The University of Blog

I get asked the question all the time when I meet new people: Why in the world would you choose London? Out of all the cities that I could have chosen through the Journalism school, I have greatly pondered that question. Well, the answer is always simply that I came over here for the internship program. What a great decision!  Since it was my first day today, I felt incredibly nervous about what I would be doing. I think that it will be different each day. It was easily the best day ever today. I went to shoot video of some prep work for the BAFTAs, which are the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.  From my understanding, the BAFTA is like the Oscars of London. I’m excited for the coverage until the show on February 8th. I met some wonderful people who were so helpful to get me acclimated to working on a PC. It is true. For this job, I need to do away with my Mac ways. I was set up with a Microsoft email address as well as MSN messenger. It will be a bit of a change to learn a PC again after using exclusively a Mac, but I’m up for the challenge, and I’m excited to go back.

Yesterday, I checked out some beautiful sites at Bath and Stonehenge. First we went to Stonehenge, which was in a beautiful area. I still don’t understand why these people created something so massive. While the stones didn’t look that big, they weigh tons. Why in the world would these people chose to find a way to lift these stones and put them on top of each other. There must be a zealous religiosity that drove them to create something so massive.

Bath was wonderful. The city itself seemed like it was built among history. Every shop was in a building with interesting architecture. When we went through the Roman Baths, we were told not to touch the water, but just being there was an experience. There was a man who recited a prayer to Sulis Minerva (the whole bath is in praise of this god). While in the moment, I threw in a coin. Back when many visited the baths, folks would throw in curses against people who had wronged them for the pettiest reasons. I learned a lot from this tour, and I think I will really enjoy taking these British Life and Culture field trips in the future.

the Roman Baths

I hear that Americans overuse the word exciting. It seems like everything that I say I am “excited” isn’t really that exciting. It may be neat, but jump-out-of-your-chair excitement just doesn’t happen too often. Today may be an exception. I may not be out of my chair as I write this, but I have a sense of hopeful expectation that I haven’t felt as much as I do today.
This morning I had my interview at MSN. The architecture immediately gives an impression of what type of place and experience the internship will be. It’s a beautiful building from the front and even gets more impressive by a walk through the waiting room complete with an Xbox. Everything is cutting edge.  From talking with my editors, I realize that I will be getting invaluable, hands on experience doing video and writing. They realize that Mizzou students know their work and are not afraid to let them take control of their projects and tasks. With a healthy dose of self-motivation, I can work on some really great projects. From what I know, I will be working in entertainment as well as video. While most of the editors do the interviews, I hope I am able to at least shoot some of these. A personal goal for me would be to go film a movie premiere in addition to doing some great work. I just need to leave my MacBook at home (since it is a Microsoft office). The commute is an easy 15 minutes on a crowded tube in a business district.

It pays to be a U.S. citizen today especially at Madame Tussauds. Venturing through the museum of stars, I finally met the new president … well, a wax version, but still. It was great to see so many people line up to see a just a wax sculpture of Obama. Not just U.S. citizens waited in line to get their photo with him. It is an exciting, historical day for many in the UK who are eager to see a new president in the White House. The papers love him here and there are all types of Inauguration events in London for folks to celebrate and watch history in the making. I will be at the Union Bar later tonight before class to see as much of the ceremony that I can. It already feels like a day that will be remembered for life. One of the questions my grandkids will ask me “Granny, where were you when Obama was Inaugurated?”

This morning we visited Westminster Abbey. I didn’t know much about the church other than it is important and a focal point of London. I learned a lot from our Blue Badge guide (who are the most highly trained guides in London) that it was converted from a Cathedral to be the Church of England.  At the Abbey, everyone who is anyone in British history is buried here. The structure itself is so awe inspiring that you can’t really get beyond how impressive it is. All the coronations take place here as well. My favorite was to see the monument to Shakespeare as well as the burial place for other literary masterminds like Rudyard Kipling, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Oscar Wilde, Chaucer, Milton and Charles Dickens just to name a few. Scientists like Darwin and Sir Isac Newton lay there as well as the royal like Elizabeth and many kings.

detail of the just the door (not allowed to take picturess inside)
For the past couple of nights, I have had some fun dancing times.  One of these happened in the Student Union. There are several pubs and one dance club in the student union. I think that I will never get over how funny this actually is.  When I get back to school, I will want to dance at our newly remodeled student union, but alas, there will be no outlet for this desire. We also took the tube last night to a club that was nearby and met a lot of international folk. Even though we were in a huge group of Americans, we still were able to meet new people, and it seemed like everyone had a lot of fun.

Since I’ve hit up a lot of museums lately, it was time for a bit of shopping. Yesterday, we got off at Oxford Circus and went shopping—which turned into mostly window-shopping. This was my first adventure with Primark. It was a very huge—almost unmanageable but the items are very cheap. I have to go back when I can have more shopping stamina than I did today. We walked to Top Shop, which had a lot of cute clothes and a pretty good January sale, but alas, I was too cautious to spend any money.

I didn’t have the same problem today when I went to the Portobello market at Notting Hill. Walking to the market, we stopped by the various open-air vendors. They had boots, retro clothing, unique jewelry and other treasures to be found here. I found one stall where everything was £2. I couldn’t avoid getting a cute dress there. There was also a retro clothing store where any clothing item is £3.

Since we were in Notting Hill area, I couldn’t avoid going to the Travel Bookstore. This cute little bookstore was famous from the movie Notting Hill with Hugh Grant. I wondered how many people came in just because of the movie. I imagine that people come in not just needing the newest Lonely Planet guide to Portugal, although I feel like people go on holiday a lot more here. How could you not? With so many cheap flights out of London, it would be  a shame not to take advantage of those deals.

I have done more walking in these few days then I did all last semester. I do enjoy walking because it gives me a greater sense of the layout of the city. I realize that things are a bit closer than I originally thought from the bus tour. We had our first British Life and Culture class yesterday. I learned more about the history of the city as well at the part that we are living in (Kensington). Apparently, it is the most expensive place to live in not just London, but the country. I do feel very safe in this area and it seems like a great place to live. The professor pointed out that not many British people live here. While they may work here, it is too expensive to live here. She explained how England still continues to have a hierarchal class system and Kensington is an example of that.

Today was a busy day. I met up with a friend that was studying in Dublin last semester. We all started at the Museum of London as part of the field trip for British Life and Culture class. I was inundated with information. It covered the hunters that lived here to the Roman empire to the great fire. I enjoyed the information about Cromwell and Charles I since it brought me back to my old AP European class, but by that point I couldn’t retain anymore information.

From the museum, we stopped by Convent Gardens. It was a huge shopping district. Most of the stores were having January sales. I decided there is a need to take advantage of them while they are still going on. Thus, tomorrow my roommate and I decided to have a shopping day. We ate a good lunch special at Spaghetti House and then meandered by Trafalgar square and down Whitehall to see the House Guards. These guards do not interact with the people. I felt incredibly awkward as we got our obligatory photo including if we could even greet him. When we thanked him, he did respond with “you’re welcome.” As we left, I wondered… how many facebook albums is this guard in?

To go home, we walked though St. James Park. It was lovely. It stayed light later than I thought it would so we were able to see the park at a pretty time of the day. We walked past Buckingham Palace and saw the Wellington Arch. It was a nice change of pace to be within nature. And there are very many parks a including Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park hat are near here.

Sunday we went to a London tour. We were in a bus but were able to see most of the touristy parts of London:

Buckingham Palace- where the queen lives (she was in today—had a flag above it)

as well as…
Westminster Abby – Where all the coronations have taken place
St. Paul’s Cathedral
Trafalgar Square –there was a protest going on
Piccadilly Square –busy area, lots of shopping
Tower Bridge
Tower of London– will go on a tour here later in the semester
Big Ben– not as tall as I expected
Houses of Parliament

St. Paul’s Cathedral
We walked around Piccadilly Square for awhile and ate lunch. We found Top Shop – a huge clothing store that we most likely will come back to later. We weren’t much in the mood to shop.

To get phones, we took the underground and got off at the closest stop to home. I was surprised by how expensive it was: £4 for one trip. With an oyster card, it will be a lot cheaper. For the internship, I’ll get the month long pass for £99. Using it to and from work will be worth it. Carphone warehouse had a great deal for phones: £4.84 for the phone, free sim card with purchase of at least £10 of talk time. To call internationally, it is only 2 p. Great deal to call my parents. I know that they will be happy with the deal

Found a good pub with a nice dinner special. I had a half pint. It looks minuscule compared to the regular pints.

Trafalgar Square
We had an social orientation to learn about the great opportunities around us. There is a coasteering trip that I’d really like to take. It sounds like a blast. It is in a national park in Wales. There is also good deals through STA travel. We’ll try to find the best deal.

Well, seven hours in a plane is not terrible. I checked in at Kansas City International to go to Chicago. Each bag weighted barely under 50 pounds, which means I will have to ship everything home that I pick up in London. In Chicago I had a six-hour layover. It would have been less, but I ended up taking an earlier flight so that I wouldn’t be trapped in KC due to the heavy snow in Chicago. For the international flight, it ended up snowing quite a bit here around the time that we were supposed to take off. It didn’t cause us any problems though. Once I got on the plane, I was excited, but then I realized that I would have 9 more hours of not doing anything except flying. I tried to sleep as much as I could.

Once we arrived in London, we hopped on busses to take us to our flats. At this point we are exhausted, but really excited. I’m rooming with just one other person. This will be good for  sharing bathroom time, even though we are living in older flats. We then are taken on a tour of campus to show us where all the safety lights are as well as are fed our first fish and chips meal. This will certainly not be our last fish and chips.

We went to Sainsbury’s to get groceries. There is nothing more confusing than shopping in a foreign grocery store. I had a lot of trouble figuring out where things were as well as buying what I wanted /similar to what I had bought back in the states. I learned that they are very anti-plastic bag here. Next time, I will bring a bag to put the groceries in. It’s all a bit more expensive than the states, but not outrageous.

After unpacking a few items, we then went on a pub-crawl. We went to a few pubs around the area and ended up at the Imperial College student union. I was so surprised to see a pub on campus. We got there early, but it got packed around ten or so. I tried a snakebite—half beer, have cider with some black current syrup. That cost me about £2. I met students from Ireland, Australia and Russia, but have not yet met British students.

What an adventure the first day has been. Photos on the way.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’tdo than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” -Mark Twain

The next time that you hear from me, I will probably be jetlagged in London. Nothing better!

Cheers!

I have spent the past few days avidly behind my computer writing cover letters, sending resumes and applying for internships for this summer. It is such an effort to put it all together that I didn’t want to leave it to do while in London. My goal is to be interning in public media or a magazine in an metropolitan environment. However, since many journalism internships are unpaid, it is necessary to find ones that I will be able to support myself. Some offer stipends, but for the others that are unpaid, it would be good to live in a city like San Francisco where I have family to stay with. To find an internship for the summer following Junior year is key for journalism. All of the recent cuts may lend itself nicely to needing interns.

Being in London makes it challenging to have a phone interview and follow up. But if I haven’t heard anything by April 26, when I return, I will be calling all the places that I applied. Not only will an internship help to gain hands-on experience in the field, but also, it will help me miss London less. Once I return, I anticipate missing the city as well as everyone that I meet over there (they say that there is reverse cultural shock upon returning). However, I need to get there first, and there is plenty to do before I fly out.