Well, my first day of work went pretty well. I was translating for a housing surgery at the charity. Note, the British use the word "surgery" about the same as the American "clinic." Doctor's offices are called surgeries, and in this case, this was a consultation/clinic about housing issues, hence a housing surgery.

The British woman who came represents an organization called Shelter. I actually applied for a job with them a little while ago. They are an advocacy group for basic housing issues around the UK. The local councils have a duty to provide housing for the most vulnerable or at risk people, decided by a series of points. Shelter tends to take the side of people who have applied for this basic housing and either the process is stalled, they were rejected, or they have some other problem with housing. The charity I work for helps disabled Spanish and Portugeuse speakers in the UK, "disabled" being used broadly to include physical, mental, and other disabilities such as learning and sight disabilities. Many of the people the charity helps are refugees or immigrants from Latin America, or Europeans from Spain and Portugal. Depending on their type of visa, they may or may not be allowed to claim public benefits (just as I can't) like job seeker's allowance and housing support.

The UK is particularly generous with giving out job seeker's benefits and housing support to individuals, I think. For example, any non-student over the age of 16 can claim job seeker's benefits of 80-100 dollars a week, even if they quit their job or are not really looking for a job. This can go on indefinitely, since there is no time limit on how long you can claim these benefits.

Though Europeans can move freely between countries and work in any EU country, they are technically not supposed to be getting benefits (housing, job seeker's benefits) besides medical care from foreign countries unless they are "economically active," a term that is apparently open to interpretation. When Victoria took a TEFL course last fall, one of the students in the class was Spanish and was receiving income support, a housing benefit, and another housing benefit since she changed apartments and they kept sending her two housing benefits. You can't help feeling that they need to keep better tabs on who they are giving their money to.

Back to my job, I have also been enlisted to solve various computer problems that the organization has, which will be good experience for my resume. I will be doing two onsite translation gigs this coming week, one on Tuesday and one on Wednesday. Those should be interesting. On Monday I have a strange task. Some of our friends, Chris and Gisella, have recently bought a new computer from Dell. I have volunteered to sit in their house on Monday to sign for it when it is delivered, because they have to go to work. I will bring a good book and my computer to do job applications, I guess. They have offered to make us dinner that night as repayment. Really, I should be making the dinner since I will be at their home all day long. I hope the computer comes early, because I can leave then. I will probably try to go by the charity afterwards because they live about half a block from it.

Hmmm... other news. I forgot to mention that the fireworks in London on New Year's were really cool. The centerpiece of the fireworks was the London Eye. They shot a bunch of fireworks off of the Eye itself. We didn't have the best angle of the Eye, but it still looked impressive.