Name Change and Other Developments

Since I'm no longer at Oxford (not possible!!) I think it's time to do away with 'Oxford Blues'. I think I was the only person who got the pun anyway.

Besides, I shall now be blogging about different things. Still depression, still eating disorder recovery, but now in the big wide world rather than the insane, manic bubble that is Oxford University. It was a challenge in itself, but I've survived it, and my life is changing.

On September 1st I'll be flying out to Moscow to start a new life for a year. Yes, I'll be coming back to Britain after that year to do an MA in Interpreting and Translating at Bath (if they'll have me), but I intend to return to Russia when I've done that. It's where the work is, it's where the fun is, it's where the Russian is.

My job that I had set up fell through a few days ago: I was going to be nannying a 12-year-old girl from a family so VIP that the contract stated I wasn't allowed to tell anyone their surname, and teaching her English in preparation for going to Swiss boarding school. Then Family X, as I call them, suddenly decided they only needed a part-time nanny, not full-time as I was going to be. Well, I say full-time; that is, out-of-school hours 4 days a week and one day at the weekend. They would also take me on holiday with them to Italy for two months in the summer and continue to pay me, thank you very much. So I was pretty bummed when they pulled out of the deal, to say the least.

Fortunately, I did have a fall-back, and my boss very generously looked into some alternatives for me too. I shall soon have a Skype interview with a new family, also VIP according to the agency I contacted (called 'Prestige', which tells you all you need to know about their clientele), so we'll see how this pans out. It's basically the same job but with a much younger child, 5 years old, and I have no experience of working with children - eek! They know this perfectly well having seen my CV, but whatevs, employing me is their call. The pay would be £36k (ker-ching!) plus any overtime I worked by going on holiday with them. I know right, tough job but someone's gotta do it? Yeah.

I'm also going to be acting a lot and teaching drama at the Moscow English Drama School, which is a joke because I've never been to drama school. My training goes as far as Drama GCSE (that's age 15 for those outside England). Luckily the school is not training professionals, but just using drama as a way for Russians to improve their English, and allowing expats to socialise in a fun and creative way. Just as well, really, given that I have no technique whatsoever. The only technique (if you can call it that) which I am familiar with is all Stanislavski, having studied him in my theatre module at Oxford, but I'm hardly going to teach his 'system'. There's no such thing and anyway, it was designed for over-emotional Russians, not tight-laced Englishmen. I'm halfway through 'Trusting the Actor' by Brian Astbury, a friend's old drama tutor from East 15; his theory is that, quite the opposite to Russians, English actors need to think less and feel more, and I quite agree. So that will be my goal, despite having a mixed class of compatriots and Muscovites. We'll see how it goes...

On the eating disorder side of things, well, it's mixed. I've had a stomach upset for over a week now, diagnosed today as indigestion (i.e. acid reflux) and basically haven't been able to eat. I've lost not a lot but not an insignificant amount of weight - ED is loving it, recovery brain is banging its head on the table. So very very triggered to keep restricting even when I can eat again, you know how it goes - I'll just lose a bit more and then I'll stop - but I cannot allow myself to fall into that cycle again. Anorexia kills, full stop, and I don't want my parents to have to bury me. So, onwards and upwards.