Shopping Extravaganza

Ok everyone, I’m about a week behind here, this blog accounts for January 17^th to the 23^rd.

So last week, I was (basically) appointed account manager of one of our clients at the PR agency I work at. I was able to get her some press last Thursday, my very first public relations accomplishment!!! Here is the link; http://www.bridalwave.tv/tag/anne-wiggins-london.

So riding that high, I decided to have a pretty large shopping trip that Saturday, the 22^nd. There is a shopping trip waiting around every corner, but we decided to take the Harrods route and took a short tube ride on the Piccadilly to Knightsbridge. We first visited Zara, a high end cheap store that originated in Europe and made its way to large cities in the States. I, not being from a large city, have never been to a Zara and was ecstatic at the opportunity! I pretty much loved everything, but only bought one thing, which I felt showed a lot of constraint. I bought a cute military inspired jacket for 40 pounds, originally 90 pounds.

Then it was off to Topshop! This store does not exist in the States as far as I know, and if it does, it’s only in New York City. I had the same dilemma of wanting to buy everything, but stopped at one; a super cute pair of black skinnies (those are pants for those of you that don’t know) for 35 pounds! Then off to H&M, this is a super trendy store that exists pretty much everywhere. Didn’t find anything I liked in particular and Alyssa and I booked it to the gigantic Burberry store just across the street!!

I obviously wasn’t going to buy anything, but I had to go, it’s one of my favorite brands! It was like nothing I had ever seen; everything perfectly placed, the walls served as massive televisions and played reels of super chic pictures of all the beautiful models in their awesome cloths, the security guards……um…..staring at me. So, I admit, we didn’t look like we belonged even a little, but I loved every second of the full 10 minutes we gawked like school children. (BTW’s Ben, our children will have baby Burberry trenches-only 225 pounds, hello!!)

Now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for……..Harrods!! OMG, I have never seen anything like it!! You walk in and you can see anything from Valentino, Gucci, D&G; turn around and there’s DKNY, Louis Vuitton, and Chanel. It made me want to do a high pitched scream of happiness and roll over in a fit of giggles. The whole place is set up kind of like a trade show; there were rooms dedicated to jewelry, handbags, cosmetics, and so much more. The room is split into designers with their extravagant displays and their handsome employees that look at you like your scum if you don’t resemble a celebrity. It was so cool though!  There was also a fish and meat room, vegetables and fruit room, and a candy room!!! This literally looked like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory minus the oompa loompas. You could even sit at the bar and eat right there in Harrods. I wanted to do this but the cheapest ice cream cone was 15 pounds and I thought that was a little much for something that was going to be gone in 5 minutes.

One thing I would like to point out to the Americans reading this, which should be everyone. Londoners take their shopping seriously- I have never seen such intense and dedicated shoppers in all my life. Go to any shopping location in the city on a weekend and you will understand what I mean. Look at the people who are carrying 5 bags of designer clothing, do they look like they could afford a sandwich? Probably not, they would spend their last dime on a pair of Burberry shoes than eat. There is no such thing as saving, people spend- it’s the worst mind set to have, but I have to say that I love it! 

Love from London,
B

The Homestay.

Last weekend, the 14^th through the 16^th of January, Arcadia (the coordinators of my London program) set up a homestay for us to partake in. I have to say, I was not overly joyed about this part of the trip. I wanted to hang out with my newly found friends and go do touristy things with them. But, I put on a smile and decided to make the most of it.

Friday, we left King’s Cross station (I didn’t see Platform 9 ¾, we were on the other side of the station) on the wrong train, without seven of the 25 people that were supposed to be on the journey with us. What a start! This made me laugh, quite a lot actually. How could we have been trusted, as a bunch of 20 year olds who don’t care at all about anybody but ourselves, be trusted to make sure everyone got on the train? So the seven we left behind had to buy their own tickets and they arrived an hour after us, in Peterborough, an hour train ride north of London.  We were dropped off at the platform and we were literally in the middle of nowhere. I was so used to the hustle and bustle of London, I’d forgotten what it was like to not have people pushing at you every second.

I met my family, the Bingum’s, Kam was my “mother” for the weekend and she was a sweetheart. She insisted on stuffing our faces with as much food as humanly possible, which I liked because she was a chef and actually knew how to cook. She made us fish the first night, which I am normally not a fan of, but it was pretty good and I ate quite a bit. After dinner, there is a lot of talking and “retiring” to the living room for tea. The other two girls assigned to this family and I got into a political conversation with them after dinner. This was a little awkward for me at first, considering the majority of the country is liberal and I consider myself conservative, but I didn’t say too much and listened instead. They are very upset by the university tuition increases and made some really good points about how the government spends their money on ridiculous things. It was interesting how many of the problems in England were so similar to the problems we have in America. They explained to us how much they loved the free health care system, which I wanted to know about since our country may be going through something similar. I don’t know how convinced I am fiscally, but there are some good aspects to it.

The next day we went to the 12^th century Norman Cathedral. It was gorgeous and gigantic. It was probably the most beautiful thing I have ever stepped foot in. (You have to check out my pictures on Facebook!) These were built strictly to bring people in because of curiosity and they stayed because of what the cathedrals could provide. These were the center of the community for hundreds of years. They provided a water source, food source, religion, everything. This is how they were able to convert people and make them feel like they were dependent on God; it appeared that God was providing them with survival needs. Kam, our host mother, made a point that most sermons were very somber, making the attendant feel guilty for things they had done, she was not a fan.

The next stop was Cambridge, where we never actually saw the University of Cambridge. There are 31 universities in Cambridge, which none of us knew, so we walked around downtown and were able to see King’s College and a St. Catherin’s. It was a very pretty place and reminded me a lot of Bloomington, with the college town feel and the students taking over the city for eight of the 12 months. On our walk, we spoke briefly about the royal family and how the new generation does not respect the family the way they should. Kam believes the royal family was put on the earth by God and should be respected for that reason. People my age laugh at the thought and don’t have a lot of faith in them. I found this interesting because we are so intrigued by the royal family in America and always assumed it was the same over here, but the family is not brought up very often and is virtually invisible within the culture.  

That night, we had some pasta, again delicious, and “retired” to the living room for tea. We talked about church, which we had planned to partake in the next morning. She had already discussed her discomfort in gaudy productions and made a very interesting comment about religion, “Faith is good, religion is not.” Wow, that’s powerful. She didn’t appreciate the power religion forces onto you, but she did have a lot of faith in God. I was suddenly interested in what was awaiting us the next day.

It was a mega church. Hmmm, how can I get back to London before we enter this place? Ugh, ok, I can’t.  I stood there while seemingly crazy people spoke in tongue and danced around while the Christian “rock band” played “uplifting” music. I have to be honest, I was scared. I wasn’t expecting this at all, how was this not a production? This was just as much of a gimmick to get people to come to church as the cathedral was. Interesting how she didn’t see it that way. However, I am glad I was able to witness this; it gave me a new perspective and definitely something to remember.

After church we had a huge lunch/supper with potatoes, chicken, green beans, carrots, and chocolate cake! Yum! Kam, her husband, and their sons were all very nice and took care of us. We are so appreciative and now have a better understanding of the British.  

Next post involves the greatest shopping trip of my life and a British bar crawl!

Love from London,

B

Internship and Classes (1st Week)

We are going to back up a little bit before I move onto my first week of interning and classes. I want to go back to Wednesday of orientation week, The Jack the Ripper Tour. Andy and I went on a tour of the center of London to see the places Jack the Ripper took his victims to kill them.  Needless to say, I was tagged as the easy target. Every time the scary tour guide made any kind of jumping movement toward me, I screamed pathetically, to the delight of 7 other Americans along for the ride.

Turns out, there may be a link between the Prince of Wales and Jack the Ripper. The prince enjoyed a good time, usually involving a brothel or two, and one night in particular led to a pregnancy with a catholic hooker. Now, if any of you know anything about the English monarchy, after King Henry VIII, there could not be any catholic royals. The Prince of Wales was the rightful heir to the throne and would be and eventually became King Edward VII. With this knowledge, there is enough evidence to link the prince to the hiring of a man who is now known as JACK THE RIPPER. It was much scarier when he screamed it in my face, I promise.

So anyway, onto my internship. I work for a PR company that specializes in luxury goods, which is pretty cool and I couldn’t wait for my first day. Monday rolled around and I spent the day learning all of our clients, researching what they did and how they did it. I looked though the press books to see the press releases they had done for their clients in the past and gave the dog a few treats. I found out the owner of the company pays for our lunch every day, which is super nice of her and very helpful when it comes to my finances.

The first two days went by with nothing too exciting happening. The third day, Thursday, was an utter disaster on my part. I was calling trade publications to see if they would be interested in writing pieces about one of our clients. All of a sudden, I get a call from one of the publications. She was hysterical and asking me all sorts of questions about who I was and why I emailed her and who I was talking about and how she was sick so she couldn’t talk to me. It was horrifying; I lost all communication skills and started stumbling over my words like a bumbling idiot. She got frustrated at me and hung up the phone, ugh, my first real life work embarrassment. I thought this only happened in the movies. The others looked at me with a “what happened?” face, and I unconvincingly tried to explain it was the wrong number.

On Wednesday, I had my first classes in London. First up, Marketing in the UK at 9:30 at City University. Do me a favor and think about the most stereotypical English man possible. That is my professor. Which is completely awesome. He has the bad teeth, the three piece off color suit, and the Austin Powers glasses. He has the most random train of thought, making my notes impossibly difficult to interpret. But, it sounds like the class is pretty much going to be a repeat of my last semester marketing class, so at least it’ll be relatively easy.

After class, Alyssa and I went to Primark! This was my second time at this mega Forever 21 type store and I was dangerously in love (I had gone on Monday after my first day of work as well). This store is terrifyingly awesome. There are a thousand people in this store at all times, from every country, speaking every kind of language possible- this is the awesome part. The not so awesome part, there are people everywhere, picking up the exact sweater you need in the perfect size just as you’re going for it. Then, when you finally find the sweater again, you go to wait in line- oh you mean the line that is wrapped around the entire store? No problem.

While waiting, someone is shouting at you that you can only take 8 items into the room. 8 items? I only have a sweater. I start to look around and notice people have gigantic baskets with at least 30 items each and they’re trying to decide which items they want to try on this time around. Holy crap, I just want to try on this one sweater. I finally try it on, and guess what? It doesn’t fit, you know why? Because I completely guessed on the size. The sizes here are not marked with an S, M, and L, these numbers are all over the place and I have no idea what I’m doing. So, I finally figure out 8 looks like my ideal size and I grab that and wait in the fitting room line for another 20 minutes. Ugh. Ok, awesome it fits. And guess what? I ended up buying a pair of jeans for 8 pounds!! That’s like $12! I like it here.

We finally get to my last class of the day, Diversity in the British Workplace, 6:30 pm. This is going to be an easy one. We talk about how pathetic we are to the workforce since we are unpaid interns and no one cares about us or what we have to say. Awesome. Then we get to talk about how worthless we will be once we are newly paid employees. Even more awesome. What a life.

After class, a bunch of us went to the Hollywood Arms (a pub in Chelsea), rumored to be Hugh Grant’s favorite. This place was awesome, it was super posh and they had mood lighting and music. The drinks were five times more expensive, but it was almost worth it to be around sophisticated drinkers, rather than bumbling drunks. It was Allie’s 21^st so we had a good time and called it an early night. (Check Facebook to see hilarious pictures of the boys doing a wedding toast!)

Stay tuned, I had my homestay this weekend and should have the blog posted soon!

Love from London,

B

Week of Tourism and so much more...

Ok, so it’s officially been my first week here in London. It has been a whirlwind already but I’ll try to fit in as much as possible….

So from Tuesday till Friday we encountered the most boring orientation material known to man so I will not bore all of you with the gruesome details. Thursday I had my interview for my internship, which went sooooo well and I can’t wait to get started tomorrow. After getting a tad bit turned around and asking a lovely lady in a shop for directions, I found out the company is a two person operation with two interns, me and a girl named Elena; she is from the UK and seems very sweet.  My job entails blogging, tweeting, and data basing (I think I made that word up), among other things. 

I said I wouldn’t bore you with orientation stuff, but I do have to mention the extremely inefficient way of registering for classes here in the UK. Does anybody remember registering in the 50’s? Well, I don’t but I got a pretty good taste of it this past Friday. We had to line (queue) up at a classroom which held desks that represented classes with the professor of each class positioned at their designated desk. Once we entered, we had to find the class we wanted to take, go up to the professor sitting at the desk and have them manually sign us up on a piece of paper. Once the slots on the paper were full, the class was full and we had to figure out where to go from there.   Luckily, I got all the classes I wanted and walked out rather quickly (I was trying to get out of Friday classes so I could travel, especially with Ben in March, but no luck), others were not so lucky and were stuck in the congested hot room for hours! After signing up for classes, we had to line (queue) up at another room and get all our classes officially signed off. It was painful, but I got through and we move on.

Enter Friday night. I have never pegged myself as a drinker, mostly because I don’t drink. So, I’m sure you can imagine I was a little nervous when I was supposed to go to a pub/bar (I don’t know the difference) with a bunch of people I had only known for a few days. I was pretty sure I didn’t like alcohol from the stuff my father had given me to show me how horrible the taste was so I never tried it myself (it worked), and I wasn’t excited to be pegged as the girl who hates drinking and doesn’t see the point in it. We ended up going to a pub (we were later told it was the largest pub in London) called At World’s End in Camden Town. The music was so loud and had an emo screamo theme to it, which I was not feeling off the bat. Hmmmm, this was not going well. So after consulting with a few people, I decided on a Rum and Coke combo. This was absolutely delicious and it is the only drink I will drink at this point, which I get made fun of for, but oh well.

Saturday a bunch of us went to the British Museum, which was the biggest and busiest museum I have ever seen!! I stayed in medieval Europe room for 45 minutes; it is my favorite time in history. We had lunch at King’s Kebabs, which was so yummy. I have never had a kebab before and it was gigantic and extremely greasy (all the better). I had a little bit of a confusing moment when ordering my meal because the man asked me if I wanted chips, and I didn’t know why I would. I looked at him in a quizzical way, thinking I misunderstood and then he said, “Do you want fries?” Oh right. What a typical American, oh well.

 The next day, we had a preview of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, and Buckingham Palace. We even walked a little bit of the Princess Diana Memorial Walk, which was a beautiful park in the middle of London. We barely got to see anything, so we are going back at least three times in the next three months. A few of us have decided to try and attend a service at the Abbey, which would really be something to remember. We had lunch at a cute little shop right next to our house, which I can’t remember the name of, but they had the best chicken penne pasta ever created!

I will be writing two blogs this week since I started my internship and classes (and my first shopping trip!), so keep a look out early this weekend for an update. If you want to check out any pictures of my trip so far, I have been correlating my albums with my blog titles on my Facebook.

Love from London,

B

1st Day

I’m finally here!! Yeah! It was a long journey so let’s start from the beginning……

It started in Evansville, Delta flight to Atlanta. This went surprisingly smooth. My whole family plus Ben and his family went to Denny’s for lunch and we all enjoyed each other’s company. We then caravanned to the airport because everyone wanted to see me off and I wanted a few more hours with them.  Once we were all waiting outside of security and looking out at the planes leaving the airport (actually only one plane, Evansville is a very small airport), waiting for my flight to be called, it really was sinking in, I was off to London. This came with another hit, I was going alone, no Ben to help me this time, no one to stop the tears if they ever chose to come. This was a scary thought but also empowering because this would be the first time I would be doing something on my own- I kinda liked the sound of that. Once the good byes came, I started to tear up, but never got too emotional-which came as a surprise, to me and probably to everyone else too.

The next thing I know, we are in the air and landing in Atlanta, whole thing went off without a hitch, thank God! So I get in the airport and there was a little confusion about which gate my flight was departing from, but the crises was quickly averted and I sat at the correct gate in plenty of time. After checking in with Ben and my Daddy, I ate at Fridays and then got a hot chocolate from Starbucks, making it back to the gate about an hour before departure, perfect. Except immediately after I sat down, my first delay made its appearance, this would not be such a big deal except for the fact that I had transportation that would be leaving the airport at noon and this delay was going to get me there at 11:15, which was pushing it a bit. But I kept my cool and sat patiently.

And now the second delay, which not only was annoying in the first place, but we all had to move terminals because they were going to put us on a different aircraft all together.  I still managed to keep my cool because this was still going to get me there on time. In the process, I met three other people who were involved in the same program as me and we decided to cling onto each other for dear life. We finally boarded the plane, put our belongings in the appropriate places and headed down the runway……

My third and final delay. As we were getting ready to launch ourselves for take off, they found another technical problem and we were forced back to the gate and to board another flight. This was starting to upset me, I never became outwardly emotional but I was starting to brew on the inside. This was not only going to cause me to be late and miss my transportation, this was going to cause me to miss my orientation meeting and miss vital details about the rest of the week. Well, finally we took off and I endured a relatively sleepless night with random people I had never met before and was forced to trust. We finally landed in London at 3:30 pm, 5 ½ hours later than original planned. At this point, I was calm because on the way down I was given my first live glimpse of the city I thought I would have to wait another 10 years to see. It was pretty magnificent, the tall skyscrapers in some areas, the super old buildings in other areas, and the large residential areas where all the houses looked exactly the same strewn throughout.

Once off the plane I high tailed it to customs where there was a simple two question game and I was through!!! I met my fellow students at the baggage claim, where we waited an eternity to finally get our bags, and then we were off!! We weren’t really sure where we were off to since we now needed to find our own transportation to our residential areas and none of us had ever ridden a subway or a taxi. We followed the signs to the underground, which was super cool and we even had to get off and get on a connection train to our final destination at the Paddington station. We were very proud of ourselves. Now to tackle a taxi, well thank goodness there was a sign for that too and we followed it out and what do you know, a constant line of taxis, just waiting for the idiot American who knows nothing about public transportation.

I finally arrived at 5:45 pm, exhausted from lugging 120 lbs. of luggage all over London. We knocked on the door and what do you know, no one is home! Hmmmmm, this would normally be the point where I sit down and start crying uncontrollably while thinking, “Why me?!” However, I was still running a high from the little adventure I had been able to take without calling home and asking Ben for directions to the London Underground, so I said to the boy with us, “We will stay with the bags while you go and find a payphone and call the emergency number they gave to us.” The boy agreed and we waited outside with all our belongings on the front steps. He came back and said someone would be there shortly (meaning an hour) and I was finally able to see my new living space for the first time.

It’s a very quaint neighborhood and a cute apartment, I live with two other girls and there are a total of 6 girls living in the flat and 26 living in the whole building. I am now in that awkward stage where I haven’t really been able to see any part of London except underneath it and I am missing Ben. I know once I’m out and about tomorrow, I will be able to relax a little and truly enjoy myself, I can’t wait!

Side note; All pictures are courtesy of Ben because he bought me a camera for Christmas!

Love from London,

B