sorry!

Hi friends,
Sorry it's been so long since I've blogged; there was nothing worth updating on Wednesday and yesterday will take too long to blog about because I am leaving in twenty minutes to catch a train to get to an airport to catch a plane to...

AMSTERDAM!

I'm so excited to see this beautiful city and experience some aspects of its culture (NOT the pot-smoking part).  Can't wait to tell you all my stories when I return!  Til then, 

vaarwel tot maandag!! 

which means goodbye until Monday!

yesterday...

...was an utterly insane day in every possible way!

Started work early, got in in time for free BBDO breakfast, which is amazing.  I had a peanut-butter and Nutella sandwich, a mocha, and some fresh grapes and strawberries...they were to-die-for, a little taste of home.  I could live on purple grapes (never green) in the summer.  I seriously eat them by the bucketload.

I also heard my first-ever legitimate utterance of "Bloody hell!" in the BBDO lobby.  A guy was wrestling with his umbrella, carrying coffee, trying to get his passcard to buzz him in, and holding his plate of breakfast as well.  I buzzed him in and he thanked me, then absolutely SHOUTED the "bloody hell!" as his umbrella got caught in the doorway.  I cracked up and felt all happy inside for about twenty minutes after the fact.

Yesterday was also the first day that the new BBDO Europe CEO was in-office in London!  To welcome him, we had a special Eurovision session to review BBDO's Superbowl ads and how they stacked up compared to other agencies' work.  Just in case you're dying to know, BBDO was responsible for Monster's "Fiddling Beaver" ad and the Snickers "You play like Betty White!" ad, which was rated the #1 Superbowl commercial by Nielsen, the American ratings company.  It was SO cool to see the teams that had worked so hard on these ads get recognized...they were so proud!  

Anyway, Jack, our Notre Dame-grad BBDO CFO, ordered about twenty Pizza Hut pizzas (Pizza Hut is considered a "classier" lunch option in Europe, and they eat their pizza with a knife and fork!) for our Eurovision meeting, and since half the skinny-minnie girls in the creative department don't eat lunch (ever) there was a ton left over...the new CEO was appalled and kept trying to get them to eat it, which was super funny.  He is super nice, down-to-earth, and spent a long time chatting with us lowly interns.  

I was a little bit stunned by how surreal the experience was after the fact...I mean, how many times in your life can you say you sat down to a pizza lunch with the CEO of a multinational company who actually spent over a half hour of his time talking directly TO you, about you, on his FIRST day in the office?!  I was so excited.  This job is ridiculously wonderful. 

Last night, Coleen and I were going to make chicken parmigiana for dinner...she had all the ingredients and a recipe handy and wanted to be creative, so I offered up my flat for the cooking of the dinner.  BIG MISTAKE.  When we turned our oven on to bake the chicken, about two to three minutes later we opened it and smoke started billowing out!  Our whole flat was quickly filled and I. Freaked. Out.  Like, Grade-A Lizzie Schwegman Freak-Out.  Coleen evacuated the chicken to her flat upstairs (of course, this was our first concern), and I flapped towels at our smoke detector like a madwoman (it still went off, though thankfully just in-room and not the whole building!).  Turns out there is most likely something stuck in our oven's fan that is blocking it while simultaneously burning and causing it to smoke like a chimney.  I was very scared and frazzled...but the chicken parmigiana was delicious and in the end I guess that's all that really matters ;)  Oh, flat dinners, how I love thee.  

Signing off for now as this is getting long and it's almost time for Tuesday Library Tea, one of my FAVORITE things about the London Centre!

Umbrella Etiquette 101

Hello lovely blog-readers,
Just a quick little random post before I go cook dinner...today was SUPER eventful and will require more attention than I can give on my empty stomach and short attention span.

As the weather forecast for London looks like this for the next week...

...I thought now would be a good time to write a brief summary of the unspoken but oh-so-important etiquette governing the use of an umbrella on the bustling streets of Londontown.  

First, if you wish to blend in at all with the locals, you will invest in a sturdy, practical and utterly dull plain black umbrella with a serviceable, collapsible handle.  I am clearly failing from the start, as my umbrella looks like this:

Yes my friends, it is bright sunny cheerful yellow with a plethora of orange, pink, navy and white polka dots.  Oh-so-fun and delightful to look at on a dreary rainy day, but definitively NOT British-y at all.

When carrying an umbrella, British people must pay very close and careful attention to the proper times to open and close it.
-Upon immediate entrance to a Tube station staircase the umbrella must be closed.  This means you will get rained on for about 15 seconds while descending said staircase.
-An umbrella may not be opened until you have reached street level and fully exited a Tube station.  You WILL get mean dirty looks from angry people.
-If walking under a covered walkway for construction the umbrella must be closed, as space is very constricted.  If you do not close your umbrella, even if it means you will get dripped on through the construction scaffolding, you will also be the recipient of dirty looks, and may actually poke somebody's ear, shoulder, or scalp (depending on their height).

This brings me to the important point of negotiating height differences with umbrellas.  As I am a very short 5'4", my umbrella's natural height is on par with most people's eye levels.  Others, such as the 6'5" businessmen who tower over everybody, will hold their umbrellas either very high above everybody's heads to avoid impaling people, or very low and tight to their heads.  For the shorties like moi, carrying an umbrella means constant lifting, lowering, and angling of the umbrella forward, backward or extreme-to-one-side to avoid hitting people, letting your runoff go down their coat collars, or edging them off the sidewalk with your bright yellow polka-dotted weapon of mass destruction.

Once indoors, the umbrella must immediately be folded and fastened shut and put away, despite the fact that it is probably slowly creating its own small lake on the floor of whatever facility you have entered.  This may mean that one side of your not-waterproofed backpack may become wet, meaning it is logical to remove all critical documents (like essays you have due the next day) from said backpack.

And the number one most valuable lesson I can provide any future London-goers about use of an umbrella, with all its risks, hazards, and potential for inflicting injury upon others:
The word "Sorry!" is your ABSOLUTE BEST FRIEND.

to bring sunshine to your rainy day...

kind of homesick, again?!

My flatmate Kelly's parents are in town for the week and it is making me more than a little bit homesick.  This is unusual for me, as when I am at Notre Dame I am rarely if ever truly "homesick," as in longing for Lakeville and the comforts of my house.  But seeing how excited Kelly is about her parents being here is making me want MY parents.  Or even just to be back in a country where I can get Caribou Coffee, or go to a Target, or place an online order at jcrew.com, or see cars being driven on the correct side of the road.  Or to not have to look at the labels to see what way I have to check before crossing a street.  Or to watch "The Bachelor" and "The Office" and proper Olympic coverage with the John Williams fanfare and all of NBC's pomp and circumstance.  Or shower in a shower with water pressure and sleep on a bed that's soft.

Done whining now.  Here's a total digression: as I am in London on a student budget, I am going to talk about food.  Specifically, the food we are eating, the food that is different here, and the foods I like and dislike.  This blog post has been ruminating in my head for a long time so here we go:

1. TWININGS TEA.

-I should really just write a whole entire blog post that is just an ode to Twinings and how much I love, worship and adore their different varieties of tea.  I actually really just love tea in general right now...not that stupid frou-frou Chai-blend crap Starbucks sells Stateside (I've always hated that, hmm), but proper tea, with tea bags that have to steep and sugar and milk and lemon.  I love classic Earl Grey with milk and sugar (a drop of milk, two sugars).  I love Lemon-ginger with a slice of lemon floating in it.  I love peppermint tea with sugar.  I love raspberry-pomegranate tea with nothing added to it because it is just. that. good.  Mmmm tea.  Since we got here, I've been working my way up in tea dependence.  First few weeks I had maybe a cup every few days.  Then it was a cup every day.  Now it's up to about four a day.  Oh dear.  I'll come back to the US and be a tea-monster.

2. Weird chip flavors.

-As BBDO does the marketing for Walkers, the British version of Lays, we get a lot of free chips in the office.  British chips (crisps, to be truly proper) are not like American chips, as in they come in weird, weird flavors.  Some highlights:

1. tomato ketchup.  Tastes like eating french fries with ketchup; I like these.

2. Bacon-and-cream cheese.  Tastes like eating, well, bacon.  They're...interesting.

3. McDonald's Cheeseburger.  Very odd.  Because it tastes just like a McDonald's cheeseburger and I don't know if that's a good or bad thing.

4. Prawn Cocktail.  Prawns=shrimp and that= a weird-ass chip.

5. Paprika.  These are kind of sweetish and spicy.  Good.

6. SALT AND VINEGAR.  I remember when I was little my dad tried to get me to eat salt-and-vinegar Pringles and I hated them.  Now I love salt-and-vinegar chips.  Go figure.

3. Chicken tikka.

-The Brits think this is Indian and Indians in Britain think this is British.  I think it is delicious as it is sort of the most Westernized Indian food possible...it's sort of a curry-ish spiced chicken that you can eat in a variety of ways.  And it's sometimes served in a good sauce.  Yum, basically, because as I have previously gushed, I am in love with Indian food.

4. Digestives.

-I don't recall if I've already rhapsodized over the yumminess that are digestive biscuits, but they have nothing to do with aiding digestion.  They're basically graham-cracker style cookie-things with a coating on one side of a hard milk- or dark-chocolate shell.  Meant to be enjoyed with tea, we culture-less Americans choose instead to enjoy them with, well, everything.  

5. Leek-and-potato soup.

-I was devastated to find that one of my staple cheap-foods, chicken-noodle soup, is as unheard of in Britain as grape jelly or good dental hygiene.  Luckily my brief experimentation with different soup flavors led me quickly to a new stand-in for the semester: leek and potato.  It's creamier, a little garlicky, and has leeks (like onions) and potato chunks floating in it.  I like it very much.  

Top 5 Letdown/Gross Foods:

1. white sauce.  Their version of Alfredo sucks, which is sad because pasta is such a go-to food here.

2. raspberry jam.  I like strawberry jam now (because they don't make grape jelly!!) but raspberry jam is seedy and nasty and just ick.

3. bread.  I like wheat bread at home, whatever kind my mom buys anyway, but the wheat bread here dries out or goes moldy within a span of three days.  BUMMER.  I've been forced to get nutrient-enriched (read: chemically-enhanced!) white-bread if I want it to last through even half a loaf.

4. cereal.  NO CHEERIOS.  I am on the brink of breakfast-death.  Also, no Special K Vanilla-Almond, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Lucky Charms or Kix.  Basically, none of my favorite breakfast cereals.  I'm making do with Special-K Red Berries, which I have never really liked because the "berries" are like dried-fruit-sourness-turds instead of actual strawberries.  

5. Diet Coke.  IT TASTES DIFFERENT HERE.  Enough said.

Okay now I feel much better and am going to go eat some fake Ritz crackers with some fake British-ized peanut butter and pretend to be productive.  :)

this store exists in an alternate universe.

Hello all!
Rainy day in London.  I feel like at this point I should be used to it and expect it, really, but it's hard to when the sunny days are so determinedly, downright gorgeously brilliant that I want every day to be like that.  With rain comes a complete lack of desire to go outside so I'm currently having a lazy Sunday morning...toast, tea, and a blog update.  Lovely.

Hmm, weekend.  Friday was low-key as everybody in the world (assuming the world=the Notre Dame London Undergraduate Program) seemed to have a million papers to do.  We spent the morning working, the afternoon watching "Austin Powers," and the evening having ridiculous misadventures on Marylebone High Street, home of The Golden Hind.  Here's the story:

Since we are Catholic college students, we all like to observe the no-meat-on-Fridays-in-Lent rule, but we also all like to eat as we are all starving in London.  Enter my brilliant idea to take a group of 8 to The Golden Hind, the best fish-and-chips place in London, for a Lent dinner.  Turns out we (shockingly, ha) weren't the only people in London who had that idea.  Got there after ages and ages, only to find that it was completely full-to-the-gills (no pun intended).  We stood outside bewildered for a bit until we saw the TAKEOUT MENU, so we ordered lots and lots of hot golden fish and hot golden chips to eat for takeout before realizing it was about 35 degrees outside and we had nowhere to eat said fish and chips.  So we wandered for a bit.  A long bit.  An eternity, really, when you're starving and can smell Golden Hind emanating from your giant takeout bags.  Finally we found a McDonald's (HA) and bought small pops there and parked ourselves determinedly and ate every last bit of our delicious fish and chips.  And enjoyed it!

Then our group split up and I went with Kayla and Felicia to the Everyman Theater on Baker Street to see "Valentine's Day" on a half-price student ticket.  Let me tell you the best thing about English movie theaters: they let you drink alcohol while watching the movies.  We each had a glass of chardonnay (really cheap chardonnay) while watching the film, and it was a downright lovely time.  We had been met by some more lovely ND girls, and after the film ended we all took the tube back to Farringdon.  Then it was City Pride karaoke night, then we went to another music pub called The Slaughtered Lamb (which was totally Jesus-y and odd, although it made me feel less bad about going to a bar on a Lenten Friday) for MOTOWN night.  We danced like fiends for two hours and had a total blast.  Isaac, Martin, Nicolle, Anmol and I ended up staying up super late just talking and playing Hot Seat and having a marvelous, friendly night.

Saturday: Victoria and Albert Museum!  This was another totally inspired idea on my part because this museum was SO fun.  Isaac, Nicolle and I walked from K-M to Kensington, which turned out to be a 3.5 mile, 1.5 hour walk through some amazing parts of London!  We took most of the normal route to the London Centre, then turned off through Piccadilly Circus (the English version of Times Square), cut past Hyde Park and went down Brompton Road, home of SO MANY AMAZING STORES.  We passed Harvey Nichols, Burberry, Dior, Dolce and Gabbana, French Connection, and bestbestbest of all, HARROD'S.  I immediately melted into a little pile of expensive-fancy-store loving goo and uttered some kind of nonsense like "There is a ridiculously happy feeling in my heart's heart" as we realized what we were looking at.  Nicolle and I immediately decided we had to stop in there on the way back!  The museum was just a bit down the road from Harrod's and we were so excited to finally arrive.

It was amazing!  So much of everything, it was truly one of the most diverse museums I've ever seen.  We all ended up splitting up, and I wandered through exhibits on the medieval Church and the Protestant Reformation, an AMAZING series of rooms devoted to Tudor England lifestyles, an exhibition of armor through the ages, a vast exhibit on the evolution of fashion (so cool!), and best of all, a room featuring eight original Raphael "cartoons," or draft-paintings, for tapestries to decorate St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.  It was SO cool.  After two hours, we rendezvoused in the main entry and headed out for a totally different "look but don't you dare touch" experience.

Harrod's is the most ridiculously over-the-top place I've ever been in my life.  Having visited it briefly senior year with the band trip, I knew moderately what to expect, though Nicolle and Isaac didn't.  We beelined straight to the Food Halls to look around and enjoyed smelling international coffee samples, marveling at designer chocolates and candies, and bemoaning the price of $800 chocolate Easter eggs and $40 (small) blocks of cheese.  Then we ventured upstairs to play "guess the price" in the women's designer section, and sat on some $3500 folding lawn chairs (that I could find doppelgangers for at Pottery Barn) in the home-and-garden section.  All Harrod's-ed out and feeling very poor, we caught the #38 bus home to Farringdon Road and cooked some dinner and did some Facebooking and homeworking.  Around 10 we took a break for cribbage and I was in bed by 11:30.  Mmm, sleep.

As it looks like the sun may be trying to come out, I'm going to wrap this post up with one little factoid for you:
In 2001, Harrod's had a pair of 66,000-pound designer shoes encrusted with rubies, diamonds and emeralds on display.  How did they choose to protect these designer beauties?  They imported a king cobra from Egypt, of course, and put it in the case with the shoes.  Because a snake is such an effective and classy protective device.  Why would anybody ever try anything else?  ;)

bloodstains are the new black...?

Tonight was Lizzie Goes To The Opera, Part II: "Lucia Di Lammermoor!"  First, however, I am going to talk about how I singlehandedly saved BBDO several dozen-thousand pounds today...it's an exciting story for anybody as business-nerdy as me (coughPhil-and-Chriscough).

In the UK, corporations can reclaim portions of sales tax that their employees have expensed to the company by creating a compilation called a VAT Reclaim.  It fell to me, the lowly accounting intern, to do this unglamorous but essential job this year.  Basically, I went through every expense claim that had been filed over the course of fiscal year 2009, photocopied and refiled every applicable VAT-reclaimable receipt, and created a monster of an Excel spreadsheet to tabulate it all.  By spending my whole week working on this, I saved BBDO about 17,000 pounds...big deal, right?!   I felt like such an accountant rockstar.  Haha, oxymoron for the win.  Anyway, it was a good, good day at work due in large part to that.

"Lucia:" bloody brilliant in more ways than one!  I thought the plot, singing, orchestra and general performance was miles better than "The Rake's Progress."  The singing was much more rich in lower male voices, my favorite, and the two tenors of the cast were also amazing.  Lucia, the lead role, was a very light-voiced soprano that was lovely to listen to.  The plot is very dark... Lucia's older brother, in desperation, forces her to marry a man she loathes for a political alliance, and she murders that man and then goes insane because the man she loves (her brother's sworn enemy) forsakes her.  Then she dies and so do a lot of other people.  Very dark.  Lots of blood.  As in, Lucia spends the whole third act in a nightgown covered in it.  We had a wonderful time and were thrilled to head back to the flats after the whole three-hour performance ended.  I was a really big fan of this opera, although it wasn't sung in its original Italian which bummed me out a bit.  (One of the highlights: an INSANE amount of wonderful piccolo solos!!  YEAH piccs on top!)  

I'm still nursing this godforsaken cold, which has migrated from my head down to my throat/lungs and set up a very determined camp there, so I'm going to go put jammies on, drink more peppermint tea, and call it a night.  Catch you on the flip side!

Turtle Mocha!! (sort of...)

Well, I would wish all of you a happy Lent but Lent isn't supposed to be happy, so...Lent.  I was going to give up coffee but a series of unfortunate events (rain, cold-induced sleep deprivation, etc.) have conspired to prove to me that I am no longer capable of existing without coffee.  Sadness.

Also, this morning I got to take advantage of a wonderful perk of Caffé Nero...their Loyal Customers stamp card.  Basically, every time you get a coffee you get a little light blue card stamped, and after 9 stamps you get a free beverage of your choice!  Since it was gratuit, I decided to go all-out today and get a regular mocha with a shot of sugar-free caramel...which, for any Caribou Coffee-lovers out there, is as close to a Turtle Mocha as you can get.  I'm now sitting waiting for Philo of Law to start and it. is. delicious.  

Tonight is Ash Wednesday program Mass at the London Centre...I'm excited because I love our program chaplain, Father John.  I also have my first test of the semester today, in Macroeconomics, and it should be a breeze...emphasis on "should." We studied last night for it and then tried an ill-starred attempt to make traditional British pancakes for real Pancake Day.  The universe conspired against us in every way possible...our pans were crap, the stovetop wouldn't stay at a consistent temperature, and we couldn't get the texture or thickness of the batter right.  All we had when we were done was a doughy mess of pancake goo, so we surrendered good-naturedly and ate Nutella instead :)

Class time now, gotta dash!  Happy...well, Lent.  !!

Thoughts on a rainy day in London

So, it's absolutely pouring here today for the first time since we've been here, and I feel woefully not up to it.  All of our colds (and by "all of our," I mean literally about half the program) are peaking and I woke up this morning feeling like a sniffly, snotty, soggy mess with a throat that could replace sandpaper.  Needless to say, the walk to school in the deluge was less than pleasant.  I felt like the line in "Pride and Prejudice," when Caroline Bingley berates Elizabeth Bennett for walking to Netherfield... "Did you see her hems?!  Six inches deep in mud!"  Well, my pants weren't six inches deep in mud, but they were certainly six inches soaked with water.  "Rain, rain, go away, come again once we've left in May!" will be my rallying cry for the day.

After Images this morning, which was utterly mind-numbingly facile and easy, I decided the combination of the weather (shitty) and my health (also shitty) necessitated a trip to Caffé Nero for hot chocolate and a raspberry muffin.  While there, my inner strategic management-student went CRAZY...here's why:

At Caffé Neros, you place your order with one of two baristas working.  That barista then writes your order down, goes to the espresso machine and makes your order, then returns, asks if you want any pastry items, and if you do, goes and gets those while your coffee sits on the counter getting cold.  That barista then rings you up, swipes your card, stamps your Caffé Nero Loyalty Card (get your 10th drink FREE!), and ONLY then may you drink your coffee.  American coffee houses, on the other hand, have two baristas, sometimes three...one of whom is the designated cashier and the other (two) who prepares the drinks.  So much more efficient!  Think of the throughput time that could be saved at Caffé Neros everywhere if they would only divide the labor more effectively among the personnel on staff!!  It would certainly have cut down the 15-minute line that I had to stand in.  

Anyway, done rambling for now.  I'm going to go eat my muffin, take some Tylenol Day, and hope that Little Orphan Annie was right and the sun will come out tomorrow.  Cheerio!

pancakes and copy machines and really bad colds

Today (well, technically tomorrow) is Pancake Day in England, and it is officially my new favorite English tradition ever.  Instead of celebrating Mardi Gras, Brits celebrate by making LOTS of pancakes and eating them.  Best idea ever, right?!

English pancakes, which we had at BBDO during our "Pancake Party" today, are really thin and bubbly like crépes but have lots of little tiny holes in them.  One eats them by squeezing lemon juice all over them, then absolutely covering them in sugar, rolling them up, and then putting more lemon juice and sugar on top.  It's delicious and addictive and totally unlike anything I ever thought a pancake was.  Such fun.

On another note, BBDO's copy machine is my bitch.  It's approaching tax season at work, which means lots and lots of international taxation headaches.  Because BBDO is a company that has branches in almost every European country plus the Middle East and Africa, it's taxed in every country and that means the accountants at the headquarters (the team I work for, and me) have to do absolute loads of work.  Today I calculated VAT rebates (their equivalent of corporate sales tax) for every employee at the headquarters for all of the tax year thus far...doing this for the rest of the branches is going to be my new big project.  It involves A LOT of using the copy machine to record receipts, invoices and VAT...I went through an entire ream (500 sheets) of paper today alone.  Aaah, killing trees=guilty conscience.

I also have a nastily raging cold, as do the rest of my flatmates and it seems the majority of the London Program.  Spring colds are the worst.  Hate it.  Thank goodness for Twinings peppermint tea.

Okay, done now.  Happy Pancake Day, y'all, I've got to go figure out what to give up for Lent!

1 month ago...

...we were all arriving here, sitting (sleeping) through orientation sessions, and trying to acclimate ourselves as quickly as possible to our new home in London.  I can't believe it's been a whole month already, time has flown by and yet at the same time it feels like so much has happened that I can hardly fathom how much I've done and seen and experienced.

This weekend has been blissfully low-key for me.  My flatmates Kelly, Joanie, and Ellen were all traveling for the weekend, so Nicolle and I were alone in the flat.  Friday night after I blogged was a great evening of watching "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" with a group of friends...I had never seen it and it was so funny!  We also discovered Cadbury Cake Bites...which are sinfully delicious in every way.  Early bed for me, as I was still exhausted from the long Thursday night I had :)

Saturday consisted of a program outing to see a rugby game!  About 35 of the people who hadn't traveled this weekend took the Tube with our awesome program supervisor, Ric, to Kew Gardens for the match.  Kew is a really charming suburban-ish village on the outskirts of London...very picturesque with brick streets, lots of red-brick houses, and tons of trees, flowers, and open green space.  What a nice change from the cityscape of London!  The match was between the London Welsh Dragons and the Bedford Blues, and was comparable to attending a Saint Paul Saints baseball game...minor-league but with a super fun and energetic dynamic.  The very few girls in the group definitely enjoyed the rugby players' buff physiques and the short shorts they all sported, and I was shocked to see how violent a sport rugby is...they wear no padding and it is intense!  We were rooting for the Welsh, the hometown team, and they took an early lead to dominate the Blues 26-13.  What a fun game!

Nicolle and I deep-cleaned our flat after the match (it needed it BADLY) and decided to cook an Indian dinner to celebrate our newly-tidy living space!  Isaac, Kayla, Anne, Tanya and her friend Kayla, and Jonathan all came over for the peanut chicken dish I had made a few weeks ago with Coleen.  It was a hit once again...I felt so accomplished actually cooking something successfully!

We then cleaned up and headed to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, one of the oldest pubs in London.  The signs outside brag that the pub hasn't been structurally changed since 1667, which is just insane to think about...I was drinking in a pub that was older than my COUNTRY.  Mark Twain, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Charles Dickens were all regular customers at this place in their time; it was such a rush to sit at the tables and wonder what famous piece of literature may have been dreamed up in that nook.  We had a wonderful time and "drank like the locals..." nursed a few pints and enjoyed the company and society!  It was another early night for me, as I wasn't feeling super (I now have an absolutely raging cold).

Today was a very quiet Valentine's Day!  Nicolle and I spent the morning relaxing around the flat and then met up with three other girls to go on an epic quest for Ben's Cookies, a famous bakery in Covent Garden.  We knew vaguely where we were going, and met up with an adorable French couple spending their Valentine weekend in London...I was able to give them directions and converse on the way.  I love being able to use French more over here!  So exciting!  We got a bit turned around and ended up wandering for a bit before we finally found the Market.  After waiting about 15 minutes in line, we were able to purchase our cookies, and OH MY GOD, they were phenomenal.  If you are reading this and have any plans to visit London anytime in the future, make Ben's Cookies a stop on your trip.  I had one lemon and one white-chocolate-macadamia-nut, and they were SO yummy.  The only better cookies I've ever had in my life were The Isles Bakery's in Uptown Minneapolis.

We headed home, cooked some dinner and did some homework, and are now just relaxing; Joanie and Kelly just got home and we're watchin' some Olympic luge!  It's really nice to be settled in and comfortable with just relaxing, especially considering just a month ago we were stumbling around the flats gawking at maps and trying to get comfortable, period.  I love it!  :)

Ciao for now, everybody!  <3 Liz

birthday :)

I know I complained like all get-out in my last post about how crap my birthday eve morning was, but thanks to the wonderful friends and people I've been lucky enough to meet and know here, I had the best 21st birthday I could possibly have asked for!

Wednesday was just a crap, struggly day all around.  I was not focused in class, my foot was excruciatingly painful and I was feeling very homesick and far away from my friends and family.  After Charlie and Kate ID'd my problem as a likely case of plantar fasciitis (something to do with ligaments and tendons that sounds really gross and unpleasant), I hobbled across Trafalgar Square to a Boots pharmacy and bought some awesomely old-lady orthopedic shoe inserts, then took the Tube to Chancery Lane.  This still left me with about a 10-15 minute walk back to the flats, and at that point I was in sheer misery...I completely lost it and burst into tears walking down the street just down-in-the-dumps about EVERYTHING in general.  So as I'm walking along bawling like a baby, this lovely, lovely Englishwoman fell in beside me and talked to me about how "everyone has those utterly rubbishy days" and "nothing can be all that bad, love," and she cheered me up a bit.  As did Colin Firth (!!) in the delightfully long A&E miniseries of "Pride and Prejudice," which I immediately parked myself in front of when I got home.

After I had talked to my WONDERFUL AMAZING MOM (love you!) for way too long on a 26¢-a-minute line, Nicole asked me if I wanted to go to Isaac's flat to watch a movie.  It sounded like just the thing to make a bad day better, so we headed over there.  Turns out it was a surprise birthday-eve party!!  I was so excited and...duh, surprised, to see so many of my friends in the London Program had come over to celebrate as the clock turned midnight and I turned 21.  We had some delicious chocolate cake, and of course the ubiquitous Lambrini 1.50 pound wine and some Strongbow Cider!  I was a much happier camper by the time I went to bed.

Thursday morning I woke up to the most brilliant sunshine streaming into my room and my vaseful of daffodils blooming on my nightstand...my birthday was the sunniest, prettiest day I've seen yet in England, which seems appropriate ;)  I got dressed and opened all my birthday cards from my parents, Grandma Marsh, and Cait, and took the bus with the lovely Kate Gardner to the London Centre.  After a stop in Café Canova for an almond croissant (YUM), I was surprised at the Centre by some absolutely gorgeous flowers from somebody special :D which made my morning a very happy one.  Looking for a good way to celebrate a birthday lunch, some of us headed for the ultimate cliché destination: McDonalds.  It was an excellent little taste of home, as awful as it is.

Work came next, because interns can't get the day off for something so small as a birthday...but BBDO and the lovely Helen, the CFO's PA, had planned a surprise birthday tea for me!  There was amazing chocolate cake with those little sparkly silver things on top and white-chocolate stars, truffles that melted in your mouth, awesomely good tea (BBDO makes the best cup of tea I've found yet in London), and a birthday card signed by everyone in the office.  I was so surprised and it was so much fun to get a bit of celebration with all my new friends at the office...what a special and memorable thing for them to do :)

A few of the girls in the Program came to meet me after work for fish and chips dinner at The Golden Hind.  Amazing food again, and a really funny story: we were in the more private room in the basement and were being moderately loud and silly and exuberant (because, duh, it was my birthday!) and this old man who was also down there with a younger woman got really angry at us for being too loud.  We were cut off mid-laugh by his extremely vehement exclamation of "DO you MIND?!" and his companion's bitchy "You're being exceedingly LOUD!"  We all were ashamed for about 30 seconds, then got angry that he had been so rude with so little provocation (we weren't being anywhere near completely obnoxious...because, clearly, American girls can be VERY completely obnoxious if we try!).  Thankfully, we had finished eating and were able to head out quickly...what a party pooper!  We went and did a little tipsy shopping of H&M and I got a great deal on a really fun dress to wear later that night for my party!

Birthday partying happened at O'Neills, the most cliché-ly American of all bars in London, masquerading as an Irish pub.  With a live band on Thursday nights, it's THE destination for London Program-ers.  This was my first time so we had double-fun!  I danced a lot, drank a lot of delicious "snakebites," which are a combination of hard cider and beer and taste delightful, and got wished "Happy Birthday" more times than I could possibly count...it seemed like the whole program was there! Although I was celebrating this biggest-of-all-birthdays in England, where the legal age is 18, I had a very American-y night, which was actually really fun for a 21st birthday.  The other nice perk of being the birthday girl?  You drink for free.  Best night EVER.  :)

Long story short, although this is already ridiculously extensive and if you made it this far you're a winner...I am so grateful to everybody who texted, called, Facebooked, emailed, sent a card and most of all celebrated here in London with me over the past few days.  I was nervous that turning 21 would be a letdown celebrating far from home without all my closest friends, especially since it's a totally anticlimactic age to turn here...but everybody made it so amazing and special and memorable that I had the best possible of all birthdays!

a very bad birthday eve morning.

So I woke up this morning and literally could barely walk...I don't know what the deal is because my left foot feels exactly like a sprained ankle but there's not a speck of swelling or bruising.  I literally can hardly put weight on it to walk though, and had to take public transit to school this morning.  Here's to suckiness, spending unnecessary money, and my usual knack for screwing up everything coming rushing to the forefront.

Also, Caffé Nero failed me for the first time this morning.  My regular-mocha-to-go is an Americano, which means it's so strong I can hardly drink it.  :(  Here's hoping today turns around, and stat.  Otherwise, all I'll be imbibing on my 21st will be painkillers...........

It's my birthday Adam!

For those of you not familiar with this AMAZING new favorite tradition of mine, a Birthday Adam is a wonderful invention of my flatmate Kelly and her friend Katie's family.  Basically, you have your ordinary birthday, and the day before your birthday is your birthday eve...but in the Bible, Adam came before Eve and so the day before your birthday eve is your BIRTHDAY ADAM.  I love this whole concept as it means I get three days of being special instead of just one (insert joke about how I am special [ed] every day of the year)!

I'm celebrating by catching up on blogging while drinking a delicious cup of tea.  Mmmm, tea.  I'm so addicted.

As I wrote last, Saturday was Greenwich and we had a blast.  (Rhyme!)  Saturday night was very low-key as we were all pretty tired from long days of fun...Isaac and the girls from upstairs came to our flat and we were going to watch "Pride and Prejudice" but instead ended up playing cribbage and just talking and being chill and having a mellow night.  I really enjoyed it...good company and an evening of relaxation was just what the doctor ordered.  We were up early on Sunday to attend Anglican Mass at St. Paul's Cathedral, the seat of the Anglican Church.  It's only about a fifteen-minute walk from our flats, which is nothing compared to other places we walk routinely :)  Charlie, Coleen, Kate and I got there about five minutes before Mass started and got second row seats, right under the enormous dome!

It was such a beautiful service...very, very similar to Catholic Masses, actually, except that instead of praying for the Pope, you pray for the Queen, and there are some subtle wording differences.  The men/boys choir was phenomenal and the sound of the choir and organ resonated to fill every corner of the enormous church...the second-largest in Europe, after St. Peter's Basilica in Roma!  The little choirboys were adorable in their high-necked choir robes, and they sang like little soprano angels, although Kate and I cracked up when one of them started picking his nose and eating it in front of the entire congregation...not very dignified!

After the COLD walk back it was hard-core homework time for the first time this trip: I wrote two papers all afternoon long and worked ahead on light reading and such to prevent another marathon homework session from having to happen again.  Sunday night was the Superbowl at Exmouth Arms so we all drank some wine (a lot of wine) and cider before heading over to the pub for the 11:30pm kickoff.  The Exmouth Arms is a very small, very quaint pub that offered us awesome drink deals for the Superbowl and now on Mondays (thanks to the awesomeness of my flatmate Joanie!).  We had a really good time watching the game, although I think we all missed the American commercials...and it is a truth universally acknowledged that British sportscasters do not know how to announce American football games.  I headed home around 1am as halftime was starting, and got to bed soon thereafter.

Monday and today were both uneventful!  Long day of interning at BBDO and PriceWaterhouseCooper class yesterday in some very half-assed attempts at snow...London's no Minnesota.  WE FOUND DAFFODILS FOR SALE OUTSIDE THE EMBANKMENT TUBE STATION and my heart did a happy dance of joy!  Daffodils are my 100% unequivocal favorite flower and I can't wait for them to bloom...a little birthday-week miracle :)  Kate and I had an adventure on the Tube home as we encountered our first signal failure and were stuck with all the other commuters for about an hour total.  We started a new opera today in Opera in London, "Lucia di Lammermoor," and I already like it much better than "The Rake's Progress."  And...ummm...hmm.  Now I'm drinking tea and writing a blog.  Tomorrow is a long class day but that's mitigated by getting to sleep in a bit!  Now I'm going to stop being verbose and un-funny (cough*Brian*cough) and go enjoy the rest of my relaxing Tuesday!

the weekend update: issue #2, volume I

Hola, amigos and amigettes!  Again, sorry it's been awhile since I've written, but after cranking out ten pages worth of essays in the past 24 hours I didn't feel like writing another word to, for, or about anything or anyone!  We'll start with the weekend rundown:
1. Saturday: Greenwich!
2. Sunday: St. Paul's Cathedral!
3. Sunday NIGHT: Superbowl!

Exclamation points!

Sitting here now drinking some Orange Tango (it's like a fusion of Orangina and Fanta, only better...) and listening to "bare: the musical" :) and I feel so ADD right now!  Today has been very long and I got very little sleep due to the fact that the Superbowl airs starting at nearly midnight when you are a resident of the UK like I am...blech.

1. Greenwich: Charlie, Coleen and I took a wonderful day trip to Greenwich on Saturday!  It was a gorgeous day...very sunny, very temperate, and pretty clear, which was perfect for what we were doing.  We started the day off with coffee, which was absolutely essential after the night of fun we had all had the night prior.  (I am unhealthily addicted to English coffee...the espresso is about twenty-million times stronger than it is in America, and so I've been forced to relegate myself to mochas since the coffee is just SO caffeiney and strong.  Mmmm yum.)  Coleen and I were immediately attracted to the many darling boutiques lining the main street of Greenwich's centre, but Charlie kept us under control...for the morning, anyway.

We headed down to the piers hoping to see the Cutty Sark, a famous old British Naval ship that I know absolutely nothing about, but it was undergoing renovation and we couldn't even catch a glimpse.  Instead, we continued along the piers and ended up wandering through the quads and courtyards of the Royal Naval Academy, which was ridiculously beautiful and stately and had great views right along the Thames. Charlie then led us to the National Maritime Museum, a huge tribute/museum dedicated to the history of Britain on the water!  We saw so many cool things, including Lord Nelson's uniform from when he was killed at the Battle of Trafalgar, the official gilded barges of the Royal Family from hundreds of years ago, and beautiful stained glass from the East India Company's offices back when it was the premier shipping and trading center in Europe.  We spent several hours there and continued on to Greenwich Park, the former home of the palace (which is sadly not there anymore, boo).

After wandering the gorgeous and expansive park grounds enjoying the sun, we hiked up the hill to the Greenwich Observatory, home of 0 Longitude and the Prime Meridian, as well as the biggest telescope ever (or something, I don't really know!).  The views on the way up were SO beautiful!  We could see London's entire financial district, home to some of the world's most powerful companies, and in the distance could see St. Paul's Cathedral and some of the more historic skyline.  I took so many pictures!  We then nerded out over the history of clocks, the astronomy center, and went a little nuts over the Prime Meridian.  It was really cool to think about standing in two hemispheres at once...even though it was really just standing on an arbitrarily-decided line that really demarcates nothing...sigh.

Charlie had his Frisbee so we played some very challenged Frisbee across the Prime Meridian...he is really good, but Coleen and I both had difficult shoes on, and it was muddy, and we can't throw or catch them very well.  Still, dual-hemisphere Frisbee was a life experience I am very glad I had!  WE headed back down to the central town and on the way passed a boutique called Bullfrogs that Coleen and I just could NOT pass up...we went shopping and both totally scored!! I got a super super cute black coat with bow-buttons and Coleen got two dresses!  Charlie was bored stiff but we headed back soon after making our purchases...overall, a very successful day of fun!

Blech, this is going to be a really long blog.  And I have to go put laundry in.  I think I'm going to go throw that in and take a break; Part II will follow soon!

i officially love indian food.

A lot.  A lot a lot.  The few times I have had it prior to coming here, it has been great, granted, but oh, my gosh, it is SO much better here.

On Thursday night we went out to our first Indian dinner in London, which happens to be famous for its superlative Indian food.  About three blocks from the flats there's a cute little restaurant called Café Saffron, and eight of us headed there hungry and excited.  Well, an hour and a half later (!!!) we were finally eating our delicious Indian food!  I had chicken khorai, which is a spicy, savory mix of onions, chilies, peppers, chicken, and herbs in a sort of creamy dark sauce.  I can't even describe it, it was so good.  You eat it all over naan, really good Indian flatbread that's almost like pizza crust on crack.  I LOVED IT!  Others in our group had chicken korma (creamy, mild, sweet-ish), vindaloo (SO SPICY), chicken madras (another spicy dish), and a few different lamb dishes I didn't taste, like biryani and balti.  Of course there were the obligatory curry dishes as well!  So yum.  My taste buds were singing arias all night.

After we got our check, which was another half hour of waiting, we headed to Tesco in search of some ice cream to cool our burning mouths down.  The Tesco guy, however, did us one better and pointed us in the direction of the Tinseltown Diner, home of the best gourmet milkshakes in London (according to him).  We were instant converts the moment we heard the three magic words: "Ferrero Rocher milkshakes."  They. Were. To. Die. For.  Oh my gosh.  Such a great discovery!  Thursday night was low key for me, as was Friday during the day...full of reading and homework (which, believe it or not, we do still have!).

Inspired by the deliciousness of our Indian Thursday night, I was seriously craving some naan, so I texted Coleen and decided we should be adventurous and brave and try to make our own Indian food.  Needless to say, this was one of my crazy crackpot ideas that could have gone really well or really poorly...Coleen had the good sense to look up a pretty basic recipe for peanut chicken, and we wrangled Charlie and Colin into joining us for a Waitrose shopping trip and cooking extravaganza!

The chicken, thankfully, was a success!  Marinaded in a blend of ginger, chili paste, soy sauce, crushed peanuts, lemon juice, garlic, onion and brown sugar, it was a pretty easy recipe, but we still managed to have a few fiascos...Colin and I had to crush the peanuts with the boys' iron!  We had a really good time cooking though, and the dinner was fantastically good...I was SO proud of us and SOOO happy we didn't end up having to order pizza!

In keeping with our Indian-themed night, we decided to watch "Bride and Prejudice," a traditional-Bollywood style film based on...duh..."Pride and Prejudice."  Colin is spending today at the Jane Austen House with his Global Romanticism class (I'm kind of bummed I didn't get on that trip :( but oh well), so it was a good (and amusing) primer for him!  The movie was a ridiculously fun and funny blend of crazy Indian dance numbers ("screw in a lightbulb with one hand and pet the dog with the other" is my new signature dance move!), singing, and repressed sexual tension...there's no kissing allowed in Bollywood movies which made for some pretty funny close calls.  We had a ton of fun and ended up singing along to our favorite dance number after the movie ended...with a lot of hilarious attempts at Indian dancing included :)

Enough blogging for now...I'm off to Greenwich for the day to have some fun!

do we fight for the right to a night at the opera now?

Sorry it's been a while, folks...turns out we still actually have this thing called "class" over here in London...

Wednesday night was my first opera-going experience for "Opera in London!" We saw Stravinsky's "The Rake's Progress" at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.  Oh my GOD, it was the coolest experience!  The Royal Opera House is so sumptuous and glamorous I can't even begin to describe...but I'll start at the beginning.

Peter and I went out to dinner before the show with Anton Juan, a crazy, kooky lovable Philippinian professor who teaches a few different theater classes here.  He took us to Chinatown where we ate at this place that was literally roasting whole ducks, intestines, and tongues right in the window.  Needless to say, I played it safe and got chicken-and-crispy-noodles, which were great.  It was a great meal full of very random and wonderful conversation, and I'm glad I could spend some time with such a cool professor, especially considering I'm not in any theater classes! 

Peter and I then bid Prof. Juan goodbye and went to have a few pre-theater drinks at this lovely pub near the Opera House, the name of which escapes me right now.  It was very much one of the places the opera-going crowd was hanging out pre-show...everybody was dressed to the nines and it was all very much a place to be seen.  We made friends with this darling old man, Tony, who turned out to have Alzheimer's but who was utterly interesting and charmingly odd.  I was a little worried he didn't know where he was going but he followed us to the Opera House and I'm sure he got back to his wife (who was in some kind of business meeting) alright. 

The OPERA HOUSE!  Imagine an enormous gigantic oversized Roman-style temple complete with all the columns and pediments and a grand staircase and enormous windows, all blazing with light and full of glamorous people, and you've got the scene.  You walk in and take a left, and end up in the former Covent Garden Flower Market, which has been glassed in now and is a huge meeting-place for the crème de la crème to see and be seen pre-show and at intermission.  We spent a bit down there, seeing and...well, probably not being seen, but oh well.  Then we took this huge escalator up to a second-level bar that was glassed in, overlooking the old Flower Market.  Peter got some Beefeater Gin, and James, another ND friend, and I got some chardonnay, then went to peer out the windows.  Time came to take our seats and the opera began!

It was very bizarre, to be honest, but I really enjoyed it.  The opera's plot centers around the corruption of this sort of foolish, vapid "rake" of a man by a Devil-figure, and how his eventual decline to death is stopped only by his true love for his childhood sweetheart...although he ends up insane and alone at the end.  Sigh.  This director had decided to set the play, which should be placed in London in the 18th century, in 1950's Hollywood.  Which was even weirder.  Needless to say it was more than a little bit...well, unique, but I had the time of my life listening to the amazingly gifted singers (both the "rake" and the devil figure were phenomenal!!), watching the orchestra and just taking in everything around me.  Intermission was a half-hour blur of stem ginger ice cream (interesting and bizarre, much like the opera!), watching people who were watching other people, and discussing the weirdness of the opera among our classmates.  Second half: more of the same.  Singers and orchestra great, plot bizarre and random, still very much enjoyable for me because I love any kind of theatre art.  All in all, a wonderful night I'll remember for a long time!

I'll blog later today (hopefully) about yesterday and the great night we had, but right now the sun is out and I have a paper to write, so I'm going to stroll to a café somewhere and get that done with a coffee!

"monday, tuesday, happy days!"

I have just had two of the best days I've had yet in this program, and weirdly enough they were both "school" days...

I got really weirdly homesick on Sunday coming back from Petticoat Lane Market.  The market is up by Brick Lane, an area that used to be the Jewish ghetto and is now famous for its amazing Indian food.  I went with Nicole and I don't really know what I was expecting, but it was overwhelmingly cheap, foreign, huge and...well...foreign to me.  I'm really used to (and I really love) shopping in malls, for clothes that have a set price and you can't haggle for, and that you know aren't stolen or black-market.  I don't really have much to say about it except that I am glad I went to see it, but don't know if I'll be going back or not.  Oxford Street, although MUCH pricier, is more my venue, and until I return Stateside, I'll have to content myself with windowshopping there :)  But anyway, I got on the Tube by myself to go home after Nicolle met up with a grade-school friend, and I just felt so isolated that it overwhelmed me for a minute.  I spent the rest of the day in a coffee-shop doing reading and homework and perked up by the time I went to (very early) bed.

Anyway, Monday!  It was my first full 8-hour day as a working girl at BBDO.  I got there in time for free breakfast (free EVERYTHING there, it seems) and had some yummy strawberry jam toast and coffee.  Spent the morning working on the PSA again, and actually got it all the way up to date!  Stephan was pleased, a bit surprised I think that I got it done as quickly as i did.  The best part of the day was being surprised by Georgina (yes, the Georgina who kind of scares the shit out of me) when she sent me and the guys in my department out for a "Welcome Lizzie Lunch!"  Although I had been there for two weeks, this was the first time the entire controllers' department had been in the office at one time, and it was a wonderful surprise.

I was a little skeptical when I was informed that we would be eating at a fish and chips place after my experience at Windsor...but I was SO wrong.  The five guys (Stephan, Dale, Tom, Adam, and Tom) and I headed out and walked down Marylebone (said "Mar-lee-bone") High Street, another very posh shopping district, until we reached The Golden Hind, a tiny-little-itty-bitty hole in the wall that has been passed down from generation to generation of families and makes literally only fish, chips, and the necessary side dishes to fish and chips (mushy peas!).  I ordered "small cod," with chips and the essential mushy peas, and sat back while all the guys got adventurous...rockfish, plaice, salmon, haddock, and perch for each of them, all with chips (duh) and mushy peas (also duh).  They served us up and I immediately knew this was going to be better...the fish were CRISPY and absolutely sizzling hot, the chips were golden-fried, smoking-hot perfection, and the mushy peas were the best combination of sweet, salty and...well, mushy...possible.  I CHOWED.  First time I've been full during the day for a LONG time.  We ambled slowly back to the office and Tom K showed me around on the walk, filling me in on a bit of the history of the area and recommending other fun places to walk around and check out.

The afternoon consisted of me doing some filing, me doing some invoicing, and me doing some AWESOME transfer-price analysis of Sabine (crazy German lady I blogged about a while back with weird corporate spending) and her expenses all across Europe.  She works in the UK, lives in Germany, and spends money in about every possible currency in the whole world, so her paychecks and expense claim reimbursements aren't always consistent with the actual value of what she earned/spent.  My job now is to figure out what she actually deserves/should get, and make sure that is annotated correctly.  So I did that all afternoon, and Stephan gave me the best compliment ever (well, it just made me happy!): "You're really much quicker than other interns we've had...brighter.  Impressive, really."  I smiled on the inside for the rest of the day, and went home to a quiet night of talking to my mom, TRYING to do British laundry (SO difficult), and getting to bed WAY later than I should have (boo).

Today I had Images, Opera in London (my first opera is tomorrow YAY!), and went to intern.  I got to work on variance analyses for Mars, the candy company...it was a mouthwatering afternoon.  The best part of the day comes AFTER work, though...a group of us met up at Lincoln's Inn Fields and went to the John Soane Museum for a special "candlelight night:" once a month, the museum is opened after hours by candlelight and shown the way Sir John Soane himself lived in it when he was a resident!  The museum is literally his house: throughout his life, Sir John was a gifted and renowned architect with a passion for collecting art and antiquities, and upon his death he turned his house into a museum that was to be kept free and preserved as he left it for students and artists to visit.

The place was unbelievably cool...there were gorgeous sculptures, moldings, carvings, etc. from Greek and Roman temples all over the place, a mummy, a skeleton, a table made entirely of bones, a funeral ring containing a lock of Napoleon's hair...every wall was hung with paintings from floor to ceiling, and there was even a room that had walls that opened out...TWICE...to allow for more paintings to be hung, displayed, and flipped through like a trippy, oversize picture book of Hogarths and Canalettos and Turners.  It was honestly the most ridiculously amazing thing I'd ever seen.  I could have spent hours in there just staring at everything, and I am totally planning on going back by daylight.  SO amazing!

Now, however, I am completely worn-out after a bad and short night of sleep last night, so I am going to go read for a tiny little bit and turn in...thank heaven I have a later-start day tomorrow and can sleep in a little!  Goodnight and cheerio to all of you, hope your Monday and Tuesday have been as lovely as mine! :)