a reasonably stressful and high-intensity full time job. In ways it’s a dream, because I could, in theory, continue to travel indefinitely like we did in December throughout Europe and live out of backpacks and hostels, seeing the world all while maintaining an income. I now at least have some idea of what that would feel like (as opposed to long term travel WITHOUT jobs, which of course is something we have a lot more experience with).

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United Kingdom

Moving to the United Kingdom (York!)

edit: After writing most of this blog post, I realized that I didn’t provide much context about why we’re moving to the UK. Long story short, while in Japan Lindsay decided that it was about time to get a masters degree. After months of researching different graduate programs, Lindsay narrowed it down to a program in Vermont at Marlboro College in Vermont, and the University of York in York, England. The University of York ended up feeling like a better fit for what Lindsay was looking for, so we decided that was the next place for us to move after Japan.

Back to the States

Moving home from Japan ended up being a fairly tiring endeavour, but we did it in two full days (a bit more really as we left on Saturday in Japan and had the benefit of gaining a number of hours on the way back to the States).