Bloody Brilliant: A Semester in London

Life has been too busy for blogging. I’ll catch up once the semester ends NEXT WEEK

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I WON A SCHOLARSHIP FOR NEXT YEAR!

Thank you Kogod Awards, and my awesome accounting profs who love me apparently enough to give me $1000.

So excited.

So, this weekend was my birthday, but we’ll get to that later. Here are the highlights of the week leading up to my birthday:

Monday, Taryn, Liz and I went on our ride on the London Eye, which if anyone doesn’t know is this giant slow moving ferris wheel basically, except the pods hold like 30 people, and the view is so much more incredible than any ferris wheel I’ve ever been on.

Tuesday, my British life and cultures class went on a tour of The Globe, Shakespeare’s theater in London. While the building was pretty cool, the tour itself sucked. Crappy tour guide. AND he ruined the end of the last Lord of the Rings movie, which Liz and I have been watching. So upsetting. Though the best part of the trip by far was the millenium bridge that was close by, which in case you didn’t know, is the bridge used in the beginning of the Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince movie. So cool.

Wednesday through Friday I interned, nothing too exciting there. Interning has proved to be pretty exhausting these days. Only 4 more weeks though.

Friday a few of Claire and Emily’s friends arrived, so we took them out to dinner at Brick Lane, which is always fun, and always quite delicious. And I proved how ridiculous I am and walked into yet another pole, just like I did in Madrid. Except this pole was more like 4 feet high, not 1 foot, so I really have no excuse for walking into it except I’m just so dumb sometimes.

After brick lane, we headed to a pub, where we met up with a few other people from my program, and my friend Steph, who was visiting from Madrid!

Saturday, aka my birthday, we went to the Portebello Road Market in Notting Hill. It was pretty cool, because a good portion of the market was antiques which was interesting to see. And all the buildings on the road were so beautifully colored.

Afterwards, we came back and relaxed for a while before going out to dinner. A delicious italian restaurant near my flat called Wildwood. Which of course reminded me of the beach in NJ and all those Brown family vacations from back in the day.

After dinner, my friends surprised me with decorations and a cake and a tiara and fun birthday stuff which was super cute of them. After celebrating Steph joined us, and we went out for the night.

I won’t go into details for reasons I’m sure you can guess, but it was definitely not much different than a traditional American 21st birthday, I can tell you that.

Not much exciting has happened since then. The parents get here tomorrow and are here for the next week, so there will be plenty of touristing to share with you all. And, the moment we’ve all been waiting for is coming soon…. Finally going to the Harry Potter Studio Tour this Sunday!!! Look for lots of pictures on facebook after the fact.

Cheers Friends!

Okay, but actually, there is PLENTY to say about St. Patrick’s Day Dublin. I will not be saying all of it, for reasons I’m sure everybody can guess. Anyway, we arrived in Dublin late Friday night and stayed a hotel right next to the airport. And it was magical. We felt like queens, even though we had to share the beds. It was spectacular. But the beds were not on wheels, which is quite the luxury for us FIE students.

Moving on to the real stuff though, we headed into Dublin early the next morning, went straight to the hostel to ditch our stuff and then headed towards the masses of green waiting for the parade to start. On the way we stocked up on our St. Patty’s Day gear - face paint included - and went to join the crowd. It was kind of chilly so its hard to tell, but here are some pics of our amazing outfits.

It started raining at one point. Only for 15 min though.

So, after waiting outside for a good hour at least for the parade to start, during which Seneca decided climbing the tree was an ideal way to watch the parade, the parade finally started and headed in our direction, and oh my god I have never seen such a bizarre parade in my entire life. There was no reasoning for any of the obscure things that were in this parade, and we spent the entire time trying to understand what was going on. It was quite the experience. I enjoyed it though. Here are just a couple examples to show the insanity of this parade. The rest of the pictures are on facebook, if you’r interested in more weirdness.

Post parade, we headed to a pub for our first Dublin Guiness. Now, I don’t like beer, but this stuff stuff was pretty good. Had a slight coffee taste, which was pretty nice. This of course was followed by a dinner, some delicious Leprechaun Juice, and a ton of pub crawling for the night.

Sunday morning, we got up and headed out for our tour of the Guiness Factory. Even though I don’t really like beer, it was pretty cool to go to. We got to learn about how it was made, and then learn how to pour the perfect pint of beer. A pretty useful skill if I do say so myself. We even had lunch there which was the best decision ever. They had amazing stew, made with a little Guiness in it of course, and it was one of the most delicious things I’ve ever had.

For the rest of the day, we walked around Dublin, saw one of the castles, went to the St. Patrick’s Day Carnival for a little bit, and of course did some more pub crawling, before heading back to the hostel, and then heading back to London the next morning - we decided that a repeat of Madrid’s night of no sleep was not a good plan.

No trips for a couple weeks, but there will be some excitement coming up, so keep reading!

Cheers!

Since spring break ended life has been pretty hectic, so here are the highlights since I have no time to go into all the details:

Right after spring break, Josh came to visit! He was here from Sunday to Friday, and staying a 5 minutes walk from my flat! It was really great getting to meet his friends and hanging out, even though our schedules kept us from seeing each other that much. Saying bye was hard though. I miss having my best friend 5 minutes away at all times. But I’m super excited to go to Copenhagen at the end of April to visit him.

Also, my internship started last week! I was super nervous at first, but it turns out my office is pretty cool! And I have an intern buddy from the University of Florida to hang out with. It is a recruiting company called virtual human resources, and I’m working in the finance and accounting department. Though for now I’m stuck revamping their management excel spreadsheets. So irritating.

Overall though, I really like it. And the location is super cool. Its kind of far away though, which sucks, but its right next to the Tower Bridge, so I get to walk over the Tower Bridge to get home though which is so awesome. And the building itself is on a wharf, called New Concordia Wharf because its cool, and the building used to be a spice and tea warehouse. Its pretty cool. 

The days are long though, and I’ve found myself getting quite exhausted and going to bed by 11 pm - super early. If my knee and hip problems weren’t enough, I’m now officially an old lady, going to bed early and everything.

Anyway, I’m quite exhausted. Its becoming a theme in my life. Dublin this weekend for St. Patrick’s Day, so there is definitely an exciting post to look forward to in the near future.

Cheers!

With Josh on his London visit

Oh, just walking around on a break from work.

The pier side of my building. So cool.

Walking home from work.