Off to Paris!

Today I am up way too early but for good reason...we leave for Paris in a couple hours!!! I'm so excited to move on to another city (with a better exchange rate!), especially Paris which is so much fun. We are taking the train from London to Paris so thank god I don't have to worry about the weight of my luggage this time around because I think it will be way too heavy. Packing next time should be fun :-( Haha.

Yesterday was our last day to do something touristy in London and since it was a nice, sunny day a few of us decided to head slightly out of the city and go to Greenwich. Greenwich is a cute little town that houses the Greenwich Prime Meridian (longitude of 0 degrees). There is an observatory at the top of a hill that overlooks a beautiful, enormous, green park and so it was great to spend some times outdoors and enjoy the sunshine. We took lots of pictures including of course me standing in two different hemispheres! Haha.

Once back in London we had a last dinner at one of our favorite restaurants in our area and then headed out to meet the whole group at a pub in Soho. It was great to spend some time with everyone to wrap up our visit to London! We drank and talked and planned things to do in Paris so now I'm even more excited for our next stop! We all headed home pretty early to finish packing and now we're about to leave...I'm not sure what my internet situation will be in Paris although I hear they have free wireless in many cafes so if I can just borrow someone's computer...haha. Until then, au revoir!

Catching Up...

It's been a couple of days since my last post so I guess I have quite a bit to catch up on. On Friday we had our last venue visit in the UK. We met with the BBC's director for African and Middle Eastern news and got a chance to talk with him about his job and the BBC's role in the UK in general. The BBC is different from other television stations in the UK in that it is not funded by advertising but by a mandatory licensing fee that every TV owner pays. This way, the station doesn't have commercials and really is indebted to its viewers, not its advertisers. It's somewhat like PBS in the states, except for that everyone in the UK must pay the fee. Anyway talking with him was really fascinating. He had a lot to say and as most of our presenters have been, was extremely open with the kinds of things he shared with us.

On Friday night our group was thrown a "welcome party" by a former USC student who has lived in London for the past 30 years. We all dressed up and headed out to Chelsea to her beautiful home. Luckily, it wasn't raining so we got to enjoy a nice evening in her garden. It was such a nice change to be out of the city and since guests included many of the people whose businesses we had gone to visit, it was a great opportunity to talk with people in the industry in a more laid back setting. I spent a long time talking with one of the managing editors for the Daily Mirror about his experience in journalism. He had also brought along some of his newer employees so it was cool to get a chance to people at all stages of their careers. We were all so thankful that Jane (the hostess) opened her home to us!

Saturday was a free day for us!! Yay! So after breakfast my roommates and I headed out to Camden Town. Camden is an enormous outdoor market where they sell cheap clothes, jewelry, accessories and of course food. Although it was raining, it was great to explore all the booths (although I restrained myself and didn't buy anything). The market is cool in that it isn't all in one place. The entire little town is in market-style so you can really wander around for hours. The shops and the people the town attracts reminded me a bit of Venice Beach...lots of piercing parlors and souvenir shops. After we got tired of shopping we headed to the National Gallery. The gallery is a fantastic art museum located in Trafalgar Square. It houses many pieces from Monet, Van Gogh, Da Vinci and many many more. My favorites were probably Monet's waterlilies or Van Gogh's sunflowers. So beautiful!

Last night was really fun because I was able to meet up with one of my friends from SC, Natasha. She is here in London with her mom for a couple days before they head off on a European cruise (fun!) and so she came to spend a night with me. :-) We went out to a club near here which was really fun! Everything is sooo expensive here though. But luckily we didn't have to buy our drinks because some nice guys took care of that for us. Haha. Anyway the night was great. At the club, I also got to meet up with another friend from SC, Kristin, so it was really cool to get to hang out with people from SC here in London!

Today we've pretty much been taking a day to relax. I think we're all a little burnt out from all the endless sightseeing and venue visits so it's nice to take a day just to hang out in London. Kind of feels like I live here. :-) We went to brunch at a cute cafe in the area and have just been catching up on sleep, reading, emails, etc. We go to Paris on Tuesday so I'm trying to give myself a little break from the tourist thing before we get to a new city! I'm so excited for Paris! One of my roommates here spent the last semester studying there so she plans to show us all the cheap places to eat, tour, etc. Although the euro exchange rate isn't great, it's still going to be better than the pound...soo expensive!

Anyway on a happier note it's not raining today so I think I may go take advantage of that fact and grab a cup of coffee or tea. How British of me :-)

A Spoonful of Sugar :-)

I don't think i've been this busy at sc ever. We're going nonstop all day every day! today we had two more venue visits. in the morning we went to ITN (the Independent Television News) which directly competes with the BBC for news broadcasting in the UK. The presentation was really fascinating. We toured the news room and the studio and got to see the anchors prepping and rehearsing for the lunchtime news. I'd never been in a real news studio before so that was definitely cool. We met with the managing editor of ITN and he talked with us about what they do, how their business is changing and how it compares with the US. Like most of the people we met with, he was incredibly open with us and seemed actually interested in what we had to say.

After ITN we met with Peter Walker, a senior partner at Pielle Consulting (a global PR firm). His firm was much different than MS&L who we met with the other day. It was a much smaller organization that dealt with much bigger clients, namely entire countries. Pielle is currently working with Nigeria to improve its international image. He talked about the challeneges facing the country and the importance of internal perceptions of the country and how they affect global perceptions. Very interesting.

After the two presentations we were free for the day! Yay! I went with a bunch of people in the group to see a musical...Marry Poppins (hence this blog's title :-)). The show was fantastic! I love musicals in general but this one was amazing...great dancing, singing and of course I grew up watching the Julie Andrews movie over and over again so it brought back great memories. By the way, I forgot to mention that it was finally nice outside today!!!! No rain and even some sun and it even warmed up a bit! Definitely put everyone in a good mood and it was great to see the streets filled with people other than tourists.

Tomorrow we are meeting with the BBC (yay!) and then we have a party being thrown for us by a USC alum who apparently married a very wealthy British man and always throughs the ICS students a "Welcome to Europe Party". Should be fun :-) Anyway we don't have to meet until 12:30 tomorrow (such a nice change from 8am!) so that's exciting. However, I have some errands to run (like getting a stupid shop to take back a credit card charge it gave me because it decided to charge me TWICE for a coat I bought...not fun) so I will be getting up early anyway. I'm praying it doesn't rain tomorrow and I can enjoy one more day of sunshine! Think good thoughts :-)

RAIN RAIN RAIN

so today the rain finally got the best of us. it rained ALL day and it was so not fun. we had two venue visits today which were both very cool (Channel 4 and Manning, Selvege and Lee which is a PR firm). Channel 4 even gave us a little goody bag which was a fun way to start the day. but as soon as we left Channel 4 it started to rain and then basically never stopped...the PR firm was really interesting. I really didn't know much about PR before talking to their employees and now I feel I know a bit and it's a bit different than I thought...but I liked it. :-) anyway back to the rain. even though we were really tired after the two venue visits i desperately needed a jacket and scarf (because for some reason i thought that because it's summer it would be warm...) and so we did a bit of shopping and i found both things! yay!

the program arranged free tickets for us to go to the globe theatre tonight but of course...it rained. the globe is an incredible place and i am definitely a fan of shakespeare so i was excited to go and see titus andronicus but...the rain made it seem less enjoyable. we had "yard standing" which means you stand up for the entire duration of the play and the place has no roof. we bundled up and toughed it out for a while but about ten minutes before intermission i was freezing and couldn't move my hands so i decided it was time to go haha. so we left and braved the rain and sadly had to cancel our plans to go to ministry of sound (a famous london club) and instead stayed in with a bottle of wine.

tomorrow we have two more venue visits but a later morning so yay! i'm pretty tired so i might just blog more later...night!

I wish I lived at the Ritz...

it's only my fifth real day in London but I already feel like I really know the city pretty well. we've been traveling throughout the city basically all day every day using the tube and the buses and i almost feel like i know where i'm going :-)

today was another incredibly busy day. we had a venue visit today at the Daily Mirror, which is a "tabloid" newspaper in London. we met with the managing editor of the paper and the news editor who were both really interesting and open with us. we spent a long time talking about the differences between the UK papers and the US papers (which are abundant!) and then also comparing all the different UK dailys. The Daily Mirror seems to be a very sensational newspaper and although it is considered a hard-news daily in London, it would definitely be a tabloid comparable to the Enquirer in the states. The papers are pretty full of female nudity and focus a lot on celebrity news and sensational stories. Also, something that was especially interesting to me was the differences between the importance of sourcing in the two countries. In the US, a story is basically not considered credible without a reliable source. However, in the UK it is not unusual to use a "protected source" or completely make up a source for the "benefit" of a story. Although apparently this is an accepted practice in UK journalism, I found it incredibly unethical and it completely eliminated any trust I may have had in British papers like the Mirror. Although the Mirror is a cool organization and the paper definitely is entertaining, it i just that. Entertaining. Not necessarily good news.

Anyway sorry for the rambling. After our venue visit we decided to do some more touristy things. So we went back to Westminster Abbey to completely tour the whole building. Even though I had been there before when I was here with my family, I decided to go again because I think the church is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. Also, it was really cool to see all the tombs of famous and royal people around the church. After that we went to Parliment! Parliment was so cool because Parliment is in session right now and (for free!) you can go in and watch the members debate key issues and bills. So we did that for a bit which was really fun. The members are really funny. This one guy kept talking for a really long time and looking around the room, I saw that no one was listening. At all. It was quite hilarious. Also, the clerks really do wear those ridiculous wigs! Fascinating! Haha.

After Parliment we went to High Tea at the Ritz which was AMAZING! The Ritz is so beautiful and ornate and the service was amazing. We had endless tea sandwiches and pastries and biscuits and cakes...it was fantastic. :-) A bunch of the girls on the trip went and it was definitely a fun girly thing to do. I definitely wish I could have high tea at the Ritz every day.

And now I am exhausted again (of course) because I have been going nonstop since 7am. Blah I hate that our meetings start so early. Oh well, other than the early mornings it's been a fantastic experience so far! :-)

First day of "class

Today was our first day of "class". I put it in quotes because it's definitely not like a normal class I would take at sc...or any other school for that matter. The day started off at 8am...WAY too early for my taste (I don't even schedule 8am's during the school year...)! We met with two clients today (MORI and Jean Pierre Langellier...I will explain more in detail later) and listened to them speak to us about what they do in London.

The first speaker was a representative from MORI, a direct marketing and opinion research company based in the UK. His presentation outlined what the company does and then went into some of the results from their many opinion polls. We talked a lot about perceptions about the British media and how the British take in their news. All this was very interesting to me...because for the most part it was totally opposite from the American news market. In America, it seems to me that the trusted news sources are usually print sources like the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or the Washinton Post. Many Americans are skeptical about the political and social biases of many television news stations (ex: fox) and therefore are less likely to trust their news. However, it is totally the opposite in the UK. For the British, television news is the trusted news media and most people here rely on stations like the BBC for their news. The newspapers on the other hand are openly slanted and most focus more on the entertainment news (they're called tabloids and most really are very similar to American tabloids). Sorry to bore with the details, but we're supposed to be thinking about differences and similarities between the UK and the US for our final so I guess I'm using the blog to prep.

Anyway after the first speaker we had a break for lunch so a bunch of us went to a local cafe for sandwiches and then used the remaining hour to wander around the British Museum (which was right across the street from our meeting venue). Since I had been there yesterday, I took the time to go into places I didn't get to because the place is HUGE. I could definitely spend an entire day wandering around there. In the middle of the enormous "great hall" is the Reading Room, which was one of my favorite parts of the museum. It's a huge circular room filled from top to bottom with old, classic books. Originally, the entire room was a library and that you needed a membership to and only the most prestigious authors were granted one. The members could browse the library's huge collection and add their own personal books to the room if they wanted to. Anyway the room was amazing and I loved looking at all the cool books (I know I'm a complete nerd...)

After lunch we headed back to the classroom for our second presentation. This time we heard from Jean Pierre Langellier, the British correspondent for France's "Le Monde" newspaper. Although I definitely had trouble hearing through the thick French accent, Jean Pierre was a really neat guy who has had an incredible career reporting all over the world. He has been a correspondent in many different countries in Asia, Africa and now Europe. He talked to us a lot about what he has been doing with his life and then a bit about what the goals of Le Monde are (I won't bore you with the details).

So by 4 o'clock we were done with the academic part of our day and free to do what we wanted so I went to Harrods for some shopping :-) I absolutely love Harrods and its countless rooms filled with overpriced novelties. Trying to keep with my budget, I didn't buy anything there...but I did treat myself to some jewlery from a store down the street! One of the girls I was with decided she wanted sunglasses and so she bought some from the Armani store which was kind of exciting. Haha.

After shopping we ate dinner at this cool Indian restaurant that came highly recommended. The food was great but it was definitely extremely expensive so now I think I have to cook for myself for the rest of the trip. Haha no but I guess I do need to look out for ridiculously priced curry. Anyway I just realized how long this blog is so I will definitely stop writing now. Tomorrow is another 8am day when we go to the Daily Mirror (a British tabloid) and then...high tea at the Ritz! Yay!

busy days!

so i've found a cheap(ish) internet cafe near our flats which is exciting so i decided to update the blog. i also just figured out how to read my comments so thanks to all who have written! :-)

last night was our first non-jetlagged night out and it was a ton of fun. after drying off from buckingham palace we decided to go to covent gardens for dinner. covent gardens is this great area of london that has an open air market, tons of great restaurants and pubs and lots of shops. sadly, we got there after all the shops were closed so i think i'll have to make a return trip sometime soon. we ate dinner at this great pub that was supringsly well-priced considering the heinous exchange rate over here. it's about 2 dollars to every pound, which makes already expensive london just about impossible to afford. anyway after a leisurely dinner we decided to check out the club scene. we ended up at this great underground club down the street (im totally forgetting the name right now, i'll check on that...). we met these hilarious british guys who took it upon themselves to buy us drinks for the night and show us the "cool" way to dance in england (which apparently looks a lot like disco haha). when we were ready to leave, we realized the tube had already closed so we had to find our way back on the bus system which was quite an adventure. i have to say though that the public transportation system here is fantastic...we really need something so easy to use in la!!

today we went on the london eye courtesy of the housing company who is providing our flats here. for those who don't know, the london eye is an ENORMOUS ferris wheel across the river from parliment and big ben. each "pod" is big enough for at least 25 people to comfortably walk around and see the sights of london from way up high. i got some great pictures (even though it was raining) and even though i'm seriously afriad of heights i was able to suck it up and stand by the edge long enough to take in the amazing views.

after the eye we walked over to westminster abbey and the parliment buildling. sadly, the church was closed to tourists on sundays (go figure...) and so we couldn't explore the amazing building. however, we did sit in on their late afternoon church service which was really beautiful. they have an amazing choir and the inside of the building is so intricate that it kept me occupied just to look at the stained glass windows on the ceiling.

after church we hurried over to the british museum in order to get there before it closed. we didn't end up having much time in there (it's so huge that you could definitely spend an entire day there) but i was able to spend time in the egypt exhibit which was awesome. i saw cleopatra's mummy which was so cool!

anyway as you can probably tell today was a really long day so now i'm exhausted. we have "class" tomorrow at 8 am so i don't think there will be any pub crawls for me tonight. i'm interested to see how tomorrow turns out because none of us really know what to expect from class and our venue visits. i'll be sure to keep you all posted on how it works! :-)

london!!!

i'm in london!! traveling was exhausting and long but i made it here! we are staying in flats in the west end of london and it's a really great area. very posh as they would say here. there are 4 people to a flat so i'm living with three other girls who are fun and everyone is pretty close together so we've all been trying to do things together.

yesterday was full of traveling. we got to our flats around 2 london time (so it was about 6 in the morning for me) and settled in a bit. then my roommates and i went on an adventure to find european cell phones so we can keep in contact with the group. i got one (let me know if you want the number) so i can keep in touch with people from the group and from home. then after spending about an hour trying to navigate the buses and the tube back to our building we met the group for dinner. our professor who's traveling with us took us all out to dinner at this great little restaurant so that was nice to be treated to a meal :-) after dinner we decided to check out the local pubs and spent a bit in a crowded smokey bar watching the locals watch cricket (very interesting...)

we were all incredibly exhausted after all of our traveling so it was a short-ish night. today we got up early and decided to head to buckingham palace to see the changing of the guard. i was very proud of myself for navigating the tube all the way there (even when our normal station was closed for the weekend). it was incredibly crowded there and of course as soon as we got off the subway it started to POUR. so we braved the rain for a bit and did end up seeing the changing of the guard. i've been to buckingham palace before and although it's a very cool building, there are just always way too many people for it to be worth it for me. but oh well. we stayed around for a bit and people watched and then decided we couldn't brave the rain anymore so we ducked in a cafe and had some lunch. now we're at an internet cafe and about to head back to the flat to change out of our soaking wet clothes (because of course now after our excursion it is dry) and rest a bit before deciding what we are doing tonight.

i'll try to post as often as i can but there is no internet access near our building so it may be more difficult than i thought. hope everyone at home is doing well! feel free to write comments or send me an email! :-)

Getting Started...

So this is my first experience with a blog...we'll see how it goes.

I leave tomorrow so I am spending today packing and stressing about traveling tomorrow (of course). It hasn't really sunk in that I will be spending 6 weeks in Europe...starting tomorrow! Ah!

Anyway I hope that you all will enjoy this blog of my adventures throughout Europe! :-)