One down, three to go?

I've been in London a month and I'm still alive (a little exhausted always but alive and that's what matters)! I don't really get home sick anymore. Sure, there are moments where I miss my friends and Pitt, but it's not the same feeling I had a few weeks ago and I'm glad that normality has officially set in.

I count my lucky stars every week that my first class on Monday is a class that requires little thinking from me. This week, we watched 12 Years a Slave and I was extremely excited because it was a movie that I've been wanting to see, but I hadn't gotten around to it. I completely understand why it won so many awards and is so highly reviewed. The movie made my skin crawl, in a bad way. I felt overwhelmed with a combination of guilt and disgust by the end of the movie after watching the graphic and unjust treatment of the characters.

During the three hour break between my British Contemporary Film class and the worst class I've ever had to take, Emily, Billy and I took a short 10 minute walk from CAPA and found the Natural History Museum. The Natural History Museum actually disappointed me. It was more of a museum for children (which is fine), but after being in the Smithsonian, The Benjamin Franklin Museum or even seeing the dinosaur exhibit in Carnegie Melon just a few blocks away from me in Pittsburgh, nothing could compare.

THIS INTERNSHIP CLASS! It is awful and I don't think that I will ever shut up about how much I hate this class. I hope that CAPA reads my blog some day and just understands how much I loathe this class. We talked about different roles in organizations and in the making of products and production. It was interesting, I guess. It was more interesting than the normal culture shock topics that we address week after week so that was at least a win on this class' part.

Tuesday was a work day! I was kept pretty busy with teaching myself how to use GIMP (a free, rip off version of photoshop) to work on updating the website with everyone's edited pictures and bios for the Corporate Alliance website. I published the Facebook page officially and worked on a few different blog posts for the website including one for Valentine's Day and one about an Australian campaign called #IGotFlowersToday.

Side note; If you have time, definitely read the poem that is associated with the #IGotFlowersToday campaign. It involves domestic abuse for anyone who might be triggered by that, but it effectively brings awareness to the issue and I found it very interesting and quite sad.

During my hour break (that I don't believe that I'll ever get used to) I walked 15 minutes from my office to Daunt Books in Marylebone. Daunt Books is a very British book store that looks like something out of a movie. Almost every bit of wall space was covered in floor to ceiling book cases that contained thousands of books. The whole time I was there, I was just thinking about how much Belle from Beauty and the Beast (and my dad) would just thrive in this environment. The store specializes in travel books and people come from all over to visit this bookstore.

I ended the day by going to Primark with Rose where I bought clothing that I didn't need but I've been wearing the same like six outfits over and over again and hoping that no one has been noticing. To add onto my lacking variations in outfits, I ended up snagging a thread of my sweater on the wood in Daunt Books and ended up with a hole in the middle of the sweater, thus throwing it out that night so I needed something to fill that void in my closet.

On Wednesday, I continued to add a few last touches to my blog posts before I had my weekly meeting with Melissa, my boss. We discussed what I would need to do for the next week along with giving me access to the Twitter and LinkedIn accounts so that I could put content on those two platforms. Melissa taught me the format that the organization used for their tweets, along with the hashtags that we should be using and which accounts to retweet content from.

We attended a meeting with members of the House of Commons and Vodafone in the efforts to try to put in place a national initiative. Here, the research that I did the previous week was put into play and I was told that my work was impressive and better than they expected which is a good thing to hear.

That night Billy, Rose, Liz, Tori and I went to go see Wicked in the West End at the Apollo Victoria theatre. Because we are poor college students, we bought tickets all the way up top in order to save money but still be able to experience it. Liz and I had both already seen Wicked previously, but this was the first time for Billy, Rose and Tori.

It had been a while since I had seen Wicked so I was ready to re-experience it. I remembered most of the songs, but I had totally forgotten about a few plot lines and points. We had an understudy for Glinda that night, but she held her own very well. I'm glad I saw it again is basically what I'm trying to say.

The one thing I hate about British theatre is the lack of Playbill or anything like it for free. I would've loved to have something beyond my ticket to remember the night from, but if I had extra money for a booklet, I would've just spent that money on closer seats (not that there was anything wrong with ours! We could easily see everything).

Another side note: I just want to inform everyone that Rose has never seen the Wizard of Oz and sat through the entire play thinking that Elphaba was going to be the witch that was crushed under the house. She was disappointed (but mostly confused) by the end of the show.

Thursday is my least favorite day of the week. Something about sitting in two over three hour classes in one day just makes me dread waking up and rolling out of bed. (As much as I do complain about the long day, it really is more beneficial to me because it makes my work scheduler prettier and allows me to have Friday's off so that I can travel!)

In my advertising class, we talked about the concept and importance of storytelling when it comes to advertisements and what the viewers want. These types of ads can range from your typical 30 second ad, to the six minute ad. We focused on film-ads brought to us by BMW and Johnnie Walker. BMW had an iconic series of commercials that came out starting in the early 2000s. The evolution of the plots, the cars and the production value in general had all improved a great deal. It was like watching a mini action movie where people only drove BMWs and I was surprisingly okay with it. However, my favorite ad we talked about was the Johnnie Walker ad. I really enjoyed the Johnnie Walker ad. It focused on telling the story of how Johnnie Walker came to be. On top of that, it was filmed in one shot and everything was to a tee. If you have an extra few minutes, I'd recommend looking it up. It's very highly reviewed so you should have no trouble finding it on the internet.

I had a group presentation in my Marketing class which went surprisingly well. I thought that Willy (my professor) was going to be a hard grader, but we still did well on the presentation despite that fact that I'm going to admit it wasn't as good as it should've been.

Thursday night, Billy, Liz, Emilia and I went to Sindercombe right down the street to unwind after a long week. There was live music playing and the band wasn't bad and I enjoyed listening to them. They were high energy and played cover songs that anyone would know; from Amy Winehouse to Maroon 5. However, the minute that the band left and the bar started playing the music, I wanted to leave because their choice in music was subpar, at best.

The weather on Friday was awful (surprise!), but we weren't going to let it prevent us from doing our little Friday adventure. The cold weather along with light rain did manage to speed up how long we spent at each place tho.

We started in Shoreditch which has been going gentrification and is now considered to be a popular and fashionable part of London. It also has a large amount of street art and graffiti, including two pieces by Banksy (I love him, surprise! I am basic!)

I dragged my friends through the crappy weather and we (Emilia) managed to find the two remaining Banksy pieces in the area, despite the fact that part of one had been painted over.

After the Banksy adventure, we made our way to Covent Gardens to walk through the Market, see the surrounding area and grab a late lunch at one of the little restaurants (and to warm up because we were freezing).

Afterwards, we went to Waitrose because Emilia and I had this idea that we could make homemade pizza (we watch too much Food Network). However, after realizing we had no measuring cups, couldn't find the yeast and needed at least two hours to let the dough rise, we opted out.

That night I stayed in and went to bed early because I was exhausted (and also because I fell off the sidewalk earlier that afternoon while admiring Banksy and may or may not have had a sprained ankle for about two days) ((Ha sorry mom and dad)) (((This is the first my parents will be hearing about this sprained ankle))) ((((It's better now)))).

Saturday was a homework day because midterms were coming up and I was not about to fall back into my procrastination habits that I have in Pittsburgh. Well, that and the fact my ankle was still sprained and swollen. We took a break around 4:30pm to watch another Rugby game (from the comfort of our couches) and England won yet again. Later that night, we took the tube to Founder's Arm which is a bar that is located right next to the Thames where we enjoyed dinner and drinks for those who decided to drink (not me because I'm poor).

Sunday was ANOTHER homework day and a lazy day. My ankle was feeling significantly better, but I didn't want to work it too much so I figured another day at home wouldn't hurt. I spent the day doing a combination of school work and work for my internship which put me ahead for the week so I'm glad because now I have time to do things like write blog posts and sleep (ha, just kidding).

The fact that spring break is coming up shortly is what is keeping me motivated because in a little under two weeks, I'll be in Italy :-)