The sky is the colour of old concrete when the bald cabbie cocks his head to tell us we've 'picked a nice day to arrive'. I wait a second to see if he's 'havin' a laugh' but he's dead serious, gripping the Black Cab's steering wheel with his tattooed knuckles. He starts to question us about our plans in London, asking why we are here and what we plan to do in the city by the Thames.

I look out at London, the city I'm going to call home for the foreseeable future and it's all pretty uninspiring - the 'arm and a leg' taxi ride from Heathrow Airport to West London is not the prettiest drive. But I'm happy. After a nightmare trip from New York to London via Iceland (never again!) we are finally home, even if home is a ginormous city full of millions of strangers.

Our friendly driver is the last completely English person we will encounter that day as we enter the cultural melting pot that is Shepherd's Bush, an area in West London otherwise known by the postal code W12 (it's all about postal codes here in London). The Bush (or She Bu to some) is our new home because our friends have kindly found us a flat to live in while we've been swanning around the Americas. I love the randomness of having someone else pick our fate and looking at the Bush, I can tell it's going to be an interesting place to live.

Later I will find out that Shepherd's Bush was once home to members of The Who, The Sex Pistols and The Clash - and it is the 'Bush' referred to in Gavin Rossdale's band name (Bush). But for now it's a complete mystery as we sit in a pub called The Green waiting for our friends to lead the way home. The pub is just like every stereotypical London drinking establishment. Seriously, we could be sitting in the Rover's Return from Coronation Street, except for the bar girl who is clearly Eastern European.

And then we are taken to our flat which is another Corrie cliche. The dark bricks and patchy design are so incredibly English. Inside, our flat is a pleasant surprise, completely unlike the hovel I was imagining but there is one problem which hits us the moment we walk into the place: it's empty.

Luckily our friends (now our flatmates) have everything sorted. They have been in London for three weeks sleeping on people's couches and dreaming of the day we would all move into our She Bu mansion.  We go straight to Argos, a store which most Kiwis living in London are probably quite au fait with. Argos is a store which sells everything but the kitchen sink yet you walk in and it's completely empty. Everything is sold with catalogues the size of the Auckland White Pages. We pick out some blow-up beds and pillows, write their numbers on a teeny piece of paper and take them to the counter. Then they magically appear from behind the counter staff's doors.

Back at the flat we flop into our new 'bed' and listen to the loud hum of the downstairs fried chicken joint, a sound which will drive me slowly mad over the next few weeks but which is okay for now. I realise as I'm drifting off to sleep that tomorrow it all begins. We are thoroughly unemployed and our precious Kiwi dollars are being gobbled up by the strength of the pound. We need jobs and we need them now. And that, I know, is going to be one hell of an adventure.

Check out photos from Kelly's trip in her Flickr album.

Find out about London.

Read more of Kelly's blogs.