So many finals this week...but only 5 days until Italy!

Internship update...

I had my internship meeting this morning, and it looks like my job is going to be even more incredible than my original high expectations made it out to be! I'll be working in a little office near Oxford Circus. My commute is short; I only have one tube transfer (Piccadilly Line to Jubilee Line at Green Park), and I get off at Bond Street and have a nice 5 minute walk down Oxford Street. This morning I arrived for my interview way too early, and so I sat in the window of a little Italian cafe along the way and sipped a foamy latte to escape the pouring rain outside. My boss is named Ania, and she's just a few years older than I am. In total, our team will be less than ten people, and because of this I've been promised lots of real responsibilities. I'll be doing a lot of graphic design (posters, fliers etc.), making informational calls to various clients, and helping prepare curriculum, guest lists, and schedules for the awards show in April. I was tentatively asked to join the group in Cannes (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) at the end of April for the show given that everything goes well with the internship. AKA I need to start shopping for a ball gown asap... The girls were incredibley welcoming, and the environment was creative without the pretentiousness that usually accompanies it. The photographs that will be recognized in the show are absolutely gorgeous, and I'm so incredibley greatful to be involved with a company dedicated to promoting such amazing work!

Valentine's Day

On Friday night Sara and I went to the Odeon Theater in Leicester Square where we lined up with a couple hundred other celebrity obsessed common folk to see the actors in Valentine's Day arrive for the movie's London premiere. We saw Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, Emma Roberts, Topher Grace, and Jessica Alba. It was a freezing three hour ordeal, but it was fun being amidst all of the screaming fans.

Istanbul

Hagia Sophia

Istanbul

4 days later...

I'm back in London after an epic weekend in Istanbul, Turkey. The 700 pound cost had me second guessing my decision to participate during the entire preceding month, but now that the trip is done, I can honestly say that it was the best big purchase I've ever made. Our group of forty students and four adults toured the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sofia, a few palaces, and went on an hour long cruise down the Bosphorus. With smaller groups, I ate lots of lamb, saw the whirling dervishes, shopped at the Grand Bazaar and walked from to Europe from Asia one night after going out in Taxim Square. At the Bazaar, I haggled over a few pieces of inexpensive jewelry and emerged with a silver Hand of Fatima (the daughter of Muhammad) necklace, a few little beaded bracelets, and a gold ring, all of which set off the metal detector at airport security, and got me privately wanded down. The Bosphorus cruise was my favorite. I learned from Orhan Pamuk's book Istanbul: Memoirs and the City that the name Bosphorus translates to "throat". It's a shockingly appropriate name considering that the Bosphorus breathes life into Istanbul and offers respite to the a gigantic city which is in the midst of a cultural, political, and religious crisis following the fall of the Ottoman Empire. It is a gorgeous river that spans as far as the eye can see and shines brilliant blue turqouise during the day, gleams golden at sunset, and mesmerizes with it's black instensity at night. Between the river, the 22 million person population, and the indescribably ornate mosques, Istanbul is a city so sublime that its ineffable.

more photos...

this week

Updating this blog on a regular basis has proven to be slightly more arduous than I thought it would be, and so (once again) I find myself overwhelmed will all of the details I want to tell you about this past week but without enough time to write the novel that they deserve. Last weekend I went on a free FIE trip to Stonehenge and Bath. I was suprisingly free of my typical motion sickness during the bus ride and so I could actually listen to our tour guide and enjoy the English countryside that whipped by out my window along the way. As most who make the journey would probably report, I was a little let down by Stonehenge. We were blocked from getting closer than 15 yards from the actual rocks, and so for the most part, seeing them wasn't much different than staring at the Stonehenge microsoft desktop picture. The chance to put them in the context of their landscape was appreciated though, and I genuinely enjoyed the fresh air and our tour guide's explanations. According to her, the public haven't been allowed to get close to Stonehenge for a few decades now, ever since viewers began to make a habit out of borrowing chisels and hammers from local blacksmiths and vandalizing the rocks. After Stonehenge the bus deposited us in Bath where I saw the baths and splurged on a 10 pound lunch of goat cheese tarts and caeser salad. Sara, Christie, and I didn't take the tour bus back to Kensington with FIE and instead waited in Bath for a friend of Sara's to pick us up. Lottie lives near Bristol, and we spent the night getting scolded for not being ladies (when we ordered pints instead of half pints at the pub) and eating delicious home-cooked food that her mom made. Later on we went to a guy nicknamed "Peaches" birthday party in Birnham near the sea. Once again we were the token Americans at a party, and all of the English kids (and the parents who were in attendance) wanted us to teach them drinking games. It was a great weekend, and now I'm buckling down (kind of) until Thursday morning when I depart for Istanbul!