In less than two weeks I'm going to call Chester "home". The reasons behind my relocation to the UK were many, but the most pronounced one was that I felt like there was time for a life change - a huge one, time to take risks and create memorable life experiences.
I did improve my english quite a while in the past years, I can entertain a skype meeting with my overseas clients, watch movies without subtitles and even give tourists directions when needed.
But living in a whole other country, where your native language is going to be of little to no use, that's a whole different story.
I like to read books - or, well, at least buying them - I have an impressive collection of books I've never got to read, or have partially read and lost my reading appetite after only a few chapters.
To aid my efforts to build a meaningful experience as an expat, I decided to add to my collection (and hopefully read before my departure date) the following titles: Acting: Face to Face, Thinking, fast and slow, Most Common Mistakes in English, Sanford Meisner on Acting, Improve Your Social Skills and Chatter.
Most of the above books are more or less related to psychology, and will hopefully prove helpful in my journey.
And this is how I started listening to audiobooks. Honestly, I'm not a fan of listening to books, I read fast and having someone narrate the book to me just slows me down.
I'm not a fan of commuting, so I'll always choose the pricey rent only to live at a walking distance of the office - which leaves little time for listening to narrations of books.
However, now that I'll be moving to a country where I'll only be able to speak in english, I needed to give audiobooks a chance in order to improve my pronunciation skills. And so my first choice of an audiobook was The Martian, a wonderful novel that I would recommend to anyone as their first audiobook.
To no one's surprise, tv shows remain a great asset in the language learner's sleeve.
I rushed to finish Friends, Seinfeld, Sherlock and The IT Crowd while still being up-to-date with the shows I was already watching before.
Because I also have to somehow get to the UK, I had to buy a flight ticket for the first time in my life.
A quick google search sent me to skyscanner.net, which I used to buy a ticket from Bucharest to London - since I couldn't find any direct flights from Bucharest to Liverpool.
Now, since London is not really near Chester, I also bought a coach ticket to Chester from nationalexpress.com.
All in all, planning and doing preparation work for this Journey has been a wonderful experience. And, hopefully, it'll work out well, if you want to see things I'd have done better please read Things I wish I knew when preparing for my journey to the UK.