Sunday 20 November 2011

Leaving Cardiff after 6 Years...

So on Monday 10th October the time finally came to leave Cardiff, 6 years and 2 weeks after first arriving as a scared 18 year old fresher. It was pretty sad, or at least it would've been if I hadn't been so worried about making the house spotless, and whether all of our stuff would fit in the van we hired... Which is also the reason there are no photos, blogging was the last thing on my mind! You will, however, find a smattering of photos of the mess I made of my parents' house once we arrived...

My sister's room the day after our arrival. I'm so glad she's visited since to see it's not in this state now!

I carried on working in the lab almost right up until the last minute, including spending a whole day cataloguing all the material I was leaving behind in freezers and cupboards: DNA, seeds, protein, plants, cultures, etc, etc, etc.

My desk - not much thesis writing happening there...

N had a huge leaving party with loads of his colleagues, so many people turned up, it was all very touching + showed how missed he'll be there. I didn't feel the need for a party, I'm only 100 miles away, I'll be back there seeing my supervisors for a meeting and my friends for lemony Christmas fun in a couple of weeks already anyway! I'll save the partying for when there's a "Dr." in front of my name and a "PhD" at the end!

More stuff. You may be surprised by the big empty space, but that's where the bed goes...

We spent a looonngggg time packing and cleaning. I was ruthless, I've never chucked out/recycled/donated so much stuff in my life! We even took a couple of trips to the dump, that was fun! But I had so much useless junk! Who needs so many old invoices? Guiding information that went out of date 5 years ago?! Insane! We also spent a 12 hour day the day before we moved out, with both of us cleaning absolutely everything, the whole house from top to bottom. It was spotless. And yet the landlady has still managed to find some reason to hold back a princely proportion of our bond... Sigh.

This is actually no where near the worst mess I made of the hallway, at one point I managed to fill the whole thing with stuff!

Anyway, despite all the ruthlessness (and a trip from a very lovely friend of mine who took a load) there was still a lot of stuff filling our living room (really wish I'd taken a photo of that!), including two bikes, so I was pretty scared to see the van when it arrived. It was pretty small, but we actually fit everything in easily, phew! (Thanks again for driving Col!) What I hadn't considered was how challenging it was going to be to fit everything from our 3-bed house into my parents' already full 3-bed... But I managed to fit it all in neatly after 2.5 days of sorting and tidying (and thank God for having access to a stable and my mum's old studio!).  I should take some "after" photos to show how I managed to pack it all in!

N stayed for 2.5 weeks before jetting off to the USofA, which I will talk about soon...

7 comments:

  1. I'm impressed you managed to sort your stuff out in two and a half days...I'm still going and it's been 3 years since I left Cardiff haha xx

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  2. haha! I didn't have much choice, no space! And I do have a low tolerance for mess...

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  3. Didn't have a party!! I recall attending at least 2...

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  4. Oh yeah, forgot about the Guide one, sorry Rach! That was indeed a very good party, there were even banners in my honour, I should have posted the pictures of them. And there's a hilarious picture of me crying while trying to sing Taps!!! But I wouldn't class the QG one as a leaving party, although that too was very lovely :)

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  5. I want to see the Hairspray party photos!

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  6. I will post the ones I can next time I blog :)

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  7. WOW I'm glad I only just found your blog and have witnessed my crap-filled room whilst sitting in it...good job sis, everything stowed away neatly...possibly right underneath me...

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