BES-Reflective Journal, Week 2

Wow, what an eventful week...I would be worried if I didn't say that though. It was the first week that we began our scheduled classes and internships for the term. I must say that I liked having structure and schedule. Being able to do whatever we wanted and set our own schedule was fun, but this week made it feel like I am here to stay and not just on vacation. Classes were introductory so nothing too exciting yet. The first week of my internship was awesome, I went to a press viewing of an exhibit at the V&A Museum, went to various theatres and venues to pick up pamphlets to mail, and even got free tickets to Ladykillers! That was my first experience with heavy British humor. Some things that the audience laughed at weren't funny to me at all, but overall the show was very good. I adored Les Mis, almost shed some tears but I held it together.


My week was going awesome until Thursday afternoon.We went to Brixton for food and to visit the market. On the way home I hit a physical wall. I'd been having a sore throat for a few days but my head started to hurt, I was really cold, and the back of my neck killed. I came back and tried to sleep it off, by the next morning it had only gotten worse. My friend scared me saying, "You're symptoms match meningitis, you need to go to the doctor!" I was terrified, all I know about meningitis is that usually if you get it you die. It was the first time since I got here that I felt helpless. I wanted to talk to my mom but with the time difference she was at work and I couldn't. I didn't know how the healthcare system here works, and I was afraid if I had to do something (get X-rays/blood test) my insurance wouldn't cover it and I'd have to pay thousands of dollars to get treated. The thoughts also ran through my head, "What if I do have something serious and I have to go home? I'm not ready to do that yet! What if I have mono or something and I have to spend my time in London in bed?" It was all very overwhelming and I was truly scared. Luckily I have made some great friends here, one took me to the doctor and stayed the whole 3.5 hours that we were there. Turns out I just have a virus that's going around, I feel a lot better now...no meningitis.

Experiencing the emergency room at St. Thomas' Hospital was an experience in and of itself. I noticed a lot of differences than America. For example, while we were waiting to see a doctor the would wheel in people on stretchers that had died in the ambulance. I've never seen a dead person before and it was very shocking that they just wheel them in front of everyone in the waiting room. We also heard a few people flat line (heart-rate stops) who I assume died as well. I can't believe that they just wheel them in front of everyone to see...still shocks me. I'm grateful that my treatment was free but overall I'm appreciative of the healthcare we have in America.

Yesterday was Chinese New Year and we went to the celebration in Trafalgar Square....bad idea! There were so many people up in my business and I'm sure I was in theirs as well. Good thing I'm tall so I could see a few things going on stage. I feel bad for the short people with me, they couldn't see anything going on. It was cool to say that I'd been there but I wouldn't recommend anyone else doing it in the future.



I felt a lot of things this week: excitement, frustration, homesick for my mom, claustrophobic, and of course amazed both with this city and with myself. Just this morning I went somewhere by myself for the first time! Granted it was just to Marks and Spencers to get some floss and food I was proud of myself. I'm the type of person who relies on my GPS to get me to places in my hometown, so even if I just went to the store by myself I feel proud of myself and can definitely see how I am growing as a person here.

Internship-Assignment B

Holly Osborn


Company: "This is London" (magazine)


A. Mission statement: "Launched in 1956, we are London's longest established "whats on" magazine, distributed to visitors staying at top London hotels. We provide up-to-date information on all events, shows, museums, restaurants and shopping venues across the capital. We also offer an online ticketing service with exclusive discounts."


B. It is distributed every other week. The chain of command is less formal, both Julie and Beth work together to get things done. They receive emails from P.R. representatives, both new and those they have worked with before. They turn P.R. releases into short catchy magazine worthy pitches and organize them into categories (Music, Theatre, Exhibitions). 


C. Both Julie and Beth Jones make decisions about new policies, they are a great team. But technically Julie is the main owner/editor. 


D. The main competition is "TimeOut London" magazine, which is a lot bigger. But it's rarely ever talked about at all.


E. It is funded by advertisements and subscriptions/distribution of sales. Most of the advertisements come from theaters and complexes that host events who want to draw people.


F. It serves tourists and those who want to keep up to date on what's going on in London.


G. Two main employees (Julie and Beth Jones), the printing publisher, and one woman outside of the city who runs the website.


H. Since it's just two people, mum and daughter, they get the benefit of working from anywhere they want. They can go to events and write from anywhere since their is just two of them. Additional benefits include free tickets to shows and events for both the purpose of the magazine and leisure.


I. Issues include advertisement funding. They said that in a recession the first thing that companies cut is the P.R. department. The P.R. department is who contacts the magazine and funds its advertising. One good thing that Beth said is, "Even in a recession, London still has its tourists. When people are on vacation they are more likely to spend money on the things we tell them to do. No Londoner in their right mind would pay 65 quid for tickets to Ladykillers, but tourists on vacation will."  

Internship Assignment A

I. To explore the world of magazine publishing and get a taste of what it's about

• have my work be published in the magazine
• not be afraid to take a risk...don't play it safe
• learn as much as I can from Julie and Beth about teamwork and running a magazine on their own

II. To use my status as a visitor to London to help the magazine appeal to tourists

• don't be afraid to explore areas and venues that aren't familiar to me
• encourage readers to go to events that are culturally rich 

III. To continually improve my work ethic and team work

• work as a team with Lucy to complete tasks
• continually strive to be punctual with time and on top of assignments

Internship Weekly-Journal 1

Week 1

Date: Tuesday 24 January & 25 January                                Total Hours: 12

What an eventful first week at my internship with "This is London Magazine." I am doing my internship with Lucy Thomas, another student from Central so we work as a team to get tasks done that we are assigned. Both days we ventured out to Stansted on the Central Line (zone 3) where we met Julie and Beth Jones, a mother-daughter team that runs the magazine. The "office" they use is in a coffee shop/art gallery called Stour Space. It's right on the river and in the area of the Olympic Park, one of them picks us up in their car and we drive through Olympic Security to get to Stour Space. We did a variety of things this week all over London.

On Tuesday Beth explained how formatting the magazine works and how to convert a long press release into a 200 word preview that goes into the magazine (it's called subbing). There was a press event that she also told us about and gave us directions to. Then we took off to get everything done. First we went to the V&A museum where the press viewing of the new "Golden Spider Silk" exhibit was taking place. It was very cool, the silk comes out of the spider already gold, and it took 1.5 million spiders to make both of the pieces the exhibit was showing. It was in a very posh neighborhood, but I really enjoyed it and want to go back to the V&A and have a look around on my own. We then returned to Vandon where we did some computer work. Lucy proofread a script of the magazine while I wrote a piece about the V&A exhibit. We spent the next few hours subbing, we each did seven. Some of mine included: Shrek the Musical, Laila Shawa and the annual flamenco festival at Saddler's Wells. We emailed them to Julie and called it a night. Well, almost :) the magazine gets a lot of free tickets to shows and events, so we went and saw the show "Ladykillers." I'd say that was a pretty successful first day.

Day two wasn't quite as glamorous as day one. We met Beth and she gave us our duties for the day and then sent us back on our way. We walked for an hour from Victoria Station to St. John Smith center to get some pamphlets to send to the lady who helps with advertising. We returned to Vandon to finish proofing the subbings and sent them back in. She wanted us to practice writing as well, so I did a piece about Ladykillers last night. The only thing I would have done different would be take a different route to St. John Smith, we walked around for a very long time when we could have gone another, more efficient route.

I had some cultural experiences, nothing major, but I noticed some differences from my home culture. I'm not really a coffee fan but I know it's rude not to accept when someone offers to buy you either coffee or tea, so I tried a cappuccino. Minus the caffeine high it wasn't too bad, and it helped me fit in better culturally with the group I was with. While subbing I had to get used to some differences in British grammar/spelling. Simple differences like the words "colour" and "favourite" weren't recognized in Microsoft Word and I had to remember that that's how it's spelled here. And finally, it wasn't totally part of my internship but seeing Ladykillers gave me my first insight into British humor, which it was packed with. It's not exactly the type of humor I'm used to, but by the end I was laughing along with everyone else.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed week one of my internship.

BES-Assignment 2 (Making Sense of it all: the Museum of London)

This past Sunday I ventured to the Museum of London with a group of girls from our program. I took a trip through the history of London, from pre-historic times to present day. We were there for about two and a half hours but I could have spent a whole week if I stopped and read all of the captions to the displays. I moved through, taking everything in but only stopping and reading what I found interesting. My two favorite parts of the museum were those featuring the black-death plague and the great fire: both of which had videos that accompanied them. They had a display for the great fire (pretty sure it was for children) with a video and diorama that lit up when the video of the days of the fire progressed. I’m not ashamed to admit that was my favorite part of the museum.

The first few exhibitions reminded me a lot of American history with the Native Americans, which I thought was pretty boring. Once we began to make our way into the 1900’s things started to become more interesting. I found the “pleasure gardens,” area very interesting, especially the costumes from the time period. I liked how the museum went in chronological order of its history, it gave me an opportunity to understand how the culture became to be what it is today.

Although it has a rich and cultured history the history of London is a lot like the history of America. Urbanization, suffragettes and two world wars are all also part of our own countries history. It was interesting to see another side of WWII. To Americans it was on foreign soil but the war actually happened in London and impacted its people. In addition to the great fire and the black plague I enjoyed the displays of fashion throughout the museum. My favorite area was that of the 60s, featuring Beatles band dresses and fashion. Something unique I noticed about this museum was that it focused on the people’s history. There wasn’t much about the royal history/ history about the monarchy. I like how it focused on the people of London, showing how it developed into the metropolis that it is today.

After getting lost and wandering the streets, we found our way to the Barbican Centre. It was a nice complex that looks like it has a lot of cool things going on. I can see why people get lost looking for it, because it was super hard to find. We walked around the areas that we could but most of it is admission only. I grabbed an information packet with February events in it and saw that the cinema is showing the film “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” which I wanted to see. If it can find it again I will definitely go see it.

 

Overall, this area of London seemed very cultured with many opportunities to explore past and present London. If I have time I would like to go back and spend more time in the museum but it won’t be at the top of my list. 

BES-Assignment 1 (London's Neighborhoods and Markets)

For this assignment I visited two markets; Borough Market and Brixton Market. Both very interesting yet both very different.

 After our walking tour on Saturday we spent some time in Borough Market, it was insane! It felt like the tube station during rush hour, everyone was shoulder to shoulder. They had a wide variety of food available for sampling and purchase. I tried some cheese which was delicious but quite expensive. I didn’t find much in the market that I would consider “a good deal.” With the amount of people there it was hard to not be concerned about keeping my purse in front of me. I’m not sure if it’s usually that busy or if it was just because it was a Saturday, but I didn’t stay for very long…my claustrophobia was kicking in hard core. I didn’t end up buying anything but I did leave full from all of the samples that were available.

On Monday morning two other girls and I took an easy tube journey to Brixton market and had a wonderful experience. We walked through the area taking it all in, which was easy because it wasn’t too crowded. They had mostly food stands but I also saw jewelry, clothes, and key cutting stands. I bought a pineapple, ½ a pound of green beans and a bag of grapes for 4 pounds! The deals were awesome; my friend bought 3 pairs of earrings for 5 pounds…the jewelry stand is definitely one I will be visiting again. One thing that I didn’t like was the smells. My stomach got a little queasy walking through all of the dead fish and animals, which were everywhere. One thing I found myself questioning was, is the meat safe to eat? It was just sitting outside and the fish were practically still swimming. But it’s where a lot of people get their meat so it must be safe. In addition to the market we stepped into Poundland and Iceland’s where we bought cheap groceries and school supplies.

Overall, I really enjoyed the markets because they gave me an insight into traditional culture. Although slightly different from American grocery stores Sainsbury’s is a lot like my local King Soopers or Hy-Vee. The markets were a new cultural experience for me, and they offered great deals for organic natural produce.  As far as I know the American “farmers markets” (equivalent to a market) aren’t allowed to sell meats, only fruits and vegetables. That’s one difference I noticed, Americans wouldn’t trust a non-licensed store to buy meat from. Although the products at Borough Market were great, the one thing I didn’t like was the amount of people. It made me nervous and pushed the limits of my claustrophobia. I will definitely be visiting these markets more and many of the other ones throughout the semester. 

BES-Reflective Journal, Week 1

It's weird to think I've only been here for a week, it seems a lot longer than that. In seven days I've suffered jet-lag, overcome jet lag, gotten the hang of the public transportation system, blown up my toothbrush from the outlet, eaten less than I am used to, and walked more than I think I have in my entire life combined.

I have found myself starting to say 'toilet' instead of 'bathroom' and 'quid' instead of 'bucks.' Although I am trying to adapt to this new culture there are parts of my home culture that have molded me, making it difficult to change. For example, I find it very confusing that people don't look at each other or speak on the tube, but romantic couples will make out on an escalator or in a restaurant. In America people will speak to each other but rarely engage in any forms of P.D.A. This is just one cultural difference I have noticed.

I am beginning to understand why people are so skinny...they eat half as much as we do and walk twice as much as we ever do! Food portions are definitely smaller  and fatty foods sold in bulk in the US (hamburger meat/steak) are very expensive. Good thing I brought a belt because a pair of jeans I brought are already too big. Another cultural shock that I experienced was that of public television at night. My roommates and I discovered the hard way that after 9pm, anything is fair game on public television.

I think that I am still in the "honeymoon" phase of arrival. Everything is new and exciting and functioning on no sleep is still working. Last night a group of us gals were looking for a bar/nightclub to go to and got hopelessly lost. After three and a half hours we had been everywhere except where we were trying to go...it was quite comical, but also frustrating because the tubes were closed and we didn't know the bus system yet. But overall my experience thus far has been awesome, but I am excited to begin this week with a set-schedule that I can get used to. 

Bye bye jetlag: hello London Life!

After a few days functioning on no sleep I've adjusted to the time difference and have had the energy to experience this culture. As a group we've gone bowling and had our first British Experience Seminar (BES) class at Birkbeck College. Yesterday we put our three-days worth of London city knowledge to the test when we were set loose in the city on a scavenger hunt. I was paired with a girl named Nichole. After three hours of tube stations, thousands of people, and a handful of stops throughout the entire city we attempted to return to St. James Park station. Of course it had just stopped working so we had to find alternate transportation home. We waited for a bus but after a while we found two Welsh girls who needed to go to Victoria Station as well so we split a cab with them to get back. Overall, we lost the scavenger hunt but now we know where everything is.

On Wednesday me and another girl who is doing the same internship as me went to see what we will be doing this semester. We will be interning for the magazine "It's London," an event magazine for tourists and those looking for current things to do in London. It's run by a mother and a daughter (Julie & Beth) who really do everything, which is quite incredible. It looks like we will be doing different things from week to week, from running errands to going to major events and writing articles about them. Another awesome thing is its location, the main "office" is in Olympic Park, where the 2012 Olympics are going to take place. Everything is coming along quite nicely and it looks really cool. I am really looking forward to this opportunity!

I've only been here a week but have used the saying "You're only here once," many times, trying to take advantage of all of the things there are to do here. A large group of us went to the famous 'Absolut Ice Bar' earlier in the week (a bar where it's -5 degrees and everyone wears parkas) which was a ton of fun. I also experienced Primark, a giant store with contemporary clothing for a lot cheaper than the designer stores...I found a pair of boots and a shirt for 14 pounds. But it's madness-I'm sure there were thousands of people in the store.

Although I am having the time of my life, I'm not so thrilled about the extreme costs of everything. I didn't realize until I got here just how expensive most things are. For example, going out to eat. Take McDonalds, a sandwich+fries+drink meal is 4.72 pounds, which equals about $7.33...that's a lot for a Big Mac! I think I'll be sticking to homemade pasta and sauce!

I think I've walked more in the past few days than I ever have in my entire life combined! But I am having so many adventures and seeing so much culture that it's easy to forget about :)

Mind the Gap & R.I.P Sonicare....First Few Days in London!

Wow, what a busy past few days! After a very long journey through three time zones in three days, I left American soil and headed over the pond. After numerous miniature crisis' at the airport (no fingerprints at customs, no shuttle man at my terminal, girls I was meeting at a different terminal, no cell phones) we found each other and came to Vandon House here in London. The next two days felt like one never-ending long day...all filled with jet-lag overridden by excitement. We have 35 students in our program, mostly girls haha. I'm in a triple with two other girls from Central, our room is a pretty nice size, and we have our own bathroom. Some scheduled things we have done over the past few days included: orientation, drinks at the local pub 'The Feathers' (first and only time Central will buy a drink for me), and a walking tour in London (we saw a lot! Coolest things we saw were The Tower of London, Trafalgar Square, and St. James Park). Our tour guide pointed out the place where the sand volleyball Olympics will take place, so obviously the three of us volleyball girls had to take an action shot! :)

Some unplanned adventures have centered around exploration of this fabulous city; seeing the sites, buying cell phones, going grocery shopping, and experiencing the cuisine. One dramatic experience that has already occurred has been the death of my Sonicare toothbrush. After about two minutes of being plugged into the adapter I brought, an explosion big enough to make London Bridge fall down occurred. Luckily, that's the only thing that hasn't adapted to the outlet changes.

Overall, it's been a great first few days here! Finally getting used to the time change and getting some sleep.