In March of 2020, the pandemic hit hard right when we were moving to London. In the absolute chaos that all entailed my blogging habit fell off and never really picked back up. I also started working part-time in March and then full-time in September, which took away any time I had to work on the blog. After a couple of years, however, I realized that I really missed being able to look back on the blog and remember things about my life (I have a terrible memory!)
So in May of 2023, I decided to start writing “Monthly Review” posts in which I would do a roundup of the previous month. It’s still not as good as the daily/weekly blogging I did before, but at least it’s something! I am enjoying doing those so much that I have decided to try and go back and recreate monthly posts from when I stopped blogging regularly. Thankfully Google Photos organizes all of my photos chronologically, and Google Maps keeps a timeline of where I go (although basically nowhere for a lot of 2020!) so with the help of technology I should be able to figure out what I’ve been doing with my life the last couple of years.
So here is my first attempt to back-date a monthly review post, so let’s see what we were up to in March of 2020!
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It looks like we started March in Austin, Minnesota, visiting our friends the Magnuson’s. This family is some of our oldest (for Joel) and closest (for both of us) friends and the youngest one, Oliver, is our godson. We always play plenty of games when we get together - usually Dominion as everyone indulges my extreme love for the game. This time we also took Alexyss prom dress shopping! Looking back I wonder if she ever got to actually wear that dress to prom…I’ll have to ask her. Here’s a picture of us with Oliver at The Prom Shop!
On March 2nd we mailed off our passport and all of our paperwork for my work visa, fingers crossed that everything would come through! (Spoiler alert: it did!)
Just three days later we had our passports back in hand with our visas!!! It took forever to get to the point of finally turning things in, but once we did, holy cow did it go fast. I celebrated by going out with my brother to the restaurant he worked at - a breakfast joint called Eggs & Jam. They celebrate hip-hop music and have tons of cool graffiti art all over the restaurant. I ordered the breakfast egg rolls which were so yummy!
Over the weekend I got to see my girls! I have been in a covenant group with these three wonderful ladies since 2015, and we have kept it going even when Sarah moved a state away, and now I’m moving a country away! Whenever we are back in the US we try to get together for a retreat. This time, Kendy hosted us at her new house in Urbandale. We had a true girly sleepover together with wonderful food, fun games, and binge watching Love is Blind.
A trip back to Iowa wouldn’t be complete without seeing some old friends in Ames! Nicole and I had lunch together at The Cafe (still my favorite restaurant in Ames!)
Then we stopped by the church where I used to work and Nicole still works, to say hello to people and to surprise her kids! These two were in Joel and my wedding back in the day - Zachery was our candle lighter and Savanna was the flower girl!
Then I joined Joel at his friend Brian’s house and our old gaming friends came over to have a game night. They also brought their kiddos who have grown up so much since we last saw them! Some flying hugs may have been involved.
We left my family to head to Joel’s dad and step-mom on Friday the 13th (ominous!) I remember I was starting to get more and more worried about Covid-19. The US government was asking all citizens abroad to return home, and here we were with visas in hand, waiting to move to a new country. Our flight was scheduled to leave on the 17th and I was terrified that we wouldn’t be able to leave. I spent most of my time at my in-laws just anxiously waiting and watching the news, although we did go out to enjoy a walk along the Mississippi River in the snow.
We called the airline about changing our tickets and were told we could for the princely sum of around $600. We obviously weren’t going to pay that, so we took a big risk instead. We had Joel’s dad drive us to the airport two days early so we could talk to someone from the airline in person. This is a four-hour drive and then he left us there so I don’t know what we would have done if they hadn’t let us on an early flight! Thankfully, they did. It was surreal to be leaving Chicago when thousands of people were coming in on the arrival side and mere hundreds were with us on the departure side. We flew with Aer Lingus from Chicago to Dublin, then Dublin to London, and I will forever sing their praises for putting us on an early flight with no extra charge. I think it was around this time that my anxiety stopped me from documenting things very well, so I don’t have any real pictures of this trip. But I do have a picture of our boarding passes for London!
Before we left the US, we were told that we would need to get our visas stamped by a border agent upon arrival in London. However, because we flew to Dublin first, they check you in to the UK there, so showing up in London is like coming in on an in-country flight, meaning no border patrol. When we arrived on the 16th, we wandered the airport for a while looking for a border agent to stamp our passports but when we finally found one, he said we didn’t need it. We made him double-check with colleagues but in the end, they all refused to stamp our paperwork. So after a quick text flurry with our immigration solicitor, he said to take pictures of our boarding passes so we would have proof of entry, which we would need for further visa applications in the future. It was all a very nerve-wracking process at a very nerve-wracking time in the world!
When we finally left the airport, Vince and Joan picked us up and we spent one last night with them before they took us to our new flat in Notting Hill. We stuffed the small amount of belongings we had in their car - which didn't seem like much until we tried squeezing it all in!
They also let us use their Costco membership to stock up on essentials (of which hardly any were to be found) but we did manage to buy a giant carrot cake so that was a win.
We spent the first night in our flat on the 17th of March. Then the Prime Minister announced that lockdown would be going into effect on the 23rd. So we had about five days to get as much of our lives together as possible before we would have to stay home. We needed a bank account so I could get paid, a UK phone number so I could communicate with colleagues, internet so we wouldn’t go insane, and oh yeah, furniture! This week I also went to my first (and only!) staff meeting at the church where all we talked about was how to close down the building and what we might do to keep in touch with church members and provide worship.
On the 19th I took a solo trip on the underground to meet up with Joan, she was leaving from her last day of in-person work. I remember I was delivering to her things I had brought to her from the US, which I must have forgotten to do when I saw her two days earlier! The trip took me to King’s Cross station which is where Platform 9¾ is located. This place is never empty, it is usually crawling with Harry Potter enthusiasts. But this night…it was deserted. It was surreal.
Sunday the 22nd of March was supposed to be my first Sunday leading worship at Notting Hill Methodist Church. Instead, the Methodist denomination had asked all churches to close their buildings indefinitely. So, to Facebook I went! The church already had a page, so I became an admin and broadcast my first online worship. It was very short, with a meditation on Psalm 23 and some YouTube videos of hymns that got silenced (hadn't learned about copyright stuff yet!) and I was oddly formal in my robe and stole. Our filming setup was also very janky - check out the phone propped up by the laptop on a chair on top of the table...anything to get the right angle! The way we did online worship definitely evolved over the next few months.
Once lockdown hit we didn’t do much other than watch Netflix in our flat and go on our one allowed walk a day. We did make sure that the first movie we watched was Notting Hill! Even with everything else going wrong, we couldn’t believe how lucky we were to be watching Notting Hill while living in Notting Hill. On our walks, we quickly learned that we were within walking distance of many amazing places, including Kensington Palace. (Peep my reflection in the photo.) Of course, no one was allowed in anywhere, but it was still cool to walk by.
During lockdown we started walking, a lot. There really wasn’t much else to do! Every time we stepped outside I felt like we were on the set of a zombie movie or something - we could go on long walks around the city without seeing anyone! We started walking down the middle of the streets just because we could - there was no traffic around. We were blessed with some gorgeous spring weather - I have no idea what people are talking about when they say the UK is cloudy and rainy all the time!
I think that just about sums up the absolute roller coaster that was March of 2020. Our lives were changing rapidly - finally moving to the UK on our visas - and the world was changing rapidly with lockdowns and the crisis of the pandemic. At the time we definitely had no idea just what the rest of the year had in store for us!
XOXO, Bethany