Internship Weekly-Journal 2

Week 2

Date: Tuesday 31st January & Wednesday 1st February                                 Total Hours: 9

This week was a little bit different than last week. Lucy and I were given more credit with less direction in our assigned tasks, which was great and also more challenging. We met with Beth on Tuesday morning for coffee at the Liverpool station where she gave us our duties for the week. The last issue came out last Friday so this week is made up of constructing the next (Valentine's) issue. She told us: we'd have more subbing to do (converting long press releases into short quirky touristy snippets) and email back to them to put into the magazine, Wednesday we'd need to go see "The Importance of being Earnest," and do research on smaller shopping centers. We came back to Vandon and spent the next few hours subbing on our computers...we each did six of them. We spent some time researching the small shopping centers, not with much luck, but we got a start.

Wednesday we didn't formally meet but we knew our tasks. At 2:30 we went and saw "The Importance of being Earnest," at Her Majesty Royal Theatre at Haymarket. I don't think they had our tickets at the box office because we had to sit in different places which was weird. An elderly woman asked me, "So do you come to the theatre by yourself often?" It was odd watching it by myself. The play itself was also odd. I didn't know anything about it before-hand, but I found myself confused for a lot of it. I know that it was written in 1895 by Oscar Wilde, and they were wearing Victorian fashion and speaking old English, but they also had cell phones and in the opening scene Algernon was playing Wii? I think it was a classic story spoiled with attempts of modernizing it. When I got back Julie asked me to write a review about my reactions to it, which I did...including opinions that I just stated. This week wasn't very challenging but I really enjoyed our tasks. They told us what we needed to do and trusted us to get it done right. One thing that I've begun to find frustrating is the lack of schedule we have these two days. We wait until Monday night to hear about where/what time we're meeting. I'm usually a very organized and punctual person so the lack of schedule has been the challenging part of this internship for me.

I didn't really have any huge cultural experiences this week. Unfortunately, Lucy's gran-dad passed away last weekend and I got sick last week, so I got to see British sympathy first hand through Julie and Beth. When we met for coffee Tuesday Beth sat down and truly talked to us about how I was feeling and how Lucy was doing. In all of her emails Julie has said "take care of Lucy," or "hugs for Lucy." I can tell that they really care about us as people. Beth's already invited us out to Essex (where they live-also the "Jersey Shore" of London) to spend some time. These experiences make me feel more welcomed to England and help me see how their culture works.