Lazy Mornings

Yesterday was Sunday, but it felt like a Saturday to me because it was the start of my weekend (ie no internship). We turned the clocks back an hour on Saturday night, so for the next week, London is only 4 hours ahead of the US, rather than 5. Next week, the US will turn its clocks back, and things will be back to normal. I don't like the turning back of the clocks because now it will be getting dark so early in the evenings. I know that happens in Boston, but it always gives me more sunlight in the morning, whereas here, the sun was already up when I woke up. So I'm not a fan of London daylight savings.

Yesterday I had to register for next semester's classes at 9am Eastern Standard Time (and it was rather confusing -- with the daylight savings time -- to figure out what London time I would register). So I had to be at my computer at 1pm. I slept in late and puttered around. After I registered, I tried to take a shower, but the water was cold. So I waited a few hours and got a hot shower around 3. I went to see an Italian film in the London Film Festival at 6:30. It was called "My Brother is an Only Child." It was about Italy in the 1960s, fascism vs. communism within a family and community. It was OK, but I think some of it went over my head, either because of the language/cultural barrier, or because I don't know enough about that time period in Italy. I liked "A Secret" better. On Wednesday (Halloween), I am going to another film. So I will not be dressing up or going out for Halloween. It's probably better that way because I have my internship the next morning.

Today I slept in and was woken up (as I am every Monday morning) by a testing of the fire alarm system. It is a joyous way to wake, let me tell you. God forbid there ever was a fire on a Monday morning -- no one would get out of bed for it.

Tomorrow is the day our boiler is supposed to be fixed and I am so excited for hot water anytime! I think I might go to Harrod's tomorrow. I also need to drop off my laundry. I've gone almost 4 weeks without doing laundry -- a new record. If I play my cards right, I'll only have to do laundry twice more in London.

OK well I think that's about all that's going on here. Yay Red Sox!

Friday Night

So the past 2 days, I was actually given something to work on -- however, both days it was given to me late in the afternoon, and so I got out of work late. Yesterday I finished at 6:30, but today I didn't leave the office until 7:48. I had been doing number-crunching/data analysis for 5 hours and was practically delirious by the time I left. I mean, I'm happy I made a contribution and had actual work to do, but I sat at my desk for hours being bored, and then had to stay late. Couldn't they spread my assignments out better?

Being on a Sunday paper is hard because during the week, sometimes your stories get taken by dailies and then you have to come up with new stories and start from scratch. Hence, a lot of work is wasted and a lot of Fridays and Saturdays involve tons of work. I never would want to work on a Sunday paper again. And if all papers are like this, then maybe I'm in the wrong field. I'd rather find this out now than later.

The Party's Over

Well the past week has been a whirlwind of my internship and my parents (and one class). I have barely had time to breathe, but I've had so much fun exploring London. I'm really happy my parents came; I was glad to see them, and it gave me the opportunity to do so many touristy things in a short period of time. On Sunday, my parents and I went to the British Museum. It was huge, and there were a ton of things to see, including the Rosetta stone and this famous cat sculpture of a god.

It was small and cute, but had ear and nose piercings. Weird.

After the museum, we did the London Eye. It was so much fun and the sights were beautiful. I'm really glad we decided to go on the Eye at night.

View of London from the Eye

Looking Down on the London Eye from a Capsule

Parliament and Big Ben from the London Eye

A London Eye Capsule

View of London from the Eye

View of London from the Eye

Parliament and Big Ben

Mom and Dad on the Eye

Mom and Me on the Eye

On Monday, I had class in the afternoon, but I met up with my parents to see a film called "A Secret" in the London Film Festival. The film was in French with subtitles. It was a great story and very well done. The only problem was that the film machine had broken, so they showed the movie in DVD format. Because of this, they offered everyone a free movie pass to see a show of their choice. My parents gave me their passes, so now I can go see 3 movies (or 1 with 2 friends). Score! (And I wouldn't have even noticed that it was DVD format haha.)

Today, my parents and I took tours of St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey. They were both huge and beautiful and ornate. At St. Paul's, we climbed to the top of the dome (well my mom only made it to the second gallery). It was a lot like the Duomo in Florence. First, you climbed to the top of the inside of the church and could walk around. There was supposed to be a "Whispering Gallery" where if you whispered against one wall, people on the opposite side could hear you. We couldn't get this to work, unfortunately. Then, we climbed up to the next gallery, which gave us a great view of London. (This was especially nice because it was during the daytime, as opposed to our nighttime trip on the Eye.)

View from the first gallery

View from the first gallery

View from the first gallery

Then my dad and I continued on to the top gallery, but my mom didn't like the open, rickety staircases, so she stopped. My dad didn't like the top gallery (it was high and very crowded), so we didn't stay there long.

View from the higher gallery

Me on the higher gallery (You can kind of see Tower Bridge to the left of my ear.)


Me on the higher gallery (You can see the top of the Gherkin (building shaped like a pickle) to the right of my forehead.

Lots of famous dead people were buried/memorialized at Westminster Abbey. We couldn't take pictures inside, but some people I remember seeing plaques to are: Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Isaac Newton, Handel, Lewis Carroll, Shakespeare, Winston Churchill, Rudyard Kipling.

Westminster Abbey

Side of Westminster Abbey

After the Abbey tour, we stopped in a pub for lunch/dinner and then we decided to go to King's Cross Station. What is at King's Cross Station? you may ask. Why, Platform 9 3/4, of course -- only the direct route to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!

Platform 9 3/4

Me attempting to go to Hogwarts. I got the cart halfway in the wall, but it just wouldn't go any further!

The Platform (OK, so the cart is already halfway in the wall. You caught me; I'm a Muggle.)

After the disappointing attempts to break through the concrete and make our way to Hogwarts, we decided to try to find the British Library, so that my mom (who is a librarian) could at least tell her friends she had seen it. Now, it was about 7pm, so we assumed the library would be closed and we would snap a picture of it and be on our merry way. However, today was our lucky day because the library closes at 6:00pm everyday-- EXCEPT Tuesdays, which was today. So we went inside the library and they had a museum-ish room, which held, among other things, one of the 4 original copies of the Magna Carta, the papers upon which the Beatles originally hand-wrote some of their lyrics, and the original handwriting of famous authors' books (including the bane of my 9th-grade existence, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. [Shudder.]). It was a cool exhibit and they had lots of famous people's work.

So it has been a very exciting few days! England lost the rugby World Cup to South Africa. I watched the game on Saturday night with some of my friends. It was a boring game; England didn't ever seem to have a fighting chance. But, the same night, the Red Sox clinched their place in the World Series, so all was well with the world. (Well, with my world, anyway -- I'm sure many Brits were disappointed.) Oh, and the water boiler broke in my building on Sunday. And apparently it won't be fixed for 2 - 3 more days. Originally, they told us they needed to replace a part, but now they have to put in a new boiler. So we'll all have lukewarm/low-pressure showers for the next 2 -3 days. Lovely. I can't help thinking that if this happened in Boston, it would have been fixed by yesterday at the latest. I miss the USA.

Well, tomorrow, it's back to work, maybe some grocery shopping, and then saying good-bye to my parents, who are leaving on Thursday morning. (They are going to Stonehenge, Bath, and Windsor Castle tomorrow.) I will miss them; we had a lot of fun. But I'm here for less than 2 more months, and there are still so many things I'd like to see and do. I know the time will fly by and I'm happy that I'll be home for Christmastime!

Life as an Intern

So things at my internship got better after the first day. Reporters have started asking me to do research for them (usually very tedious/menial/boring tasks, but that's better than nothing at all or being asked to get coffee). I still find that I have a good 2 - 3 hours of downtime everyday, during which I read the day's newspapers and try not to fall asleep at my desk. The office atmosphere is weird; it's so quiet all the time. I think people are afraid to talk. The highest-up editor is intimidating and likes to yell at people and humiliate them. So people try to stay on his good side. Everyone is either always busy or pretending to be busy. I was told by both Helen and Chris that on Tuesdays and Wednesdays it's acceptable to go out for lunch, but it's taboo to do so on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, because you should be busy, and if you're not, you at least should try to look busy. lol.

I'm having a lot of fun with my parents. We went to a pub for dinner on Wednesday night. We all had a drink together for the first time ever. And last night we saw Mary Poppins. I loved it. The sets were amazing and the music was great. The plot strayed from the movie, but it was still good. Tonight we went on a Jack the Ripper tour of London. It was ok, but I had heard amazing reviews, so I was expecting something more. It was fun for what it was, though.

I have to work tomorrow (Saturday) unfortunately. So I will have worked 5 days this week and gone to a 4-hour class one day. Yuck. Starting next week, I will have Tuesdays off. This is only fair because the BU program only requires us to work 4 days a week. Plus, Tuesdays are dead at the Sunday Times anyway, so it works out fine. Tomorrow is the Rugby World Cup: England v. South Africa. Although I've never seen a rugby game, I have done so much research on the World Cup in the past few days that I've picked up some of the rules and I've decided that I want to marry Jonny Wilkinson.

Now I must go off to bed. Working takes up my whole day. :-(

First Day At My Internship

Today was the first day of my internship, and it was not at all what I had expected. I arrived and checked in with Kathleen. She took me over to the news desks and introduced me to Colleen, who assigned me to sit at the desk of someone who was on holiday. Kathleen left, and Colleen told me that Tuesdays were slow and everyone is just trolling for stories, so I should do that, too. So, for about 6 hours, I read every British and American news website. I couldn’t think of any stories – anything I found had already been done, or someone else had discovered it. So that was a frustrating few hours. Throughout the day, I introduced myself to three people: Helen (another intern), Sarah Kate (a reporter), and Steve (a reporter). Jack and Chris (reporters) came over and introduced themselves to me. There were a lot of people in the news area, but most of them ignored me (which Kathleen had warned me about). I understand that they’re busy, but I also didn’t want to disturb them. I’ll try to introduce myself to more people as the week goes on.

For lunch today, Chris invited me to go with him to get a sandwich. We chatted about me and my studies and how he lived in Barcelona. It was a nice break from stalking the news websites. And then around 4:00pm, Helen asked me to help her research British education programs – I enjoyed that because I was actually being productive. We had to print out articles and highlight the parts relevant to our assignment.

At the end of the day, I checked in with Kathleen and asked her about working out a weekday I could have off so that I don’t have to work 5 days a week. She said Tuesday would probably be best, so I guess that means I’m working 5 days this week. At least I won’t have to sit in the office bored on Tuesdays, like I did for most of today.

Pictures

or copy and paste the link below into your browser:

http://picasaweb.google.com/valpal95/FallBreak2007ItalyAndSpain

Fall Break 2007: Part V: Barcelona

Barcelona was a lot different from Italy. Our B&B was actually someone's home and we shared 2 bathrooms with the people in three other rooms. Our host's name was Ferran and he was very friendly and helpful. He gave us his mobile phone number and told us he considers his guests friends and will help them out with whatever they need. He advised us of good places to eat, told us how to get to the beach, and lent us sunblock and sarongs. He was great.

When we first arrived, Ferran gave us a map of the city and pointed out good places to go. For dinner, he told us of a tapas restaurant. We went there and had to wait 50 minutes for a table, but it was so worth it.

The next day (Friday), we walked around and explored the city. We walked down La Rambla, which was pretty disappointing. There were street performers and tons of tourists and American restaurants, but that was about it. We walked all the way to the Barcelona shore and saw the water. Then we walked around the Gothic area and saw the Cathedral (but we didn't want to take a tour) and we toured the Picasso Museum. For dinner, we went to a great seafood restaurant on the water (Ferran's suggestion).

On Saturday, we went to the beach. We took the Metro to the train station and took a train to Sitges beach. The weather was beautiful and made me wish I'd brought my bathing suit. (Although, European beaches are very free and any amount of clothing is acceptable. A lot of people wear literally nothing at the beach. So it was quite an interesting experience.) The sand was so soft and the water was blue and glittery. It was beautiful. Unfortunately, while at the beach, my Venetian glass necklace broke, and I'm pretty sure the glass fell into the Mediterranean. I was sad, but glad I still had the earrings.

We stopped for lunch in a little restaurant, and the service was really not that great. Italian service was much better, but in reality, the US really has the best customer service I've experienced. The waitress came over to take our order while Katie was in the bathroom and seemed annoyed when we asked for a few more minutes. Also, I think she understood and spoke more English than she let on, and enjoyed seeing us flounder with Spanish. So that was a disappointing lunch.

We went back to our B&B, showered and took quick naps, and then headed out to explore Barceloneta. We were hoping to do some shopping, but the neighborhood was mostly restaurants. We stopped in a bar and had a few drinks and hung out for awhile. Then we went dinner at a seafood restaurant. The food was delicious, but the people next to us were obnoxious and made fun of us throughout the meal, probably because we were American and didn't speak Spanish. I think they thought we didn't know they were mocking us, but it was pretty obvious. I discreetly spit out a fish bone into my napkin, and they thought that was hysterical. At another point, Katie finished a sentence with "in the summer" and the woman next to her started singing "in the summertime, when the weather is hot." Then when our waiter came over to tell us desserts, he said it in English and made a big deal about it, and the people next to us thought it was hysterical. And our waiter was on their side and laughed with them at us. It was really rude. We had planned to go out afterwards, but that put a damper on our night and it was already 10:30, so we just went back to the B&B.

On Sunday (yesterday), we went to Park Guell, the Gaudi Museum, and La Sagrada Familia. I love Gaudi's architecture! Park Guell was beautiful. We wandered around it for over an hour. The Gaudi museum was in his former house and held pieces of furniture he used and/or built. It was interesting. And La Sagrada Familia was amazing. It is huge. Construction on it began in 1882 and is still ongoing. Everything about it is so detailed and so... Gaudi. Gaudi is very creative and definitely thinks outside the box.

After this, we were tired and ready to go home. We got to the airport 4 hours early (around 6pm) and finally arrived in London Luton at 11:10pm. The customs line took forever (45 minutes) to get through. Then we still had an hour-long bus ride back to Victoria, where we could've taken a bus home, but we decided to take a cab instead, since it was 11 pounds split between 3 people and we were tired. We arrived back at our dorm around 1:30am and we walked in the door and the security guard said, "Hey did you just come from Barcelona?" and we said "Yeah! How did you know that?" He looked shocked and told us that he just picked a city out of the air and it happened to be the right one. lol. I called my parents when I went home and then went to bed.

Then I woke up this morning and had class at 2. It's back to real life now. My internship starts on Tuesday and my parents are coming then, too, so I'm excited!

Fall Break 2007: Part IV: Venice

After a peaceful train ride, we arrived in Venice around 5:30 on Wednesday. We took a water boat to the Bed and Breakfast Venezia. The woman who ran it only spoke Italian, but had an employee Roberto who spoke English. Roberto wasn't there when we checked in, but Diana translated what the woman told us. Our room was very nice and clean. We walked around Venice, which is beautiful and looked in some shops.

On Thursday, we did some hardcore souvenir shopping. I got earrings and a necklace made of Venetian glass and picked up some Christmas presents. Venetian glass is beautiful! We only had time for lunch before we had to make our way to the airport. The downside of booking with RyanAir (a discount airline) is that the airports they fly to are nowhere near the city centers. They do provide transportation to the airports, but it takes awhile to get there. To get to the Venice airport Treviso, we had to take a 40-minute train ride and a half-hour bus ride.

Venice was great, and I almost wish we had more time there; however, there wasn't much to do, so we probably would have gotten bored easily. I would love to return to Venice when I'm older and in need of a relaxing, romantic vacation.

Fall Break 2007: Part III: Florence

The train ride to Florence was only an hour and a half. It was very relaxing. When we got to Florence, we had trouble figuring out what bus stop to get out of. Not as many people in Florence spoke English. I had written on our itinerary to take Bus 4, 20, or 28 to Viale dei Cadorna, but that stop wasn't listed on the bus routes. The info man told us to take 31 or 32, but then the 32 bus driver said his bus didn't stop there. Diana went back to the info man and asked him again, and he checked with a co-worker and told us to take Bus 4. That bus driver told us to get off at the second or third stop. We got off at the third stop and some friendly women pointed us in the right direction.

We stayed in The Abatjour, and it was very nice. Our host Paolo spoke English well. The only problems with the room were that it was right near train tracks so we heard trains go by all night (but we were so tired they didn't really disturb us) and that the bathroom door was very thin, like a folding closet door, which was sort of awkward. But the room was clean and breakfast was good.

We went to dinner at a restaurant that Paolo recommended. We had pizza, and the crust was thicker than the very thin Roman pizza. It was delicious. After dinner, we went back to the Abatjour and went to bed. The next day, we saw David (we had to wait in line for over an hour just to get into the Accademia Gallery where he was) and climbed 463 steps to the top of the Duomo. We also walked around a lot of Florence, and saw Signoria Piazza. While at the Accademia Gallery, we ran into a girl who lived on our floor. It was funny, especially because at the Spanish steps in Rome, I ran into another friend, and Diana saw a girl she knew in line at the Accademia Gallery. Italy is a very popular destination for BU London students during their break.

For dinner that night, we met up with Stacy and Michelle (whom we had seen at the Spanish steps) and we went to a nice Italian restaurant. Afterwards, we went out for a drink. When we tried to call a cab home, we were told that there were no cabs. (I can't imagine that happening in the US.) We called back 5 minutes later and they sent one, but only 4 people can legally fit in one cab. Luckily, the driver didn't care and drove us all to our respective accommodations.

We had train tickets for Tuesday at 2:30, but we wanted to see the Uffizi Gallery in the morning. We dropped off our bags at the train station and arrived at the Gallery around 10am, and had to wait in line for 2.5 hours just to get into the museum. That only left us an hour to look around, but we knew that we wanted to see the Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Boticelli, and Raphael rooms. We found them and saw some amazing artwork. Then we left to catch our train.

Fall Break 2007: Part II: The Vatican

On Monday, we had a 3:30 train to go to Florence, so we planned to spend the morning at the Vatican. We arrived at the Vatican at 8:30 because we knew there would be long lines. We waited in line for an hour, only to get to the front and find out that we had waited in the reservations line. So we started walking toward the other line. And we kept walking. And kept walking. For 20 minutes. And we still couldn't see the end of the line. We were getting worried because we knew there was no way we'd get in. Then we heard a man offer an English tour. We stopped to listen to his offer. It was 45 euros (but 35 with a student ID, which we all had) for a 3-hour tour of the Vatican, and we got to skip the lines. At that point, we knew that this was the only way we'd get to see the Vatican, so we decided to take the tour. It was a great choice. The tour was very informative, and we saw so much. The Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica were amazing, as was much of the artwork in the Vatican Museum.

After this, we raced back to our hotel room to grab our bags and head to the train station. We had some trouble finding our train because we didn't realize that Florence only a stop on the train and that Milan was the ultimate destination. But we were able to ask someone at the information booth for help and he pointed us to the right platform. (By the way, almost everyone we encountered in Rome spoke English.) So we found our train and were on our way to Florence.

Fall Break 2007: Part 1: Rome

After taking a 6:30am flight to Ciampino Airport, we arrived at our Bed and Breakfast in Rome around 1pm on Saturday, October 6. When we got there, we were told there was a problem with the toilet, so we were being moved to the sister Bed and Breakfast. It actually worked out really well because that one was in the area, but way closer to the Metro stop. Our room was very nice and clean and Renata, our host, spoke English and was very helpful. After all our traveling, we were exhausted, but we wanted to start sightseeing right away. We had lunch outdoors at a small Italian cafe and then went to see the Colosseum. The Colosseum was amazing and extremely impressive. Unfortunately, it rained while we were exploring the Colosseum. It was still fun though. Afterwards, we walked around and saw the Roman forum and Roman ruins. We saw the Trevi Fountain and I threw in 3 coins. We had some Roman pizza for dinner and it was delicious.

On Sunday, Katie and I planned to take a hop-on hop-off bus tour while Diana met up with her cousin. However, Diana's cousin had planned to give us a personalized tour of the city. Anna took us to many great sites -- the Pantheon, piazzas, a hill overlooking the city -- and gave us a great tour of Rome. Later, we met up with Anna's nephew Gianpaolo and his girlfriend Daniela, who joined us on the tour. Anna invited us back to her home for dinner. Her house was a huge, gorgeous Italian villa, and it even had a gated driveway. We had an amazing dinner of pasta, lettuce wraps, cheese and pineapple, crackers and dip, and Sicilian desserts. It was a lot of fun. After dinner, Anna's husband Carlo and Gianpaolo drove us back to our bed and breakfast, but they made stops along the way to give us the nighttime tour of Rome. We stopped on 2 hills that overlooked the city and we saw a street where a famous politician was killed in the 1970s. It was a great day and we truly got a good feel for Rome.

Halfway There!

I finished my finals. Yay!

Today's final was not as bad as I was expecting -- but I still have to see how he grades it. I picked it up at 9am and went straight to the computer lab and worked on it for 3.5 hours. I passed it in around 12:50pm, and I was the second person (in a class of 17) to pass it in. That made me a little nervous, but then I ran into Stacy who was passing hers in right as I left, and I talked to Jackie afterwards and she said she finished around 11 and then just hung around for 3 hours before she passed it in. I have a feeling that a lot of people took it home and procrastinated while taking it.

I'm really happy that finals are over and I survived the first part of the semester. I always think it's funny how at the beginning of the semester, when I first get my class syllabuses, I look at them and think Oh gosh, how am I ever going to get this much work done in such a short time period?. And then the end of the semester comes, and I find that, yes, I actually did get it done, and it wasn't too bad. It's a great feeling of accomplishment.

Now my bags are packed and I'm ready to go, but our flight isn't until 6:30am tomorrow. We have to leave here at 2am. I tried to go to bed at 6pm, but I only slept for an hour because my body doesn't want to sleep now. Maybe I can sleep in the airport or on the plane. Oh, and the fire alarm went off about an hour ago because some people don't know how to wave smoke away from the fire detector when they are cooking.

OK I think I'm going to try to sleep some more. Good night.

It's Almost Break!

Tomorrow I have a take home test that I pick up at 9am and drop it off at 5pm. My professor basically told us that he expects us to spend the whole time working on it. So I figured that 8 hours is enough time to spend on a final, and there's no way I can study for it. Thus, I spent today at the Tate Museum of Modern Art.

Tate Modern

Some exhibits were really interesting, and I saw works by the likes of Picasso, Monet, and Andy Warhol. Others, however, were not as impressive. I mean, since when is a giant group of mattresses with a faded map on them art? And I don't think that a plain gray canvas is very creative. So I saw the full spectrum of modern art.

I also stopped by St. Paul's and took some pictures. I wasn't in the mood for a tour of another cathedral, so I wandered around the grounds and briefly checked out the inside.

Millennium Bridge (Between St. Paul's and Tate Modern)

Statue

Close-up of Statue

St. Paul's

St. Paul's

And here are some pictures from Saturday night. Steve and Meg and I went to O'Neill's and the first song the band played was "Valerie" by the Zutons, which was pretty exciting. The band was great and we had a good time.

Meg & Steve

Me & Meg

Steve & Me

So after my final tomorrow, I will finish packing (my roommate has graciously offered to lend me her big backpack for the trip so that I don't have to check luggage), eat, shower, and go directly to bed. I will wake up around 1:30am and drag myself to the airport for our 6:30am flight. The upside is that we'll be in Rome by 10am. Yay!

So I don't get back until really, really late on Sunday October 14, and I may not update again until then. But I'm sure when I get back I will have tons of stories and pictures to share!

London Weather Does Not Agree With Me

And I must have a horrible immune system because I've been here for just over a month, and this is the second time I'm sick. When I first arrived, I had a sore throat for literally 2 weeks. And as of yesterday, I've got a cold. The British cold medicine has NOTHING on Sudafed; I took some and still sneezed about 5x during class today and had to blow my nose like 10x. I swear, there's nothing more awkward in class than being the one who's blowing her nose every 5 seconds. Thank goodness today was my last class until after break. I've stocked up on orange juice, tissues, and vitamins and I'm drinking lots of tea.

I can't believe that the first part of the semester is almost over; it's gone by really fast! I still have 2 1/2 months here, though, so I have plenty of time to see more sites.

So I'm going to spend the rest of this week laying low, studying, and recuperating. (I know, very exciting haha.) I got "The World According to Garp" by John Irving (my favorite author) out of the library for when I have some down time.