Terra Incognita

a word for the faint-hearted
There’s so much that I’m going to write and I’m sorry that I haven’t posted for a week. This is going to be a monstrous entry. So here’s my disclaimer: I could post every day and the info would be about as long. So, if you are short of time and can only take a little London at once, then take a section or so a day while I’m gone for the next week and it’ll be just like I’m posting every day.

my major realisation
I’m only in Europe at age 20 once. This is my one opportunity to be able to travel freely in Europe and do and see all I want to. I was thinking about it, and I realized that most students leave college with a debt of some kind and right now I don’t really owe very much at all. And I started thinking, from this summer on, I’m working. I’m not going to have long vacations because I’m going to try to be gaining respect and working over-time. This is my chance to (putting it cheesily but truly) see the world. I don’t want to leave this semester thinking, I could have gone to the Riviera, but instead I saved up enough money to go to New York this summer with my family. I can see New York any time I want, pretty much. I can’t very easily hop on a plane to Dublin or Barcelona. So, I’ve decided that I don’t mind accruing a bit of a dept in Europe. Don’t worry parents, that doesn’t mean I’m going to go out and buy a complete Burberry outfit, I am still eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch nearly every day. I’ll just be eating those pb&js in Prague or Salzburg.

the photoshoot
…was somewhat boring. But it got me out of the office and into Soho for four hours…to watch them set up two, repeat that, two still life, yes still life, shots. Who knew that arranging six calla lilies to look like they’d been casually set on the table would take so much careful precision.

Brighton
Ellen, Megan and I went to the sea-side town for a day trip Saturday. We walked along the pebbly beach, through the carnival on the pier, visited the street markets and just had fun being someplace other than the big city. While I was in line for fish and chips, I struck up a conversation with four (quite good-looking) British chaps. One of them gave me the stuffed monkey he had won at a carnival game. I shall treasure it for always.

puttin’ on the fritz
Fritz Cropp, the journalism study abroad advisor from Mizzou, came Tuesday and treated all the interns to a free pizza dinner. I think I have eaten more pizza here in London than I did all last semester at MU. It’s really different pizza….knife and fork pizza, not hands and grease pizza.

rose-to-the-etta stone and a brief preview of next week
For our excursion this week, we visited the British museum. Some pretty cool stuff there. For one, we saw the Rosetta Stone (the stone that historians found and used to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics). We also saw pieces of the Parthenon. That was really cool for me because tomorrow (!) we leave for Italy and Greece for our mid term break and will see the structure. It was cool to hear some history behind it before going to see it. We also got to go inside the remains of an Iraqi palace in one exhibit and got to see real live (or not so live) mummies in another. Sweet stuff.

on the wrong side of the road!!!
I went to Harrow Wednesday to visit Sarah for dinner. We went to dinner with two guys from her school, one from Barbados, one from Greece. To get there, we caught a ride with a Londoner, Irfan (I now know two Irfans). I’ve been in a bus, but this was my first ride in a British car. It was an odd feeling, to keep expecting to see a car coming straight at us.

all work and all play
I got to design my first page today! It’s a page advertising a CD put out by the magazine that appears in every issue. The June/July issue is a redesign so the art director, Sally, wanted a new page with the new fonts and colours, etc. Plus, the old one was really boring. I gave her four different layouts from which to choose and the one she liked the most was the same one that I like the most. Made me feel like maybe I know a bit about what I’m doing. :) Sally said that she’s still waiting on some pieces for a job bag (a zip-lock-type bag that holds all the physical pieces of a spread) for me but hopes to have them when I return from break. I can’t believe my luck with this internship. Erin Patterson, if you do this program next year, insist that you are assigned to Wedding and Home.

many thanks
…to Pat for sending course catalogues for the summer and fall semesters. They were put to good use by many an MU student in this building of flats.
…to Luke for registering me for classes. I know I’ve sent you chasing consent cards all over. Thanks dood.
…to Margaret for sending all the mail at AX to my family.
…to everyone who’s emailed me in the past week. I got a huge influx of email. Sorry I can’t respond to everyone right away!

weddings weddings everywhere
Maybe it’s because I’m working at a bridal magazine but I really don’t think I’ve ever experienced so much wedding talk. Congratulations to one of my best friends since first grade, Jennifer, in her engagement to Kyle! Congratulations to my dear cousin Delaney in her engagement! Congratulations to Andrea in her recent marriage and to Brent in his as well! And then there’s Leigh Ann’s wedding this summer, and Amy’s engagement and Natalie’s engagement. And friends’ families’ weddings too: Emily’s brother, Sarah Hood’s brother, Sarah McCann’s brother. Elisha and Tim were married over Christmas break. This is crazy, people!

the itinerary
We leave tomorrow morning at 10:15 London time. From Sat to Tues morning we will be in Rome. We’ll see the Vatican and Sistine Chapel while there. Then, Tuesday and Wednesday we’ll spend in Florence. Wed. we travel to Venice for a day and take a gondola through the city. Then we go to Athens where we’ll stay two nights. I’m super excited and everyone at work is really jealous. I’m lucky that the honeymoon/travel editor has a ton of phrasebooks of all sorts. I’m bringing the pocket European phrasebook with me. I’m prepared! To my parents and anyone who doesn’t think they can wait a week until I post again, Megan will have her European mobile on her. The number is 44 0 0774 3756 159.

observations
* 'skint' = 'broke' as in, 'After this semester and all my trips, I will be skint.'
* the Brits really do have bad teeth!