City Life

I have officially been at Vandon for a week! Time is already flying by, as I knew it would.  So here goes.

Tuesday morning we had an intercultural training session with a woman from Scotland.  It...could have been really good.  She had some really great points but it lasted so long, and everyone was still so tired.  That afternoon I had my advising appointment, and then the programme took us out for pizza and bowling.  I thought that seemed a little too American for London, but it turned out to be really fun.  Quite a few of us went to a pub afterwards, which was a good way for everyone to relax and finally open up.
Wednesday was my internship interview/meeting/whatever you want to call it.  Another girl found out last minute that she is at the same place at me, so we went together.  We took the tube to the centre of the new Olympic Park, where the magazine's temporary offices are.  We were early, so we wandered around the new shopping centre there and looked around a bit.  Then we met Julie, who I guess you could call our boss.  She is adorable. The Olympic Park area is currently a restricted area (which apparently means we can't walk around..?) so she drove us to the office.  Their office is actually just in a community work space, which is something I learned about in my entrepreneurship class last semester.  It's this really hip/trendy renovated industrial building that small businesses and entrepreneurs can pay a daily or monthly fee to use.  There was an art gallery and a cafe, where Julie took us for tea.  The magazine is actually run by Julie and her daughter Beth (whose real name is actually Lucy Elizabeth--crazy!), who is actually only a year older than I am.  And...they write the entire thing.  They have a team that does ad sales and a company prints it for them, but the writing and layout is all them, which I think is amazing. It is a small magazine, but it runs once every two weeks.  Anyway, Holly (the other girl from Central) and I had a lovely chat with the pair of them.  Then they took us into Central London for a couple of errands for the magazine, which included picking up a packet from Wigmore Hall (a major concert hall) and dropping something off at the bank.  Then Beth took us to lunch at Pret, a nice sandwich shop, and then she decided she just had to walk us through Selfridges, an extremely high end department store.  And that was my day.  It was completely not what I had expected, but I'm more than excited to work with them.  Holly and I will be doing different things every week, from running errands to going to shows and festivals to writing articles (that will be published!!!).  I really am looking forward to it.

Thursday Abby and I took some of the other girls shopping at Oxford Street.  Actually, they overslept so we went to Covent Garden first and had lunch.  We just sat on the curb, eating our sandwiches, hanging out in Covent Garden like it was no big deal.  Then we went to Oxford Street.  It was a lot of fun, but so exhausting! That evening one of the boys had this whole big surprise walk planned, so I went just for the fun of it.  There were eight of us I think.  We ended up getting off at Millennium Bridge, which has a beautiful skyline view of the city.  I had my first yay London! moment..finally.  The city at night always gets me.  Then we went to a couple of historical pubs on the South Bank--it was a good evening.

Friday we had our first British Experience seminar at Birkbeck College, which is part of the University of London.  They gave us a quick tour of the Student Union, and then we were back to Vandon for our scavenger hunt around the city.  I was in a group with two sophomore boys, and it went pretty well.  We had to go to Brick Lane in the East End, up to St. Pancras Station, back to St. Paul's Cathedral, down to Hamley's toy shop, over to South Kensington to the Natural History Museum, and back to Vandon House.  I am happy to say I got us on all the right trains and to all the right places.  The only issue came at the very end, when there was a signal failure at one station that caused two entire tube lines to be shut down.  So we detoured back, but only ended up being ten minutes late.  And just to brag, MY TEAM WON.  That's right.  We have a cash prize coming next week and I'm more than a little proud of the three of us!  That evening we went out to the pub at the Student Union at the University of London, which was a lot of fun.  We had quite the adventure figuring out the bus system on the way back, but we made it safely.

Saturday was a very lazy day; I think Abby and I only left our room to have lunch and to make supper.  Today we made lunch and then decided to wander around the parks.  We are literally less than five minutes walk from Buckingham Palace, so all of the parks are right there.  We walked through St. James Park, had coffee, and then rented bikes and rode all through Hyde Park.  It was lovely--and since it's only a pound to rent a bike for the day, I will definitely be going back.

I have one sad note for the week.  Mum called me on Saturday to let me know that my Grandad, her dad, had passed away that morning.  I was planning on going to see him with Aunt Jenny this weekend, which made it even harder to hear.  Jenny said that it was all very peaceful, and it probably was time.  He hadn't been well for a long time, and he wasn't going to get better.  Still.  So Mum will be coming to England this weekend, and the funeral will be sometime that following week.  It's definitely not the reason I wanted her to have to come, but it's one of those mixed blessing things.

I'm sorry that this was so long and a lot of information at once, but I'm trying to keep everyone updated on everything.  Hope all is well with you, wherever you are in the world :)

much love
Lucy