Zen Crib Notes

In March, I went back to London to get some stuff I left behind and also to attend the London Book Fair. London Book Fair was good: I got free booze and cake from publishers like OUP and networked with new people and hung out with colleagues I’ve known for a while. I gave one of my professors a See’s Candies Irish Potato in commemoration of St. Patrick’s day due to the fact that she’s Irish (which makes talking to her about Brexit super fun and also about the book Milkman, which is an excellent read), and I made some good connections with people in Children’s Literature through the Children’s Media Conference on behalf of my old internship. 

After LBF, I went to the Netherlands to tour around and visit places. I went to Eindhoven due to it being cheaper to fly into and stay in, but it’s only a two hour train ride to Amsterdam, which I visited throughout my five day stay. I also met with a Dutchman whom I talked to in Frankfurt Book Fair way out in the country, where he worked in a printing company. We talked about working in the Netherlands and the state of publishing there, and I still thought about filing in paperwork for a work visa in the Netherlands where I don’t need a work sponsorship to job search there. 

The big mistake was when I entered back into London. Border security became “concerned” that I didn’t have a return ticket to the states yet, and had even accused me of not having left the country after my student visa expired back in January. One, I did, and they even noted that i came back to the country back in the beginning of March anyway. They also asked me if I had a boyfriend there, as if that was reason enough to return to the country so soon after my visa finished, and they were suddenly “confused” as to why I would come back to visit the UK after leaving. which, for one, within my right to do so as an American traveler anyway, and also there isn’t any kind of grace period where i can re-enter the country. An issue which was already addressed when I flew in anyway by Border Security in Gatwick Airport. Well, they pulled me aside, and told me that they wouldn’t let me into the country until I bought a return ticket within a week after coming in. So that meant that I flew back to California on March 28.