liz in london

yet another lizzie's blog flake-out

2010-05-05T02:43:00.000-07:00

hi guys.

I'm kind of embarrassed to delay catching up yet again, but it's now final week in more ways than one: we are taking final exams, and it's my final week in London.

This means:

-my fingernails have been bitten completely off and my poor hands are a mess

-I've done lots of productive things like laundry and packing, but not studying

-I've once again perfected the art of online shopping

-my average time to complete a game of free-cell solitaire has been cut in half

-I'm feeling overconfident with absolutely no basis in reality about how easy these finals will be

-the need to dress up every day and fight the finals-week dress-like-a-slob trend has utterly taken over.

Lots to write about...LOTS.

1. Brighton

2. Hampton Court

3. Thames cruise

4. last few days at BBDO

5. Intro To London Theatre

6. PARIS...right. I went there once upon a time.

7. wine-tasting

8. Isaac's birthday party and the Migration Issues play

9. impromptu dinner parties

10. last thoughts on London in general

It's coming up eventually. I'll probably just write endless amounts of blogs on the plane home and publish them all as soon as I'm back in the 612...Minnesota!

In the meantime, I have to go read about innumerable criminal court cases and the various philosophies connected with them. And maybe give myself a manicure in the process.

Love you all! :)

on sunshine and warmth and days in the park

2010-04-25T15:22:00.000-07:00

Another short little catch-up blog because I'm in writing mode now and need a break from academic work.

On the fine and beautiful Friday before our Saturday Oxford trip, Nicolle, Kayla, Felicia and I decided to take advantage of the gorgeous weather and go have a picnic lunch in Hyde Park. For those of you who are totally clueless about London geography, Hyde Park is London's version of Central Park...huge and beautiful and open and full of room and green space. I love it.

We journeyed home from our Images class's trip to tour the National Theatre and put together our own little picnic...I brought a baguette with jam, Nutella, brie, Boursin, hummus and honey. Exactly the lunch I ate every day in Paris...not that you would know that since I still haven't finished blogging about Paris...

the day went something like this:

pretty striped chairs

us girls in bright-colored tights

watching the world floating by on the Serpentine

and enjoying daffodils and blooming trees.

all in all, an absolutely perfect day :)

a day in the City of Dreaming Spires

2010-04-25T09:56:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia on Oxford:

Oxford (pronounced /ˈɒksfərd/) is a city, and the county town of Oxfordshire, in Southeast England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 151,000 living within the district boundary. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through Oxford and meet south of the city centre. For a distance of some 10 miles (16 km) along the river, in the vicinity of Oxford, the Thames is known as The Isis.

Buildings in Oxford demonstrate an example of every British architectural period since the arrival of the Saxons, including the iconic, mid-18th century Radcliffe Camera. Oxford is known as the "city of dreaming spires", a term coined by poet Matthew Arnold in reference to the harmonious architecture of Oxford's university buildings. The University of Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world.

Lovely London Ladies @ Christ Church College

My thoughts on Oxford:

We visited the city for a day trip with the Program in connection to the Archaeology and Ethics class. Which I am not in. The students in the class were expected to visit two different museums, the Ashmolean and the Pitt Rivers, and evaluate lots of archaeological and ethical things. I clearly did not have the knowledge base or inclination to do that. Nor did the majority of our group.

When we arrived at the Ashmolean at around 10:30 am, we quickly realized that we were going to get next-to-nothing out of the trip when we saw copies of various marble statues and busts we had just seen the originals of in Rome. Yup. We booked it straight to the Ashmolean Café, where we gobbled down croissants and chugged cappuccinos before ditching that museum like a bad prom date.

Instead of lingering at the Museum of Bad Copies of Awesome Art We Saw In Rome, a big group of us headed to Christ Church College, which is really famous for a lot of reasons, but most importantly (for this blog anyway) for being used in the filming of the Harry Potter movies. We all nerded out pretty intensely over things like Harry's dining hall, the staircase ascended by the first-years before they're Sorted, various campus locations we recognized as sites of Harry-Ron-Hermione interactions, and other more obscure but exciting Harry-related locales. Kayla and I also had a wand-fight in the dining hall. Because we're cool like that...

Expelliarmus! Dueling in the dining hall.

After playing and having endless fun at Christ Church, we headed through their beautiful cathedral...burial place of John Locke, famous philosopher, and home to a lot of pretty beautiful architecture. I loved it, and decided to challenge myself by reading the cathedral guide in French instead of English. It was kinda fun...I love that this semester has enabled me to use so much more French. Then...we went shopping.

Outside the cathedral. Isaac=pimpin'

We hit up the Alice in Wonderland store (Lewis Carroll was an inhabitant of Oxford!), then grabbed some traditional Cornish pasties for lunch at the Botanic Gardens. This was the best best best part of the day because...

MY FAVORITE!

The entire gardens' ground was BRIMMING with DAFFODILS. I went postal. I was in heaven. I went completely kindergarten on everybody and started jumping around like a little child. It was a beautiful 65 degree day in England with abundant sunshine and I was having a picnic in a FIELD of my favorite flowers. It was, in a word, perfect.

That's the face of Lizzie Schwegman in BLISS.

I may or may not have even made a crown of daffodils as the world floated by in punts and paddle-boats along the river. (We all did. It wasn't just psycho me. I promise!)

"And if you wrap yourself in daffodils..." -Counting Crows

We turned on some Beatles music and read some books and talked among great friends. It was a pretty beautiful way to spend an afternoon. After watching (and laughing with, and talking to) punters and passersby for nearly two and a half hours, we headed back to the buses to return to London. It was, all in all, the best way to escape from the hectic crush of the city. Oxford is so picturesque, quaint and incredibly beautiful. I had the best day ever!!

PS: if anybody from the Botanic Gardens ever asks, those daffodils were just lying on the ground, and we definitely would never have picked them. Ever. :)

just like in Angels and Demons, Dad!

2010-04-25T07:57:00.000-07:00

Okay. Rome. Easter Monday. Enter the Four Musketeers: Phil, Mike, Courtney and Lizzie (that's me).

It's a bright and beautiful Easter Monday morning after all the nasty rain of Easter Sunday, and so the four of us rendezvous-ed at the Piazza di Risorgimento (the Piazza of My Misery, from Good Friday) to squeeze every last drop of touristing out of our time together before Courtney, then I, then Phil left Mike for our respective journeys either home or around Europe. Since Courtney and I had shared our hostel that night, we had a nice, easy morning of packing up and getting ready to go before dropping our bags at the front desk and heading out to meet Mike, then Phil (late as usual, but what else is new!?) :)

Since Courtney needed to depart for the airport much earlier than either Phil or myself, we decided that a quick espresso-and-pastry breakfast was in order before sending her off to Fiumicino Airport. After attempting to hit up Mike's favorite Roman bakery (closed for Easter Monday) and his other second-favorite Roman bakery (also closed for Easter Monday), we headed to MY favorite tourist-trap "Roman" bakery, the Blues Café, right near the hostel. This is where I bought six croissants and brought them to Easter Mass so we wouldn't starve. The women who run the place, needless to say, were excited to see me back.

A quick ode to espresso:

Italian espresso, how do I love thee?

Let me count the ways.

I love thee as an Americano watered down with lots of sugar.

I love thee as a frothy-delicious cappuccino with chocolate powder on top.

I love thee as a latté, though I can't tell the difference between a latté and cappuccino.

But I don't particularly love thee as a straight shot of pure espresso.

A bit too much horsepower for me.

Still, hopefully our love will grow.

You're perfect and have gotten me off my "chick-coffee" ways.

Hooray!

Right, now that that embarrassment is over and I've appropriately celebrated the yumminess and caffeinated goodness of Italian coffee, let's continue onto the part where Courtney bids us farewell to return safely to Toledo. Mike, Phil and I had decided that we wanted to go see the Castel Sant'Angelo, the Pope's castle, fortress and...well, that's pretty much it. As my beloved, very literary (bahaha) father knows, the Castel Sant'Angelo played a pivotal role in Dan Brown's masterpiece of meritorious American literature, "Angels and Demons." (That was sarcasm for any of you too thick to see that. Dan Brown, while fun to read, is not in any way meritorious.)

The Castel Sant'Angelo on our approach

We took a brisk walk through St. Peter's Square and along the Tiber until we reached the castle, which was beautifully devoid of lines. Note: the beating of lines has been a theme of my time in Rome, a theme I much appreciated. Win. We waltzed right in and immediately started up the big wide cool ramp that the Pope's soldiers apparently used to ride their horses up and down in times of military unrest. The castle was very dim and stony and cool, with lots of little trapdoors and chutes you could probably drop bodies down and dungeons that the Pope probably stuck his infidels in. Clearly we were seeking knowledge, and not at all being immature, silly, or giddy with ridiculousness. Because Phil, Mike and I take ourselves very seriously at all times. Of course.

My favorite guys being paragons of virtue and decorum, as always

On the first level of the castle was a series of rooms decorated by a Barberini pope, or, as I termed them, the Bumblebinis. Mike can appreciate my adoration. Very few others can. We got to see some very nice reliquaries, chalices, thingies used in religious affairs, and various other artifacts of Papal awesomeness. We also got to see some bad-ass armor. And the Pope's treasure room. I enjoyed it but was at this point a little sightseeing'ed-out, and was having way more fun just goofing around with two of my best friends. Mike, as usual, did an amazing job of explaining the significance of anything he could identify and knew things about, which made me feel like I wasn't being a total waste of oxygen and religious appreciation...and Phil just made me laugh a lot, which is always nice.

Mike and Phil with the Pope's balls. We had a fun, off-color joke-making time with that one.

We continued to make our way up the castle, which basically keeps spiraling up until you reach the top, crowned by the Archangel Michael. On the way, we learned about the restoration of the Papal apartments through an interactive touch-screen computer display that was intended for the ten-and-under crowd, and therefore (of course) amused me way more than it should have. We finally emerged on the top of the castle to an absolutely awesome view:

Overlooking the Vatican City with Phil and Mike. The Popes of old had a great view!

We spent a good amount of time up there in the windy wind enjoying the view and the company. You could see for miles, and I had fun trying to pick out the various monuments we'd visited and explored over the past few days...I could see the Coliseum, Pantheon, National Monument, part of the Forum, and the Royal Palace of Justice. It was nice to be able to spend a little time just hanging out and having fun with a few of my bff's, and it made me even more ready to be back on campus with ALL my favorite people, as much as I love the friends I've made in the London Program.

"okay guys, now SMOOSH!"

While the exploring of the castle was reallyreally fun, we decided to head out (laughing at how ridiculously long the line had gotten in the meantime) and go get some authentic Roman pizza and, of course, gelato before I had to head out. On our way out of the castle, we found this guy, who looked startlingly familiar...

Avada Kedavra!

Who knew Voldemort liked to hang out with the Popes?! We had a laugh at that one, then rocked and rolled off to a pizzeria Mike knew and liked.

In Rome, pizzas are cut with a scissors...pardon me, Phil, with a PAIR of scissors...and then served folded in half. I love it. I had super good four-cheese and tomato pizza and it was cheap, filling and delicious. Best part? I still had room for a triple-cone of Nutella, tiramisu and dark chocolate gelato at Millenium Gelato (best gelato in Rome, Old Bridge can suck it!) before saying goodbye to my favorite guys. I was more than a little sad to go. I may or may not have almost cried on the Metro. I may or may not have definitely cried a little bit on the Metro.

Okay, fine. I cried on the Metro.

Met up with Nicolle, Martin, Joey, Anne, and a few other Londoners to catch our bus to Ciampino, where it felt like we encountered about 1/3 of the London Program waiting to board our flight. I re-read "The Blind Side" for the fourth time this semester while we waited, and then we took our dinky little bus out to the plane and boarded. Flight was uneventful and beautiful...awesome scenery out the window.

somewhere over the French Alps.

All things said and done, Rome was the most perfect vacation I could possibly have contemplated. I would be hard-pressed to say that it was better than my spring break, but being with my best friends, enjoying amazing weather, drinking and eating great wine and food, celebrating Easter with the Pope, and having a general blast gave SB2010 a run for its money. The two trips are definitely tied :)

If we want to get to talking about favorite cities, now that's a different story. You can't tell Paris, because Paris always will have a special place in my heart, but Rome may have been my favorite. In fact, I'm pretty sure it is.

That's all for now. Time to go get another cup of tea and a Früsli bar before I keep catch-up going strong!

what to expect: coming up shortly

2010-04-25T06:54:00.000-07:00

Well, blog-followers (if there are any of you left),
Last time we met I was stressing out over papers and schoolwork. What a change of tune from the semester, which has often felt like all play and no work! It's weird to be stressed or worried about something as trivial as school when I'm in London and the world is my playground. At any rate, I now have major blog catch-ups to do, so you can expect updates on:
1. the rest of Easter in Rome
2. my day in Brighton yesterday
3. London Theatre
4. BBDO shenanigans
5. my day-trip to Oxford
6. playtime in Hyde Park
7. the Bibendum Bordeaux wine-tasting last Wednesday
8. Isaac's birthday dinner and the "Children of the Migrant Moon" play
9. my foray into the dangerous world of the London Anthropologie
10. that one time over spring break when I went to Paris almost a month and a half ago and never finished blogging about it...yeah, remember that?

So. Now it's time to get cracking. I've got my cup of Waitrose-blend tea, the sweet tunes of Michael Bublé crooning in the background, and a nice clean room to write in. For all you loyal readers (haha) waiting for updates on my life thus far, peel your eyes and stay close to your computer monitor. I've got a lot of free time in the next nine hours to write bloggity blogs and you better brace yourselves!

Dear World,

2010-04-20T11:31:00.001-07:00

I haven't died, just fallen down the rabbit hole for the time being into an alternate universe where all I do is write papers. And edit papers. And write more papers. And edit more papers. And then sometimes go intern and screw up work I should be doing with both eyes closed and then generally make a fool out of myself. And then go to useless review sessions. And then write more papers.

I'm still breathing and mostly sane, and I will be back from Paperland around this time tomorrow. I hope. Til then, as the Brits say, "keep calm and carry on!"

Love,

Lizzie in Paperland

an epic day of London Tourism

2010-04-18T03:12:00.000-07:00

So as the entire WORLD has heard, there's this little volcano in Iceland that nobody can pronounce...and that little volcano decided to be awful and erupt at the most inopportune possible time. As a direct result of Mr. Icelandic Volcano, all UK airspace has been shut down since Thursday...17,000 flights in, around, and to/from Europe have been disrupted so far...and I missed my weekend trip to Austria to go see one of my bffs, Phil. I know that was such a minor disruption compared to other people's situations but I was super bummed. To make up for the disappointment of missing a weekend in the Alps and all the fun that would have entailed, Coleen, Isaac and I went epic London-touristing yesterday.

We started off at Portobello Road Market again because it was possibly the nicest day we've had yet in London...the high temp was 66 for the day and the buckets of sunshine pouring over London actually made me a little bit tanned. All my freckles popped out again for the summer, which is always fun. Nicolle, who joined us for the market, had never been and she and Isaac had a great first time. Coleen and I in the meantime knew exactly where and what we wanted to hit up...vintage, antiques, jewelry, and the clothes. Then we stopped for a crepe at one of the Portobello Crepe stands (mmm) and met up with Isaac to continue to the next leg of our day: the Tower of London!

The Tower of London is a hugely multi-faceted complex: royal palace, prison, treasure repository, history museum, and barracks for the Yeoman Warders, the guardians and tour guides of the Tower. I LOVE the Tower of London. When I was in London senior year of HS, it was one of my favorite parts of the trip because I am just such a nerd. With architecture dating back as far as 1080, the Tower has played host to some of the most dramatic moments and dastardly prisoners in English history. The princes in the tower? That was there. Henry VIII's wives' executions? The Tower. Guy Fawkes? Tower. Sir Walter Raleigh? Tower. Every public execution from the 1400s-1700s (and there were a LOT)?...that's right. The Tower of London hosted them all. I am such a super-geek that I knew all the stories almost as well as our awesome tour guide.

If you ever do go to the Tower of London, take the Yeoman Warder Tour! It's free with the price of admission and these guys are seriously amazing. To be a Yeoman Warder you have to serve at least 20 years of distinguished military service in Her Majesty's Army and receive certain accolades and awards for bravery and courage and exemplary performance of duty. The Yeoman Warders are hilariously funny, incredibly knowledgeable and incredibly historic. Our tour was so much fun.

We spent our time at the Tower learning about its history from our Yeoman Warder, then went to see the Crown Jewels. Wow. Holy BLING is all I can say. Even though I had seen them before, it never fails to blow your mind. We read all about the different jewels, then went around looking at them three separate times on the moving walkway. Yup. After the Crown Jewels we explored the White Tower, home of the 5-century collection of royal armor, and the tower in which the two princes' bones were uncovered. Rumor has it that they still haunt the tower and you can hear their laughter sometimes...so of course the Tower tourism people played that up and piped a track of children laughing into the area where you can see the bones were hidden. I jumped about a MILE when it first played, no joke. The Royal Armor was really cool but I got bored after a while...there's only so much you can say about how fat Henry VIII was and how hard it was to make him good armor because of it. So we went to the Bloody Tower, overlooking Traitor's Gate, and saw where Sir Walter Raleigh lived in his time imprisoned in the Tower. Pretty cool stuff.

After the Tower of London, we headed over to Kensington for Mass at the Brompton Oratory, one of the biggest and most beautiful Catholic churches in London. I really enjoyed the environment of the church but the homily really rubbed me the wrong way as it was more of a political adjunction (Vote for people who will restrict gay rights and make it impossible to get an abortion!) than an illumination of the significance of any of the readings...and the Gospel today was one of my favorites, about Jesus filling Peter's fishing nets after the Resurrection. So I was a bit disappointed but the church was still absolutely beautiful. My awesome dad (who had hurt feelings because I don't talk enough about him here!) made a comment last night about how it sounded like I am really loving the church-going here...and that's very true. I've been spoiled for beautiful churches, choirs, and Masses, and I really love it over here in that sense. It's unbelievable to see how their religion has inspired so many people to make such incredible monuments to faith and worship. Not to mention it's way more fun to attend Mass in a beautiful and historic church than some dull modernist hole (cough All Saints cough).

Mass was ended and we went in peace to love and serve the Lord...and fill our stomachs. Kate (of SB2010 fame) had made some AMAZING Mexican food for dinner...homemade guacamole, fajitas, and tequila sunrises, with the English interpretation of flan for dessert. Oh my gosh. Yumness to the nth degree. Tequila sunrise may be my new favorite chick drink. After gorging ourselves, everybody else was ready to head out but I was ready to drop dead...especially as I have two papers to write today. I went back to my flat, talked to my parents for a LONG time (love you both!) and went to bed nice and early. I still can't wait for my home mattress though...ahhh anticipatory thoughts.

Long blog short: Iceland, you suck. England, you make up for it. Mexico, your food is great. Austria, it would've been real. America, see you in 20 days...if Iceland stops sucking.

the golden days

2010-04-16T06:48:00.000-07:00

I only have three weeks left in Europe. Cue sad face.

I'm very excited to go home. Don't get me wrong, there are so many things I love and miss about America, and so many things I have come to dislike about London (cost of living, homicidal drivers, constant rain, to name a few). But those things I dislike about London pale in comparison to the magic of being young and living in Europe and having absolutely not a care in the world beyond finishing a super-easy paper or finding a cheap flight to the next weekend destination. I'm going to be so sad to leave London, as excited as I am to see my family and friends. Looking back on this semester, I realize just how lucky I've been to have this experience, and have it the way I have had it...interning, making some amazing new friends (both in the program and among Europeans!), using my French, visiting my best friends all over Europe, seeing the world on a shoestring budget and loving it anyway.

I've drunk cheap wine, dined on the most innovatively cheap meals possible, and cut costs wherever I can, and it has been so worth it. I've seen amazing plays and musicals. I've visited museums I'd only read about in books and seen innumerable works of art, artifacts, and relics. I've pub-hopped, clubbed and socialized in bars like a real grown-up. I've mastered public transportation and traveling alone. I've heard Mass in some of the most famous churches in Christendom. I've learned to budget and watch money more effectively than ever. I've gained work experience I couldn't possibly have gotten in the States that will look amazing on a résumé. I've created memories and stories that will last a lifetime.

I know I'm getting really sentimental but I just spent 20 minutes on the phone with my mom (who turns 50 today! Happy birthday Mom!) talking about life in general and it made me realize just how fortunate I've been. I have the best family. I have the best friends. I have the best life. I only hope everything continues to be as golden and wonderful as it has thus far.

Anecdotes from an amazing week:

1. On Monday at BBDO I put together the budget for a 100-person worldwide company conference in Madrid this July...and my supervisor told me it was "phenomenal." On Tuesday Steph and I worked together all day to totally redesign the system for expense claims and automate it. Again, we got a great review on our work, and being able to speak up about why we'd done what we'd done made me feel like a huge contributor to a project that will actually have long-term impacts for the company. I love my job!!

2. On Tuesday night we saw an absolutely amazing play called "London Assurance" at the National Theatre for my London Theatre class, with two of the best comic actors in the UK, Simon Russell Beale and Fiona Shaw (who played Aunt Petunia in the Harry Potter movies). It was absolutely beyond critique...perfect acting, a beautiful set, great costume design, a plot that kept you riveted and laughing the whole way through. Our professor called it "a show of glee incarnate" and I agree 100%. One of the best plays I've ever seen. I smiled the entire rest of the night!

3. On Wednesday I received flowers at the London Centre from somebody special :) and they were gorgeous and made me happy. I also discovered Monmouth Coffee Company, the "best coffee in London," and found out that the reputation is true. Best cappuccino I've ever had...and second-best croissant (the first best being in Paris, of course). If you are ever going to find yourself in London, ESPECIALLY if you are in the London Program, go to Monmouth Coffee Co. It's right on the way to class from K-M and it's to-die-for.

4. "Glee" is back and I love it. Peter, Colin and I watched it Wednesday night and it was so great. So so great. :)

5. Today after London Theatre class, a bunch of girls went to Bea's of Bloomsbury for tea and cupcakes. Red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. And black-vanilla tea. Oh my goodness, my taste buds died and went to heaven. I also made a new friend, Laura, who will live right down the hall from me next year. I'm so excited now for a year that sounds like it will be full of amazing ladies and lots of good times.

I just feel happy all the way through right now. I can't wait to see how much I can get out of these next three weeks...hopefully everything continues to be as great as it's been so far. Sending lots of love radiating out around the world...because happiness like this should be contagious :)

ECIII: Buona Pasqua!

2010-04-15T06:37:00.000-07:00

Okay now I'm caught up through to Easter Sunday, when I arose at the buttcrack of dawn (6:30am!) to get ready to go to Easter Mass at the Vatican, presided over by my new favorite guy ever, Il Papa...The Pope! :) We set out around 7:30 to stop for espresso and croissants at a little café across from our hostel, then joined the hordes of people waiting to get into St. Peter's Square. Think airport security, only more religious...

Once inside the square, Phil, Mike, Courtney and I proceeded to our seats, obtained courtesy of Notre Dame (our group had a block of tickets, yeeeah!). Almost as soon as we sat down it started obnoxiously on-and-off raining, drizzling, misting...call it what you will, but I left London to get away from it, not to sit through four hours of Mass and blessings in it. We soon figured out that all our umbrellas open at once in a row just meant we all got dripped on by each other...so Phil and I pioneered a very innovative system where his umbrella covered our heads and mine covered his knees...Mike and Courtney shared on my other side, and we all stayed moderately dry for the Mass.

Again, Mass felt more like a giant circus than a holy service, especially with crazy Asians with golf umbrellas standing on their chairs to snap pictures of the Pope. (I was guilty of mucho photo-taking too, but I didn't stand on my chair to do it. So there, Asia.) The square was absolutely filled with people, which was a really fantastic sight. Poetically, the rain stopped just in time for Communion, and it was a mad rush to get the Eucharist...I ended up being one of the last people in our group who did before they ran out. That's right, the Vatican ran out of Communion. So much for planning ahead?...

After Mass, the Pope did the "Urbis et Orbis," blessing the crowd in about 30 different languages and proclaiming that Christ has risen. It was a beautiful thing to witness, even though I couldn't understand his English at all in the crowd...everybody got really excited when they heard their language called, and Benedict was pretty impressive on his fancy balcony. All in all, my Easter Sunday experience made me glad to be Catholic, and was just overall really humbling/staggering/mindblowing. I felt so lucky to be there...celebrating the holiday that our religion is founded upon, in the center of that religion, under the eye of the leader of that religion. So amazing. :)

After Mass, some of the lovely Rome band girls offered to make Easter Brunch at their apartment, so we headed back there to dry off, warm up and have an Easter feast! The food was simple, delicious and filling, the company was wonderful, and the time to catch up was much appreciated. As weird as it was to spend an Easter away from my family, spending it with my band family was the next best thing, as cheesy as that sounds. Mike also taught us a really fun Italian card game called "scuppa." I kicked ass.

After brunch and a bit of cleanup, the Fabulous Foursome (Phil, Mike, Courtney and myself) headed to the Coliseum for a damp afternoon of gladiator-style fun! Pictures really don't do the sheer size of the Coliseum justice...mostly because you can't get the whole Coliseum IN a picture. It was really cool. I nerded out pretty hardcore over the exhibits of gladiatorial armor and weaponry with the guys, then we went out into the main amphitheater where we walked around a lot, took A LOT of touristy pictures, and may or may not have staged an epic gladiator battle, where Mike redeemed himself after his loss in the Circus Maximus. Then we also may or may not have climbed all over ruined statue pedestals. The Coliseum, in short, was a really good time had by all. :)

Post-Coliseum, we got Courtney's hostel situation sorted out and moved her into mine...because any hostel, no matter the price, is better than a sketchy night sleeping in an airport. Then we started having epic dinner adventures, trying to find a place to go that was a: open on Easter evening, b: reasonably priced, and c: not a total tourist trap. We succeeded on all counts, finally stumbling onto a cute little restaurant near the Campio di Fiori, a big bar district. Dinner was awesome because:

1. it was really, really good. I had seafood ravioli in pink sauce that was a revelation and the menfolk had really great lamb.

2. the wine was really, really good.

3. the waiter was really, really drunk. No, not kidding. Like really drunk. He poured the wine so haphazardly that I was afraid it would spill...and he DID spill our after-dinner grappa. And he kept hitting on Courtney. Hilariously so.

4. Grappa. Oh wow. He recommended the strongest version of this super-distilled after-dinner wine, calling it "grappa for the men...and power women," indicating me. Great. Now I'm a power-woman, and can drink like a man. Baha. Anyway, it was about as pleasant as drinking straight rubbing alcohol...not to mention you're supposed to get about a shot's worth and he gave us entire champagne flutes full. We lingered over our grappa for a VERY long time...and my sniffly, stuffy nose was completely cleared by the end of my drink. Bahaha. Such fun.

After a thoroughly excellent dinner full of laughter, drunkenness (on others' parts) and catching up, I had just been reaffirmed in the belief that I have the best friends in the world, and that I miss all my campus friends like nobody's business. Can't wait to see all of you this Senior Week. :D We were very full and very tired at this point so we wandered through Campio di Fiori for a little while then headed home, agreeing to rendezvous for our last day together at a decent hour of the morning...more sleep, MMM.

10 Morals of my Easter Sunday:

1. Always be prepared for the elements. That umbrella saved my LIFE.

2. If you want to be Pope, you better be fluent in a bunch of languages, and able to pretend to know a bunch more.

3. Asian tourists. Grrrrr.

4. Grappa is better used as cold medicine than as alcohol drunk for pleasure.

5. Gladiator fights and statue pictures are ALWAYS a good idea.

6. Brunch is an under-appreciated meal.

7. Drunk waiters are better than sober waiters.

8. ND can get whatever it wants.

9. The Coliseum is really really big. Huge, in fact.

10. I have the best friends ever.

ECII: Uscita lato…destro?

2010-04-14T03:10:00.001-07:00

Saturday in Rome dawned bright and beautiful…I have never been so excited about nice weather before in my whole entire life! (That’s a lie. I’m always excited about nice weather.) Still, this was particularly novel after months of London fog, rain and cloud-cover. Sun!

Since we had toured the Vatican Museums on Friday, Phil, Mike, Courtney and I were all able to sleep in a bit more than the rest of the ND “pilgrims,” who had an 8am entry time for the Vatican Museum tour. GROSS! Instead, we met up at 10am at Cipro, Mike’s Metro stop, to adventure to the top of the cupola (dome) of St. Peter’s!

That's right. We were going up there. Yup.

We got there, and the line was massive…wrapped all the way around St. Peter’s Square. So we did what every self-respecting American college-student/tourist would do…cut in line. Very subtly, very neatly and not drawing any attention to ourselves. Still, some stinky tour guide took it upon herself to harangue us for cutting the line…after we’d been in line about 10 minutes. Needless to say I was NOT going to the back of the queue, so I firmly explained that we had been in line just as long as she had…and that she had just missed seeing us because we were on the other side of the (very wide) queue from her. She shut up and left us alone…haha. I was proud of myself for sticking to my guns, even if we were sort of kind of maybe in the wrong.

Anyway, we waited an hour and a half in all to begin the climb up the Cupola. It was a fun wait in which we talked a lot, caught up, got squished a whole bunch against other pushy-shovy tourists, and discovered the Italian Jay Leno. Much fun. We finally started the ascent, which actually freaked me out a bit…you are REALLY high up even when you’re only like…halfway up. We climbed some annoying spiraly ramp stairs, then came out on the roof of the Basilica which was really cool. Then we went inside the Dome…Cupola…whatever the technical name is…and had a fantastic birds-eye view of the interior of St. Peter’s…

We were SO high up!

Then it was time to climb inside the actual dome itself. I was a tiny bit freaking. A lot, actually. Thanks Mike, for talking to met he whole time…you kept me sane, buddy :) The weirdest part was when the walls and stairs started to slant to the side following the curve of the dome…it was so bizarre and felt like something kooky out of Alice in Wonderland, haha! At any rate, we finally got to the top…and oh, my god…was it ever worth it.

Yours truly with St. Peter's Square and Rome in the background!

We spent a long time atop the Cupola appreciating the beautiful views of the Vatican and Rome spread out underneath us, then started the trek DOWN the cupola…which was actually harder (I fell. Boo.)…then we toured the actual Basilica. SO huge. SO remarkable. SO incredibly gorgeous. We saw Michelangelo’s “Pieta,” which was staggeringly beautiful, and the tombs of many popes, and just the general architecture and atmosphere of the church. I loved it! After we finished the interior of the Basilica di San Pietro, we went DOWN into the Papal Tombs, which are under the Basilica itself. I saw John Paul II’s tomb and words can’t describe. Not to mention the even cooler experience of seeing the entry to St. Peter’s tomb, which is down in the Scavi even further beneath the Basilica. It was such a trip walking over the rock upon which the Catholic Church is built…aaaagh.

the interior of St. Peter's...pretty unbelievable, huh?

Now for my imbecile moment…being the sleep-deprived traveler I was, I elected to give up breakfast for the more important benefit of an extra 20 minutes of sleep. As we had eaten an early-ish dinner at Mike’s, and as the Cupola/St. Peter’s/Popes’ tombs took a REALLY, REALLY long time, it was approaching 2:30 by the time we even got out of the Vatican. I was absolutely famished…almost 20 hours without eating is a REALLY poor life choice. Phil is doing the McDonald’s Challenge (eating Mickey D’s in every country), so we took some lovely public transit (uscita lado…d’estro? is the Italian equivalent of “mind the gap!”) over to the first McDonald’s in Italy, conveniently located near the Spanish Steps, another destination I had to hit. By the time we had navigated the public transit and absolutely insane lines at McD’s, it was 3:30 and I was getting really hungry, bitchy and insufferable…needless to say, my friends were really happy when I finally had some food in me and was nicer. :)

After McD’s, we blitzed through the following essential tourist destinations:

1. Spanish Steps: super super crowded, super beautiful, lots of flowers and sun and fountains.

"Those damn Spanish Steps!" -Grandma Lois

2. Designer District: I saw a woman wearing the same Valentino ensemble that Valentino was currently displaying in their window. Then I laughed.

3. Trevi Fountain: We threw our coins in! One for Roma, two for love. :) I hope they both come true!

Fontana di Trevi!

4. The Pantheon: It’s huge. And there’s a hole in top. And it was so crowded we couldn’t even get to the other side. I still thought it was awesome, though.

The Pantheon! An architectural miracle!

5. The Circus Maximus: Home to ancient Rome’s foot races and chariot races (I think) and stuff, Mike and Phil had their own spring race. Phil won, which means Mike gets fed to the lions later. Kidding…

After all this touristy running around Rome, we booked it to the Roman Forum and Palatine, which is where ancient Roman emperors and politicians lived, played and worshiped. IT WAS SO COOL. I was being such a total dork over the awesomeness of the ruins. One of the emperors, Nero, had a private indoor island, moat and made a 35-foot statue to himself. The whole imperial house complex was gigantic and made me reconsider my desire to be a French princess at Versailles…or marry into the house of Windsor…maybe I should go back in time and be an empress in the Roman Empire ;)

Ruins of the Imperial Forum. Pretty bad-ass!

The big part of the Forum, the old ruined temples, was my favorite. Mike knew a ton about the ruins and who each temple was dedicated to, and we had a really good time playing in ruins and making generally touristy fools of ourselves.

The Forum ruins at sunset. Amazing.

By the time we finished the Forum, we were starving again (surprise, surprise) so Mike took us to Trastevere (what he called “real Rome”) for a great, great 3-hour Italian dinner at Tony’s…yes that is the real name of the restaurant, haha! I had chicken parmigiana that was seriously the best chicken parm I’ve ever had ever. Mmmm I’m getting hungry just thinking about it. After we killed a bottle of the house wine, we also got limoncello on the house…really yum. I was a fan. Our waiter recommended a gelato place 30 feet up the road, so we got gelato (another theme of my time in Rome) and walked down to the Tiber Island.

The gang's all here...dinner at Tony's!

After finishing our gelato on the banks of the Tiber watching the world go by, we headed out to the island itself. Had some fun exploring the island, accidentally interrupting romantic trysts, and making “Angels and Demons” jokes…the island is the one that Robert Langdon “washed up on” at the end of the book. I was thinking about my papa bear all weekend :) We ended up all grabbing some ground on a pretty little hill and just spending an hour talking and talking and talking (and stargazing! It’s been so long since I’ve seen real stars!)…I can’t even explain how much it felt like coming home to be spending time with some of my favorite people in the world. We actually talked a ton about all the people back on campus and how much we miss them…so if you’re on campus and you’re reading this, we missed you then and miss you now. Then we headed back home again, and I passed out in bed sleeping like a BABY. Early Easter morning awaited us!

Epic catchup part 1: Roma Reunion!

2010-04-14T03:09:00.001-07:00

WOW, so I haven’t written for over a week…call it a combination of blogger’s block, extreme exhaustion, and a week that was particularly hectic and stressful for a multitude of reasons. Suffice it to say you can expect an absolute blitz of bloggy catch-up here, so stay tuned for the next few days before I head off for Austrian adventures!

Two weekends ago (geez, time flies) as I mentioned, I was in Venice and ROMA for Easter weekend. To get to Rome, I had to take the night train from Venice…departed at 11:30 pm, arrived at 6:30 am. I was supposed to have a private 4-person sleeper car with three other women…instead I got stuck in with three drunk, crazy Greek guys who kept trying to get me drunk off Limoncello. Needless to say, I didn’t exactly sleep much. Haha. At the time it wasn’t funny but the further I get from the situation the more humorous it seems :)

I got to Rome absolutely exhausted at 6:30am and took the Metro (I love public transit!) to Ottaviano, my stop. As I was completely worn out, tired of being alone, and a little frazzled, I went to try to go find my hostel…and couldn’t find it. I found the building it was in, but it was not listed on the buzzer panel on the left side of the door. I flipped out and went to sit in the Piazza di Risorgimento, right across the street. So I spent the next half hour there on a bench under a big statue of a horse, looking at the Vatican (I could see St. Peter’s from my hostel, nbd) and trying to decide if I wanted to burst into tears or not. I texted everybody I could think of who was in Rome and was like “HELP! I am tired and alone and lost and I WANT TO GO TO BED!” but at 7am, of course nobody responded. So I went to find a little café where I had a 1-euro espresso and cried/whined to the proprietor, an awesome old man, for like an hour. I was all, “Sono solo, sono perduto, sono triste” and he was all, “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” before he finally told me that my hostel was in the building I thought it was in, but the buzzer was on the right side of the door. I was effusively grateful, found the hostel, grabbed a bed and absolutely CRASHED until noon. Mmmmmm sleep.

I can’t even begin to describe the happiness of going to the Basilica of St. John Lateran, which is the real seat of the Pope, and being reunited with Mike and Phil…it was absolutely the best feeling ever, especially after 36 hours of total solitude. We (along with Courtney) decided we were way too cool for the guided ND tour, complete with hordes of London-Programers and a giant ND flag, so Mike took us on our own guided tour! We saw St. John Lateran, where the skulls of St. Peter and Paul are, then walked over to the Scala Sancta, or Holy Steps…the stairs that Jesus ascended on the way to be judged and condemned by Pilate. Most pilgrims go up them on their knees, but as it was Holy Week we walked up the side staircase on foot instead of waiting in the insanely long line. Then we headed over to another church whose name I am forgetting at the moment, to see the Passion Relics…only it was closed for Mass. Boo.

Basilica of St. John Lateran--so beautiful!

Instead of doing that, we took the Metro in the general direction of the Vatican, and got the BEST. GELATO. EVER. at Millennium Gelato, Mike’s favorite place, and decided to try to see the Vatican Museum. Usually, the line to get in to the museum (which includes the “School of Athens,” “Laocoon and Sons,” my sister’s favorite sculpture ever, and the Sistine Chapel) wraps around two or three sides of the Vatican walls…so it was absolutely amazing that we literally walked up to the door around 3pm and walked right into the museum. YES win #1 for Team Bandies.

Coconut and mango gelato at Millennium Gelato. YUM.

The Vatican Museum was absolutely unbelievable…we’re talking phenomenal ceilings in every room (I think I have a thing for ceilings, judging by the number of pictures of them that I take)…mindblowingly large collections of sculpture just lined up in these amazing rooms…baptismal fonts, Papal rings, chalices, reliquaries and other Catholic equipment…and the artwork. Aaaaah. The only thing I disliked is that you literally HAVE to go through a million-and-two different galleries before you can get to the Sistine Chapel…and some of those galleries were really odd, like “Modern Art of the Church” which was NOT my cup of tea. It was so worth it in the end though.

The four bandies outside the Vatican Museums. St. Peter's in the background...

The Sistine Chapel was indescribable. I know the ceiling gets all the credit, but the walls and the window vaults are similarly incredible. One side of window vaults tells the story of Moses, and the other tells the Passion, while the wall at the end shows the Final Judgment, with Jesus surrounded by every saint at the time it was painted…utterly mind-blowing. It was insanely crowded with tourists, and the guards kept yelling “Silence!! NO PHOTOS!” which sort of detracted from the reverent, respectful atmosphere they were trying to create. Oh, Italians. :) I still snuck a few photos….shh, don’t turn me in to the Swiss Guard!

The Sistine Chapel...illegally taken. Look at that crowd!

After the Vatican Museum, we bought some pasta sauce and noodles at a supermarket and went back to Mike’s apartment to cook up some dinner before Stations of the Cross at the Coliseum that night. It was great to just catch up with Mike, Phil and Courtney…bandies, I miss you ALL so much. We then headed over to the Coliseum, obscenely late to meet the giant ND group. So we didn’t. :) This quickly became a theme of the weekend! Instead we took a brief whirlwind walk-past of the Roman Forum and the National Monument on our way over to the Coliseum.

The crush of humanity at the Coliseum was overwhelming…there were SO many people there, waiting to see the Pope and hear Stations. We jammed in behind some really funny German tourists and settled in to wait for about an hour and a half. It was so worth it though, as I got to see the Pope!!!

Pope Benedict XVI leading Stations of the Cross

Benedict XVI in the flesh! I know it probably sounds sacrilegious but he is utterly adorable in the cutest old-man way. I just want to hug him, except that’s probably a sin. He presided over Stations (if that’s what you call it) and the crowd went wild for him. Stations, overall, felt more like a circus than a reverent pageant, which was kind of odd…but I enjoyed it, especially picking up fragments of the Our Father in Latin and remembering it in French. Mike also really enhanced the experience for me by translating bits of each station, which were read in Italian.

After it ended, we all split off to head home…leaving Phil at Largo d’Argentina to catch his tram, Mike, Courtney and I walked to a Metro stop, stopping at the Trevi Fountain along the way!! It was just as gorgeous as it is in every movie I’ve ever seen it in…although much more crowded. We skipped tossing coins in for the time being…

Soon I was home, tucked in bed and absolutely zonked out. It felt soooo good to sleep. Happily, our Roman adventures had just begun!

one short day...in the watery city!

2010-04-06T16:01:00.001-07:00

My Easter Break started off in a somewhat unorthodox manner…I had decided way back at the beginning of the semester to go to Venice and ended up going there alone last Thursday for the day before taking a night train to Rome that evening. Needless to say, being the worrywart I am and having the travel record I’ve racked up over this semester, I was more than a little apprehensive about traveling alone. Add to that the fact that I had booked a 6:30 am flight out of Stansted Airport (an hour at least out of London) and you’re looking at a very sleepless Wednesday night…

I left the flats around 2am, caught a bus to Victoria Station, and the madness started right away. Nobody could tell me where to catch the National Express bus to Stansted, and I mean NO ONE. Not the station officials, not the policemen roving the street, not the National Express bus drivers themselves (who were utterly unhelpful and rude, boo)…I ended up wandering around the Victoria area at 2:45am completely lost, flipping out, until I finally found the bus stop…across the street and down a block. BOO, Victoria Station. You’re now 2 for 2 in screwing me over.

Got to Stansted, then to Venice, uneventfully…caught a bus to the central train station, bought my night rail ticket right away, and wiped out on the very first bridge I tried to cross. Leave it to the most uncoordinated girl in the universe to embarrass herself by falling down on a pedestrian bridge in Venice…gah! After I dusted myself off I decided that the day needed to start off on a better foot…with gelato. At this point it was about 11:30 so it was the perfect time for a sugar cone of fragola (strawberry) gelato and some people watching right on the train station’s main piazza. It was so crowded, so sunny, so warm and beautiful that everybody was out…what a wonderful start to a day!

After I finished the first of many Easter weekend gelatos, I bought myself a Venice map, which turned out to be utterly useless, and set off for the Rialto Bridge and Piazza di San Marco…St. Mark’s Square. Venice, built on water, was not designed to be navigated on foot, not even by the most intrepid map reader…which I am not. I was lost within about ten minutes, but luckily the gelato sugar-high had me thinking that it was a great adventure and not a great reason to panic. Instead I wound through picturesque, narrow streets with pastel buildings and wrought-iron balconies, crossed side canals on beautiful little bridges, listened to the sound of seagulls and gondoliers and enjoyed the sunshine. I

I totally fell in love with Venice while I wandered around…every new turn in a street was a new and picturesque church, piazza, or canal, and before I knew it I must have stumbled into the shopping district…suddenly every narrow street housed a market or was lined with shop windows. Authentic Venetian masks…cashmere-lined leather gloves…handmade lace…Murano glass…it was so much fun to window-shop and look at everything…and I confess, I may have been really really tempted to make a purchase…but I held out, thankfully!

Finally I emerged from central Venice’s labyrinth of super-confusing streets and found myself staring head-on at the Rialto Bridge and the Grand Canal. What a gorgeous sight! Open air restaurants lined both sides of the canal, there were dozens of gondoliers and vaporettos (water taxis) filling the canal, and hundreds of people out and about. I headed toward the peak of the Rialto and joined the cluster of tourists snapping the stereotypical Venice picture…well, like twenty stereotypical Venice pictures. No shame here. Eventually I got a little too claustrophobic to enjoy the view though and headed onto St. Mark’s.

Again…I got lost about two seconds after I left the main canals. Oops. It took me about half an hour to find St. Mark’s where it would have taken about five minutes had I known where I was going. By this point, it was about 2:00pm as well, so I was a bit stressed thinking I was under a “time crunch.” Haha, the concept of a time crunch is so anti-Italian it makes me laugh now! Anyway, St. Mark’s was finally found, and I spent another half-hour sitting there watching people, feeding the birds (so cliché, so tourist, so much FUN anyway) and trying to get somebody to successfully take my picture with the Basilica of St. Mark’s.

Funny story about Venetians and tourists in Venice: when you ask for a picture in front of a huge historical monument, they don’t seem to understand that you want the monument IN the picture with you. So now I have some lovely pictures of me against a nondescript background in St. Mark’s Square. Oh well!

St. Mark’s on the inside is very, very beautiful and very, very ornate, but also looked like it could use a very, very thorough cleaning. I really enjoyed taking my time going through the basilica, which apparently contains over 4.1 km of fresco and mosaic work…the whole interior was absolutely breaktaking. It took me ages to get through because it was completely mobbed with tourists, was enormous, and also required a lot of attention to detail…so I took my time. It was a really gorgeous church, but couldn’t replace my favorite, Sainte-Chappelle, from Paris. Headed back outside to pouring rain and took a vaporetto back to the train station to lock my bag in a locker before heading to Murano, the island.

Genius that I am, I locked my camera in that locker as well, so I have no photos of Murano, the island famous for its artisan glass. In my handy Venice guidebook it said that no visit to Venice was complete without a trip out to see glassblowers in action and “peruse the assortment of authentic Murano glass,” so I took the water bus across the harbor-type area to the island around 4pm. It was absolutely indescribable…every shop was full of gorgeous, colorful glass. Ornaments, frames, clocks, stained-glass window decorations, chandeliers, sculptures…I was blown away.

Unfortunately, the actual glassblowing tour was way too expensive and took way too long for me to actually take it, but in my wandering around (lost, of course) I stumbled on a smaller factory that was letting tourists in for free to take a look. I jumped ALL over it. It smelled really weird, but it was so completely insanely cool to see how it all happened. The glassblower we watched was making a yellow vase swirled through with red and white, and watching it take shape was one of the prettiest, most impressive displays of craftsmanship I’ve ever seen. After the “tour” was over, I headed to the adjoining shop and bought a few souvenirs…and gifts…then rushed back to the water bus stop to catch the late bus back to the train station. Thank GOD I left when I did…I caught the last water bus back, and I still shudder to think what a catastrophe it would have been to be stranded on the outer island with a train to catch back in the main part!

About 8:30 I arrived back at the train station and settled in for the three-hour wait for the Trenitalia night train to Rome. By now, I was not only completely wiped out and really feeling the effect of a sleepless night before Venice, but I was getting really sick of spending so much time by myself. Traveling is such a social activity that it was really weird and sort of un-fun to spend a whole day on my own…nobody to share my excitement with or to keep me from spazzing when I got lost for the fourth or fifth time, haha! I spent those three tired, cold, sort of lonely hours in the Trenitalia waiting room and eventually got on my night train…where another story starts. This blog is getting way too long though so that’ll be saved for another day! Arrivederci and much love!

catch up part 2: All Work and All Play...

2010-03-31T05:56:00.000-07:00

...is what my life in London seems to be all about!

First, BBDO stories, because BBDO=the best workplace and internship ever and I love it like nobody's business. Then, lots and lots of gushing about one of my new favorite places to shop: Primark!

I know I kind of stopped giving the general rundown of how everyday life at BBDO has been going, but that hasn't been because it got boring, it's been because life has been so nuts. This week I spent a lot of time working with Tom Krailing on Mars accounts again...always interesting. Yesterday I cross-checked advice notes for what agencies should bill with what they did bill, then started bonus-payment calculations review. This was done based on Mars agencies' individual evaluations of the BBDO agencies who they deal directly with...each agency receives an aggregate score and the bonus is assigned accordingly. It was a fun morning reading over each agency's reviews...and I caught a few significant errors so Tom kept calling me a genius. It was nice :) even though catching basic math errors hardly qualifies me as a genius. Still, I wasn't going to argue!

The other noteworthy comment on BBDO is the camaraderie that has developed between both the interns (Kayla, Kaitlin, Katie and me) and between Kaitlin and I with Steph. I love coming to work because Steph (and the others in the office, but Steph especially because we work most closely with him) is so much fun to work with. He's only 25 and has a wickedly funny sense of humor, and makes our cubicle the office hotspot for stopping by to chat. Yesterday Kaitlin and I were having our lunch out in the café and he was sort of lingering by the food bar looking ove, it was so transparent he was hoping for an invite...so we asked him to join us and had the most ridiculously fun lunch break :) Sometimes it's easy to forget that he's so close in age to us since he is technically one of our bosses, but the whole office environment is just great. I hope someday I can work somewhere as fun again...this has been the best first office experience ever!

Now...Primark. Aaaah Primark. American readers are all familiar with Forever21, of course, as the biggest discount/trendy clothing retailer in the States. Primark is the English equivalent to Forever21 only cheaper, better quality, and way more varied. Kaitlin, Tess (a new London Program friend) and I went on Monday night after work...it's right on Oxford Street, near Baker Street! It was absolutely insane in there...super crowded, fitting-room lines that stretched half the length of the store (which stretched almost half a block) and just general mayhem. To be honest, not my kind of shopping experience...but I sipped the Primark kool-aid and went to town. I ended up leaving with two pairs of flats, five pairs of tights (I needed them REALLY badly), a few shirts, a sweater, and a bag...all for under 30 pounds. Yup. Primark is dangerous. Dangerously good deals, dangerously cute merchandise...I need to just stay away.

So that's London catch-up for the time being...time to go keep living life now!

catch up part 1: London Life Lately!

2010-03-30T15:43:00.000-07:00

Hi...and oops. This has taken me way too long to write because work (school and otherwise) still occasionally happens here in London, and this week has been a prime example of that...This update will be a random potpourri of London over the weekend, and then I'll get to that fabled post about Paris...I promise.

As I said on Friday, I had to meet with the internship program director, Cornelius, about BBDO and how things are going there. He was interested in everything I've been doing, especially in office interaction (one of the major goals of internships in the ND program is to expose students to "real Brits"...yes, they do exist!). I was extremely positive about the BBDO experience I've had, because it has been, in a word, superlative. We ended up digressing onto a series of discussions on the London Program in general, which got two thumbs way, way up from me...so weird to think that I only have a little over a month left in this amazing, amazing city!! :(

After Cornelius and I finished up, I downloaded almost a hundred different piano songs on sheet music blogs and played piano at the London Centre while it poured rain outside, hoping I could wait out the storm (I still hadn't replaced my beloved yellow J.Crew umbrella after spring break!!). After about an hour and a half of piano time (really, the first time I've played piano extensively since last December...felt AMAZING), the storm had blown over and I set out into a beautiful sunny, rain-washed London. The sky was absolutely riveting...think black storm clouds and blinding sunlight mixing to turn the whole city into this sparkling wet gorgeously brilliant place. You couldn't have helped but be happy to be alive. :)

Of course, I realized that I couldn't hope to get through five more weeks in London without encountering rain, so I stopped at a corner stand in Leicester Square and bought a really cute hot-pink and white striped umbrella...for the low, low price of three quid! I was excited, even though it's a total piece of crap that will for sure not survive its first real thunderstorm. Feeling on top of the world, I stopped at Ben and Jerry's for a kiddie scoop of cookie dough ice cream in a sugar cone and practically skipped home, loving the sound of all the different languages (I remember counting at least seven...), traffic and general London hustle-bustle.

Along the way, we always pass the Grey's Inn Gardens, which are surrounded by beautiful red-brick buildings and filled with gravel paths, benches, and absolute fields of daffodils...my absolute favorite. The problem is, the gardens are fenced off and the gate is usually shut and locked. Serendipitously though, it was open on Friday and I decided to take a ramble...I ended up off the paths just wandering through daffodils that came up to my knees. Needless to say, I was absolutely in heaven...I spend 45 minutes there before going home and got my shoes, socks, and jeans soaking wet in the flowers...so worth it!!

Friday night was a letdown. Think: really drunk college students trying to find a bar pretty far from the flats, without determining if that bar has a 10-pound cover on the weekends due to concerts. Then think: aforementioned college students discover aforementioned cover, get really upset (irrationally) and instead dive into the first dive bar they find. Then think: aforementioned dive bar is really gross and skeevy, and aforementioned college students are so weirded out they just go home without ever determining the name of aforementioned dive bar. That's basically our night in a nutshell. yupp.

Saturday dawned bright, sunny, warm and...homework-laden. I've got a big accounting paper due tomorrow night that required quite a bit of researching and background work before it could be written, so I hit the ground running with that and spent hours (literally) reading fascinating (not-so-literally) articles about fair-value accounting and its role in the financial crisis. Woo! Then I NEEDED a break so I went for a walk down Farringdon to St. Paul's Cathedral...just a 15-minute walk away for some beautiful architecture and views. I spent some time there just walking around, enjoying the sunshine, and ruminating on London and life in general. Then I went home and did more accounting until it was party time!

I mentioned that in Montpellier we met three other American girls: two of them were Laurens who were students at Syracuse and one of them, Lauren L, had already planned to celebrate her 21st at the London Syracuse program. Once we all connected over Facebook she invited us to join her, so Peter, Kate and I headed to the Syracuse flats near the British Museum for a night of good old-fashioned American fun...beer pong and flip cup followed by a night of clubbing! We met lots of really cool people from Syracuse, Maryland, Brandeis...and got to reconnect with our fellow Montpellier survivors, which was hilarious. We entered the party and were instantly famous as "the people who saved the Laurens in Montpellier," which was kinda cool :) I played a few games of beer pong before getting wiped out by two total hustlers, then enjoyed the rest of the party before skipping out of clubbing to go home and sleep. Mmm, sleep.

Sunday: Nicolle, Joanie and I decided to try to adventure to find a different church than the one we usually attend. Unfortunately, we still suck at getting around London even after two and a half months here, and wandered around the area where the church was supposed to be for like twenty minutes before we just gave up and decided we had ultimate-failed but God would love us anyway for trying really hard. Nicolle headed off to Brick Lane and Joanie and I started home. We were just casually walking along when all of a sudden I looked up and spotted a familiar tousled head of dark hair and some very familiar man-capris............

I immediately squawked out, "Oh my god...Steph!" That's right folks, I had just encountered the one and only Stephan Claridge IN THE REAL WORLD. (Steph=my "handler" and absolute favorite favorite person ever at BBDO, duh.) He was taken aback at first, I'm sure wondering "who the hell is this crazy girl talking to me" but as soon as he realized it was ME IN THE REAL WORLD we both got really excited and said a lot about "oh my god, it's a small world!" He then pointed out his flats...literally 25 yards from where we were standing...and I promised I wasn't a stalker. After a few laughs and small talk, we parted ways. I felt like SUCH A GROWN-UP. I ran into a work friend in real life, and even cooler, he introduced me to his friend as "his colleague at BBDO." That's right. I am officially a COLLEAGUE. Hahahahaha. :D

The rest of Sunday was uneventful...some work, some catch-up on cleaning and laundry, and of course Mr. Martin Colianni's 21st birthday celebration!! Homemade chocolate torte by Kayla, profiteroles and cream tarts from Tesco...aaah wait there IS a story left. And then this epic blog will be done.

I got asked out by the checkout boy at Tesco. (This is the part where you laugh...)

Tesco is a very ubiquitous, very cheap supermarket and we ND students are pretty well-known at our local Tesco because it is convenient, in our price range, and sells Lambrini, the 1.50 pound wine we all love and drink like water. I went in around 9 on Sunday night and was the only person in the store so the staff chatted me up a bit while I picked up sundry essentials. One guy, an Indian teenager who couldn't have been older than 18, was especially friendly, asking about my weekend and being generally helpful. He went to the register to check me out and when I gave him my card to charge the items, he commented, "Elizabeth, a lovely name...like the Queen!" I was sort of like, "Yeah, haha, it's nice..." and thought to myself, "Weird, but whatever, sweet." Then he looked at me and asked, "I get off work at ten, do you fancy having dinner with me?" I seriously was like... "Whaaaaat?" in my head and spent ten seconds wondering if he was serious, completely dumbfounded and amused by the situation...and then I was very polite and said I had a birthday party to attend and left. It was just very funny and ironic and amusing, and makes for a funny anecdote that is much better relayed in person.

Okay, now I'm done, because even I am bored of this blog at this point and I just need to stop writing it. If you finished this whole entire post, you need to go make yourself a cup of tea and have a few Cadbury eggs to celebrate. :) Much love and happy Tuesday to all of you!!

"i am the green fairy!"

2010-03-27T04:29:00.000-07:00

Here it is folks...after much anticipation, another long-delayed post about Paris! My goal is to wrap up spring break over the weekend because next week we are all headed to Rome (and in my case, Venice as well) for Easter! I can't believe it's that time already. I can't believe how fast this semester is going by. It's crazy!

As I mentioned in the post on Versailles here, after our day-trip out of Paris we met up with my flatmate Nicolle and her travel companions Siobhan and Julie for drinks. As we were in Paris, after all, we decided we needed to be adventurous and bad-ass and all those other good things, so we looked up absinthe bars in the district we were both staying in. There was one that seemed about equidistant between their hostel on République and our home in the 10e, so we Google-mapped walking directions and headed there. We assumed it would be an easy walk as it only required two turns, but we managed to do both of those two turns wrong and walked almost all the way to République instead of getting to the place in the middle like we should have. Lots of wandering around Parisian streets at night, but thankfully it was a decently nice area so there was no apprehension like there would have been, say if we were walking around Montpellier at night ;)

At any rate, we all finally got to this bar around the same time (the others had gotten really turned around too), and it turns out it either is, or claims to be, the oldest absinthe bar in Paris, Cantada II. (Look at that link, and then you will be able to scoff at me for the rest of this story about what an idiot I am for taking us there in the first place :P )

Turns out Cantada II was a goth-Satanist-Spanish fusion bar...yeah. Wrap your head around that one. Goth-Satanist-Spanish fusion. It was as weird as it sounds...fake skulls on the wall, lots of pornographic-ish manga-style art that I could see people having tattooed on them in some countercultural effort to rebel. I was a little weirded out, rocking my J.Crew sweater set and dragging four non-French speakers (Nicolle speaks a decent amount) in with me. Everybody's reaction was a little skeptical as we grabbed a table, but it was handled with good grace and, in hindsight, it was a just-plain-hilarious situation. I mean, it sounds like the opener to a bad joke: "Six Notre Dame students walk into a goth-Satanist-Spanish fusion absinthe bar in Paris..."

As the best French speaker of the crew, I headed bravely to the bar while the rest held down the fort...Charlie followed me thank goodness, which later was very fortunate. I ordered six "mitres" of absinthe (a play on words based on the Satanist nature of the bar and the shape of the glasses...a mitre is a hat used by religious officiants) and settled in to wait...it takes about ten minutes to prepare absinthe correctly, because the actual alcohol has to be poured from the bottle over a sieve containing sugar cubes, dissolving the sugar completely and filtering down into the mitre before it is drinkable...it forms kind of a slurry-like texture.

While we waited, two big tattooed vest-wearing biker-looking French men at the bar started a conversation with me, with the by now all-too-predictable opening line: "Your French is very good, where did you learn?" Naive as I was, I explained that I was in university and had learned "au lycée" (high school) and at college. They took this to mean effectively that I was young (yes) and wild (no), as is the French pre-conception of American college students. They were hitting on me pretty hard, but in a very good-natured way, and if they wouldn't have looked like they were Hell's Angels lost in France, I wouldn't have made Charlie be my fake boyfriend while the absinthe filtered. As it was, he stood with me and was a very good bodyguard/pretend BF for the next ten minutes. My biker friends, whose names I have forgotten, were very assiduous in inviting me to return to La Cantada the next night, Friday, for the weekly orgy concerts. That's right. Orgy concerts. I thought I had misheard them and thus told them that I had misunderstood. They then explained, very explicitly, that every Friday night there were raging concerts in the basement that then turned into "lots of sex." I politely said that we would consider checking it out, and our absinthe was fortunately done filtering so we took everyone's drinks to the table.

Later, my nouveaux amis came over and one of them showed me his sketchbook, which was actually remarkably beautiful pen-and-ink drawings of Paris landmarks, Métro stops, and architecture...with naked women interspersed throughout. Still, we had a wonderful look-through them as we sipped our absinthe, which tasted JUST like black licorice. Overall, a very successful absinthe experience, free of hallucinogens (we went to a "safe" absinthe bar, apparently) and green fairies :) After we all finished, we bid adieu to lovely Nicolle, Siobhan and Julie, and headed home, only to get lost again. Thanks to Charlie on that one as well for good navigation...he finally figured out where we were and got us home!

Long story short: if you are going to drink absinthe, check your bar out first so that you don't get propositioned at the bar by French bikers. And when six Notre Dame students walk into a goth-Satanist-Spanish fusion bar, hilarity is sure to ensue :)

my absinthe: it glowed in the dark when I took a photo!

Parliament, Plays, and Pub Quizzes!

2010-03-26T05:46:00.000-07:00

A busy past few days have kept me from updating this...it's been constant go-go-go with a Macroeconomics test and then a lot of fun on the books for us crazy London kids!

On Tuesday afternoon, Charlie was kind enough to give Peter, Kate and me a private tour of PARLIAMENT. Oh. My. God. Absolutely staggering. We got to go in the administrative building, Portcullis Place, for starters...once there, we went through airport-style security and got official lanyard-ID tag things, then Charlie hit the ground running giving us the tour. He was full of facts and fun anecdotes...it was an awesome way to experience Parliament! We took an underground passage to enter the main Parliament building and emerged into the gated courtyard I always pass and wonder who gets to go in...answer? WE do!

We headed into Westminster Hall, the oldest part of Parliament that had been saved from fires like four times or something ridiculous like that, the home of Henry VIII's court and the place where Charles I was tried before his execution. I know this is going to sound weird, but it literally SMELLED historic. Huge wood-beamed ceilings, floors that were worn from being walked on, stained-glass windows. It absolutely reeked of history, which of course means I loved it.

From there we continued into the newer State departments and from then on out it was one big mindwarp for me...I kept thinking "Oh my god. We're in Parliament. Parliament!" and it really blew my mind. We walked around and Charlie was able to tell us a lot about the history of the building, how Parliament functions today, and what was going on in the places we checked out. Highlights:
-The Queen can't go into the House of Commons, EVER. We did, though, and watched a debate on banning certain types of ammunition in active warfare. Kind of dry, but really cool to see how Parliament functions on a day-to-day basis.
-The House Of Lords: Ridiculously sumptuous, beautiful room, with the golden ceremonial throne for the reigning monarch's opening of Parliament every year...it was built for Queen Victoria and is tiny and beautiful. We watched more debating there, with a Baroness and a bishop discussing clean energy.
-We also explored the building a little bit, as Charlie's pass got us through places pretty easily. It was such a rush to pass people in the halls and think that they were doing all this hard-core business...it made my head spin!

Our time at Parliament ended all too soon when I looked at the clock, realized how late it was, and remembered I had a play to get to...across the river...at 7:30. I literally sprinted most of the way there, asked directions to the theater and got directed to the wrong one, and finally arrived at The Old Vic, the correct theater, only to find out that our seats had changed...I was so frazzled at this point that I just sort of went blindly where they directed us and finally arrived in our (very good) seats totally worn out and not at all in the right mindset to watch a play.

"Six Degrees of Separation," by John Guare, was a very random, very intriguing play based on the true story of a young con-man who swindled his way into the lives (and pockets) of rich New Yorkers in the early 90s. The play was incredibly weird, unique and unlike anything I'd ever seen. I still honestly don't know if I liked it or didn't...I enjoyed the experience of seeing it, but it sounds like I was in the minority as the rest of my classmates either hated it or were bored stiff. Whatever...I guess I just have no discerning taste...but it was a fun night out no matter what. After that, I went home and had a pretty late night studying, boo.

Wednesday was a very busy but quiet-ish day of class, class, and domesticity. I cleaned. I read a bunch of blogs I had to catch up on. I emailed people. I watched "Dancing With The Stars" online (my pick? Erin Andrews, although I loved Buzz Aldrin, he was adorable). Early bed.

Thursday was a workday for me: I spent most of the morning doing filing and invoicing as it's quarter-end and Steph and Dale were swamped with work on that. The afternoon saw me running GG's errands picking up and delivering "really vitally important documents" between the three Omnicom agencies on/near Marylebone...and then doing work on transfer-pricing analysis, Sabine's travel expense analysis, and the PSA. The other interns and I went to the Golden Hind for fish'n'chips before pub quiz night and oh, my god, it was amazing as always. Unfortunately we got absolutely drenched on the walk there, oh well!

Pub Quiz Night! It was amazing. Tom K, Tom P, Adam and Janet were the only ones in the office who came, but when we showed up it was even: four interns, four Brits. We split up into Tom P and Janet's CFM team (Katie and Kaitlin) and the financial controllers (plus Kayla) team. Our team name? QuizzyModo, a clever play on the fact that we go to Notre Dame. We all got pleasantly drunk in the best innocent, fun giggly way, and FINANCIAL CONTROLLERS beat the CFMs in a last-minute, one-point victory because we were able to identify blurry pictures of David Beckham versus Roger Federer. So much fun...and I now have a really cool silver Stella Artois pen to commemorate our epic win. After Pub Quiz, we went to a place on Baker Street for "a curry," which is what they call any kind of Indian food. I had lamb bhoteko at Tom K's suggestion and it was sooooo good. We all talked about movies we'd seen, our families, our friends, our lives in general...it was great, I had so much fun, and I feel so incredibly lucky to be interning at BBDO. The people are really just fantastic.

I'm going to draft a Paris post and put it up in a few hours, although now that just feels like an empty promise since I never do...but right now I have a meeting for internship advising with our program director, Cornelius. Cheers!

London Monday...

2010-03-23T07:44:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick update on London life:
Yesterday: work at BBDO...Katie, Kaitlin, Kayla and I took the Tube in early in time for breakfast and had a great morning catch-up session on our weekends. We had pranked Steph earlier last week by decorating his desk with a bunch of cutouts and pictures of his favorite football team's archrivals...it would have been the equivalent of covering an ND grad's workspace with USC gear. Everybody in the office thought we were hilarious and to be honest, so did we. He wasn't at all mad yesterday morning and actually left most of the "decorations" up...although he's now claiming that he's plotting to get us back, so we'll see how that works out...Also, Tom K, one of the men in my department, brought exciting news yesterday that his wife is expecting their first child! He was adorably excited and it was SO much fun to congratulate him and watch him flash the sonogram pictures around, totally beaming with pride.

Then it was off to PWC, where we had a class on the global recession. My team also had the chance to sit down with one of the company's IFRS transition specialists to discuss our final project, a comparison of the UK's IFRS implementation to the planned US convergence. She had a lot of great information and gave us an awesome perspective on the project, which should be a great help. I had a moderately uneventful night of trying to meet up with two piccolo alums who were in London, but due to crossed wires, mixed signals and our mutual failure to top up our phones, we weren't able to get together. Sad day! I went to the Exmouth Arms with most of my spring break group, and the bartender let me pull a pint of Guinness the real way. It was super exciting!
How to Pull the Perfect Pint:
1. Putting the spigot of the tap against the glass, tilt glass to a 45-degree angle with the bar.
2. Fill about 3/4 of the way full...pull the tap down and just let it go!
3. Level the glass and let it fill almost all the way.
4. Once the glass is near-full, to eliminate excess "head" (foam on top of the beer, don't get dirty-minded!), submerge the spigot IN the head and tilt the glass. The extra foam will just run off the top and make a mess on the bar (and your feet, if you're standing too close), but you will have the perfect pint...

I was so excited! And it was really good, although according to the bartender, my pint had an unacceptable amount of foam. Even so, I like it like that...Guinness foam is my favorite part of the beer, which I'm sure makes me a completely pathetic excuse for a Guinness-drinker. Oh well! (I kept the pint glass as a souvenir.) IF anyone ever needs a pint, you know where to find me! ;)

Today's been very quiet...library noon tea at the London Centre and now I'm getting work done in the library...but this afternoon we're going on a private tour of Parliament, courtesy of one-and-only Parliamentary intern Charles Landis, 1/5 of Team Hot Route! I'm super excited, as we are a: getting to see Parliament and b: doing it for FREE. YAY. Then it's to the Old Vic Theatre for "Six Degrees of Separation," the first play we're seeing for my Intro To London Theatre class. I'm excited!

Paris posts will continue probably tomorrow as I have a lot to get done in the next 24 hours...til then, CHEERS!

Skirting the Issue, and a very golden day!

2010-03-21T16:56:00.000-07:00

Finally, another long-awaited Parisian post, but first, a note on London men.

They are creeps!! At least a lot of them are, or at the very least, a lot of them in our part of the town are. Today was warm enough to go out in a skirt with bare legs (55-60 degrees during the day, sunny skies, GORGEOUS) so I did when I had to go get groceries. Not only did I get honked at twice (in a totally respectable knee-length skirt with a cardigan), but a cab driver rolled down his window and asked if I wanted to take a ride with him later. Ew, sketch. Why does this bug me, after getting hit on multiple times in Paris? I don't really know. Mostly because it's so asinine, unnecessary and unflattering on both ends. I guess I need to keep the tights on for the time being. Sigh.

Anyway, I digress. We're up to Paris Day 3: Versailles!

Team Hot Route (formerly known as Team Tuscalonis) departed for Versailles around 11:30 am after a leisurely and lovely morning in which the ladies took cold showers (Claire's building was having the heaters worked on, which we didn't learn until the day we departed) and Charlie made us breakfast and tea. What a man, ladies, what a man. The train to Versailles was fast, cheap and easy, much like its former residents...from what I knew and later learned on Wikipedia, it sounds like the Bourbons didn't worry about messing around at ALL. We arrived on a beautiful sunny, if blustery-cold, day. The castle is absolutely unlike Windsor in every way on the outside...palace describes it better than castle. To me, a castle always implies moats and stone and dungeons and fortresses; a palace is somewhere with expansive gardens and excessive windows and ornamental fences, not defensive walls. Versailles is the epitome of a palace. Gold EVERYWHERE. Windows EVERYWHERE. Gardens EVERYWHERE. I already knew I was going to like it a LOT.

Too bad the ticket-vendor had to sour me on the experience right away! We had been informed by Peter that it was possible to get free admission to Versailles with our student visas; I asked accordingly when we were purchasing tickets. Not only did the man we were buying from totally deny us, but he was a complete and utter asshole about it. After I attempted to explain that our visas had been accepted at the Musée d'Orsay and the Louvre (a petite white lie), he gave me the snottiest, snootiest look ever and said, in the most patronizing tone I have EVER heard in my life:

"Madame, this is not the Musée d'Orsay, this is not the Louvre. THIS...is Versailles."

To hear him talk, you would think I had marched in there in a fannypack and cowboy hat and demanded rudely in English to have tea with Marie Antoinette herself. I was speaking fluent French and made a perfectly reasonable request, to which he responded with utter rudeness and snobbishness. It was my first experience with real French xenophobia and it completely put a damper on the rest of my day. We instead paid the fee of 15 euro to enter, then ate our lunch in a café overlooking the gardens, which cheered me up a bit. Nothing like Nutella and Bonne Maman jam on baguette to give you a little sugar rush and make your day brighter!

We finally entered the palace for real and picked up our handy dandy audio guides! The palace itself was beautiful. Fantastic parquet floors, marble, gold, and carving everywhere, and ceilings of every room gilded, painted and decorated to the nines. The chapel was one of the most beautiful places I'd ever seen. This was becoming a theme with my spring break...

After walking through a random photo retrospective on Versailles over the past 150 years (umm wtf?!) we finally reached the State Departments. Much prettiness. A lot of art. A lot of gold. A lot of really expensive decoration and furniture. I was loving it, although I have to say the interior was almost a bit underwhelming compared to Windsor...and compared to the beautiful views of the palace gardens! We finally reached the Hall of Mirrors and it was...well, everything I thought it would be...enormous, mirrored, absolutely majestic. It was also, however, totally crowded with tourists. I suppose that's how it would have been back in the day as well, only everybody would've been wearing awesome gowns and jewels. Haha...that's how I always imagined it. Silly me. :)

I may or may not have taken a Myspace mirror pic in the Hall of Mirrors. But I'm embarrassed about the fourteen-year-oldishness of that so it's not going on my nice blog. :) The State departments continued and Coleen and I saw Marie Antoinette's rooms, including the bed where she gave birth to her children in front of a bajillion-and-two members of the court:

We then headed outside to walk around and explore the beautiful grounds. It was a fantastic sunny day and we had a really good time walking around and exploring! The gardens weren't in bloom or anything but there were buds on all the trees and I bet the exterior is absolutely stunning in the summer.

There are three other chateaux on the Versailles grounds...the Grand Trianon, the Petit Trianon and the Hameau of Marie Antoinette. We walked out quite a ways to go visit those as well; I really wanted to see them as they were famous as being Marie Antoinette's favorite personal retreats from the busy and public life in the main palace. Once we got to the Petit Trianon, however, we were dismayed to discover that each of the three attractions cost an additional fee! At that point, everybody was so sour on the previous ticket-vendor's attitude that I didn't even bring up paying more to see the rest of the chateaux. I guess it's just an incentive to go back someday when I have lots and lots of spare change...after all, who wants to do and see everything? Then there's nothing left to live for! It's just like with Cinque Terre...since we didn't make it to Monterossa, the fifth town, I have a reason to go back. Now I have one for Versailles as well! :)

After some more wandering around the garden, and some awesome/moderately embarrassing Team Hot Route photos in front of the Grand Trianon (it's PINK! I was in heaven!), our group walked back to the main palace to catch the train back to our Parisian home for the week. We ate our dinner and met up with Nicolle, Siobhan and Julie later...but that's a different story for a different post, as it's getting late here. Bonsoir, chéries!! Bisous! (Goodnight and kisses, dear friends!)

a delightful day in Londontown

2010-03-21T02:48:00.000-07:00

Hi all...more Paris to follow but I've got a life going on regardless of how up-to-date my spring break posts are, and yesterday is definitely post-worthy!

Coleen, Charlie, Kate and I set off around 11:30 to go visit Notting Hill, setting of the Julia Roberts movie of the same name but, more importantly, home of the "world-famous" Portobello Road Market! It claims to be the largest antiques market in the world, and after yesterday, I believe it. We got off the Tube and were immediately swept into an unbelievably large and diverse throng of people headed the same direction...young, hipster London girls with the kind of style I always wish I had, old men and women out together, young families with children in tow...it was just this enormous crush of humanity. Claustrophobic, yes, but really fun to see. The people-watching alone would have made this market day an experience to remember.

As you may recall, I was not particularly enamored with my first market visit, to Petticoat Lane...junky, weird people, and all-around dissatisfying. That said, Portobello Road was fantastic! We started off walking down a row of pastel-painted houses with colorful doors that reminded me of Cinque Terre (ahhh I want to go back!!). At the beginning of the market, Coleen, Kate and I were drawn into a little vintage jewelry stand where everything was 5 pounds. I was looking at an opal ring and Kate was considering the brooches when the saleswoman freaked out on Charlie and told him to "go and find another playground." She repeatedly insisted that he leave, and as his loyal women, we of course left with him. Nobody yells at our man like that and gets our business ;)

After that the market was just one REALLY REALLY long street full of wonderful surprises. Portobello Road doesn't sell only antiques...there are long stretches devoted to jewelry artists, art, clothing, fresh food, food vendors, toys...just everything you could imagine. It was super fun. We poked around an antique maps-and-prints shop for a while, looked at tons of jewelry, and had a great time. After a lunch stop at an Italian pizzeria that served pizza by the meter (yes, for real, by the METER), we paid a visit to The Travel Bookshop, of "Notting Hill" (the movie) fame. So cute and charming, although I must say my favorite bookstore in the world is still Shakespeare and Company :)

Purchases for the day: Coleen got an antique bracelet that was absolutely beautiful and I got a pendant-watch, which was just too novel and pretty to pass up. We then caught the Tube and headed home, where I stopped in Tesco and ran into the one-and-only Kayla Coggins and Anne Spont! They were planning a baking night and I jumped right on that. It was so much fun! We made chocolate and vanilla cupcakes with homemade buttercream frosting. Oh, hello, decadence. Best part? We dyed the frosting pink and decorated with absolutely adorable novelty sprinkles, sugar flowers, and glittery dust. It was so pretty when we were done that I hardly wanted to eat them! (We did, though.) Big shout-out to Bobby, who knows all the words to an enormous plethora of songs as well as the integral plot points of "Rent." Nobody puts Bobby in the corner.

After a fun night of baking to the sweet sounds of middle-school power jams, I headed home to call it another early night. I'm always so tired at night here...maybe that's why the nasty hard bed doesn't feel quite as awful anymore. Paris soon, I promise...but London is still too fun to ignore!

who loves you, pretty baby?

2010-03-19T16:45:00.000-07:00

Tonight was a spectacular success of an evening to cap off a very theater-y day. We started our second seminars for Images today, and mine is Intro To London Theatre...along with six or seven of my closest friends in the program and various others. The professor is a real character who has acted and directed in London for what sounds like ages...part of the first day was having us all go around and explain our experience with theater-going, and when I mentioned seeing Shakespeare plays in Minnesota he immediately recognized that I was referencing the Guthrie! We got off on a bit of a tangent in the middle of class about Minnesota theaters, and it was so much fun to meet and talk to somebody who knew the significance of the Guthrie, Ordway, Pantages, Orpheum, etc. :)

Anyway, on our break in that class, Coleen and I decided that we really wanted to go see a play this weekend, and being the spontaneous, lovely girls that we are, decided that we should go tonight. All that remained was to pick a play...from candidates like "War Horse," "Billy Elliot," "The Little Dog Laughed," and "Love Never Dies," the new Andrew Lloyd Webber sequel to "Phantom of the Opera," we decided on "Jersey Boys." I was so excited...I've had a bit of a love affair with the Four Seasons since we played them freshman year in a halftime show.

After London Theatre ended, I went to my favorite Caffé Nero at the bottom of Trafalgar Square and read three or four chapters of the text for that class (yes, I am aware that this makes me an irrefutable nerd). The book focuses on the evolution of all arts in England from the Dark Ages on...I started with the first assigned chapter on Elizabethan English theatre and read straight through to the architectural revolution under Willam and Mary. Wow, I am a geek. Moving on...

Coleen and I got all dolled up and walked down to the Prince Edward Theater on Shaftesbury in time for student rush tickets at 6:30. After a bit of confusion in which the ticket vendor thought we wanted full-price tickets, we were offered "grand box seats" for the low, low price of 20 pounds. Needless to say, we jumped at the opportunity...HOORAY for awesome seats at a cheap price! We headed out to find a pub for the requisite pre-theater drinks, and were offered 50% discounts as a promotion if we went to this new place called Club 49. Half-off is too good to pass up, so we went there, and I had two great mojitos (mine and most of Coleen's, she wasn't a fan) before we headed back to the theater.

Our seats were great, the show was better. Super dynamic, jam-packed with the kind of hits that make you want to dance in your seat (I did the entire show, haha), and amazing acting throughout. I loved every minute of it...there were points where I was literally leaning out of the box over the railing, I was so enthralled. The second act was utterly fantastic, all the huge hits, a super-cool and innovative final scene, and a curtain call that exploded into a reprise of "December 1963," my FAVORITE Four Seasons song :) Needless to say, we both left the theater super happy and sang and danced the whole way home!

Anyway, enough for now. I'm exhausted and still trying to catch up on sleep after an unexpectedly hectic week, so I'm going to turn in. More on Paris to come tomorrow. Good night!!

bonjour paris, ça va?

2010-03-18T14:24:00.000-07:00

Our first full day in Paris, Wednesday the 10th, started as we ate a spare and nasty breakfast in our hostel, then went to meet Peter at the République Métro stop to go drop our things at Claire’s apartment. Her place is adorable! Small, perfectly clean and decorated very eclectically, just as I always thought a French girl’s house would be done. It was beautiful outside! Very sunny and pretty. We took the Métro to the Musée d’Orsay as soon as we had all dropped our things off, looked around and geared up to head out. The Musée d’Orsay used to be a train station, and was almost demolished to make way for new construction, but thankfully was converted to a museum instead…it’s absolutely beautiful! The focus of the museum is mainly on Impressionist art. I was in heaven…Impressionism is my favorite!

We saw works by Renoir, Monet, Manet, Degas (I love his ballerinas!), Sisley, Van Gogh, Gauguin, and so many others I can’t even remember all of them. I was in absolute heaven wandering around by myself…we all split up to do the museum right and just enjoy it on our own, at our own pace. One of the best parts for me was talking to one of the museum's head curators, in French, for about half an hour about how the d'Orsay was renovating gradually in hopes of being able to attract donations from private art collectors and add to their Impressionist collection. I felt like such a bad-ass, using my French and actually having an intelligent, cultured conversation...aaah!! :D

It was really cool especially to see some overlap between the Van Gogh museum, which I visited in Amsterdam, and the Musée d’Orsay. There were more paintings by the Barbizon School, a French pre-impressionist movement that majorly influenced Van Gogh and focused on painting nature and capturing light. There was also another big feature on Van Gogh…I feel like everything these days is focused on him, with the museum in Amsterdam, the big exhibit at the d’Orsay, and now the huge exhibition in London at the Royal Academy of the Arts, which I still have to get to.

The sculpture at the Musée d’Orsay was remarkable as well! It took up the entire main part of the gallery, which used to be the central part of the train station and was consequently enormous, sun-drenched and beautifully open. I love sculpture, but to be honest, everything sort of paled in comparison to the amazingness of The David in Florence. Still, it was so beautiful and I loved it.

After the d’Orsay, we headed back to Claire’s to bid Peter farewell, as he was heading to Perpignan, her hometown, to spend the rest of the break with her. We got some baguette, sausage, cheese and jam on the way to make our usual lunches of sandwiches (nowhere NEAR as good as the coppa and pecorino in Lucca, but still), and all too soon it was time for him to go…it was so sad to break up Team Hot Route! We spent the rest of the afternoon settling into Claire’s and catching up on some much-needed rest, relaxation and correspondence with families.

Later that afternoon Nicolle texted us to see if we wanted to meet up for dinner, so we offered to cook. After meeting their group at Goncourt, the Métro stop closest to Claire’s, we cooked a dinner of spaghetti Bolognese, salad, toasted bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and a cheese platter for appetizer/dessert. Not to mention several bottles of amazing red, white, and rosé wine…yum! We went to bed really early after they headed out for the night, totally exhausted and looking forward to our planned trip to Versailles the next day!

kiss me, i'm Irish :)

2010-03-17T07:15:00.000-07:00

St. Patrick's Day in London merits an interlude between Paris posts, so I figured I'd update quickly.
1. Londoners don't wear green on St. Patrick's Day.
2. Every single person in the ND London Program does.
3. Irish car bombs are not called Irish car bombs in London. I don't know what they're called so I'm scared to order one.
4. Irish coffee > normal coffee
5. Our Philosophy class likes their liquor early. Our Philosophy professor doesn't like that they do.

More interludes to come later...

it's a small world after all :)

2010-03-16T13:52:00.000-07:00

Hello...so, as you can see, that was the last blog post I actually drafted out while we were spring-breaking, as Paris required so much of my rapture, devotion and attention that by the end of every day I was in such a euphoric state of exhaustion that I simply collapsed into bed grinning from ear to ear.

I am in LOVE with Paris. The city...aaah. It wasn't everything I dreamed it would be...it was better, it was worse, it was different, it was how I imagined it...the city defies imagination just as much as it inspires it. I kept feeling like everything was surreal and I seriously couldn't believe I was there for most of the six days we had there.

When we arrived at Gare Lyon, we went to the Ministry of Economics and Finance to meet our lovely hostess for the week, miss Claire Botella. She was kind enough to lend us her beautiful little apartment in the tenth arrondissement (neighborhood) for the week! After we got her keys, we went to drop our things at the hostel we were staying at for one night (while she was still in Paris and needed her apartment). The hostel was way the heck out in the middle of the 18th, and was a total shithole, but we literally changed clothes and headed straight for the #1 Parisian icon tourist destination...the Eiffel Tower!

We took a Paris Métro to get there and my first official sight of the tower was as the train exploded out of the underground to street level, with the tower directly outside the window. I seriously teared up and almost died right then and there of satisfaction. We got there around 4:00, just in time to climb it for sunset. That's right...CLIMB it. We CLIMBED the Eiffel Tower. Let me tell you, that is one hell of a natural Stairmaster...my legs were killing me for the next 48 hours!

This is where the "it's a small world after all" part comes into play: As our group reached the top of the second level, out of the souvenir shop popped my one-and-only flatmate Nicolle and the rest of her spring break group! I stopped dead in my tracks and immediately shouted "NICOLLE" right in her face. She turned, did a HUGE classic double-take, and shouted right back in my face, "LIZZIE!" Then we ALL started jumping around and shrieking and laughing about how small the world really is when you're tourists in Paris. We were super super super excited about it, as we weren't supposed to overlap our time in Paris by much at all...I guess the whole Montpellier debacle was a little God moment helping us get to that awesome encounter on La Tour Eiffel :)

Anyway, we watched the sunset on the tower, took a million gazillion pictures (literally, I promise you), and were getting ready to head down when all of a sudden the lights show started. I was breathless the entire five minutes, just completely in awe of where I was and what I was doing and how so many dreams had all culminated in just one day. We descended and I literally felt like my insides were having their own little light show, I was so happy!

Peter led all of us to an amazing restaurant he had eaten at on his first trip to Paris, called Le Royal. For 12 euro we got an appetizer, entrée, dessert, and three glasses of wine apiece...I had a chevre crépe with salad for my appetizer, choux (spinach, cheese and meat made into a sort of layered soufflé type thing) with rice and tomato remoulade for my main, and a to-DIE-for pear tart for dessert. Not to mention I had an amazing time conversing with the proprietor, waiter and bartender, all of whom thought my French was great and had many helpful tips and suggestions about what we needed to see and do in Paris!

Exhausted, we headed back to our hostel for a night of sketchy sleep...I covered my pillowcase with my towel and made sure every inch of my skin was out-of-contact with the questionable sheets...but it was so much more than worth the ickiness to dream about the fact that I was in the City of Light and my adventures had just begun!!

That's enough for now, and Paris is too amazing to be wrapped into one post...expect more soon :)

Observations de train…

2010-03-16T13:11:00.001-07:00

Originally written on 3/9, en route to Paris…it was a 4 hour train ride. Cut me some slack, I needed something to do! : )

10:37: Leaving Gare St. Roch, Montpellier. Sigh of relief, prayer of thanksgiving.

10:53: Lots of vineyards. And snow. And you can tell that they are not super-used to snow here.

11:09: The other four are passed out dead asleep. We’re stopped at Nimes, another South-of-France small town. French women are irrepressibly chic. Makes me wish I could rock short hair.

11:34: Countryside. This train has a bar, apparently…I’m tempted to go find it. The guy sitting diagonal from me has the most Gerard Depardieu-esque nose I’ve ever seen, and it’s making me happy. Lots of hills…contemplating falling asleep, but I’m afraid I’ll miss announcements or something. Hmmm….

12:09: Kate and I just ate an entire tube of Pringles. With minor assistance from Charlie and Coleen. Très gourmands.

12:42: Taking advantage of our train captivity to clean out and organize the 10,000 photos in my iPhoto library. We just passed a ruined castle, and some grazing sheep and cattle. Very provincial France. I feel like I should be listening to “Beauty and the Beast” right now…

1:41: The bathrooms are smaller than airplane bathrooms, the French countryside we’re riding through right now looks like Nebraska, and my iPhoto library has been so far condensed to 9275 photos. Productive trip…

2:04: They just announced Gare Lyon, Paris. My heart is absolutely palpitating right now. AAAAAAH PARIS!!!! I'm finally here!! Updates soon!

22 hours in the sphincter of France.

2010-03-10T14:18:00.001-08:00

-originally written on March 9, 2010

WELL. We’re not in Barcelona. In fact, we’re not in Spain at all. We are currently in Montpellier, France, which is the knife-crime capital of France, and known for its hate crimes and anti-racial/foreign sentiments. Great, huh? You may be wondering…just how the hell did we end up here, of all places?

Yesterday we got to Pisa so early and thought we were really okay with everything…takeoff went flawlessly, life was good, and we thought we were doing well. Until the pilot came on the intercom to explain that there was such heavy snow in Barcelona that we would have to circle for a while. Then we were told we would have to go refuel in Montpellier before returning to Barcelona. Then we were told we were de-planing in Montpellier to be bussed to Barcelona. Before we knew it, we were in a random provincial airport in a fricking French resort town with no Ryanair liaison, no information about how we were supposedly going to catch this “bus” to Barcelona, and no idea what the hell was going on. The Ryanair flight we were on had literally refueled and turned around and left us alone in Montpellier with absolutely no recourse...no information, definitely no “bus” to Barcelona, and no idea what to do next. I have never been more thankful that I chose to study French in my life.

We got croques-monsieur for lunch and jumped into action…rallied up with the rest of the people who Ryanair had abandoned, got a tram to the center of Montpellier, and started trying to figure out what the heck to do. Thank God for McDonalds. I know I couldn’t possibly sound more American or gauche but we have been to the McDonalds in Montpellier no less than SIX times in the past 22 hours…free WiFi, cheap food, and relative safety…you KNOW the city you’re in is sketchy as hell when the place you feel safest is the McDonalds.

We met up with three other American girls who were in our same boat…two of them, both Laurens, needed to get to Malaga for their spring break and there was also a Beth trying to return to Salamanca. We all got to a hotel where we were able to get two pretty-nice suites and talk to the concierge, who I literally adore. He was SO helpful and made me feel better right from the start.

A large group of moderately crazy Italians who were also on our flight were convinced we needed to start immediate legal action against Ryanair and so we got sort of dragged into that by merit of the fact that I was the only one of the group of (now about) 20 who could speak French. I talked to Ryanair’s “service hotline” (what an oxymoron!), got yelled at by the personnel at Montpellier Aeroport, who had already filed a formal complaint against Ryanair for shafting them off with 100 tourists and no aid, and attempted to try to diffuse all the information I was getting through the group. Turned out that Ryanair had officially stated that we had landed safely in Reus, one of their Barcelona airports, and were being bussed to Girona, our original destination. F-ing liars. Gaaaah I HATE RYANAIR.

Anyway, we spent the night in the sphincter of France. Montpellier is apparently so dangerous for women/Americans that the US government advises that they not go out at night, never travel in small groups, stay only on populated, public, well-lit streets…in short, do everything we couldn’t do. If ANYBODY is planning a trip to southern France, don’t go to Montpellier. It is sketchy as all get-out.

After a very intense night of trying to figure out what the heck was going to happen, Peter, Charlie, Coleen, Kate and I pushed all our beds into one big long bed, had a pillow fight/snugglefest/planning session, and ended up having a slumber party for safety in our hotel. We were up again at 6am, at the train station by 6:45, and informed that there was still no way to get to Barcelona at all by about 7:00. We immediately decided to just cancel our Spanish leg of the trip…too much hassle, and to be honest, we all just wanted to get the hell out of Montpellier as soon as was humanly possible. We booked TGV (bullet-train) tickets to Paris, and I’m currently sitting on the train at the station waiting for it to depart.

Part of me is very, very selfishly excited that we are getting two extra days in Paris…but I do feel really bad that we’re missing out on Barcelona. I was so excited to see the Gaudi architecture, Sagrada Familia, etc…but c’est la vie. I think we’re going to try to plan a trip to Normandy for tomorrow if it’s easy/cheap/not too far…we’ll see.

The best part of being in France? Using my French. I am apparently a much better French speaker than I gave myself credit for being. The concierge said my French was “impeccable,” the staff at McDonalds were impressed with the speed and fluency with which I could communicate, and this morning a random older woman in a café said I had “la plus belle accent d’une Americaine qu’elle a jamais entendu…” the most beautiful accent she had ever heard from an American. I’m very content with my skills/abilities and I can’t wait to see what six more days of French speaking will do for me/my comprehension/my speaking ability.

Aaaah. The adventures continue…more updates as soon as I can get them! In the meantime, à plus tard!!

David, Duomos and Domers

2010-03-10T12:59:00.000-08:00

Originally written on Mar 7 2010

I’m sitting in the Pisa airport right now absolutely relishing the fact that we are an hour and a half early for our flight. Even though we got a little lost on the drive back to the airport, we still arrived with plenty of time to ‘prendo una macchiato,’ walk through duty-free shops (my favorite) and catch a quick cat nap at the gate. Mmm, what a contrast to our frantic sprint through Stansted only last Thursday!

Tuscany has absolutely flown by…I can’t believe that in only an hour we’ll be on a flight to Barcelona, the next leg of our adventure! Saturday night the boys cooked us some delicious spaghetti carbonara while they let the ladies shower…what keepers. Dinner was heavenly (duh) and after we finished up Enrica’s daughter Claudia and her boyfriend Lucca came over for some vino and conversation! About five to seven years older than us, they spoke English about as well as we spoke Italian, so there was a lot of hybrid mixing of the languages, asking Peter and Lucca to translate words as we scribbled all over sheets of paper and napkins. Lots of laughter and two bottles of Lucchesi (Lucca region) wine later, we had two wonderful new Italian friends!

Yesterday we got up really early, about 7:15, to get ready to go to Florence for the day. Peter drove us in our lovely Fiat, which we have named Figaro or “Figgy” for short, to Lucca; we caught a 1.5 hour train to Firenze that dropped us right in the heart of the city. Being the good Catholic schoolchildren we are, Mass was first on our order of priorities, and churches are one thing Firenze is not short on! We went to 10:30 Mass at the stunning-beautiful-breathtaking-indescribable Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, colloquially known as Il Duomo. From the outside it’s like spumoni, all green, red and white marble with statues and intricate carving, so I was surprised by the relative austerity and simplicity of the interior…

…until we got under the famous Duomo, constructed by Brunelleschi. Suffice it to say I was breathless for all of Mass and left the Duomo with a crick in my neck that lasted for hours.

Lunch was next on our agenda and we absolutely dominated some amazing Italian pizza…I had “salsicci e carducci,” or sausage-and-onion. Delicious...

Yesterday was the Italian Festival of Women so Coleen, Kate and I got free admission to L’Accademia de Bell’Arti, which is home to Michelangelo’s famous statue of David. We saw some beautiful Renaissance-era religious iconography and then turned into a long hall filled with unfinished Michelangelo sculptures…it was insane to see his works-in-progress and realize just what it takes to create a sculpture of that magnitude. Best of all was the sight of The David at the end of the hallway in the center of a light-filled atrium. Words can’t describe. The veins in his hand, the knuckles on his toes and fingers, the hollows of his neck and planes of his musculature…it is the most stunning thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m pretty sure we spent about twenty minutes just looking, and I came back twice more in the course of our time at the museum. It’s easily the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.

After L’accademia, we shopped the famous Florentine market scene and, between the five of us, left with: a Venetian carnival mask (Kate), an Italian silk tie (Charlie), two Italian soccer scarves (Peter), a watercolor print of the Florentine cityscape (me) and major postcard-age (Coleen). We strolled down to the Ponte Vecchio in the sunshine, shopping a bit along the way at the artisan craftsmen’s shops. Ponte Vecchio was beautiful but everything was WAY out of our price range…still, fun to look.

By this time, we were all pretty tired and getting crabby, but I was determined to get to the top of the Piazzale di Michelangelo to see the view of the Florentine skyline that everybody I’ve talked to has raved about. Sadly, the rest of my group wasn’t too crazy about the idea of walking a mile to climb a huge hill and freeze our butts off looking at a view…but I’m thankful to say they humored me, albeit crankily, and we headed out to la Piazzale. It was a miserable climb…cold but hot, uneven stairs, etc, but the views along the way and the gelato we bought at the top more than made up for it. And then there was the benefit of the view…

After enjoying the gelato and view (and meeting some Notre Dame connections through a SMC transfer student!), we headed back down the Piazzale and walked back to the train station. Tired, cold and ready for a break, we settled in for the two-hour train ride home and completely passed out…then drove around for a while looking for a restaurant until we stumbled upon Il Gattino Bianca, or “The Little White Cat,” where we enjoyed a completely authentic, traditional three-course Italian meal. Oh, Dio mio, words can’t describe, which is the theme of this trip…it was delicious. Highlights were Charlie eating boar meat, Peter’s filleta with truffle oil, and the amazing stuffed calamari Kate and I had…not to mention the to-die-for tiramisu we shared for dessert!

Then it was laundry time, where the misadventures of Team Tuscalonis (our team name, so bad-ass, right?!) to continue…the washing machine was broken and spewed water all over the bathroom, so Kate, Coleen and I did the laundry by hand. I have such a deeper appreciation for the travails of pioneers. J After some chianti and conversation, we collapsed into bed before getting up at 5:30am to say “Arrivederci” to Tuscany!

More updates to come from Barcelona!

Cinque Terre is proof that God exists.

2010-03-10T12:40:00.000-08:00

Written Mar 6, 2010

I know for a fact that it is not possible to describe my day to you, or to make its sheer perfection make sense using words. This kind of feeling, bone-deep contentment that just gets ahold of your soul and makes your whole body radiate, can’t be captured in words. Here goes my paltry attempt.

FIRST, a huge shout-out and thank you to Peter Balestracci for being the catalyst behind this Tuscan paradise of a break. Not only does he speak very good Italian, but he drives like he was born behind a steering wheel, even in the scariest and narrowest of Tuscan roads. He knows his Italian food and wine better than I know my alphabet. He got us our Lucca home for the weekend. Best of all, he comes up with adventures I would never have dreamed up…case in point: today.

We left La Casa Di Iva by about 10:45 and drove through hands-down THE most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen. Peter’s ancestors came from La Spezia, Italy, which is now the naval center of the country and sits on the coast of the Mediterranean. We wound our way up switchbacks and through the mountains to reach Cinque Terre, the most beautiful place in the world. Cinque Terre literally means “five lands,” a reference to the five cities that dot the coastline like pastel jewels. For us, our day started in Rio Maggiore where we left the car (which we named Figaro) for the day. We purchased our trail-and-rail passes and started off on La Via Dell’Amore, or “Lover’s Walk.”…

The boys had purchased some foccacia bread, coppa salami and pecorino cheese so we had a picnic…after climbing down the cliff via some rickety wooden stairs and setting up on a massive boulder in the Mediterranean Sea…shoes and socks came off right away and we climbed down the side of the boulder to dip our feet in….

Then it was back up the trail and walking to the second city, Manarola, my favorite. We spent very little time there because the view of the town from outside it was just so much prettier…

After Manarola we walked a more challenging trail to the third city, Corniglia. After the actual trail ended we climbed a series of switchbacks through vineyards and lemon groves to reach the summit of Corniglia, where we drank a bottle of red wine bottled at a vineyard owned by the restaurant we were visiting, admiring the phenomenal view…

From Corniglia we had to take the train to the fourth town, Vernazza, as the trails weren’t open this early in the season. We got gelato at a specialty shop and had the gelaterro’s two specialty flavors in a homemade cone: crema de Cinque Terre, which was pistachio with hazelnut and chocolate, and crema di Vernazza, lemon gelato with strawberry. While we ate we walked along the jetty, saw some jellyfish, or “di meduzzi,” and climbed the enormous boulders lining the breaker…

All too soon it was time for us to leave beautiful Cinque Terre, and I know that I left an enormous piece of my heart there…I can’t wait to go back and reclaim it someday. Amo, amo, amo Italia! This country has gotten into me and wrapped itself around my heart. It makes me happy to be Italian, even a little bit…just so I can claim a little bit of this beautiful, beautiful place for my own.

si bella. <3

I guess this is what falling in love feels like.

2010-03-08T13:46:00.001-08:00

--originally written on March 6 2010

I am in love with Tuscany. I never want to leave this place. It’s so unbelievably beautiful that words can’t describe it and cameras can’t capture it…but being the determined writer/photographer I am, I’ve kept trying to capture it…

We woke up in Pisa early yesterday morning and left our gorgeous bed and breakfast to go take the obligatory tourist pictures by the Leaning Tower…

Once we had done that to our satisfaction we headed back to the airport to get transport to Lucca. The drive from Pisa to Lucca is super confusing…lots of narrow Italian roads with very little or very unclear signage…but we made it to our tiny town of Massa di Machinaia in just under an hour. The drive was breathtaking…Lucca is nestled in the foothills of the Italian Alps and along the way we could see the snow-cappped peaks in the distance as we drove through them. We passed ancient Roman acqueducts, olive gardens (not cheap Americanized Italian restaurants, the real thing), and villas perched so precariously on the edges of cliffs and peaks of hills that they looked like they were all going to fall off. Churches stood on the corner of every small town street we drove past, and from the switchbacks on the mountain we had to drive through, we could see all of Pisa stretched at the foot, the Leaning Tower sort of tipsily sticking out. What a drive! We were in a state of constant awe at its beauty.

At La Casa Di Iva, the house’s caretaker, Enrica, met us and gave us the keys and the grand tour. The house itself is the most picturesque, crumbly, rustically gorgeous place in the entire world…plunked down on the side of a foothill surrounded by grape arbors, wildflowers and cypress trees, and with the most fantastic views of the Alps. The one drawback to our abode is that it is FREEZING! It’s meant to be a summer vacation spot and the heating system hasn’t been updated since around World War II (just guessing)…so we are spending all our time in the house huddled around the radiators or snuggled under blankets. Still…it’s absolutely fantastic for a home base.

Our first concern was lunch…thankfully there’s a deli-market right down the road from us, so we walked there and Peter, our Italian-speaking GOD and savior for this leg of the trip, ordered us panini with coppa salami and pecorino cheese that the man makes himself (the salami AND the cheese). Best. Lunch. Ever. Every bite was divine. Ahhhh. Then Enrica came and took us to see her family’s apiary (bee-keeping farm) and honey factory…that’s her real job. The bees were all sleeping because it was cold, but we so enjoyed seeing the honey making stuff…and even moreso, getting to taste-test all the different kinds they make! There were honeys made from acacia (very sweet and light), “millefiori,” or “a thousand flowers,” which tasted the most like honey as we think of it, and “melata,” or chestnut…very rich, dark and almost bitter. Mmmm. We all bought small jars to bring with us…they will fit in the airplane’s 100ml rule, yay!

After a completely cut-throat game of Scrabble (which I dominated, as per usual), we headed into Lucca to explore for the afternoon. After some adventures with a car in narrow, narrow streets of the actual town, we found a garage and parked it, then started to wander. Lucca is everything I thought a Tuscan town would be…twisty, turny cobbled streets, picturesque, pastel-stuccoed houses, small markets and shops everywhere, fountains and churches throughout. So beautiful. We had probably the best afternoon of my life wandering around. We found a glass-making shop where the family makes all their own Murano-style glass, and we three girls bought tiny, intricate charms to put on necklaces or bracelets. We found artisan meats and cheeses in delis that we bought to go with our honey for dessert that night (cheese and honey is a Tuscan favorite, apparently), and got giant bottles of Chianti. We visited a few different gelaterias (not pronounced like “cafeteria”) and tried tiramisu, Nutella, “fragola,” or strawberry, black-cherry amaretto, and sugar-cookie gelatos among us. We walked along the Renaissance-era stone-and-earth walls that surround the entire city. We had, in short, the most beautiful and relaxed and generally perfect afternoon of my life.

Last night we feasted like kings, too! The very low price of about 30 euro got us fresh-made spinach-and-ricotta ravioli, homemade pesto, insalata with oil and vinegar, bread with honey, cheese and olive oil, and what felt like endless amounts of chianti and local Italian wine. We ate, drank, and made merry from 6pm when we got home from Lucca until about 10pm, when we were all so tired and content that we decided to go to bed. Even though it was freezing, I slept like a baby in several sweaters/sweatshirts and three blankets…softest pillow in the world.

This morning has been slow and lazy…lots of coffee and snuggling up talking about how much we love this place…although we’re off in about 15 minutes to drive to Cinque Terre, supposedly one of the most beautiful places in the world. Gotta go get ready! Buona sera, mis amicis!

Cabventures, or The Spring Break That Almost Wasn’t

2010-03-08T13:39:00.001-08:00

--originally written on March 4, 2010

What a way to start off the break! Peter, Kate, Charlie and I WERE planning to meet at the courtyard of K-M at 1:30 to go to the Victoria Coach station and catch our bus to Stansted. What a flawed, horrible planning job we did, even with my brilliant 7-page itinerary! Kate was running late, Peter and I had to top up our mobiles, and Charlie had to go back to Parliament. Pete, Kate and I decided to meet them there…Turns out we were misinformed and, in reality:

A: the bus to Stansted took 2 hours instead of 45 minutes

B: the bus to Victoria Station from K-M took an hour

C: We had completely not left enough time to get to Stansted (an hour drive away) in time for our 5:00 flight.

Cue meltdown.

We ran out of the coach station, sprinted up to the first cab we found, and started shouting in utter gibberish that we needed to get to Stansted as fast as we humanly possibly could. The cab driver, who I think should be nominated to sainthood, gave us a discounted rate and absolutely HAULED ASS there…Kate looked at his speedometer at one point and he was going 80 miles per hour down the crazy, narrow English roads. We were absolutely panic-stricken and at one point all held hands and said some very unorthodox prayers to Jesus (involving wishing diarrhea on our pilot to delay the flight, praying that we all arrived, and offering to toast to Jesus with chianti if we made it to Pisa). We got to the airport at 4:30 and immediately sprinted to check-in, where we were [thankfully] rushed through…sprinted to security, where ten people were generous enough to let us cut them in line (this might have been because I was literally on the verge of tears!), and sprinted through the airport to our gate…ALL IN UNDER SEVEN MINUTES. That’s 7. Not 8, 7. So proud of us.

Charlie and Coleen, in the meantime, were doing the orthodox route on the bus after their own set of miscommunications…they had caught it at 2:45 and were therefore running even later than we were, due to the slowness of the bus. (At one point, when we found out that we had caught up to them, Kate and I decided that “This is a race now. It’s ON.” and were total champs.) We were at the gate waiting and waiting for them, and had to get on the flight before we saw them get into the gate. Needless to say, I was utterly panicking thinking that half our group was going to miss the flight…we sat in our seats watching everybody board the flight, waiting and waiting…and finally, the LAST two people on the flight were Charles and Coleen. Thank GOD! We may or may not have said a prayer of thanksgiving…

After the eventful lead-up to the flight, I passed out from sheer exhaustion and slept most of the way to Pisa listening to some Ferris and Cedar Avenue (local MN bands I love). We landed, and got off the flight, and I LOST MY YELLOW UMBRELLA. I am, needless to say, devastated…and am going to go back to the EasyJet terminal tomorrow when we go back to the airport to see if they found it or something…cross your fingers for me. We took the bus to central Pisa and walked to our hostel, which is literally about 50 yards from the Leaning Tower Of. We took some touristy night pictures and headed into the beautiful old villa that is our hostel…it’s called Rélais Under The Tower Hostel and is more like a very ritzy, beautiful old palazzo. There are only eight people staying in our part of the hostel…three Australians and the five of us…and we have a gorgeous room with huge windows, a heavy wood-beamed ceiling, and the cushiest beds I’ve slept on this semester. Ahhhh, all the comforts of a home away from home.

We headed out to do some exploring and had some lamb-and-chicken paninis for 3 euro…so good! Then we walked along the river (I don’t know what river it is…) and hit a few bars to explore the night life. Robbie, the young Australian staying in our hostel, joined us and we had a very fun, chill night. Now we’re all tucked in ready for early bedtime so we can get an early start tomorrow…headed to Lucca and our villa, La Casa Di Iva!! :D I love Italy. I’ve only seen it in the dark so far, but it is unbelievably picturesque, scenic, beautiful, old, breathtaking…I can’t even think of adjectives that can describe its amazingness.

Buona sera, buona sera…Ti amo!

Phil and Lizzie's Excellent Adventures

2010-03-04T00:44:00.000-08:00

Phil Black, one of my best friends from school, is in London visiting from Austria for the week, and I spent yesterday hanging out with him! It's been a very fun 24-36 hours...

He and his travel companion Jon arrived at Farringdon Station around 8pm on Tuesday night and I whisked them back to K-M for a dinner of walnut-gorgonzola tortellini with pesto, garlic bread, salad and strawberry cheesecake for dessert. Gotta love cooking on a Tesco budget...it sounds fancy but cost less than 15 quid for the entire meal. :D We finished up, hung out in my flat for awhile, then decided to head over to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese to introduce Phil to a real English pub. After a half-pint each for the low, low price of 95 pence, we went on our merry way and Phil and Jon returned to their hostel on Russell Square for the night.

Wednesday I started the morning off with class and met the boys at 2:15 for a late lunch in the basement of the London Centre. We then went on an adventure to all Central London's great tourist hotspots...after I purchased a new pair of black flats for only 7pounds at Chockers (I had walked holes into the soles of my old pair!), we goofed around and took lion-riding pictures at Trafalgar Square, then walked down The Mall to Buckingham Palace. After a few jokes about going to go visit the other Lizzie and Phil (that would be the Queen and Prince Philip, duh), we talked to a lovely old man outside the gates who was a Royalist through and through...he LOVED the Queen. A lot. Then we were lucky enough to see the South African president's motorcade heading past Buckingham! He's in visiting for the week, much like Phil, although probably to do more important things than take photos in telephone booths. Which we did next, en route to Big Ben and Parliament.

After a walk around Large Benjamin, down Parliament, and past Westminster Abbey (and one picture-taking interlude with Italian tourists later), we walked back up the Thames in the direction of Embankment Street, passing Whitehall, my favorite building in London, and the memorial to the Battle of Britain, which made Jon very excited. On the road we used to cut back toward Trafalgar we found the Sherlock Holmes pub! So we went in and ordered pint of the Sherlock Holmes Ale on tap. It was good, not remarkable, but the pub's ambiance and the company of friends made it great.

As we were planning on seeing "Avenue Q" last night, we had dinner at a pub called The Captain's Circle (or maybe Corner) right off Piccadilly Circus. Roast beef, steak-and-ale pie, and chicken-chorizo pie made for a great classic English pub dinner which, shockingly, was really delicious. After eating we got our tickets (main floor, row M, centered!) for the show and went to explore Piccadilly Circus for a bit. We checked out Lillywhite's, the Dick's Sporting Goods of the UK only bigger and better, and then headed back for the show.

Oh, my gosh. If you ever have the means or inclination to see a show that will literally make your sides hurt from laughing, "Avenue Q" should be it. It was hilarious. I laughed so hard I teared up. The off-color, totally un-PC humor just made my night, and it was a perfect show to take Phil to, being that he has a moderately off-color, un-PC sense of humor himself. We walked back and got right down to spring break finalizing business when we got home; Phil and Jon were nice enough to just hang out as everybody in the London Program is running around like a bunch of headless chickens getting ready to leave for break today.

Today we're doing the British Museum in the morning, having lunch at Café Saffron to introduce the boys to good British-Indian food, and then I have to bid PBlack goodbye as it's time for me to leave on a jet plane for Tuscany, Barcelona and Paris!! I'll do my best to update this somehow from the Continent, but I will definitely at least be making regular Microsoft Word "blog entries" to publish when I get home.

Have a lovely week, enjoy spring break for those of you who are on it, and I will write soon.

Arrivederci!

amsterblog!

2010-03-03T15:57:00.000-08:00

**This blog is dedicated to Brian, who was mad that my blog posts have dwindled to zero. Brian, enjoy the voluminousness of this post!**

Okay...Amsterdam post time, quickly...I'm on my lunch break right now and it is dwindling rapidly as I stuff my face with pb&j and BBDO chips :)

Martin and I left on Friday afternoon for Stansted, which is an adventure of a train ride away. We got there way too early, so we ended up spending three hours goofing around in the airport, having fun in duty-free stores and playing with toys (meant for children, not Martin and me). Finally, after several delays and three gate changes, we were on our flight and Amsterdam-bound!

Once we landed, we boarded what we thought was the correct train from Schiphol, the Amsterdam airport (which sounds like "shithole" when they say it out loud!), to Amsterdam Centraal, the train station. Turns out we got on a train to Utrecht Centraal instead by mistake...oops! Luckily, our mistake meant we meant an amazing guy named Rico...he was a 42-year old professor of English in Slovakia who gave us so many amazing travel tips and a lot of good advice about what to do and see in Amsterdam. He also told us snippets of his life story, which was fascinating. I love meeting people traveling!

After we found our Christian fundamentalist hostel, which [ironically] was in the heart of the Red Light District, we headed up Zeedijkracht (pronounced "zie-dick-crack") to find some food, and happened to stumble into the oldest gay bar in Amsterdam, Café t'Mandje. We got some amazing dark artisan beer and admired the ambiance...hundreds of photos, postcards, newspaper clippings, and random pieces of memorabilia covered the walls, and cut neckties were draped over every rafter...such a cool place! Martin kept getting hit on by the gay guys, and I talked to two lovely middle-aged lesbians about places to go at night (all they recommended were other gay bars. We didn't go.). We were home and in bed by about 1:30 am, totally exhausted and ready for sleep...but I didn't get to bed until three because...

IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL! My hostel room for four people was populated by me and three junior girls at Miami-Ohio, who a: were in marching band b: knew people in the ND marching band (!!!!!!!!) and c: were VERY excited about all our mutual connections. We stayed up talking about the awesomeness of marching band and comparing notes on who knew who through whom for almost an hour and a half. So much fun, and it was such a pleasant surprise to find people even so far away who knew some of the people who I love dearly. :)

In the morning we got up early in time for the hostel's free breakfast and headed immediately out to the Anne Frank House. Though we thought we were going to make it there quickly, we took a circuitous route, weaving up and down canals and streets exploring the area, so we didn't get there until about 11. Amsterdam is a beautiful city, even in pouring rain (which is what it did all weekend!). Not so beautiful, though, when you're freezing your ass off waiting in an hour-long line to get in the Anne Frank House. Still, it was so worth it...I got a bit shivery and sad when I realized that I was actually standing in the Secret Annex, behind the hidden bookcase, in a room where Anne herself had lived and hid and written and read and dreamed. So surreal. The furniture had all been confiscated by the Nazis after the Franks were discovered, but Anne's bedroom walls were still covered with her newspaper and magazine pictures of film stars and celebrities, her only decoration for two years in hiding. What a mind-blowing, eye-opening experience.

After Anne Frank House, we went to a market on the Prinsengraacht (Prince's Canal), one of the biggest canals in Amsterdam. The best part? Free samples of amazing food! We tried goat-liver sausage, soft and delicious Amsterdam cheese, different kinds of spiced ham and meats, and several different kinds of spreads and dips for rye bread...pesto, tomato, artichoke, etc. A great snack mid-day! We also explored old book-stands and poked through some of the antiques. What a cool little market.

Then we started walking around the city a bit more...we crossed canals, went in the Holland opera-house, visited another market that Rico had recommended, and popped in our first coffee-house. For those who don't know, coffee isn't on the menu in Amsterdam coffee-houses...instead, they sell marijuana and alcohol, and nothing but. The stench of pot was so pervasive in Amsterdam that by the end of the day Saturday smelling it literally made me nauseous. We were in there for about five minutes watching and seeing everything before I needed to leave...gross. We then headed through the Rembrandtsplein, or Rembrandt Square, which is Clubbing Central for Amsterdam. We got hot chocolate at a Heineken bar...random but fun. Martin also caused a huge pedestrian-bicyclist accident...he stepped out into a bike lane, which in Amsterdam are wider than the sidewalks, and knocked a girl a few years older than us off her bike! She was livid and gave us a lecture on how inappropriate and inconsiderate we were and we went off chastised and embarrassed, but admittedly amused.

By now we were freezing cold, soaking wet, and really exhausted, so we popped into a mock Irish pub to watch the last few minutes of the England-Ireland rugby match! Amsterdamians were cheering for both teams, which makes me question how much they actually knew or understood of the game...hmm. Still, they got really excited when Ireland won, and we departed to the sounds of the entire bar singing "Danny Boy." Our last day-visit was to the Bloemenmarkt, a floating flower market on the canals. It was beautiful! Amsterdam, famous for its tulips, outdid itself with a flower market the length of a few city blocks. I loved it…and it smelled absolutely heavenly in the rain!

One of the places recommended to us by Rico was a music center on the other side of the main canal called the Muziekostergraacht or something…I don’t remember at present…which housed a jazz bar called Bimhuis. We decided this sounded awesome, so we went. You have to cross the canal on a giant suspension bridge, which is kind of freaky, and the Bimuis part of the whole complex sticks out of the building like a giant tumor…unsupported, really, and a bit scary to look at. We got our tickets (discounted drastically because I said I was a music student, haha!) and sat down for two hours of some very experimental and odd but cool jazz piano and sax.

Midway through the show I realized I didn’t just feel like crap because I was exhausted and hungry…I was running a pretty extreme fever. Spent the rest of the evening exploring the Red Light District at night with Martin…this deserves a few words. I was expecting the Red Light District to be really scary and sketchy and disgusting and, in a way, it was…but it was very different than I expected. I would call it culture shock in the extreme. You literally walk down a street and there are dozens of women standing in full-length windows in their underwear waiting for customers. I kept having crises of guilt where if I looked I immediately freaked out a bit inside, averted my eyes, and felt like a sinner. By the end of the weekend though it just made me sad…although it was still a huge shock to see it. I can’t imagine anything like it anywhere else in the world.

Sunday: we got up early and went to Dutch Mass at Sanctje Nicklauskerk, or St. Nicholas’s church. St. Nick is the patron saint of children prostitutes, sailors and Amsterdam, so it was cool to go to his church in his patron city. We happened to run into a few more ND students there, which was cool…and just proved again that it is such a small world.

After Mass, which we understood about 0% of, but still really enjoyed, we took a canalboat tour on our way to the Van Gogh Museum. If you are going to Amsterdam, DO NOT DO THIS. It is a RIPOFF and you can experience the canals by walking just as effectively for free. Still, it was pouring rain and we enjoyed being warm and dry on the covered boats for a while.

The Van Gogh museum, for lack of description, is utterly amazing and worth every penny you pay to get in. I so enjoyed working my way through his paintings in chronological order, as they are displayed there…it was such a wonderful way to see his evolution as an artist. I am freshly obsessed with Van Gogh all over again…what a character and what a gifted artist! The paintings just made me want to touch them with their texture and color. Aaah. My favorites were “Sunflowers,” “Almond Trees,” and his self-portrait for the big names, and his series of orchards and hay fields painted in Arles for less well-known ones.

After Van Gogh (where we spent 4 hours!) it was time to head back to Shithole…I mean, Schiphol…to catch our flight home. Of course, Easyjet sucks and our flight was delayed. Which meant another three-to-four-hour hang out in a European airport. I feel like this is going to be the story of our lives on Spring Break…grr…Long story short, we met up with the other ND students on our flight in the airport, played around, and finally got airborne and home in one piece.

Random notes on Amsterdam:

-I never want to smell pot smoke ever again.

-Hostels are really not THAT bad.

-Canal water is filthy and would NOT be fun to swim in.

-Any street name or place name in Amsterdam can somehow be pronounced dirtily.

-If offered advice by locals or experienced travelers, TAKE it. It will be so much cooler than all the touristy shit.

-Pack extra socks. Dry feet are worth it.

-Watch out for bicyclists when walking around an unfamiliar city!

-It IS possible to survive an entire weekend on a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. Not advisable…but possible.

Lunch break=over and so does this blog. Ciao, loves. I’ll try to write once more before spring break but if not, sorry and I’ll talk to you on the flipside!

another little delay and big apology...

2010-03-01T16:06:00.000-08:00

My first trip out of the UK this past weekend, to Amsterdam, was a rousing success! I'm exhausted and in the midst of being more than a little sick, though, so I'm going to forgo blogging the trip until I've a: caught up on a bit of sleep and b: written that philo paper that's lurking in my next few days...

Also, Phil, one of my closest friends from Notre Dame, arrives tomorrow which means blog posts may be short and inconsistent. Then it's SPRING BREAK!

Gah. Maybe I should just declare the next two weeks a vacation from the blogosphere.

I'll do my best to blog Amsterdam in the next 24 hours, and keep you all posted on Phil and Lizzie's Epic Adventures in Londontown! Til next time!

ps: it was BEAUTIFUL here today. i love sunshine. :)

sorry!

2010-02-26T05:34:00.000-08:00

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...

2010-02-23T03:29:00.000-08:00

...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

2010-02-22T09:57:00.000-08:00

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?!

2010-02-21T08:02:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-02-21T03:51:00.000-08:00

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...?

2010-02-18T15:54:00.000-08:00

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...)

2010-02-17T03:10:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-16T03:24:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-15T10:59:00.000-08:00

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...

2010-02-14T14:01:00.000-08:00

...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 :)

2010-02-12T17:20:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-02-10T02:52:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-02-09T14:00:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-08T10:58:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-02-06T02:53:00.000-08:00

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?

2010-02-05T01:37:00.000-08:00

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!"

2010-02-02T14:15:00.000-08:00

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! :)

ancient adventures and a night of birthday fun!

2010-01-31T03:15:00.000-08:00

Our group left K-M yesterday morning around 8:30 to take the first organized program day trip, to Stonehenge and Bath. Kate and I grabbed a seat toward the front and enjoyed the views of London from the bus...a nice change from the constant walking! We were all pretty exhausted, however, and I was asleep soon after we left the limits of the city, although not before watching a bit of the English countryside roll by and realizing that it could literally be Minnesota countryside...I guess farmland is farmland anywhere in the world you go! It made me a bit homesick though...reminded me of the drive to the cabin and I got a bit nostalgic.

Turns out Stonehenge is quite literally in the middle of nowhere, right off the side of a highway...it was so weird to all of a sudden hear Kris, one of our rectors, say, "If you look out the front of the bus it's right in front of us," and to look and just see it there. We disembarked to a frigid 2-degree Celsius (about 34 degrees Fahrenheit, but it felt so much colder in the countryside!) day of more brilliant sunlight. Surrounded by fields of grazing sheep and with a few wisps of cloud in the sky, it was definitely picturesque, but there is literally nothing there except the henges themselves (haha), a small café and a gift shop (of course). After a small snafu regarding where we actually got our passes to enter the site, we were handed our oh-so-ubiquitous audio guides and were off!

I hate to say this and sound disinterested, but after a while Stonehenge was a bit more underwhelming than I thought. It was sort of surreal to actually see it after having seen so many pictures and documentaries and images of it growing up, but the weird thing is that in person, it's exactly like it is in pictures...a big circle of rocks that nobody knows the what, why and how about. That was REALLY frustrating...the whole audio guide just kept stressing over and over again that nobody knows what Stonehenge is for sure, why it was built, who built it or how it was erected. Theories include that it was an ancient sun calendar (reinforced by the position of sunlight coming through the arches each month and a few other rocks' positions), a site of worship, a demonstration of some leader's power...nobody knows though and after a while I got really sick of hearing about that! Not to mention it was SO cold...Stonehenge is at the pinnacle of a hill and we were exposed to all the wind for miles, and England had gotten a light dusting of snow the night before that made walking an icy, mucky mess. Needless to say, we were all excited when our hour and a half at Stonehenge ended and we departed for Bath.

After another hour on the bus to Bath, we hopped off the bus and immediately walked to the site of the Roman Baths, the archaeological excavation of a Roman temple and bathhouse that made Bath itself famous. Weirdly, we were given a random hour to explore Bath itself, so a group of six of us (five girls and Colin!) headed to "The Circus" and "The Royal Crescent," which had been touted to us as the best example of Georgian architecture you could find anywhere in the English countryside. Apparently both sites had been featured in Jane Austen movies and were very well-known. We had a good time at both sites for a bit (the Crescent had an amazing terraced field that would have been perfect for a picnic if it would have been about 20 degrees warmer), and then went off to find a pub to get Anne, our birthday girl, a drink on her 21st! On the way, we happened upon the Jane Austen Centre, and I flipped shit and got really excited before I realized that it cost mega-pounds to go in for what would have been only about 20 more minutes.

Instead, we went to an O'Neills, one of the British chain pubs that ND kids love love, and had a pint (or two, or a few) before heading back to the Baths for our audio-guided (of course) tour. The place was surprisingly cool, although very done-up for tourists...they had people dressed up like ancient Romans walking around the perimeter of the largest of the baths, which was a little weird but interesting, I guess. I really enjoyed it because I'm a nerd and love history and that sort of thing, and there was a lot about the Roman occupation of England back when it was Britannia, one of the outposts of the Roman Empire. I wish we would have had more time to stay, learn, and explore, but we had to be back at the buses to depart by 4:15. Colin and I grabbed a pint of Ben&Jerry's (he had been craving ice cream all day) and made it back to the bus...most popular kids on the trip home, mostly because everybody was jealous of our ingenuity.

The trip back took what felt like FOREVER, mostly because we were all tired, hungry and a little bit travel-worn, and wanted to get back to the flats. It's so weird that coming back to K-M now really does feel like coming home in a sense, especially after a long day trip like that one! We ate a quick dinner and got ready to go out for Anne's birthday...after a GREAT chocolate cake and some cider/wine, we headed to the Charterhouse Bar, right down the street and around the corner from the flats. I spent most of my night conversing (in French!) with Peter's new French friends, Claire and Aurore, who were visiting from Paris for the weekend. Aurore speaks very good English so she and I spent much of the night speaking Franglais, with her speaking English and me speaking French back. It was a mutually beneficial night of language practice (and fun!) for both of us! I really enjoyed meeting them and hope to see more of them over the trip...it was very cool to be able to converse fluently with "real French people" :)

Enough about yesterday, though, today looks like another promising day of sunshine and I am really excited to go explore some more of this gorgeous, enormous, fascinating city I call home for the next few months. I'll update more later, maybe throw some pictures up as well, but London awaits!

submarines, sunsets, and spaghetti carbonara :)

2010-01-29T16:40:00.000-08:00

Well, although I said today was a gray day in London, I turned out to be proven wrong! The sun popped through the clouds around 1pm, and Charlie was gracious enough to invite me to join a group on an excursion to the Imperial War Museum. As skeptical as I was initially (a museum about war?...really, guys?!), it turned out to be a great idea, a great adventure, and a great day.

We left K-M about 2pm and headed toward the Thames in blinding, brilliant sunlight...so pretty, although it was very windy! From our crossing point of the Thames, the view was STUNNING! We could see all the way down to Whitehall/Parliament and the London Eye looking one way, and way up toward Tower Bridge from the other. I was so excited that I just kept exclaiming "Oh my gosh, it's so PRETTY!" like a crazy tourist. The walk to the War Museum was a bit far, but through a very picturesque part of London, a bit more removed from the hustle and bustle of our zone.

The War Museum itself was really cool, although the main section of it was not totally up my alley. It was housed in a beautiful facility that I mistook for a church at first sight (oops), and upon entry the first thing I noticed was the ceiling, hung with real airplanes from World War II...I got very excited, it was...you guessed it...SO PRETTY! :) The ground floor was absolutely littered with tanks, bombs, boats, submarines, etc. I was interested at first, but after a while all tanks are really just tanks, so I went to play in the submarine interactive exhibit that was intended for 12 and unders. Don't judge. I had waaaaaay too much fun in there for an almost-21-year-old!

After the boys had exhausted the ground floor tanks and stuff, we spent a long time in an exhibit I really enjoyed, about "The Children's War," World War II from the perspective of British kids and teens. They talked a lot about the evacuated children who were moved into foster homes to get out of London, and even had a real-size example of a typical country English home of the time...I really enjoyed it. The anecdotes and stories of the children looking back, however, were my favorite...there was such a range of opinion, so many different perspectives and attitudes and stories to be told...I love that. I absolutely love learning about what people thought and did and felt, especially at such a turbulent and difficult time as World War II. What an era to come of age in!

We left the War Museum around 4pm to walk home, and quickly got distracted by the absolutely BEAUTIFUL sunset over the Thames. I'm not kidding, it was radiant. Colin and I stopped and took about 20 pictures each over the Thames with Whitehall, the Eye, and the bank of the river in the background, silhouetted against an absolutely flaming-ly gorgeous sky. So amazing...I will probably never get over the beauty of this place!

Then it was time for the second of (hopefully) many Minerva Flat 3/4 dinners. Tom was our chef this time and, after a complicated miscommunication where nobody actually bought stuff to cook, made the most. delicious. ever. spaghetti carbonara...noodles with eggy, buttery delicious sauce, covered in fresh-grated Parmesan cheese with bacon, peppers, salt and pepper and all manner of deliciousness. I shamelessly chowed down and had seconds too. Sticky toffee pudding with ice cream, and two three-liters of Strongbow Cider completed the meal, and much great conversation was had along the way. What a great night with great people! It's our turn to cook next time and I think Nicole's going to whip out a recipe for shrimp gumbo...my taste buds anxiously await :)

After dinner we headed down to our favorite local pub, The City Pride, for karaoke night. It was a huge Domer-Bomb, as at least 50 of us took over the establishment to sing ND classics like Taylor Swift's "Love Story," Bon Jovi's "Livin' On A Prayer," Journey's "Don't Stop Believing," and most importantly Billy Joel's "Piano Man." Anne's 21st was at the stroke of midnight and Isaac decided to request that the DJ play Happy Birthday...but we instead got this super weird version of a birthday song for Martin Luther King Jr. all about world peace and harmony...it was absolutely hilarious, and none of us could stop laughing!

Tomorrow is a really big day though...our group is off to Stonehenge and Bath for a day trip! I'm sure I will have much to blog about and a lot to say after the fact but for now, goodnight dear world. Sweet dreams all!

heels that make you feel like a bad-ass in the morning...

2010-01-29T03:08:00.000-08:00

...make you feel like a dumb-ass at night. Lesson learned!

Yesterday was a BBDO day for me, after my awesome Opera in London class! We spent the session wrapping up our study of "The Rake's Progress," before we go see it next week, then discussed Mozart and Wagner briefly. We got to listen to a few excerpts from Mozart's "Don Giovanni" (very fast, very bright, very much sung in Italian!) and Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" (the orchestration was SO evocative and beautiful!). Then it was off to BBDO for the day!

Uneventful day at work. I finished up Sarbanes-Oxley testing with Tom, then went on to get my lesson in PSA tax documentation with Stephan, who is quickly becoming a friend as well as a co-worker :) The PSA is a document that tracks the whole company's expense claims and determines what is taxable, for how much, and who should pay that tax. Since BBDO is a company that deals with so many different people and countries, it's fascinating and complex to consider some of the tax issues the company encounters. This will be my primary project for the rest of the semester, as the tax season in England ends in early April!

Here comes the part where I make poor life choices...ready? Brace yourselves...

Yesterday morning I woke up and it was a beautiful sunny (for England) day, so I decided I would be fine without carrying my umbrella. Mistake #1. As I had to intern, I needed to dress up a bit, so I grabbed out black pants only to realize that I would need to wear heels with them so the cuffs didn't drag on the sidewalk and get ruined...so I grabbed my "sensible," "comfortable" heels out of my tiny little wardrobe and set off for class! As the sun was shining and the day was beautiful, there were a lot of people out and about and I was feeling pretty on top of the world...funny how a little sunshine can do that to ya...I was even asked to give directions for the first time, and I was able to do it!! (Granted, they were directions to the British Museum, which was only about three blocks away from where we were at the time, but STILL. And it was an English woman who asked me, which just made it better!) It was so temperate and nice that I was able to take off my heavy coat and walk to class in just my blazer and blouse, and my feet were doing fine at that point...at that point. I was in love with the world and having a really great day, Trafalgar Square is gorgeous in the sun, and everything was going right.

After work, Katie, an ND intern with BBDO's finance team, was planning to walk to Tottenham Court Road to meet a friend from elsewhere who was also in London. As my Oyster Card (tube pass) was really low on funds, I decided now would be a good time to learn the walk back to the flats from BBDO. MISTAKE #2, PEOPLE. Let's take a minute to analyze the flaws with this rhetoric:
1. I have heels on, and am challenged at walking even on a normal day in heels.
2. For those of you not familiar with the streets of central London, Tottenham Court Road is NOWHERE near the flats and involves walking almost all the way back to the London Centre, then doubling back to get to Kamen-Minerva.
3. I have heels on. Yes, that is such a poor life choice it gets mentioned twice.

So we walked, and I was doing fine at first...we were walking through a really affluent part of town then turned onto BAKER STREET, as in Sherlock Holmes :) which made me very excited and happy, and then onto Oxford Street, the big shopping one. It started to rain as soon as we passed Selfridges, though, and I started slipping...London sidewalks are notorious for loose paving-stones, grates, and uneven brickwork. Oh dear. The combination of heels that quickly became painful at the end of the day, rain that started as a drizzle and turned into a deluge, and only having a moderate sense of where I was going quickly turned this happy camper into that kid who just wants to go home.

Long story short, we left BBDO at 5:30 sharp, and I didn't get back to the flats until 7PM! Katie got to Tottenham Court Road okay, I had to walk about another half-mile further after that to double back, and even speed-walking in an attempt to get home quickly and get out of the rain, a 4-mile walk (yes, folks...FOUR miles) in heels is never fun. Lesson learned. I will never again walk home from work (or anywhere, for that matter) in heels. Gah.

Having said that, we did decide to go out last night and visit a bar we'd been to last Thursday, The Rocket. It's a very cool, relaxed bar with awesome music and pool tables (!) that lots of students from all over the world frequent. I ended up getting into a pool match with a new British friend, Martin, and he kicked my ass...British pool is really different from American pool, played on much smaller tables with a very short cue and some really odd quirky rules! I also met a girl from UNC, Ellie, and we exchanged numbers so hopefully I'll be seeing both of them again!

Now it's a gray Friday and I'm debating whether I want to subject my blistery feet to more walking or give them a bit of a break...maybe down to the Caffé Nero for some homework and hot chocolate? :) More news to come later, I'm sure...
Ciao for now, lovelies!

alone in the flat and in a bloggy mood :)

2010-01-28T03:23:00.000-08:00

Good morning! It's currently 11:00 on Thursday a.m. and I am so happy this morning...everything is sort of going my way right now. Classes are shockingly easy compared to the ND equivalents I would be taking...probably means I'm in for a bitch of a senior year, but that's fine and it is totally worth it to be here. I'm starting to figure things out around here and this place is really starting to feel like "home," which is so weird because up until now it's kind of felt like a very odd vacation.

The primary reason I'm so happy? Last night a group of us started preliminary planning for our SPRING BREAK, and all I can say is that it is going to be absolutely, unbelievably epic. Thanks to a series of weird and fortunate coincidences, we started off with one plan (which, yes, would have been awesome) and ended up with a totally different, totally awesome plan. Peter, one of the three guys in our group of six, happens to have a former teacher with a villa in Tuscany (here's where you pause, breathe in, breathe out and read that sentence again. A VILLA. In TUSCANY.), which we would be able to get for one of the weekends of our break. We'll be starting our travels there, flying into Pisa, Italy (as in, Leaning Tower of!) and traveling to Lucca, the location of our villa for the weekend. From Lucca we can conveniently day-trip to Florence (about an hour), Pisa (about 1/2 an hour) and Cinque Terre, not to mention the gorgeous Tuscan countryside...we're in the heart of Chianti Country and does that ever sound good!

After several days in Tuscany, we were looking into going to Nice, France (near Cannes, Monaco, etc), but then we discovered that it is pretty much impossible to get anywhere from Nice for a reasonable price...so we started frantic-searching for somewhere to go from Pisa. I'll admit there were more than a few moments of panic, and my stress level came somewhere near going through the roof, but with the help of a little 1.50 pound wine and some ingenuity on RyanAir, I happened on a flight from Pisa to Barcelona, Spain...for only 22 euro per person!! (For those of you unfamiliar with the costs/intricacies of flying around Europe: it CAN be done cheaply, but Barcelona has...until now...seemed to be one of those places that are impossible to get to for a reasonable price.) I immediately started freaking out; it seemed too good to be true but fortunately it WAS true, and we will be spending the next three days of our spring break on the beautiful streets and beaches of Barcelona!! I can't wait to see the place, everybody I've talked to has said it's beautiful.

After the three days in Barcelona, we will be finishing up our journey in what I personally think is the best most wonderful amazing possible way imaginable...with four days in........

PARIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I found us flights from Barcelona to Paris for 10 euro apiece. I seriously almost had a heart attack with excitement. One thing that I had been really worried about was seeing everything I want to see in Paris with only a weekend to do it. Now it seems like that will be totally possible...four complete days in the city I've been obsessed with seeing for...hmm, I don't know, most of my adolescent and young-adult LIFE?! I can't wait to sit down and spend some quality time with Google planning this leg of the trip!

As I said, though, this is all preliminary, and needs way better/more thorough planning. Thankfully, I think we've got a really solid travel group with pretty similar interests and desires re: how we want to spend our time in these amazing cities, so I have a feeling that once we can sit down and really hammer out details, everything will come together beautifully. :) I am honest-to-goodness SO excited and thrilled about this that I can hardly articulate it. The best part is that it's looking like we will be able to do this trip so cheaply from the standpoint of traveling and living arrangements that I will be able to add a weekend trip somewhere I wanted to go but didn't think was fiscally possible, so I'm really excited to start looking into travel to Prague, Germany, or Austria. This spring break brings the list of places I will be going to:

-Pisa, Italy
-Florence, Italy
-Tuscany/Cinque Terre, Italy
-Venice, Italy
-Rome, Italy
-Paris, France
-Barcelona, Spain

And that's only over Spring Break and Easter!! :) I definitely want to make it to somewhere like Prague or Germany or Austria to get a taste of somewhere NOT Romance-Language-speaking, Westerny, etc. Aaah. Life is molto bene, très bien, muy bueno, VERY good.

I do have to leave for class in about half an hour though, so I am going to go make myself a sandwich and some carrots and a banana or something for a quick lunch before leaving the flats. Have a lovely day (once you all wake up, haha!) and remember to mind the gap. :)

A bit of jiggery-pokery at BBDO

2010-01-26T12:26:00.000-08:00

Hi all, sorry it's been a few days but life got CRAZY yesterday! Mondays are my longest day at BBDO so far (in from 9:30-1:30), and in honor of that, Tom Krailing, the accountant who is chiefly in charge of ethics compliance and internal controls, started me off on my first assignment with teeth: performing the 4th-quarter Sarbanes-Oxley compliance audits for the company!! Needless to say, it has been a pretty crazy 48 hours between that, my PriceWaterhouse class, and regular class on top of it all.

Sarbanes-Oxley is already the bane of my existence, and I'm not even a real accountant yet! Since BBDO is a European company held under an American parent firm (Omnicom Media, the biggest media and marketing company in the world...), they still have to perform SBox audits (as they call it here, opposed to SarbOx in the US). This means a bit of a headache for everybody involved, especially as Omnicom designs the SBox testing for all their companies as if all their companies were specifically focused on advertising and marketing...which BBDO Europe is not.

What BBDO Europe IS, is the money-handler and sieve through which all funds in Europe are dispersed, collected, accounted for and allotted to every branch of BBDO in Europe, Africa and Asia. It's a bit nuts, needless to say, when I look over books I'm audit-checking and see that the balances in these accounts are for millions, even billions, of pounds, euro, dollars and God-only-knows what else...sort of weird to think about.

Anyway, I digress. The tests involve me printing off the long, long list of every invoice BBDO has received or issued between Oct and Dec of 2009. (To put this in perspective: the lists simply numbering the invoices printed out to 50 pages each. TONS of invoices.) Then I go online, get assigned random numbers that I have to match to invoices, and have to check that each invoice matches and complies with a series of controls, such as who has signed off on them, who is being billed for the invoice, whether the invoices were entered into the appropriate ledgers at the appropriate times, etc. There are five tests for accounts receivable and five for accounts payable, and it took me literally all day yesterday and today to get just THREE tests done :( This is going to be a huge project for me! Still, it's fun, challenging and is offering me a great look into how real companies have to deal with Sarbanes-Oxley, which is such a huge part of accounting all over the world today.

On a less boring, accounting-y note, I LOVE "Images of Britain Through The Arts!" This is the mandatory class that all students in the London Program have to take, and involves a once-a-week seminar about the various forms of art (painting, music, film, theater, opera, dance, etc.), as well as two half-semester classes on two of these art forms. Today I had my seminar AND my first-half class, Opera In London. The seminar professor is super-energetic and fascinating...today we discussed the phenomenon of celebrity/power/fame/glamour and how the media can inflame that, then framed that by discussing Princess Diana's death and the AWESOME movie "The Queen." If you haven't seen it I highly recommend it! In Opera In London, we spend every class listening to and discussing the plot of the first opera we will be seeing, "The Rake's Progress" by Stravinsky. It's phenomenal, and I can't wait to see it live. The class also includes a backstage tour of the Covent Garden Operahouse, which is going to be so cool I may just die of cardiac arrest and excitement.

Hmm, I think I've written enough for now and I have another 1/2 a Facebook photo album to tag and caption, so I'm going to be done for now! Sorry this particular entry is so BBDO-ey and so light on actual London fun, but I promise I will be better next time and not bore you all to tears with the tales of a struggle-fest intern :) Cheerio!

I walked 6.5 miles today and it's only 3:30pm...

2010-01-24T08:50:00.000-08:00

So last night we were all so tired that we had a very quiet, laid-back night...I was in bed relatively early and got a lot of sleep, which was nice. Today we decided to go to Speaker's Corner, this public forum every Sunday in Hyde Park where anybody can stand on a ladder or soapbox and talk about anything he or she wants to...and more importantly (and amusingly, and at times scarily!), anybody observing can argue with, heckle or rain verbal abuse upon anybody speaking! It sounded like it was sure to be an interesting deal, so we decided to check it out.

Charlie, Coleen, Michael and I, however, didn't really know how to get straight to Hyde Park, so we took a really circuitous route to get there! First, we walked to Trafalgar Square (1.7 miles). Then we crossed and headed down to Buckingham Palace, right in time to see the Changing of the Guard happen (.9 miles)...the Changing of the Guard was really cool, their band played ABBA and the Olympic theme, which was random, but it was fun. Then we walked along the Buckingham Palace Gardens to get to Hyde Park...tons of runners, people walking dogs, and small children, very cute (1.5 miles). We were finally there!

At first I was disappointed because I was expecting a lot more speakers and a lot more crowd interaction, but it picked up once we Americans got thrown in the mix! Michael was out for blood and loved arguing with the speakers, especially this radical Muslim guy who hated the U.S. and blamed all earthly ills in the Middle East on the U.S. and Hitler (??) being on a quest to rob them of their oil and natural resources. Michael got right up in his face and pissed some people off pretty badly, which was my cue to make an exit with Coleen. We went to listen to another guy who turned out to be totally pornographic, talking about a bunch of really awkward and uncomfortable stuff...so we tried to make a quick exit from there as well. Instead, Jamie (another ND student) and I ended up talking to this 71-year old guy about sex, love, friendship, and...the economy?...for about twenty minutes.

At this point I had had enough of Speaker's Corner and all of the insanity people were spouting off, so Coleen and I crossed the street to one of the 234872265917245572 Pret à Manger cafés in London. Prets are like the Starbucks of the UK...all organic, fresh-made sandwiches, soups, and pastries/bakery items with fair-trade coffee drinks to go with it. Being on the budget we're on, Coleen got a 1.30 coffee and I got a can of "organic grapeseed and elderflower sparkling beverage"
for 99pence, and we ate our own, pre-packed lunches. Mmm!

Then Charlie came and met us, and we began the walk BACK to the flats...right through the heart of one of London's shopping districts, Oxford Street. Temptation was strong, but apart from a little window-shopping in cool British stores (and the FOUR h&m's we saw on the way!), we managed to refrain from any shopping...I think Charlie was grateful. Before we knew it we were back on the route we usually take to school, and were soon home (2.4 miles). Now I'm sipping tea and finishing up some reading for class (well, actually I'm not reading, I'm writing this, but I WILL be reading soon!), before hopefully cooking something yummy for dinner...who knows? :)

Long post short: Speaker's Corner was a kind of scary radical deal that was not what I was expecting. Pret à Manger is ubiquitous and looks delicious. And I walked really far today. Woo!

a day-trip adventure!

2010-01-23T10:48:00.000-08:00

Hello! Sorry for the lack of recent updates...after a very tiring Thursday day (and night), my first class-free Friday was spent hiding from the rain in cafés and doing lots of homework to free up my weekend for...

WINDSOR CASTLE!!

That's right folks, my first day trip was to visit the one-and-only Windsor. Aaah I was so excited, especially after a brief but incredibly amazing visit over senior year with the LSHS Band. This time, we traveled in a group of 5 instead of 50, which helped sooo much. An early, early morning saw me and the rest of our adventurers (Peter, Coleen, Charlie and Colin!) leaving Kamen-Minerva and taking my internship tube route to Paddington Station (as in Paddington Bear, Paddington Station...so cute!). I was stressed we weren't going to find our train in such a huge place, but we got it fine and it was seriously nicer inside than most airplanes. A transfer at Slough put us at Windsor by 11:00 after only a half-hour by train and only 8 pounds! Best deal ever.

We immediately warmed up with coffee at the ubiquitous Caffé Nero and hustled over to the Lower Ward just in time for the Changing of the Guard...there was a lot of pomp, circumstance and bagpiping, but the whole deal lasted only about five minutes. Still, it was really cool to see it there, and I can't wait to go watch it at Buckingham, where I've heard it's a much bigger production. Then we purchased our tickets and witnessed the Domer-bombing (ND takeover) of Windsor...apart from our group of five we saw at least two other groups of 4-6 and a huge group of about 10-12. Still, we kept to ourselves and had a guided tour of the exterior of the castle, including all the gardens and a ton of the history of the castle's evolution. It was right up my alley, being the history nerd and Anglophile that I am...everything fascinated me so much! I wish I had the time, energy and inclination to write about all the awesome little factoids and stories we learned, but there was literally just so much covered that it would take its own post to do it justice. The history of the Order of the Garter, the stories of the castle's defense strategies and sieges, tales of QE II's state entertaining and banquets, and so much talk about the 1992 fire that destroyed many of the State Departments were just a few topics that were touched upon!

Then we went in the actual castle and started off with Queen Mary's ridiculous dollhouse (doll PALACE, more like it), which has running water, working electricity, real wine in the wine cellar and to-scale replicas of many pieces of art, furniture and decoration actually in Windsor Castle. I'm not even kidding, I could have spent hours looking at that alone. Then we saw Queen Elizabeth's childhood dolls, France and Marianne...gifts from the royal family of France. No big deal or anything, they just had Cartier jewelry and couture clothing by all the major designers of the time. (Jealous? Oh yeah. My American Girl doll collection looks so insignificant now...ha!) After dolls of all kinds, we saw a selection of Queen Liz's china services...she has 48 sets apparently, each with over EIGHT HUNDRED pieces. No joke. And all of them are so intricate, so gold-covered and 100% hand-painted and made. Really makes our flats' Ikea dinnerware look classy! ;)

The next stop was the "grand foyer," which was decorated with hundreds of ornamental weapons and dozens of suits of armor and prizes from various countries in the former British Empire. After that it all starts to blur into this epic progression of rooms that were so grandiose...the chandeliers! The carved ceilings! The stained-glass windows! The priceless art! The gilded furniture! Every room was so ornate and massive that it seriously just floored me. I've never felt so insignificant in my life...or so American! Highlights:

-the Waterloo room, which commemorates the victory over Napoleon with a portrait series of every major mover or shaker involved in his defeat. Enormous.
-the room (I forget the name) with Hans Holbein the Younger's portraits of all the Tudors...Henry VIII, Edward, Mary and most awesomely, the portrait of 13-year old Elizabeth I that I've always loved. My heart seriously almost stopped!
-the musical clock specially designed to play selections from Handel while a coach-and-six rotates around the top. Absolute genius engineering and craftsmanship!
-the King's bedroom, where one of the Napoleonic descendants and his wife stayed...
-the room with all the solid silver furniture. Yes...SOLID silver furniture.
-Murals commissioned by Charles II on the ceilings of his private dining chamber and his wife's receiving gallery. Aaah...I got a crick in my neck from staring up for so long and marveling.
-The Grand Gallery or whatever where all the shields of every member EVER of the Order of the Garter hang. There have been 1,001 members to date, including every monarch of Britain...the most recent member is HRH Prince William (yum!). The room was completely destroyed by the Fire of 1992, but the restoration is 100% authentic and used the techniques that were used by the original medieval masons and woodcarvers. All the shields of disgraced or dishonored knights have been replaced by plain white shields instead...a lot of those from the Tudor era! The room itself is just such an enormous, impressive spectacle...we spent a good 45 minutes in there alone just talking to one of the wardens of Windsor Castle...she told us some amazing stories about some of the characters whose shields hang there!
-The room where the fire actually started...it's all stone now, and contains one of QE II's state thrones, as well as a suit of armor belonging to Henry VIII...fat old bastard ;)
-Speaking of Henry VIII, there was a special exhibit on to commemorate the 500th anniversary of his ascendancy to the throne...featuring artwork by all the great masters of his time. I saw works by DaVinci, Canaletto, Rubens, Holbein...I can't even remember all of them, but it was just flooring to be face to face with a real DaVinci especially...he was SUCH a genius!!
-St. George's Chapel. It's played host to a lot of royal weddings, funerals and every Order of the Garter ceremony from its completion in the 1500s onward. Entombed within were six or seven of the monarchs of England, including Henry VIII (one of my faves!) and Jane Seymour, Charles I (with his head stitched back on after being beheaded in the 1600s!), and the Queen Mother and King George. It was such a humbling and impressive place...organ music absolutely thundering out of the most beautiful and ornate organ I think I've ever seen, and tombs in the floor dating back as far as Henry VIII's reign...I accidentally stepped on Charles Brandon's tomb. Aaaaaaah Charles Brandon. As in, Henry VIII's best friend and the husband of his sister Princess Mary. (I'm not obsessed or anything.)
-Getting the requisite English picture with a Royal Guard!!! :D

We concluded our epic adventure (literally, four hours in the castle and then some more time in St. George's Chapel!) with our first fish and chips of the semester! I hate to say it, but I wasn't impressed...although the chips part was really good. Mushy peas, on the other hand, are slightly more appetizing than they look. Slightly.

Now after another quick train/tube trip back, I'm curled up at home on our tartan plaid couch nursing some sore and tired feet! We got a really cool book about the castle for 5 pounds (1 pound each from the 5 of us!) and I think I'm going to go continue my nerd-out and read that...lol. All in all, an EXCELLENT adventure and great way to start our travels outside London! Cheerio good friends!

revising plans

2010-01-21T01:54:00.000-08:00

Good morning!
Well after a very frustrating night of trying to plan international trips, I'm coming to realize I was way too ambitious in making that previous list...all those supposed "cheap" airlines? Yep, not cheap. I looked up Rome flights last night and it was close to $150 (about 120 pounds) for a round trip. And that's just one weekend!

Now I'm sitting here after a lusciously long night of sleep (first one yet!) trying to narrow down where I want to travel. Paris is still top of my list (duh), and I really do want to go to the South of France at some point too because I've heard it's beautiful. As far as Italy, thanks to my awesomely flexible schedule in Holy Week, I can get to Venice on Holy Thursday, which just leaves Florence in that country that I really want to see, along with any other exploring I can do. Amsterdam I can take or leave, despite how amazing everybody has said it is...the idea of legal marijuana, which is apparently its main attraction, just doesn't do it for me. Spain is still high on my list, as is Prague, but I just don't know if I'll make it to Germany or Ireland on this schedule and budget. Gahhh. I think there will be much more UK touristing for this on-a-budget collegiate...

On that note, time to get ready for a morning at the British Museum, followed by my Opera in London class and another exciting afternoon at BBDO. Let me know if there's anywhere you think I should absolutely not miss!

ten things i miss

2010-01-20T12:08:00.000-08:00

1. my bed.
-The beds here are the worst I've ever slept on. The pillows are about three inches thick and harder than rocks, and the mattress is worn so thin that every spring stabs through and pokes you while you sleep. Not to mention we don't actually have a flat sheet, just a fitted sheet and duvet, sans cover. Ew. I am seriously going to go to Ikea and get a nicer pillow and maybe cheap sheets this weekend.
2. water pressure.
-Actually, good, American showers in general. It's like a comedy every morning as I try to avoid getting scalded, then frozen...wash the suds out of my hair (it takes literally five whole minutes, no joke)...and get clean. The water is more a trickle than a spray...sadness. lol, I miss my big shower and the consistent water temperature.
3. 50-minute classes.
-Today I had two three-hour classes back-to-back. Ew. Granted, they meet once a week, but still...the marathon is so unpleasant.
4. texting.
-We have phones without the full keyboard, and I didn't realize how accustomed I'd become to typing all my texts like that until we had to start using t9 again...oh brutal adjustment!
5. my mom and dad.
-Don't know what the deal is today...I'm just super tired and I want my mom and dad. I really hope they get over here to visit, it sounds like everybody else's parents are and I don't think I can go 4 months without seeing them... :/
6. the convenience of the dining hall.
-Today, a group of us walked a half hour from class (which ended at 5) to Sainsbury's, the grocery store, then another half hour back to the flats. Then we had to wait like another hour while we got everything ready and cooked. I was SO. FAMISHED. After all the walking we've been doing, I'm always starving at mealtime and it always takes forever. As much as we complain about it, SDH was sooooo convenient.
7. normal peanut butter.
-the peanut butter here is reallyreallyREALLY salty. It's gross.
8. quiet.
-Our flats front right on a very busy street, and it is no joke 24/7 traffic noise. I'm sure I'll get used to it but right now it's very grating.
9. "The Bachelor."
-don't you dare judge.
10. downtime.
-It's constantly go-go-go here, which on the one hand I really like because we can do and see so much and there just simply IS so much to see...but I am legitimately on the move from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to bed. I'd love a night to just sit down with a good book and relax...hmm.

Lol, sorry to be a downer-whiner, but I've been ruminating on this stuff for the past couple days on the endless walks back and forth between K-M and the London Centre...and to be honest, the only reason I made a "ten things i miss" list is because the "things i love" list would be too long for a blog post. :)

Tonight, we're going to sit down and hammer out our international travel plans! The pow-wow is happening soon and my ideas are:
-Paris!!!! (duh.)
-Southern France (Nice, Marseille)
-Northern France (the Loire castle region)
-Spain (Barcelona, Seville)
-Edinborough, Scotland
-Italy (Rome, Florence, Venice)
-Austria (to see Philip M. Black, another duh.)
-Prague (because every single European I've talked to has said "Visit Prague" first of anything...)
-Germany (Munich? I really don't know. Germany's lower on my list because I'd rather go to Austria.)

That's all I'm thinking for international right now. I think I want to spend spring break somewhere unique, but I also think I want to spend a lot of time in France, Spain and Italy, which is tough because a spring break would be the perfect time to go more in-depth on those countries. And that's not even counting the weekend trips I want to do around the UK...I really want to go to Jane Austen's house, the Lake District, and maybe a weekend somewhere in Ireland. And of course, Scotland is technically a bus trip away only. Gah! So many decisions!

business as usual, literally...

2010-01-19T13:08:00.000-08:00

Two days of class and interning down, and there is much to tell about my wild and crazy life here! I finally have time to sit down with some yummy yummy Twinings tea (totally addicted) and catch up on cleaning, email and Facebook, and...of course...blogging.

First, BBDO. Aaaaah, BBDO. I'm still somewhat intimidated by the fact that I'm having my first internship with THE largest international marketing corporation in the world...at their European headquarters, moreover. Thankfully, everybody has been working to ease me in with baby steps...today I got to stick labels on envelopes and do some filing...ooh, glamorous, right? More significantly, however, I also got to register invoices for hundreds of thousands of Euro and pounds...help with investigating a top exec's suspiciously expensive travel account (apparently she had been flying home to Germany lots and lots, and using business class when she was only allowed to use her corporate account on economy seats)...and celebrate the CFO's birthday.

My boss scares the shit out of me, to put it lightly...she is VERY much the epitome of the "stiff upper lip," prim and proper, reserved Brit we all see portrayed on TV shows, and I really truly think she doesn't much like me, but fortunately everybody else in the office is absolutely wonderful. My cubicle mate and...well, for lack of a better word, handler, Stephen Claridge, is SUCH a gem...he's only a bit older than us and has been with BBDO for a year...he lives right in our borough so he knows all the fun bars, pubs and restaurants, and would rather chat my ear off than get any work done. I also have another ND intern in our cubicle, so that will be fun and make the atmosphere a bit more social. All the male employees are ridiculously adorable, look like they stepped out of a Polo ad, and love to stop by the intern cubicle and chat about our experiences. And the ladies!! All the BBDO girls are Tinkerbell-sized, have the shiniest most perfect hair I've ever seen, and dress like a fashion spread from the latest French Vogue. I'm craving some black ankle boots, big thick-knit cardigans, and cute shirtdresses...aaah it's like the uniform de jour there.

I'll be spending one full day and two half-days every week at BBDO until spring break. After that it ramps up a bit to two full days and a half-day as needed, as they are entering their tax season, a nightmare for an international company of BBDO's size! I'm enjoying it so far as much as I can be expected to on the first few headachy days, and I know I'm going to learn, see, and do a lot there.

The other business-y thing I have of note is my Accountancy in the UK class, which met for the first of six times last night. It's run in conjunction with and under the supervision of PriceWaterhouseCoopersUK, and our class sessions are all at their London headquarters. Located about 45 minutes from Trafalgar and the London Centre, the place is SO posh. Aaaaaah like...SO posh. No words. I want to move in and just sleep in the conference room under the table and never come home. Anyway, Paul and Lawson are our two teachers, and are also responsible for training 4000 of the 15000 PwC employees in Europe. Not intimidating or anything. :/ Thankfully they are both fantastic...Paul has the most gorgeous Scottish accent, Lawson is from Chicago, and they interact so sarcastically that the class won't be bad at all. The best part? They gave us free alcohol. Lots and LOTS of free alcohol, in fact, as the majority of our first day was a drinks/snacks reception. One major discovery that the men of the program were really excited about was meat-flavored potato chips...I seriously think that was the primary topic of conversation for a good six or seven minutes of cocktail hour. It's going to be an awesome networking opportunity and a really good way to get to know some of the accounting majors better, as it's a very groups-based class.

Long post short: I am an intern-slash-office bitch. I have mad labeling and filing skills. And PriceWaterhouseCoopers is awesome. And young British businessmen/women are my new favorite people ever. :) Now my tea is getting cold and I have a fun night ahead of me, so cheerio loves and I will get in touch soon...assuming my feet ever touch the ground and I come down to Earth again!

the weekend update: issue #1

2010-01-17T14:51:00.000-08:00

**WARNING: EXTREMELY LONG POST. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.**

My last blog was Friday afternoon, so I'll start with what happened after that: registering for classes! I'm taking fifteen of what will probably (hopefully?) be the easiest credits ever...if not, oh well! My internship counts as a class, and then I am taking macroeconomics, Philosophy of Law, Images of Britain Through The Arts (a required course for every student here!), and Accountancy in the UK, which is a five-session program run by PriceWaterhouseCooper Britain. So excited! After registering I went exploring a bit between our classroom centre and our flats, got groceries with the roommates, and we made grilled cheese and couscous (very gourmet) for dinner. Friday night was Ember night...Ember is a bar that is actually really close to where we live, although we got so lost trying to find it that you would never have known! Best mojitos I've ever had, and we accidentally crashed a private party in the basement that was being thrown by Jay-Sean's sister...random.

Saturday was another day of acclimation and preparation for the semester. It was pouring rain all day, and freezing cold (by London standards, NOT Minnesota or South Bend!), so we spent as much of the day as possible trying to stay dry and warm. Highlights:
-The British Museum!! It's imposingly enormous and utterly beautiful...it takes up an entire city block and has exhibits on every major ancient region and society, from Egypt to Greece and Rome to China and Japan and everything in between. We only spent about an hour and a half there, and covered maybe a tenth of the museum, seeing lots of amazing things...the mummies (of humans and animals, weird) were super cool but creeped me out a bit.
-Lunch in Chinatown: London's Chinatown district is on our way to school and has a huge variety of very CHEAP restaurants (our favorite). I had chicken and fried rice that was amazing, and we learned that restaurants in Europe don't bring your check until you ask for it...after about an hour of waiting for it!
-Covent Garden: We got really lost coming home from Chinatown and stumbled upon the Covent Garden Market on the way. It was a huge partially-indoor market of art, fruit and vegetables, clothing and accessories, etc. with live music and street performers. So lively and exciting! We watched a street performer whose schtick was that she could juggle butcher knives while hanging upside down from a trapeze...I almost died of fright/awe.
-WE FOUND DRURY LANE. I know where the Muffin Man lives. He's done well for himself.
-The first Minerva 3/4 dinner party! The lovely gentlemen who live across the hall from us in Minerva 3 offered to pay for the groceries it would take to make a "family" dinner, if the ladies of Minerva 4 would cook it. We made amazing sweet-chili chicken and vegetable stir-fry, and had some wine and cheese before dinner. Highlight was the amazing sticky-toffee pudding cakes we had for dessert...and Katie eating an entire one all by herself. Definitely a tradition we will be continuing!
-Lexington Bar: our first real London bar experience. Much more mixing with the locals and tasting of more unique ales and lagers. The bar itself was like clubbing in your grandma's living room...weird but very pretty/cool.

Today: EPIC TOURISTING!
We got up to find that the temperature had gone WAY up and the sun was shining beautifully...the perfect day to do the cliché tourist stuff.
-We went to Trafalgar Square and explored the environs that will be our between-class playplace...SO pretty, especially with the sunshine streaming down.
-Then we walked down the National Mall from Trafalgar to Buckingham Palace!! So pretty and an excellent route to run, which will be happening this semester for sure. The Mall is where a lot of high-powered people live, including Prince Charles and Camilla. Buckingham was sooo gorgeous in the sun with all the gold trimming on the gates and fountain. We took pictures and generally made touristy fools out of ourselves, especially jumping in for random photos with the bicycle emergency response crews :)
-After Buckingham, off to BIG BEN and Parliament! Right on the Thames...perfect day to do it. The walk there is through a beautiful, historic, government and military district, and we passed so many places I'd read about in my nerdy historical-fiction books...Whitehall Palace is stunning. Big Ben is...well, big. And gold. And incredibly exhilarating. I took about 139847287564 pictures...Parliament is also beautiful...the building is just so imposing and impressive, fronting right on the river; I just stood there thinking WOW for about five minutes before I even started looking around.
-The obligatory phone-booth photoshoot totally happened today. Don't judge me.
-Mass at the oldest continuously-existing Catholic church in London...very old, very pretty, very comforting. Our program chaplain is the cutest old man, every time I see him I just get the urge to hug him.
-Got epically lost with Isaac in the LEGAL district...it was totally deserted and creepy but I am going to go back when it's light out (and populated!) to see it in action, it looked really expansive and interesting.
-Pub dinner at Knights Templar...great traditional British food and the coolest bathrooms ever, no joke.
-Vikings-Cowboys game at The City Pride, which I think is rapidly becoming our local pub. I was the only Vikes fan in a large group of Cowboys-lovers, and we taught the Brits in attendance all about the intricacies of each team, including the epic saga of Brett Favre. They all thought he was "a tosser" for being so flip-floppy. I laughed.

That's all for now folks, you may officially breathe a sigh of relief. If you made it through this epic blogathon, you deserve a pat on the back :) I'm absolutely exhausted and have to get some sleep before I start my internship (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) tomorrow...I promise I'll update sooner and more concisely next time! Goodnight! :)

[insert tourist moment here]

2010-01-15T08:59:00.000-08:00

I had lunch in a cemetery today.

Not a literal cemetery, to be fair...after our extensive morning session of orientation, rules-and-regulations review (now that we're all awake), and preparation for the semester from heaven, a group of us went to lunch at "The Crypt at St. Martin of the Field." At the recommendation of the lovely program librarian, Miss Alice, we decided to check it out in lieu of a more conservative option like Pret à Manger (which is like a D'amico and Sons). Turns out it is literally a CRYPT...a subterranean chamber where they buried people a few centuries ago. You pass this beautiful old church, St. Martin's, and then go into a very modern glass-and steel sphere that spirals down underground. We stepped out expecting more modernity and it was like we had entered a different world...vaulted stone-and brick ceilings that looked like something you would see in "Shakespeare in Love," a ten-degree temperature drop, and...when you looked down...laid-in gravestones dating back at least 150-200 years. I was a little bit weirded out by the thought of eating my innocent, modern lunch above a bunch of dead people, but I guess it was just the epitome of everything I'm so fascinated with about London...the juxtaposition of the old and new.

I'm nerding out hardcore over all the amazing old architecture and the landmarks that I've read about in books and seen briefly from the tour bus senior year...but then there's all this stunning, avant-garde new construction, not to mention post-WWII concrete-block towers crammed in right next to the charming tippy-looking old buildings...it's just a dream for anybody as attracted to the aesthetically unique as I am.

I also had my first true tourist moment spaz this morning: four of us, Joanie, Chelsea, Kelly and myself, were SO desperate for caffeine as true jet lag started to set in, so we decided to get coffee at Caffé Nero (the Italian version of Starbucks!) somewhere near the London Centre. First off, we took a wrong turn on the way to the Centre, so we ended up coming out totally unexpectedly RIGHT into Trafalgar Square just as the sun oh-so-poetically popped out of a few clouds and came shining down...we absolutely froze and all of a sudden I saw Big Ben and the Parliament building, sparkling in the distance on the horizon between a few buildings. I immediately did the most American, touristy thing possible: literally started jumping up and down like a child and pointed and blurted out at the top of my lungs: "OHMYGODYOUGUYSLOOKIT'SBIGBEN!" in a totally unintelligible jibberish top-speed gush. We all proceeded to start like...jumping up and down together and hugging and twirling and being all like "Omg. We're actually here. LONDON AAAAAAAH!" :)

It was one of those moments that you could have taken as a snapshot in your mind...and kept forever...my first real quintessential moment of bone-deep, heart-pounding utter contentment and excitement about what the next four months holds. I guess it was just then at that very moment that I realized that this is my HOME now and that I am going to do and see so much here. I know I sound like such a broken record, but this place and this experience and everything I'm doing is just such an enormous adventure that I still have barely wrapped my head around it.

Pictures will come in a post soon...I can't find my camera cord in the mélange of stuff I have still got to find a place for...Now it's time to go grocery-shop with the flatmates. I'm sure that me, cooking, will prompt a hilarious/embarrassing plethora of stories for me to publish!! Til then, lots of love from your very own international adventurer! ;)

"this is the beginning of a GREAT adventure."

2010-01-14T13:21:00.000-08:00

Okay, to preface this post, I am so jet-lagged right now I can hardly see straight, so if something in here doesn't make sense, cut me a little slack :)

LONDON!!! I'm here! I can't even believe it, to be honest it's still so surreal that I catch myself doing double-takes every time something catches my eye, ear, or nose ;) I left MSP yesterday at 2:30 after arriving far too early and ditching to go to the Mall of America with Mom and Dad. Thankfully the flight went according to plan, because my layover in Chicago turned out to be much shorter than I thought it was! Before I knew it we were boarding and I was sitting in a window seat (!!) next to a 30-something Bon Jovi lookalike (that's a good thing) who was telling me about his career as one of the corporate pilots for the Saudi royal family (this is just the tip of the randomness iceberg, folks). After a restless night of attempted sleep and a viewing of "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Cars," we finally landed at Heathrow at 7am as scheduled! Funny story: the pilot pulled the plane up to where he was supposed to but for some reason the landing crew couldn't seem to get the deplaning gate to line up where it was supposed to. A comedy of errors ensued for the next half hour while we weary travelers all waited (not-so) patiently (in my case anyway) to get the show on the road. Finally we were off, through Customs very painlessly, and entering a pouring-rain soggy London morning! I had forgotten how crazy the drivers were and how disorienting the switched-road thing is...I was a nervous Nellie the whole time we were en route to the flats.

They're really very nice, actually, considering that they're located very centrally in London! I'm in a flat with four other girls...my direct roommate is Kelly, while Joanie and Nicole share the other double bedroom and Ellen is in the middle in a single room. We have a darling little kitchen and some VERY classy tartan plaid couches. The sink drips and one of the toilets seems to be a little funky, but this will be a great home base for the next four months!!

After some unpacking adventures (Mom, thank you SO much for making me pack less, I still have almost too much!), we all departed for the 40-minute walk to the London Centre, where Notre Dame's London branch is housed. The walk, which I will be making every day, takes us through a major theater district as well as past Piccadilly Circus, through Chinatown, and by some majorly beautiful scenery. The Centre itself is a 1907-built BEAUTIFUL building full of big windows, high crown moldings and vaulted ceilings, but it's like a maze trying to get around there! It will definitely be an adventure.

We all dozed off (and fought valiantly against real sleep) in the afternoon info session...I can honestly say I don't remember a single thing they covered, although the sensation of my head nodding and jerking as I tried not to fall asleep will be unforgettable. All the interns had their first session of info after afternoon session and I'm really looking forward to starting with BBDO next week! Then we got our ghetto little early-00's cell phones (haha) and had an epic adventure navigating home without using a map (we made it, thanks to our landmarking by pubs, theaters and cute restaurants!).

By this point, we were so tired we just wanted to collapse and die, but it was only about 6pm, so we headed out for some nosh at a pub down the street from our flats. Called "The City Pride," it was so adorable and cliché British...we all had pints of Strongbow Cider and some really yummy pub food...burgers and fish and chips (SUCH good chips!). After a really fun game of trivia, we headed back and now I'm sitting in bed trying to synthesize such a long and awesomely full, crazy day. Some thoughts/lessons so far:

-Having a passport in your hand makes you feel so adult and at the same time so young. I love the sense of power and sophistication...passports are so legit.
-When offered the choice between chicken and vegetarian pasta on a trans-atlantic flight, NEVER pick the chicken. NEVER.
-Ambien or Lunesta or something might have seriously helped alleviate the "it's impossible to sleep on planes" curse.
-Landmarking based on notable bars, pubs and cafés is an excellent life practice.
-Cider is stronger than it tastes.
-Digestive biscuits are not in fact meant to help digestively-challenged people...digest. They're really quite delicious actually.
-Always check that the tops of nail polish bottles are screwed on tightly before tossing them in with shower supplies.
-Make sure you know important things like how to lock your flat, the access code to your flat complex, and where the fire exits are located at all times.
-If your goal is to blend in, it's best not to walk the streets exclaiming "Oh my god...that's so cute!" and "Oh my god, look at that!" every thirty seconds.

More to follow...this sleepy-eyed girl is going to call it a night! Cheerio :)

thinking about walruses.

2010-01-12T21:12:00.000-08:00

With less than twelve hours until I leave for MSP to fly to ORD to fly to HEATHROW...I'm chasing around my room like a chicken with its head cut off, utterly and completely worrying myself into a frenzy.

I'm worrying about exchange rates and direct deposits. I'm worrying about getting germs or something at hostels and having to cook and not being able to remember French. And missing home/ND and forgetting my stuffed bunny and losing my passport. And sucking at my internship and getting robbed and getting lost. And missing the Sunday night curfew and registering for classes and not spending too much...

I didn't realize what a variety of things there were to spaz utterly about when leaving the country for four months. Eep. So here I am sitting on iChat (for like the last time in four months if it doesn't work in Europe, heh) spazzing to my wonderful friend Brian the Trumpet Player, and he tells me to think about walruses if I start freaking out. Naturally, my response was "walruses...what???" He explained (partially facetiously) that walruses were "BEST ANIMAL EVER" with "their big goofy tusks" so I Googled walruses and it made me smile.

I know I'm being ridiculous. I won't lose my passport (if I'm careful) or spend too much (if I stay away from Harrod's) or forget French (if I think before speaking) or starve (if I find friends who CAN cook) or suck at my internship (if I work my ass off) or get lost (if I ever learn how to read a map). I'm a capable person, and I'm going to London for the best experience of my life.

I can do this, and in my heart of hearts I know that...so I need to just take a chill pill, drink some water, watch some shallow TV and go to bed. Tomorrow will be the beginning of the biggest adventure I've ever had, and I AM ready. My passport and visa letter are packed, I have an adapter-thing for the plugs, my camera and iPod and laptop are all charged, I got a great new backpack, and I seriously have a few minute, non-crucial things to do tomorrow. On that note, the chill pills are calling and there's a Season 2 episode of "Gossip Girl" with my name on it waiting. Next time I write it will be from the UK!!! Can't wait :)

two days...

2010-01-11T12:07:00.000-08:00

...and it still doesn't feel quite real. I'm sitting in my room surrounded by piles of t-shirts, and all I can think is that I'm packing for four months that will probably be some of the best months of my life...four months that don't feel like they should be here already! I'm so excited when I think about all the awesome experiences I'm going to have, but I'm also completely panic-stricken contemplating everything that could go WRONG, even just in the next 72 hours. What if I lose an important travel document? What if my flight gets delayed? What if my luggage doesn't get there? What if I get lost? Aaah...the possibilities for a worrywart like me are endless, which is stressful.

More stressful, at least now, is trying to get PACKED! For being as sartorially obsessed as I am, trying to fit four months of fashion into two suitcases is going to take a Herculean effort. Especially considering that London and other places I'm planning to visit (cough...France!!!...) are known for being major fashion capitals. Now I know that nobody expects a college student studying abroad to be the last word in style, but I like to dress well...and studying in Europe won't change that ;) Right now it's sifting through t-shirts, and soon it will be getting internship-worthy outfits put together. I'm sure I'll overpack...but such is life.

I'm also getting together all the important things...my health insurance card, official visa (!!!!), letters for border-crossing, all the internship information I've received...and it's finally sort of kind of starting to feel real. I just got the biggest anticipatory knot in my stomach...EEEEP. After a whole YEAR of waiting for this, and preparing for this, and getting everything as ready to go as I could...it's just around the corner. I CAN'T WAIT!!