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 21st 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
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