Sunday, June 28, 2009
Sunny Summer Days ♥ 2:35 PM
So I've been kinda negligent about my blog lately and I apologize for that, it's just been so hard to motivate myself! All the way back to Thursday...I had the day off of work because I worked on Wednesday, and one of my flatmates isn't in the internship program so she had the day off of class and we decided to take a very quick train ride over the Thames to Greenwich. It's a cute little town that had been recommended to me by a friend and Kristin had heard from some people in her program that it was worth visiting as well. So we spent practically the whole
day walking around the town. We went up (and I mean up, it was a steep hill to climb) to the Royal Observatory where you can see the whole town and across the Thames to London and it was absolutely beautiful. We then walked back down through the park to a place called the Queen's House. It's the only remaining part of the Palace that used to be in Greenwich and is newer than the part that is gone, but it now is a museum of paintings as well as part of it being the Maritime museum. We went to that museum too which was pretty cool because it has a bunch of stuff from old ships and what not (being on the river Greenwich is a ship town). We spent the rest of the afternoon just walking around down by the Thames and everywhere else and by the time we got back on the train we were exhausted.My other flatmate Linden had a friend from high school come to visit and she wanted to go out, so we ventured out to a club in London which due to a new pair of shoes that pinch my toes from not being broken in yet, I ended up leaving early. Unfortunately due to confusion with the buses i
t took a little over two hours to get home.Friday was a pretty lazy day. We slept in until about 10:30, which is the latest we've ever slept in here and then went to get some lunch and took the tube out to Wimbledon to see if we could get GA day of tickets. When we got there, there was a ton of people and they told us it would be at least 2 and a half hours before we got in. With the sun blistering hot that day and me having spent the last few days thinking I was getting sick, I decided to go home with Linden and her friend and I spent the rest of the day at the flat resting. I was disappointed that I didn't get to see Wimbledon because the rest of my flatmates had been able to get in around 7, but I still think it was the best decision. I was also feeling a little homesick that day, so when my flatmates came home and suggested we hang out and wat
ch a movie I welcomed the suggestion and it made me feel much better.Saturday was a wonderful day. We took a train out to Brighton which is a city right on the English Chanel with a beautiful beach. It was amazing. It was such a nice day out and I'd never been to the ocean before (besides in Alaska, and it's a bit too cold to lay out on the beach and enjoy it). It was a rock beach which was interesting but actually I think I might have liked it better than a sand beach. The water was freezing, and the sea breeze was nice. It was a very enjoyable day that we ended by getting some fresh fish a
nd chips, it was amazing because it was right by the ocean.Today has also been quite laid back. We went to the grocery store, worked on a paper for our BLC class and went to the Hummingbird bakery for a cupcake with Linden's friend then the flatmates and I went out with the flatmates for Portuguese food at Nandos. It was really good and we were very excited because they had free refills on soda which no one does over here. So we drank like 5 glasses each. And that brings us up to speed!!
Click here for more photos from the weekend!
The End.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Eternal London Haunts Us Still ♥ 8:32 AM
This is long overdue I know, I've just not been in the mood to blog at all. Which means this will be a long one, sorry. I'm gonna break it down by days to make it easier for us all.
Thursday: I had to go to work by myself because Claire got the day off in order to meet her parents at the airport and spend the day with them. So I didn't do too much at work, it's still very calm. I made some phone calls to get prices and photos for our new products page, which basically is a page in which we introduce new products to the readers which they can sell as retail items in their salon/spa or for them to use in their treatments. After work I had to stop at Carphone Warehouse to get a new battery for my phone because it wouldn't hold a charge and then I went to the grocery store. Claire's parents invited me and all of my flatmates out to see The Hangover with them. It was absolutely hilarious. Also seeing a movie here is a completely different experience. You have assigned seats and they are much more comfortable and the theaters are much larger. More on this a bit later.
Friday: In our BLC class we discussed music, which was pretty interesting. We got to listen to clips of American music vs. British music at the same time. After class I was completely exauhsted and my flatmates were going to go out shopping, which I wasn't in the mood for so I went home and took a nap until we were supposed to meet Claire and her parents at Ping Pong for dinner. It was just as excellent as last time (even though I almost fainted! Claire started talking about dental surgery that her sister had and I just don't do well with stories about pain and blood! She had to support me to the bathroom and bring me some water!). Afterwards Linden and I went to see Transformers 2 with Claire and her parents. The theater we went to was amazing, it looked like it should have been for a play not a movie. It was absolutley ridiculous. However the movie was not as great as I was hoping, too much robot fighting...
Saturday: I went out to Portobello Market again with Linden, Kristin and Amanda this time with the intention of shopping instead of just looking. Last time they had some really cute dresses that we wanted to find and I wanted to see if that store had those shoes in my size yet! So we found some dresses and I got my shoes, I even found a cool gift for my mum a
nd an even cooler one for my dad. After a long day at the market I went home to get ready for The King and I. I went with Kristin and Claire and her parents and it was at the Royal Albert Hall. First off the theater is absolutely huge and so beautiful. Second the play was amazing, the King was played by Daniel Dae Kim who plays Jin on my favorite TV show LOST and he was absolutely supurb. I laughed so hard in parts and nearly cried in others. I loved it.Sunday: Linden and I had an interesting trip this weekend while trying to find Jane Austen’s house museum. We took an hour and a half train ride out to Alton, and we knew that the museum was about a mile from the station so we planned on just walking there. When we asked the guy at the ticket counter for directions he told us to go outside the train station and there would be a little hut basically where a taxi company was and that if we couldn’t get a taxi there, he would drive us himself. We found that to be an awkward offer, so we walked to the taxi hut and asked the guy if we could get a taxi. Well, apparently it’s a small enough town that on a Sunday they only have one taxi and it was busy doing local routes but he kindly offered us walking directions and told us that we could call him if it started to rain (b/c it really looked like rain). His directions: walk straight through town and just keep going till the shops end, then you know you’re out of town but just keep walking straight and they’ll be a bridge with a steam train going over it and underneath they’ll be an underpass, so take the underpass. Once you go through you’ll be in Chawton and it’s such a small town that th
e museum is right in the center of town and you’ll be sure to see it.Not so easy. We walked straight through town just fine, but then we got to a round about and could no longer go straight but there was a sign for the museum pointing down a freeway with no sidewalk. Not having a death wish we decided to walk around and maybe find another route. After going down a road that was clearly wrong Linden called the taxi driver who gave her the same directions again and I asked this family if they knew where it was. The gave us similar directions, and we followed them but still couldn’t find it so we walked down another random road but turned around and wound up back in the round about. So then were standing there and this car drives by and the woman is rolling down the window and I recognized her as the woman I asked for directions and she shouts “it’s down that road!” So thanks to her we found it!
By the time we were on our way back to the train we were starving, but this place was like a ghost town! Nothing was open. Finally we found a Costa Coffee which is a chain here and it was open, so we got some sandwiches and chips and headed back to the train. Well, while I was ordering I broke a cookie jar! It was right on the edge of the counter and I was just out of it enough because it was nearly 5 and I hadn't eaten since early that morning that I didn't really notice it and knocked it right off! I was so embarassed.
Monday: Another very uneventful day at work. We had a meeting with Jenni about how we thought things were going so far and were assigned to try to think of a blog to write for the website and that's about it. At class we had a guest speaker who leads the Mizzou Brussels program, which is where the European Union politics happen so he told us about the EU and then we watched a debate between someone who thinks that Britian should be in the EU and someone who does not. Afterwards we had a social with some of the students in the Brussels program at a pub near our flat called The Prince of Teck. There was free food which was really good, but all free food is when you're a poor college student studying abroad!
Tuesday: Worked all day again and really didn't do much. Later in the evening Claire C., Claire H. and Linden and I went to Hyde Park and actually walked around and explored. We found the Peter Pan statue, and the Princess Diana memorial, and a whole lot of birds. It's a huge, beautiful park that we could spend hours upon hours in and still not see everything.
Today (Finally!!!!): So far today all I've done was go to work. I went by myself because Claire is working on Thursday to make up for not working last Thursday and I don't have to go in tomorrow. It was a lot of doing nothing again today, but i decided to work on my blog. I was going to try and get a beauty treatment like a pedicure, haircut or spray tan (because they are big into that here compared to the states) and explain what I liked/thought about it in order to give the owners of the salons/spas advice. However since I had nothing to do today I decided to wait and do that for a later blog, and choose to write a blog about how these business owners could benefit from using Twitter because it was something useful to them and something I could write today. Not sure what we'll be doing this evening!
More photos for you!
The End.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Life Next Door to the Indian Mofia ♥ 8:42 AM
Nothing as exciting as the premiere has happened in the last few days, in fact not much exciting has happened in general. To explain my blog title, we live down the street from a group of Indian men that mill about the front of certain shop fronts all day long, talking to people who pull up in very nice cars. It's quite suspect. Anyways...
Since I pretty much skipped over Monday day to tell you about the premiere here it is. In the morning Claire and I had work as usual. We didn't really have much to do, we replied to some emails we had been to busy to reply to earlier and found some more statistics to to on "The Buzz" page of the magazine. We sent out a few copies of the magazine to a few people as well. Also we got copy's of the July issues for ourselves, so I now have in my possession a magazine with my name in it.
Tuesday when we went into work, we were sent out to the streets to do Vox Pops, which is just asking random people in the streets questions. The first question we had to ask people was if they knew what a medispa was, not a single soul knew what we were talking about and therefore no one cared. We needed to be in a richer area so that people would have some ideas and experience with spas so it took forever to find five people who would talk to us (much less let us take their photo).
We ended up going down to Oxford Street because there were so many more people and we found it easier to grab people in groups to talk to us. Then we had to go out a second time and ask people about their latest beauty treatment. People were much more willing to talk about this and we got it done fairly quickly. But it was a really long day and involved a ton of walking. Claire lost the rubber stopper on her heal so on our way home we had to stop and buy her a pair of shoes and mine are about to fall apart so I got the same pair as her but in black.
Today Claire had to work because her parents are coming to town tomorrow, but I had the morning off still. So I got up and I printed off a walk from the magazine Time Out London and it was down by Oxford Street. I topped up my phone (bought some more minutes) and got on the tube to Oxford Circus. I walked on the walk for about an hour and a half and then I stopped into Primark and did some shopping, but didn't find anything to my liking so then I went home.
The End.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Are you Sam Witwicky? No, it's Shia Lebouf!!! ♥ 2:33 PM
Okay, so I think I just had one of the most amazing days of my life. I went to work and class this morning per usual. Then after class we went down to Leicester Square the the Odeon movie theater for the premier of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
We got there about an hour and a half before people that were going to the movie and celebrities were supposed to start arriving and it was already packed. We managed to find a spot somewhat close to the rail and it ended up being a really great spot. It was absolutely amazing. We say some stars that we didn't really know but others around us did and then we saw the major
stars of the movie; Shia Lebouf, Josh Dummel, Megan Fox, Michael Bay.Shia, Josh and Michael all were close enough for us to touch, if I had been able to move. Shia was the first big star to get there and when he came over by me, my heart was racing it was so exciting. I h
ad my video camera out and I was recording everything, but I was frozen with excitement and shock. I wish I had something for him to sign, but we never thought we'd get that close. I kept thinking in my head stick your hand out and he'll shake it, but I just couldn't even move. It was amazing. Here's some pics! And the video!The End.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
I Want to be a Princess ♥ 12:08 PM
This weekend was very busy and productive, so let me catch you up!Friday afternoon I went with three of my flatmates, Claire C., Kristin, and Linden out to Abbey Road. As I've mentioned in an earlier post, we had already tried to find it but this time we made it there. There is a wall in front of the recording studio that you can sign once you've been there, and of course we wanted to take photos of us walking across the road like on the Beetles album cover. Minor problem: it is a major road. So our pictures aren't all that great, but we were still there and it's pretty cool.
Then the four of us went out to dinner at this restaurant called Ping Pong that had been recommended to us by the girl at STA who booked our Paris trip for us. It is a dim sum restaurant, which is basically just like a tapas bar or a restaurant that serves appetizer like food. You had the option of getting a bunch of different little things, or you could get a set-menu which was basically just a bunch that went together. We all opted for the Sum It All up meal, because since we hadn't had dim sum before we weren't sure what we would like and it was a really good price for how much was included. It was absolutely amazing, probably the best food that we have had in London. We will definitely be going back. We then went out to a night club but shortly after a
rriving decided to go home.
rriving decided to go home.Saturday morning we woke up and took our time in the morning and then Kristin, Claire C. and I went out to Windsor Castle. It was about a 30 minute train ride and it was fun to see a bit out of London while on it, not to mention that I haven't really been on a train since I was a child. It was actually a pretty cheap trip too. Windsor is absolutely beautiful, it's no wonder that it is the Queen's favorite palace and she spends most of her time there.
Just as we were purchasing her tickets, she arrived back from Buckingham, and as it was her birthday there was going to be a celebration there that night. Although it was cool to get photos with the Queen's standard flying above the palace, it meant that the State Apartments were closed as was St. George's Cathedral, which is where King Henry VIII is buried. So that was sad, but we got to see Queen Mary's doll house. I wish I could have taken photos, but it wasn't allowed in there. It is basically a huge, elaborate, gorgeous doll house fashioned to match Buckingham Palace. We also managed to catch the guards changing and I'm going to put up my video of it. It's quite funny because it takes them like 5 minutes to do something that could have taken just a few if it weren't for all of the formality.
This morning we woke up early and took another 30 minute train ride out to Hampton Court Palace. I was absolutely giddy to be there because it is the castle that much of Henry VIII's saga unfolded in and that me
ans that Anne Boleyn and all his other wives and courtiers walked 500 years ago. It wasn't nearly as beautiful as Windsor as far as the palace itself goes, but we were definitely able to walk through more of this one and it has a history that is very much near and dear to my heart. It also had absolutely beautiful, expansive gardens. Unfortunately we didn't get to walk through much of them because they were so large and we had already been walking through the palace and the hedge maze well into the afternoon. We got to see a special portrait gallery called 
Henry's Women and it had portraits from all different museums of Henry's wives and two daughters (Elizabeth and Mary) all gathered together for this exhibit. It was really very cool and informative. We also got to go into the royal tennis courts, and King Henry absolutely loved to play tennis, so I could just imagine it!It's really hard to say much more about the palaces because it would simply be a lot of description and I'm going to leave that to my photos. However I can say that this was another weekend where I was left wishing that I had lived during King Henry's reign (although I hope I wouldn't have lost my head!!) Remember to check out my photos from the weekend! And here's some more!
The End.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
I Flew Air France and Made It Back, Barely. ♥ 10:39 AM
Alright, I'm finally going to wrap up the details of the Paris Blog and then hopefully later tonight I'll have the energy to write about last night and today.
So Sunday morning in Paris we woke up somewhat early to got to the Louvre. Since we had to check out of our hostel room at 11 and didn't want to take our bags with us we had to leave them in this roped off corner of the hostel lobby with a bunch of other people's bags. We were a little nervous about it but it would never have worked to carry them with us, so we just took out everything valuable and hoped for the best.
The Louvre and the Muse d'Orsay are both free the first Sunday of every month so even though we were exhausted already from the last day and a half we were determined to make it through them. Of course the major exhibits section of the Louvre was packed, but the rest of it wasn't too busy. We saw a lot of french sculpture, and other things. But one of the coolest things that we saw was the Napoleon apartments. They are absolutely gorgeous and ornate and the coolest part is that it's all furniture that was there while he was living there and they've renovated it and kept it all looking like it did back then. I took some video for you to get an impression of what it was like because it's just too hard to capture in photos. A general theme of the weekend was me wishing that I lived many years ago.
Then we went off to find the Mona Lisa, La Venus de Milo, and the Victory statue. They were all very cool to see in person because of the esteem they all have. It was hard to enjoy it though because for each you had to wade and fight a sea of people and didn't really get to enjoy it for very long.
We ate lunch at a little cafe there and then went out to the Tuileries Gardens which were the gardens from when the Louvre was a palace. They are pretty expansive and beautiful as well as
everything else we say. It was an incredibly nice morning so we sat out by the fountains for a while to enjoy it before heading on to Muse d'Orsay.It is a museum with more modern are like pre and post and impressionism. It was cool to see some more modern works of art that we are more familiar with the art not just the artist. Linden and I are big Gilmore Girls fans, so we tried to find the Renoir painting that is featured in the festival of living arts episode but although there were many Renoir's this one was not there.
We finished off our weekend in Paris by getting back on the Hop on, Hop off bus tour since our voucher was for two days. It was nice out so we figured we would sit on the top and take it around as much of the route we could to see everything we could before we had to head back to the hostel to get a cab and head to the airport. It was really fantastic and I'm glad we had that option because it was a great way to say goodbye to a city that unfortanatly we may never make it to again.
The rest of our journey home is not so pleasant. When we got back to the hostel we had to wait for over an hour and a half for a cab because the first one that was supposed to come got lost or something so another one had to come at the last minute. Then once at the airport, our driver had dropped us off at the wrong teminal so we had to walk to another, then our departure gate was changed. Then the worst part by far however was the flight. As I said we flew Air France, the line that had a plane go missing about a week earlier due possibly to a lightning strike. Well as we were circling around Heathrow in the air for about 30 minutes, we hit very bad turbulence and lightning struck right next to the plane. It was terrifying and I felt so, so sick because as most of you probably know I have a very hard time not getting sick on planes.
We finally landed and I can't describe to you how much more I love London now that I've been to another city.
The End.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Details of your incompetence do not interest me. ♥ 8:29 AM
As very few of you may have noticed, the title of this blog is a quote from Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada. Therefore, this post is about work. The last day in Paris will have to until tomorrow, or depending on how ambitious I feel maybe later tonight.
Let's start with yesterday. I can hardly even remember because everything has been such a whirlwind. But today Professional Beauty had to go to press, so yesterday we were supposed to be frantically doing majorly important things to finish off the issue, the stress level at the 4 Professional Beauty desks in EMAP was high. Then, modern technology failed us. The power went out. We spent about the next hour proofreading and preparing items for our editor, assistant editor and Sarah and go and work from home or an internet café while Claire and I were left to man the desks (in other words, answer the phones and call them if the power came back on, since without it we could do nothing else). By this point it was 2:00 and Claire and I were next to the last people left in the office, and we had to stay at the phones. We still hadn't been able to take lunch so we went in turns bringing it back to the office. A bit after we both were back eating at our desks, other people who work at EMAP began to tell us that to phone our editors and say that everyone was telling us we should leave because the power wouldn’t be back on until the next day. Jenni told us to go ahead and go and gave us a list of things to do from home, so we spent until almost 7 that night emailing with her and working with her on getting some things done last minute.
We worked for basically over an hour past the time we were supposed to, but because of the circumstances she had asked us to come in today instead of Thursday, and since we have class at 4 on Wednesday ment we would have a short day.
Today the Tube strike began, meaning nearly all the tube stops were closed and the tube is just basically not running. We are supposed to be at work at 9:30 so we left the flat a few minutes before 8 to catch the bus on Cromwell. The first bus was too full to get on, so we got on the next one just barely. We were on there for about 45 minutes to Baker Street where we were supposed to take another bus to a stop that was right outside our work. But the bus that came by was so full it didn’t let anyone one, so we walked to the next stop and encountered the same problem with the next bus. So we walked to the next stop and I’m sure you can guess what happened next, the bus didn’t let anyone on. So at this point we had pretty much decided just to walk, it should have only been about 30 minutes, which wasn’t bad. But the streets were poorly labeled and we took a wrong turn and got a little lost. We ended up walking 45 minutes in the rain with only one umbrella not really sure where we were going. We ended up getting to work about an hour late, after having left an hour early.
We only had a few hours at work and we were very busy for all of them. We had to proofread, replace last minute reader panel dropouts, find some last minute statistics and that's pretty much it but it took the whole time.
We found the bus going home alright but it didn't go all the way to where we needed it to so we had to walk for about another 15 minutes.
It's been a crazy 2 days.
The End.
Monday, June 8, 2009
The French are Bloody Mad ♥ 2:39 PM
Stand up and stretch a bit, this is about to be a long blog post!
So Saturday morning we woke up around 8:30 for a Hop-On, Hop-Off bus tour that we had booked back in London. We were a little leery and worried because they had told us we could just get on the bus with our itinerary at any of the sights the bus stopped at. Well we knew for sure that it stopped at the Louvre so we decided to take the Metro there. We had heard a rumor that it was free for students, so we decided to check but it was only free to people 18-25 that were from European countries but we knew that the first Sunday of every month the Louvre and the Muse d'Orsay. So we walked outside to take some photos outside the Louvre, and of course it was raining. But we made the best of it and took a few photos and looked around for Les Cars Rouge which was our bus tour company. We saw one drive by so we walked towards it and when the next one came he left with out us! So we walked across the street to the Muse d'Orsay because we could see the buses stopping to pick people up.
By this point we were soaking wet so we wanted to try and find a place to
get a hot coffee and some food. We were called into this little café type place by a woman who was speaking english. The cappachinos were absolutely amazing but the food was just okay, there was a weird tasting mayo on my sandwhich. We then finally got on the bus, and it had nearly stopped raining at this point, but not enough to sit on the open top of the double decker so we just stayed on the bottom and listened to our audio tour and enjoyed the sights.The first stop was La Palais Garnier which is the Opera that the Phantom of the Opera is based off of and where they did some of the filming for the movie. It is absolutely breathtaking, everything is so intricate and so expensively gorgeous. It was amazing I can't even describe it so I've uploaded a video of the actual theater part and I'll give you the link to other videos I made of it as well.
Next stop: Arc de Triomphe. This was absolutely massive and we could have gone up but it cost money and we didn't feel the need to take pictures from up above so we took some of the Arc and got back on the bus.
Next we made our way to the Tour Eiffel. We first stopped at Trocadero Square and took some photos from somewhat far away but pretty close and then after we took a bunch of photos there we got back on the bus and went right to it. There was a mass of people dressed in yellow in red dancing, singing, cheering and we eventually figured out that there was a rugby championship. They were absoutley insane and we actually saw someone get violenty arrested; there were billy clubs involved. It was very intense. That's one thing about the French, they have army members walking around with their guns out in full uniform and everything is very intimidating.
Next we went past the Louvre again to go to Notre Dame. It was very cool, we got to go through the inside of the Cathedral and it was gorgeous again very gothic and intricate. It's too hard to describe in words and I again have a video of it.
We got back on the Metro then to head to the Hostel to rest up for a bit and find a place to eat dinner at. After a short nap we went on a quest for a restaurant in Claire's guide book, we found it eventually but it wasn't serving dinner for another 30 minutes so we wandered around and found another place.
At first I just ordered a tuna steak, but Claire and Linden ordered french onion soup to start and it smelled so good that I had to order some myself. The food was all very, very good but was super stuffed.
After dinner we headed back to Trocadero square to see La Tour Eiffel at night when it was light up and doing the light show which they do on the hour for 10 minutes. It was really very pretty and awe inspiring because it made it really sink in that we were sitting in Paris in front of the Eiffel Tower. We got some crepes while we were sitting there and enjoyed a good evening together on the grass until we got so tired we needed to go back to the hostel. Once again we slept like rocks.
I have a thousand more pictures I could put on here but once again I'm going to refer you to the facebook album as it takes forever for these photos and video to upload.
Here are some more videos too:
http://www.youtube.com/user/shandi818
The End.
Enchanté, parlez-vous anglais? ♥ 11:22 AM
Well, I made it back from Paris and I have a lot to tell. So much in fact, that I'm going to have to write a different post for each day we were there so it may take me a while before I've covered the whole trip.
It all started Friday morning when we got up for our 10 AM class, frantically packing last minute items before we left and all realizing that we couldn't bring things like face wash, shampoo and body wash b/c we were carrying all of our bags on and didn't have travel approved size container. We were all ancy throughout class and when it was over we went back to the flat to grab our bags and then took the tube to Heathrow airport. We flew Air France and considering that one of their planes disappeared the week before, some of my flatmates were quite nervous about it. The flight was about 35 minutes; we took off, got high enough for them to serve us a snack (some french cracker type things) and then started to land.
We decided to take a taxi to the hostel because we didn't know the public transportation system at all nor did we really know where our hostel was. It was pretty expensive, when we got out it was about 47 euro and then he pretty much added his own tip on by telling us that the cost was 60 euro and none of us were brave enough to say anything.
The hostel was Caulaincourt Square Hostel and it was actually not bad at all. We were supposed to be in a 6 person room and since there was only 5 of us we were going to have a random person in the room with us, and there wasn't supposed to be a bathroom in it either. We ended up getting a 5 person room with a bathroom and they were actually very cutely decorated - it was probably cleaner/nicer than our flat in London - but it was very small, basically just room for the beds. Once in our room we spend a while trying to figure out the Metro, which is the Paris version of the tube and headed out to dinner.
We went to a restaurant suggested by one of my flatmates had brought because it
had a traditional Parisian atmosphere. We got on the Metro and found the restaurant fairly easily with minimal wandering. The menu was handwritten in French and the only one of us that speaks any French is Linden, who took it in high school knew a minimal amount. She recognized vegetables and steak. We had no idea what we were going to do at that point, but then the waitress came around and very kindly told us in English what everything was. Three of us ordered a glass of white wine with our dinner, the other three girls that ordered food ordered steak and fries and I ordered what was basically like a beef stew but the broth was not as thick as a stew and tasted like a wine sauce. It was absolutely heavenly and just a Delicious meal. It was a perfect first meal in Paris.After dinner we decided to walk to Notre Dame because we were close to it and we wanted to see it all light up at night. Along the way we stopped at the river Seine and took some photos and sat there for a while before continuing on. Notre Dame was amazing, there were hardly any people in the square in front of it because it was around midnight and it is such a big, impressive cathedral. All the intricate statues and carvings are awesome. It was pretty cold and it had been a long day so after about 15 minutes or so we got back on the Metro to head to the hostel. We all fell asleep almost immediately upon putting our head on the pillow.
Alright, I'll resume writing about the rest of the trip either later tonight or tomorrow because it's a lot of typing. Also I'm no longer putting my photos on Picasa, it takes too long to do that and facebook so I'm going to put the facebook link up and even if you don't have an account you can see them there:
Paris Photos
London Photos
The End.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
The Summer Without Sleep ♥ 2:58 AM
Well it's been a fairly uneventful few days since we went to Oxford on Saturday. This week will be our first full week of classes and work, which means that for the rest of the summer most of my blog postings are going to be on weekends because for the most part we are unable to get out and see many sites during the week.
After my vlog post on Sunday we never made it out to Hyde Park. We were all so exhausted that we couldn't even exert the little effort it took to get there, so we all just lounged and relaxed in the flat. Since Claire and I had to work in the morning I went to bed pretty early, around 11:30 actually. This brings me to the subject of my blog title. I have come to realize that I will get absolutely no sleep this summer. No matter what we do each day, whether it be sight-seeing, work and/or class by the end of the day the time is just gone. We get home and always need to relax for a while after the long day, then by the time we eat dinner and update our blogs and write in our journals it's always late. And then we have to get up early in the morning.
So Monday morning I woke up at 8 for work and Claire and I got on the tube to head to Professional Beauty. We worked on the Top 50 Most Desirable Salons that we started on last Thursday. Our editor Jenny has made it clear to us that this is pretty much through and through going to be our project. We had to look at the survey and see how many of the 50 salons had responded. At first it was looking amazing, there were 45 responses! Then after looking closer at each individual response we realized that one of the salons had "misunderstood" what they were supposed to do; the manager had forwarded the survey on to employees and friends from them to take and and vote for her salon in every place. What they are actually supposed to do is just have the manager or owner take the survey and pick their personal top 10 which cannot include their salon. So Claire then had to go through and determine which were to be counted and which weren't.
While she was doing this, I was sent out to go down High Camden Street to find a store that sold frames. I was given 60 quid to buy them with and the editor Jenny told me right when we got in what I was doing; I was looking for four black frames that would fit an A4 certificate. A4 is what they call a printer sized sheet of paper over here. Well, she told me the name of a store that might have them, and then described the storefront of one that would surely have them. Then she talked to us about the survey for about an hour. So by the time I went out all I could remember was that the name of the store she told me was two words both starting with the same letter (honestly I couldn't understand her when she said it in the first place), that if I reached Marks & Spencer's I'd "gone far too far", and that I must cross the street to get to this store.
I searched and searched and when I got to Marks & Spencer's hadn't found it. So I called Jenny. No answer. Okay, so then I called the assistant editor. No answer. Finally I called Sarah and she answered and gave the phone to Jenny. Apparently the store is called SnappySnaps and it's a photography shop with a bright yellow storefront. There were about 5 stores with bright yellow storefronts. So I decided to go further down closer towards Marks and Spencer's and what do you know, there it is. Two stores down from Marks & Spencer's on the opposite side of the street she said it was. Well, I crossed the street and walked in. No A4 frames there. Luckily they were able to tell me the name and location of the other store Jenny was talking about. They had 2 different black A4 frames at Century Stationer. I couldn't decide which to pick so I made and employee give me her input. I had the frames, but I was still nervous. Jenny had given me 60 pounds and each frame was only 6 pounds, what if she wanted nicer frames?
Luckily the frames were just lovely. Jenny seemed quite happy that I had succeeded. This is the nice thing about Professional Beauty, they seem rather intimidating but always give us loads of praise once we've done something. Either their full of it, or they like us quite a bit. Also when I got back Claire informed me that only 5 of the survey respondents were legit. We would have to call the rest when we got into work tomorrow, but for the day we were done because we had to get to class by 1.
Class was alright. We had to discuss our projects that we had been assigned, which was basically to get a lot of facts about one certain paper here in London so that we could all share our knowledge and know something about the papers here. Then we watched a short documentary about war correspondents in Sarajevo and then watched an hour of the movie Saving Sarajevo. After class Linden and I headed to the grocery store and got an intense work out carrying our groceries home. We bummed around most of the night. Linden and I got up to go for a walk around the neighborhood, got a little lost and saw a cute little fox.
Tuesday we all had to work. Claire and I proceeded to call the 45 salons that hadn't responded to the survey and tell them they really do need to take it soon. After that we started analyzing the results of the survey. Then we had to type up stories that our editor had written on the train. They were very short, but we each took about 15 minutes to do it because we simply couldn't read her handwriting. By the time we finished that it was 2 so I suggested to Claire that we go get lunch before they could throw anything else at us. So we scrambled out of there and I grabbed my bag lunch and we headed to Costa Coffee so Claire could get something. We spend the lunch break eating and sitting in this little square with a bench and lots of sunlight. We took the whole hour too.
The rest of the afternoon was just as busy. We edited our readers panel again, found out one of them has already been in the readers panel and had to google salons to call on Thursday so that we can replace her with one of them. We re sized photos for the most desirable salons feature and analyzed some more survey results. At 5:30 we dashed out of there. It was a long day and we spent the evening relaxing.
We need to find some more afternoon/evening activities since that's all we have open during the week now. We have the morning off until class at 4, but it will mostly be spent doing homework since we are leaving for Paris after class on Friday!
The End.